Thread 12 - TalkLair: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 11).

The days are gradually growing longer, but the worst of the winter weather is not yet behind us. In the TalkLair, we remain hunkered down keeping cosy and warm. The hearth is glowing, the walls covered in dubious artwork, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors (and assorted pets curled up on them).

We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

A fate worse than death? I have to say that I wasn't entirely serious, and I very much doubt we'll go ahead with it after 25+ years. On the other hand, it would enable me to divorce him!

Well of course the answer's yes - he'd be a fool not to.

Oh, and in falling down a Mondrian rabbit hole yesterday I forgot to wish @Britinme a happy birthday. I hope you had a lovely day.

Congratulations, @Gonners . You really should do it, it'll surprise everyone and you can wear a nice frock and everything!

@SinnerBoy I'm doing okay so far this cycle but that's because I'm still on steroids until tomorrow. I'll feel quite lousy by Sunday at the latest and that will continue until about midweek when I should be back on an upward trajectory. I'm eating like a demon at the moment but that will be curtailed as soon as my oesophgus starts to inflame, apparently within two weeks, so I have next week to continue eating like a demon and enjoy it while I can. So, all in all I think I'm doing far better than I thought I would be back after my first chemo session when I thought that if it was like this every cycle I'd probably not make my way through it. Instead I was just an idiot who didn't take enough of the antiemetics. Twat!

I was very sad to hear that David Myers had died today. He was such a lovely man and he had an awful cancer journey, so much treatment, so unfair that he went through all of that - and it must have been bloody awful, 35 cycles of chemo - and it still got him in the end. I'll miss seeing him and Si being the absolute stars they are together. I feel so sad for Si as well, their friendship is so genuine and it must hurt to have lost such a close and dear chum.

I did have a lovely day thank you very much Bint! We went up to Rockland, which is a couple of hours up the coast from here and has a wonderful art museum in which there are a lot of paintings by scions of the Wyeth family (grandfather NC Wyeth,, father Andrew Wyeth and son Jamie Wyeth, though Jamie is now in his 80s) as well as a lot of other good stuff. Afterwards we drove up to Camden, where I knew he'd booked dinner. What I didn't know until we stopped along the way was that he'd also booked us into a nice hotel overnight. Of course he'd omitted to pack small things like clean underwear for the morning, toothbrushes and toothpaste and the charger for my hearing aids and iPad but hey, you can't remember everything. Anyway we did an emergency dash to Reny's, which is one of those sells-everything-cheap stores and bought knickers and dental requisites, and an emergency swimsuit for me as the hotel had a pool. It's February so not exactly a hot market for swimsuits, and I got the only one they had in my size for $7.99. So all in all it was a lovely birthday.

How lovely Brit!
Gonners most people I know who get married eventually, do it because of avoiding inheritance tax, and being next of kin.

That sounds like a lovely day @Britinme and it's always a pleasure to spend a night in a hotel just because!

Very sad about Dave Myers. I'm glad he and Si at least got to do a few more trips after his treatment finished.

The first episode of their last series made me decide that I really have to go to Bute and hopefully I'll be going for a couple of days in the summer with Snoop. She loves it there and I now know some nice places to get some food! I will miss their partnership a lot but I do hope that we will see more of Si although it will be horribly difficult for him.

I found a link that made me laugh so I thought I'd share it with you lot...

%C8%98erban

Silly, lovely cats! I reckon Freddie would love it given his love of cats. Talking of the marvellous Mr Mercury, his house, which he left to Mary Austin, is on the market for £30 million. I think he'd be happy that she kept it mostly as it was and is going to be incredibly comfortable for the rest of her life because of the mad price it could go for. All in all nice house story and even lovelier cats.

Had a reasonably good day so far. I didn't get rained on as I made it to and from the hospital today which was a huge relief and I even had the sun on my face while I stood outside Brighton station waiting for my train. I listened to lots of lovely music on Spotify on the way there and back, read on the train and had the radiologists playing ABBA while I was zapped. I stayed in a good mood all the time and I Have the weekend off! I got a bit moany after getting home but that was because I fell asleep and woke up grumpy. I've lost the grumps now!

MouseMinge · Yesterday 20:41

I'm doing okay so far this cycle but that's because I'm still on steroids until tomorrow. I'll feel quite lousy by Sunday at the latest and that will continue until about midweek when I should be back on an upward trajectory. I'm eating like a demon at the moment but that will be curtailed as soon as my oesophgus starts to inflame, apparently within two weeks, so I have next week to continue eating like a demon and enjoy it while I can.

Sounds like you need to make the most of gorging on gorgeous grub.

Gonners, I'm sure you realised that I meant date...

Britinme · Yesterday 22:26

I found a link that made me laugh so I thought I'd share it with you lot...

The Hooliganette says "Ha ha! Thanks!"

Can I introduce everyone to the historic sport of Dwile Flonking?

A "dull witted person" is chosen as the referee or "jobanowl", and the two teams decide who flonks first by tossing a sugar beet. The game begins when the jobanowl shouts, "Here y'go t'gither!" "T'gither" or "together" at the end of a sentence in East Anglian dialect indicates you are addressing a group of people hence the occasional doubling of the word.
The non-flonking team joins hands and dances in a circle around a member of the flonking team, a practice known as "girting". The flonker dips his dwile-tipped "driveller" (a pole 2–3 ft long and made from hazel or yew) into a bucket of beer, then spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dwile at them.
If the dwile misses completely it is known as a "swadge". When this happens, the flonker must drink the contents of an ale-filled "gazunder" (chamber pot ("goes-under" the bed)) before the wet dwile has passed from hand to hand along the line of now non-girting girters chanting the ceremonial mantra of "pot pot pot".
A full game comprises two "snurds", each snurd being one team taking a turn at girting. The jobanowl adds interest and difficulty to the game by randomly switching the direction of rotation and will levy drinking penalties on any player found not taking the game seriously enough.

(TBH it bears a striking resemblance, particularly having to swallow the contents of the chamber pot, to the "rules" of TRSOH).

You had to make your own entertainment in those days.

Although I rather suspect in this case the entetainment lay less in the flonking and more in discovering that the credulous chap from London who'd come to record local customs would write down whatever he was told.

I've heard of flunking the dwile, and was vaguely aware it was something they allegedly did in East Angular - Ⓒ the late Jade Goody. But I've only been in the area once, in the early 80s when The Otter Trust was open to the public, and nobody flunked or flonked anything. The otters were absolute stars, though!

Haven't heard of that game before. Love these strange British traditions and can only think they're borne of huge amounts of beer being drunk and then everyone ends up staggering about throwing stuff and trying to drink even more.

We once went along to watch Haxey Hood in Lincolnshire and that was fun. It involved a lot of beer, singing of old folk songs, speeches and then a scrum of 100+ men that starts on a muddy field and slowly pushes its way through fields and streets to which ever pub wins. Didn't see any injuries but there were medics on hand and ambulances at the ready.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxey_Hood

In late 1960s Norwich public opinion re dwile flonking (always flonking) was firmly on the side of 'made up by and for television'.

We were talking about this PIF film yesterday and the page says it's from 1980, but I'm sure it was earlier than that. Can anyone remember when it was broadcast?

Thing with dwile flonking is that however bizarrely ludicrous it sounds, to my non-sporting mind it's not objectively any stranger than shin kicking, competitive pinching, cheese rolling or kabaddi.

The thing it makes me think is just how focussed people were on drinking lots and lots and lots of beer in the 1970s. Maybe they still are?

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast I don't know when it was first broadcast but I'd be amazed if it was as late as 1980. I'd guess early seventies given the visuals but couldn't get closer than that. It could be even earlier.

@MouseMinge what you've said there is pretty well what we thought. Can't see it being 1980.