Thread 14 - TalkLair: “What The Hell Are We Supposed To Use, Man? Harsh Language?”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 13).

Summer should be well under way, but the chilly wind, grey clouds and pouring rain beg to differ. Looks like 2024 continues to be a washout - on the bright side, the Tories got washed out too! 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…

I read that there was some evidence they went for O most often, and A least often. But apparently it also depends on other things like sweat, and possibly skin flora.

@Britinme given the rise of Equine Encephalitis virus

I read about this, it sounds rather worrying. And dengue of course @Kucinghitam, nobody wants that 😳

My mother's hypothesis is that Malaysian mosquitoes like exotic foreign blood hence why they go more for people who have lived abroad/are not Asian .

I am an O+ midge magnet. Hello all - hope everyone is doing well. We're just back from an excellent trip to Northern Ireland. Excellent apart from the journey there and back and the weather last week that is.

In "Little Things That Make You Dance a Jig" news, I see that Priti Patel has been knocked out of the Tory leadership contest in the first round.

Goodness, how sad.

Good, can't stand that woman.

In cat news, Bubo's human is away so we've been going there to feed him and make sure he's okay. He can be a bit stand-offish but today when I was petting him, I kissed the top of his head and he stretched himself out and started purring. I'm thinking that cat knows about being kissed.

Priti Patel has been knocked out of the Tory leadership contest in the first round.

Splendid.

It's a shame that vile Jenrick has come out on top, however.

I'm trying to ignore that part.

To be fair, they are all pretty vile. If I were forced to vote (on pain of death) I'd probably go for Mel Stride on the basis that I know absolutely nothing whatsoever about him and can't recall ever hearing of him before today.

It doesn't matter much, though, does it? Oppositions can talk, but that's all they can do. It's what the govt of the day does that matters.

Pritti Patel losing in the first round struck me as quite an achievement in a ballot that also included Mel Stride. Jenrick coming top is awful though. I would have said that the least worst was Tugendhat but he seems to have veered rightwards of late. The Tory party membership can be banked on to select the more bonkers of the choice put before it s ok it wouldn’t end well even if there was a sand candidate on the ballot.

@Gonners I suspect you’ve seen or heard Mel Stride before as he was just about the only Tory minister stupid enough to agree to be sent out on the media round during the election campaign. I think he’s just very forgettable. He’s affable enough but mostly hopeless.

I love these sorts of threads!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5158217-things-you-assumed-and-were-astonished-to-find-out-you-were-completely-wrong

That's a gem of a thread, and now I know (at the age of 74) that the instep is the top of the foot, not, as I believed, underneath it.

Same. As are the vast majority of the population, I'm sure.

The Andrew/Freddie Flintoff thing was my learning moment - in my defence I pay nearly zero attention to sport of any kind.

Big thunderstorm has just started here, lots of flashes and torrential rain.

We've had joke rain off and on most of the afternoon so far (central London). Not looking forward to the journey home!

Britinme · Today 14:21

That's a gem of a thread, and now I know (at the age of 74) that the instep is the top of the foot, not, as I believed, underneath it.

So I read there, the thread closed, just as I was posting to say that some sparkling mineral water does come out of the ground fizzy!

I didn't know that about insteps.

Someone sent me this earlier about having to armour-plate a cat feeder: https://blondihacks.com/furiosas-cat-feeder/

I have to say that the number of people who don't know what, where or why the Elgin Marbles are does make me think even more that they should be in Athens.

Meanwhile, trans people were notably absent from the roster of speakers at the recent DNC here, unlike the previous two in 2016 and 2020. The Democrats are more favourable to trans issues than the Republicans, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for the vile Trump and his vile followers so I'll have to just swallow that I guess. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/dnc-2024-missed-trans-rights-implications-election-rcna167990

I read the start of that thread and was similarly astonished about the ignorance about the Elgin marbles. They should be in Greece anyway but clearly they’re not serving much purpose here.

@artant That post just made me question whether, in my head, I have been pronouncing "Elgin" correctly - with the "g" of a fish's breathing apparatus rather than that of a quarter of a pint! Whew!

When I was a child and into my teens I thought the Elgin marbles were actual marbles but bigger, as in the sort we played with as children but made of stone and about double the size of a football.

The instep thing has blown my mind.

There's an annual film quiz at a venue near Snoop and we've been going for four years with this being our fourth and me being so delighted that I was fit for it. We had too many of us for our usual team so Snoop and I were paired with a couple of young men who turned out to be delightful. We came sixth out of twenty-one which we thought was fair enough and just about respectable. We were most miffed by one of the dingbats not because there was anything wrong with it because we got it almost straight away, well I did because the lads didn't know what a patella was. The dingbat was G + patella, so Genie. The thing was that none of us had ever heard of a film called Genie. Turns out that as recently as last year there was a Richard Curtis film starring Melissa McCarthy called Genie. What?! One of the delightful young men and I agreed that we generally knew about films that were released even if they were awful and we'd never think of going to see them and how bad must that film be that we'd not heard of an actual Richard bloody Curtis film! Anyway, going for what we'd guessed rather than "maybe it's some odd reference to Aladdin even though we know it isn't" would only have got us to fifth place which wouldn't have brought any winnings. The team who won looked couldn't even be arsed to crack a smile when they went up to collect their prize. We won the first year and one day we will win again. Oh yes.