Thread 13 - TalkLair: “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 12).

Looks like spring has sprung! Tulips, apple blossom and early hay fever are upon us. In the TalkLair, we remain hunkered down keeping cosy and warm, because "something something 'til May is out". 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…

Spinach is a crucial ingredient in fish pie - though obviously only if you like spinach. I absolutely love it, even though it has a slightly weird effect on me, in that it makes the backs of my lower teeth feel really dry. My solution to this is to pay it no attention.

We had an Indian takeaway this evening from a really good restaurant and There Was Spinach (ordered by me). A couple of hours later, I still have that peculiar sensation.

I loathed English at school because I hated being told what to read. I’m still only an occasional poetry reader but read novels voraciously while on my physics degree. I think basically I just like doing whatever it is I’m not meant to be doing.

I love a lot of poetry and I write it too. I have a website with a few of my poems on it and interested parties are welcome to dm me for the link. I edited a book of pre-20th century poetry for Penguin when I worked there in the 90s so I still love the canonical stuff, but some of the recent poets are really wonderful, though I don’t go for the stuff you have to work out like a crossword puzzle.

I have Views on poetry.

It shouldn't appear in novels (a la Tolkien; Kipling gets a pass for it being part of the chapter headings and therefore easy to separate). And very few people should de allowed to write it - virtually everything written on here is actively painful, and things people write themselves for wedding and funerals generally make me want to walk out. But having once Vogoned an RE teacher for setting a particularly ridiculous poetry homework, and getting an A+ for it, I realise this reaction is rarer than it should be.

Graves is definitely on the permitted list. Although I disagree with his conclusion in this one - it's not that he overvalues women, but that they have been taught to undervalue themselves.

I am largely in favour of spinach in lasgne, and unbothered by whether or not it has a bottom layer of pasta. It probably makes serving neater, but has little effect on the eating.

Brit is also on the permitted poet list.

English lessons didnt suit me, either. I didn't like being told what to read, hated the reading-bits-our-of-order style of several teachers, and found it unbearably sloooooow. I'd usually finished the book by the time we reached the endof the first chapter, and wanted to be on to the next thing.

I don't think I would particularly like spinach in lasagna, nor would I particularly dislike it. We rarely make lasagna but I'll certainly try adding spinach next time we do.

OTOH I freaking adore spinach with curry flavours e.g. saag aloo.

I have a lurgy. Awful sore throat since yesterday and added aches/fever/dizziness today. Shame, as the weekly gardening needs to happen and I'll be too poorly to participate.

Saag panir for me!

I hope you're feeling better soon, Kuc. It's awful when you get the grips like that, not quite bedridden, not quite well enough to be active.

I absolutely love dhal with finely sliced greens mixed in.

Re poetry I was another one force fed it, mainly Wordsworth, so didn't really take to it, though I like John Betjeman. My dad, if he hadn't been a doctor, he would have made a good poet. When I was growing up, he wrote a lot and recited more. Now his short term memory is totally shot but he can still recite poetry for England. My step mother tells me that when the carers come in, as they work on washing and dressing him, he sings, recites poetry or Shakespeare to them throughout the entire proceedings.

Sorry to hear about your lurgy @Kucinghitam ! Mr Veg has the same bug and is pretty fed up of it.

I've dosed up on paracetamol, but it doesn't seem to have had an effect. Still achy/feverish/dizzy. I've got back into bed with a mug of tea, a laptop and a cat. It's quite frustrating, as today's weather looks absolutely beautiful (blue skies!) and I don't think I'm going to be able to go out and enjoy it.

Meanwhile, here are some CF neighbours.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5087739-older-neighbours-looking-for-help?

Deffo go to bed.

I'm glad to see some converts to spinach - I very rarely make lasagna as it's a lot of faff for one person (I did it for Christmas a few years ago) and have hardly eaten any pasta since last August. Actually, no real pasta, just that bean stuff once or twice. I'm now on a mission to empty the freezer because I have to defrost it, and have found several bags of spinach - have explored such old-fashioned things and spinach omelette and poached eggs and spinach for lunch, and think I'll do that chickpea bake but with some nice greenery to enhance it. And maybe when the freezer is empty (probably not till July unless I lose patience and start dumping stuff) I might cook a lasanga and freeze most of it in chunks. Though I'd have to get non-wheat pasta, so maybe not. Stuffed marrow with ragu, spinach and bechamel might be nice come September.

It's one vegetable much better bought frozen - one bag holds about a wheelbarrow load of the fresh leaves,

That thread gave me the rage. It reminded me of two occasions where I’ve put a plate of biscuits down on the table, gone to get the coffees and by the time I’ve come back, they were all gone. Both men. Claimed they thought I’d brought them out just for them. Unsurprisingly, both turned out to be bastards in other ways, too.

Re poetry, I was very into it as a teenager. Especially Sylvia Plath, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost and Anne Sexton. I still have the books on my shelf and occasionally dip into them. I write a poem maybe once every couple of years. I had a friend growing up who was similarly enthusiastic, and she went on to become a poet laureate. I’d never go to a poetry reading or anything like that (unless it was Plath’s daughter doing the reading) and don’t read modern poetry (except my friend’s).

@Gonners spinach does the same thing to my teeth. It makes them feel furry and like they’re going to fall out, so I don’t eat it very much. I mostly eat Japanese/Korean style meals these days as it works well for a pescatarian susceptible to acid reflux. Mostly short-grain rice with steamed or stir fried vegetables, tofu or salmon, seaweed, miso soup and edamame beans. I recently got a mini rice cooker which has been life-changing.

@Kucinghitam oh how rubbish. I hope you feel better soon.

It reminded me of two occasions where I’ve put a plate of biscuits down on the table, gone to get the coffees and by the time I’ve come back, they were all gone. Both men.

That sounds like my brother. When he visited us a while back Mr Veg got some biscuits out and I've never seen anyone eat biscuits so fast. In the end Mr Veg asked him if he was going to leave any for me and he looked genuinely surprised, the greedy sod.

@VictorianBigot I "inherited" a mini rice cooker from a tenant who died. She was a totally disabled lady, mentally and physically, who had carers 24 hours a day. She couldn't communicate much but she liked her little house so she was with us for 17 years in the end. When she died, most of her stuff went to the dump, which I thought was sad as it could have been donated, but it wasn't my call as to what happened to it. However, knowing this was happening I rescued this little rice cooker from the pile. I love it - holds enough for the two of us and I can just set it and forget it while I do everything else. As and when it dies I'll certainly get another.

Over the last 30 years we've had three rice cookers. They're wonderful, cook the rice perfectly while you get on with other stuff.

I steadfastly refused to read anything I was told to so there are quite a lot of books I should have read (and would really enjoy) but haven’t. I really did only start reading when I should have been going something else.

I'm left-handed and used to do mirror writing and my teacher encouraged me to read as much as possible, so I did and it helped a lot. Thing is, for some of the Englit books I'd already read a lot of them, some several times, so going through them again, slowly, page by page was really tedious. Made the exams easy, mind you.

I hated reading at school. I didn't read the books, just tried to find the relevant parts. In my late 20s I discovered I have an eye problem that causes the words to flash and glow on the page, a type of physical dyslexia that also causes eye strain. So I only occasionally read for pleasure. It often takes me a year or more to finish a book, if I ever do. I was also diagnosed with ADHD which has obviously made reading and having the stamina to complete a book or anything very difficult as well.

I loved reading. I learned very early - before I went to school - and was a totally omnivorous reader as a child. My mum had a poetry book with all the traditional stuff in and I loved that too. I wrote poems as a child and occasionally as an adult but it’s only in the last twenty years since I came over here that I’ve really focused on it as a craft. I did a lot of freelance writing in the 90s but that was all prose stuff.

I was the same as you with reading, Brit. My my mum said I could read to myself at about either 2 or 2 and a half. I just loved getting lost in a book so by the time I went to school I was well ahead of all the other pupils in terms of Janet and John and Peter and Jane, etc, even though I still wanted to read them because I liked the pictures. They were pure shite though which I recognised and moved on to more complex books at the same time. I think all of that would have been my first year in junior school which should have been my last year in the infants school but there wasn't a place for me so I got to do two years in first year juniors.

I don't think poetry was taught very well at school which was why I wasn't keen on but it was also the poetry we were being taught that I really didn't like. I see you Ted bloody Hughes.

I was fine with everything else we read. There were books we had to read for O and A level that I didn't like but that was fine because I liked other books. Funnily enough, I was put of Thomas Hardy for decades. I had to do him for O and A level (Far From the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge). My god I hated those books with an absolute vengence. Then, about a decade or so ago I decided maybeI should try him again. I went for Far From the Madding Crowd which was pushing it because I'd hated that one the most. I started reading it and it was so different to what I remembered and it was funny in places as well. In fact it was bloody great. I've still only read that and Casterbridge. I don't think I can ever read Tess of the D'Ubervilles because I've heard it on the radio too often, seen adaptations and it's all a bit, poor old Tess everything is going to be utterly fucked for her. I can do without that.

Reading seems to be something I can't do at the moment. I'm not sure why but I haven't finished a novel for months and months and I've not tried to get back to one or start a new one for weeks now. It feels very odd and makes me feel very unlike myself.

I was also an early reader, my Mum taught the basics before I started school. But I've got out of the habit in recent years. I don't like that much either! Full admission: I bought glinner's book when it came out, and read half of it at a gulp, and still haven't finished it. But I have a trip to London next weekend, and I figure I can make some inroads on the train journeys.

I read Hardy's poem more than his novels these days. I think he's underrated as a poet.

Also love: Auden's Shield of Achilles (difference between heroic myth and horrible reality); Going, Going and Aubade by Larkin; loads of UA Fanthorpe especially Atlas. And so many more.

I love a lot of Hardy's poems. I taught a course on Edwardian poetry to our local Senior College (like U3A I think) last year and put Hardy in there. I know his novels and some of his poetry were written before 1900 but a lot of it was published in the Edwardian era. I've never been a huge fan of his novels, though my DD became one after having to study Far From The Madding Crowd for GCSE. Larkin was writing his stuff about a mile from me in the 60s and 70s so I feel fondly towards him too. I'm going to shut up now or I could get very boring!

*VictorianBigot^ · Yesterday 16:17

I hated reading at school. I didn't read the books, just tried to find the relevant parts. In my late 20s I discovered I have an eye problem that causes the words to flash and glow on the page

It's not Scoptic Sensitivity Syndrome, is it? A friend of mine was diagnosed with it, when we were doing A Levels, one of our college lecturers tested him and he read 3 books in the holidays.

He'd never managed to finish one before.

On the biscuit thread, my wife is a bugger for that. A few weeks ago, our daughter cooked some oat biscuits and my wife scoffed most of them in one go and couldn't seem to understand why she was upset. She wanted to take some to school, for sharing.

And they had a school bake sale in February, daughter made 12 fairy cakes, with buttercream icing. My wife ate 7 of them. We didn't realise until the next morning, when it was time to leave for school.

I spent almost all of yesterday shivering and feverish in bed (DH and DC had a fabulous day out cycling around and eating ice creams). Totally lost my appetite, ate nothing all day except one cracker for dinner. Felt too tired to speak or even read.

I'm slightly better today - at least I could get out of bed, sit sadly on the stairs and wave everybody off to school/work. As they were leaving, I said to DH, "The last time I felt this ill was when we had Swine Flu"

But that got me thinking, I did a COVID test, and yup - positive.

It's the third time I've had COVID, but the only time I've felt properly unwell. I suppose my vaccine immunity has faded and/or it's changed a lot and/or bad luck on my part.