Thread 15 - TalkLair: “I Can't Lie To You About Your Chances, But... You Have My Sympathies.”

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 14).

Autumn seems to have gone straight into winter. It's cold, wet and windy. In the TalkLair, 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). The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics.

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

MrBint always has iPhones. So clearly they suit him, but he needs to replace them considerably more often than I do my Androids.

The 2024 SE is a grand wee phone. We just bought one for Mrs Oney from Argos to replace the 2020 one. She likes that size and doesn't care if it's not top spec

I've become a Motorola person. Nothing fancy, cheaper than many others, does everything I need and when I turn it on it says "Hello Moto!" and that tickles me.

I'd love to see AMOLAD at the cinema, it screams out for a big screen.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is also on iPlayer and it's a wonderful film. Funny, warm and moving at times.

I have an iPhone SE 2020 bought brand-new when it first came out, I'm mostly still perfectly happy with it. DH has a fancier iPhone [13?14?] with fancier cameras, but he's the world's worst photographer - he never thinks of photographing anything, and when he does it's a randomly-pointed blurry grainy snap. So I take all the family photos on my SE and nobody has complained about the quality of the resulting pictures so far.

DDs have iPhone SE 2022s, bought from Back Market. Good phones, I assume the camera is good but teenagers only take weird selfies.

I will probably have to replace my SE next year, because the battery life is going downhill. My plan is to get an SE 2024 from Back Market.

Also: it is snowing again. Rather heavily. It looks lovely and we are going to unearth the teenagers from their beds and make them go for a walk.

But I thought it was going to be a warm rainy storm weekend?

It's very windy here in London, and the sky is dark so I think it's about to piss down.

It's pissing down with rain here. I forgot to turn the heating down last night, so it's like a sauna. The wood burner stopped working last night and I tried to get it going, just upset the smoke alarm. I heard stuff coming down the flue, I think it needs sweeping.

I know nothing about Apple phones, my daughter has one and she asked me to help her a while ago, I was clueless.

I've got a 6 year old Nokia summat or other.

We had gales and torrential rain last night. Calmed.down now.

@MouseMinge when I turn it on it says "Hello Moto!" and that tickles me.

Arf! I currently have a Motorola and that just makes me shout "STFU!" at it, every time!

Anyway, I bit the bullet this morning and ordered a cheerful red SE 2022 (from Currys, who price-match everything and will set it up for me), plus a case and screen protectors via hated Amazon. Pray for me.

This is why I never bought a Motorola...

The Red Shoes is also on iPlayer now. Well, I think it is. It was on BBC2 this afternoon which generally means a film will be on iPlayer for at least a while.

My friend and I went to see Wicked at the cinema last night. Highly spectacular musical. If you don't like those, don't bother. Also it is two and a half hours long and that's only half of it - I assume the rest is out next year. That's about as long as the stage play took for the whole of it, and frankly that would have suited me fine. As it is I feel slightly cheated by having to eventually sit through another two and a half hours to get to the end, but I guess on the basis of the sunk cost fallacy I am likely to do that. Having said all that, Ariana Grande has a beautiful voice, and (surprisingly to me as I hadn't realised she could sing as well as act) so does Cynthia Erivo. I read somewhere that they actually did their singing live on set rather than mime to pre-recorded singing, which actually makes me respect them quite a lot because that must be a bit challenging when you're doing all the movement stuff as well.

My only experience with a Motorola phone was one I was given to take on an overseas field trip with students as our new big boss decided students mustn’t know put phone numbers.

I got a call on it at about 3am from a student who was running late. I was asleep as I had to travel a day late because my house had been broken into but I passed that message on to my boss. When I got on my plane to join the group I couldn’t work out how to switch the phone off. Eventually mastered that but not before it had baffled me and several of my fellow passengers. Switched it back on when I arrived in Amsterdam to discover that there was no service as the phones we’d been issued with hadn’t been set up for use outside the UK. Oops!

Storm Bertie is delivering big rain here in suburban London.

We did well to rush out into the snow yesterday morning. While we were walking around the park, the precipitation had turned to sleet and then to rain. Got thoroughly soaked and the settled snow was rapidly being washed away into slush. Almost all the white stuff was gone by the afternoon. But it was pretty while it lasted!

(Today is wet, windy and mild).

Britinme · Yesterday 18:59

My friend and I went to see Wicked at the cinema last night.

I took my daughter yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately for me, I'm no fan of musicals, but it was well done. I enjoyed the story line, how Elphaba is actually a nice character, who is reacting to discrimination and abuse.

And now can't wait for the next installment!

The scene from the end of my street. It's mild here, today, 12°.

It's a sunny 16C here, but very windy - currently 85kmh, fortunately from the south.

There's a light, warm breeze where I am. We haven't got the heating on, surprisingly.

@SinnerBoy yes I like the story line. I had read the book some years ago so I was expecting that, and I took my granddaughters to see the stage musical when I was in London earlier this month, so I was a bit taken aback by the doubling of the length.

The mother of one of my daughter's friends told me years ago that there are loads of Oz books and she's read them all and re-read them. I had no idea!

I've read a couple of them. One was about a sofa brought to life by sprinkling magic pepper on it.

Aberdeen, Sinner?

Whitley Bay, Medee.

Is this our two-year anniversary on MN?