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…

@duc748 I hadn't seen that before, thanks for linking.

I was listening to this last night https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/episode-5-julie-goes-to-genderland/id1767562982?i=1000668992475

No matter how hard I've tried, I just can't wrap my head around how people think it's ok.

That was another powerful letter @duc748, she's an amazing writer!

Had "fun" on the bus home from the city centre yesterday.

DC had spent the morning volunteering at a school event so were in uniform, while DH and I enjoyed an old-fogey time reading in the city library.

So we met up to catch the bus home, got on the top deck, found seats near the back. The back row were occupied by a gaggle of teen girls. They started by making comments at DC for being in uniform. Then they started playing music out loud on their phones. Then they started singing, louder and louder. Other passengers began to turn around giving side-eye, which caused the girls to scream-sing. In between, they were making rude comments to other passengers sitting nearby, especially any who had dared to glance at them, and particularly trying to needle DC into responding. Their scream-singing was now deafening. The lady sat in front of us started Googling "how to report an incident on the bus."

Eventually DH turned around and gave them a directly evil eye - the girls shouted "What? Don't you like our singing?" to which he replied firmly "No, it's really shit." This, surprisingly, had the effect of silencing the singing for quite a long time. We got relieved glances from several passengers.

When we got off the bus, all the girls shouted a selection of swear words at us. And then gathered at the window to watch us walking off, with more swearing and rude hand gestures.

Your girls always sound remarkably cool and sanguine, @Kucinghitam. I did laugh at the gaggle's response to DH's calm but firm put-down. I think grown-ups swearing, even mildly, often shocks horrid kids. Last summer we got an earful of foul-mouthed abuse for telling off a vile-but-posh boy (so, not local!) for cycling on the pavement and I responded calmly in my best RP that his mummy must be ever-so-proud at having raised such an ill-mannered, selfish, foul-mouthed little c*nt. He burst into tears, apologised and got off the pavement. MrG was startled but impressed.

I like your dh's response, Kuc.

Really heavy rain here and the sky is so dark I think the day will pass in dim twilight.

DDs were pretty annoyed/upset by the incident, but didn't show it (both stuck earphones in and blanked the shouty girls) - they felt they were especially targeted because they were a similar age to them, and in school uniform on a Saturday. Later on, they had a rant about how that sort of horrible behaviour gives all teenagers a bad name.

I had a horrible time with teenage girls like that when I was growing up, it really affected my confidence and I think it affects me to this day.

@Gonners love that response.

My mum, until fairly recently, as an ex-teacher, was perfectly happy to wade in and tell teens to stop being bratty. Remarkably, this has never got her stabbed - mostly it's a "Sorry Miss" and a foot-shuffle. As she is now 84 and physically very wobbly, I'm SO glad she doesn't do this any longer.

I did once witness her, many years ago, saying to an embarrassed 13 yr old from one of her classes, "Do you think I never feel like saying FUCK, Daniel?" "Dunno Miss..." "Well I DO. FREQUENTLY. And have you ever heard me say fuck?" "No Miss..."

Love that! 😄

@VictorianBigot - I'm sorry that happened to you. I went to army primary schools abroad, where they must have come down like a ton of bricks on bullying because it was generally pretty peaceful. But there were a couple of girls in what would now be Year 6 who were thoroughly nasty and clever enough to hide it. I just avoided them. Their attempts to form a larger "gang" failed.

Imagine my delight when, 2 years later, I came across them (still thick as thieves ... and thick as planks, socially) at my third grammar school in 15 months. One of them greeted me with a saccharine smile and said something mildly provocative, which I ignored. Instead, I greeted her with an enthusiastic "Hello, Dodo!" - her chosen nickname aged 11. She muttered that nobody called her that any more, I delivered raised eyebrows and a quiet "Really? How interesting!" and neither of them ever bothered me again.

Some excellent swearing at bold children, you all really made me giggle.

I had my first round of immunotherapy today and it seemed to go pretty well but I guess I'll have a better idea when I wake up tomorrow. It was nice to see some of the nurses I knew from earlier this year, including J whose husband L works in the ICU at Guilford and blah-di-blah-blah. There's a new nurse who is absolutely lovely and as well as being a nurse loves to look after my greyhound nephew, Seamus, so we know each other from outside of the cancer unit.

I'm still enjoying my food, including lots of Skips and Fruitellas. I'm having to be very, very careful with ice-cream which is fine because I'm mostly - apart from Fruitellas - fancying savoury and eating ice-cream for the calories.

I believe Heston invented a bacon and egg ice cream. But normal warm eggs with hollandaise is probably simpler.

There's an unintentionally interesting thread in Site Stuff about how clique-y and uninclusive MN is. The OP's objections seem to centre on threads like, well, this one (although she/he has named a different long-running thread series). Needless to say, I find these complaints baffling, but also I can't help but feel sorry for the OP who seems deeply confused about how The Internet works.

I hope for the poor OP's sake that she doesn't stray into the Bluestocking where even people who have been there from the start don't know what's going on half the time. Not just because Franglais.

Fruitella are the food of Gods.

The Bluestocking could finish her off! I love the surreal whimsy of the place and am very glad that MN has threads like that.

What an odd thing to have an objection to on a site where hundreds (thousands?) of new threads are started every day. Any lurkers here are very welcome to join in!

SqueakyDinosaur · Yesterday 19:57

I did once witness her, many years ago, saying to an embarrassed 13 yr old from one of her classes, "Do you think I never feel like saying FUCK, Daniel?" "Dunno Miss..." "Well I DO. FREQUENTLY. And have you ever heard me say fuck?" "No Miss..."

That's, erm .... JOLLY brilliant!

NoBinturongsHereMate · Yesterday 21:17

I believe Heston invented a bacon and egg ice cream.

Ha ha! I often tell my daughter she can have sardine flavour, if we're passing the ice cream parlour.

Odd really, describing threads where you don't immediately know exactly what is going on as 'private' and repeatedly saying you don't use social media except Mumsnet but want Mumsnet to be - I don't know, but not a huge place full of varied conversations between lots of different people. What happened to reading for a while and keeping schtumm until you 'get it'?

As I said the other day, in the last week there seem to be a lot of people posting for no other reason than to pick a fight. Have their children have left for college giving them time to pootle round the internet for the first time, trying what they expected from the name to be a small and cosy place and puzzled (and sometimes outraged) by what they find?

I read somewhere that MN has about 9m members. That's going to make a lot of discussion, and entirely unlike the village tea shop.

It's one of the things I like about Mumsnet - the sheer variety of topics. I must go and look for the Bluestocking one and see if I can figure it out.

Who designs this crap? It's hilariously awful.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/style_and_beauty/5171407-what-in-gods-name-are-these

Loving @SqueakyDinosaur sweary mum!

I poked my head into a couple of the Bluestocking threads. They're not for me, but it's just a bit of fun. After all, weren't there threads in very much the same vein at the Old Place? But as noted, it's a bit daft to complain about 'cliquey' on a site as massive as MN.

I saw that boots thread too. As you say, WTAF?

Me too. I'm imagining it said in Lauren Bacall's voice