Thread 16 - TalkLair: "Well, I'm not exactly quaking in my stylish-yet-affordable boots, but there's definitely something unnatural going on here."

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 15).

Another year over, a new one just begun...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, the walls festooned with tinsel, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, rugs are down on the floors, the tree is twinkling with fairy lights (and possibly being clambered on by cats). 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 Christmas roast beast over there in the corner of the cave…

But it's a story to tell your grandchildren, Sinner! Happy New Year to one and all.

Happy New Year folks. Just to let you know it's not all like Times Square over here, we just opened the door to let the new year in, and almost every house was completely dark in our street, and there was no sight or sound of fireworks anywhere!

Happy New Year threadsters!

Your NYE experience sounds rather scary @SinnerBoy, glad you all got out unscathed.

We stayed home (as usual), put the telly on to watch the fireworks (I concur with @NoBinturongsHereMate - really didn't take to the animated graphics), DH opened the front door to do the first-footing (we don't have coal so he brought in a log for the woodburner), then all went to bed. Weather was shit and rainy and continues so this morning.

I agree with @Gonners and others' analysis of DDs wanting to separate themselves. In fact they've chosen different sixth form colleges as their first choice... can't guarantee they'll get the ones they want, of course, but I think it would be great if they go to different schools next year.

Last night while vegging on the sofa waiting for midnight, DH started googling hotels in Malaysia and this morning started waffling on about various destinations there that I had previously suggested and he'd dismissed It's so irritating, he positively radiates un-keen-ness and yet seems deeply dissatisfied with the idea of being left out.

I'm glad you're okay @SinnerBoy . NYE can get a bit too many people and everything going a bit tits up at times. I was at Trafalgar Square in the 80s when someone died because they were crushed. As we were trying to leave the square there was a step that none of us could see and people were falling over. You had to get up as quickly as you could because if not then the next person would fall on you, etc. It was horrible. I think it got a bit more health and safety the next year which was no bad thing. I hope you're feeling okay about it all now but that was definitely scary for you.

@Kucinghitam FOMO is a terrible thing to be inflicted with and I'm so glad that I've escaped that particular malady.

Happy new year, one and all. On a macro level I can see it being a difficult one what with Trump and all, but I hope that for all of us in our own lives there are more highs than lows and that in a year's time we're looking back fondly at 2025.

Just watching the news and seeing lots of flooded places in your general area @duc748 - hope you’re warm and dry!

There's no rain here! It's been pretty dry today. A bit of frost, perhaps. But I am certainly warm and dry! 😀

We're up in the Tatra Mountains, there's patchy snow and by heck, it's windy! I got a weather warning from the Polish Meteorological Service, saying be careful and don't park under trees.

My daughter had a vomiting spree yesterday, fortunately not whilst on the 3 hour bus ride. She slept when we arrived at 5, but was lively by 8 and wanting to play Roblox. She's OK, but can't face food this morning.

Fags

Yes, I've been in a few crushes, it's why I stopped going to the football aged 16. There were a couple at gigs and even with only a couple of people on top of you, it's difficult to breathe.

Goodness @SinnerBoy you are having all the things happen to you!

We spent most of yesterday in the council's Local History specialist library. DH wanted to start collecting information and materials about FiL's workplace (all his favourite and regularly repeated stories are about his work). It was one of the biggest and most innovative metalworking/engineering firms in the north, before it closed down in the early 90s. We were surprised, but really we shouldn't have been, at how little information there was online - so meatspace it had to be.

Anyway, this library was a revelation! The staff were so helpful and showed us drawers of index cards, Victorian maps, 20th century microfilms of the local newspaper archives. It was like being in a period drama Also we found, in said newspaper archive, a photo of DH as a little boy in his church choir with his mum and the vicar and various local bigwigs!

We also started leafing through the enormous tomes of Electoral Registers on the shelves to look for our house - it got very exciting, by going backwards in time we worked out that our street was the last to be built-up in our little development of 3.5 streets and that our neighbours on either side were built before us. We found the very first family to live in our newly-built house (Mr and Mrs Batty!), and that it very briefly had a name instead of a number; DH says maybe we should put the name back!

And when we got home, the sky was so clear that we got the telescope out, all stood shivering in the front garden (to the confusion of curtain-twitching lady across the road no doubt) and got a view of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter!

It's very difficult to take a photo down the lens of a telescope, so I got about 7548 pictures of blackness until I managed this blurry and overexposed shot of Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons. Looked way better IRL.

Kucinghitam · Today 07:09

Goodness you are having all the things happen to you!

Not currently, mostly in the past!

Your husband's project sounds fascinating, but an awful lot of work. I remember using microfiche to look up books and information at university, although they did have a nascent computer database for more recent works, which they were updating slowly.

Kuc that actually sounds all very enjoyable to me.

DS1 finally got together yesterday with a woman over here who he has been friends with for quite a while, but couldn't see as he normally does because she had Covid all over the Christmas period, so we all went out for pizza last night. He goes home today, which after almost three weeks of visiting is actually a relief (bad mother but I want to get back to my own life!)

When I got back to my flat after Christmas with my mother, I just wandered around revelling in the blessed silence and order.

We rented a car for today, a Yaris, but they arrived with an Audi Q5, as the Yaris had been crashed. Lots of snow and an unfamiliar car made for a stressful drive, 30 km, to a castle on what was the ancient Hungarian - Polish border.

On the way back, my wife commented, "You're more confident now." I replied, "Yes, you're not shouting at me every 30 seconds now."

She wanted me to drive faster, even though she commented, "He's crazy! You're doing 40 and getting overtook on a crossing!" etc (40 limit).

We had a pleasant meal near the apartment and on the way back, a guy with a horsedrawn sledge handbrake turned and urged us to get in. Daughter puked (she's been ill since NYD) and we decided not to, but she got in.

She's just back now, they took her into the woods for a barbecue. We thought it'd be a little ride around! No charge, just neighbourliness.

@Kucinghitam if Mr Kuc is ever down in London, the National Archives are absolutely awesome for that sort of research too.

There's something very satisfying about microfiche. I once traced the sole surviving beneficiary of a family trust via microfiche in the Guildhall Library. He'd moved to the US, someone thought he might have gone "somwhere like Chicago", he had a very unusually-spelled surname and ... Lo! There he was, in the phone book. What on earth the Guildhall Library was doing with the Chicago phone directory on microfiche remains a mystery.

It's years since I've used microfiche but used it all the time when I worked at the British Library of Political and Economic Science. While computers are obviously better there's something rather wonderful about microfiche and back in the day it meant that so much that would have fallen to pieces got saved. I loved it.

@Kucinghitam that sounds like my idea of a heavenly day out and I'm not at all surprised that the staff were so helpful. I think that if you're working in that sort of institution then you probably love all of it and want to help people, so when people like you and your husband happen along and you're so interested, well, you've made their day! I'd love to work somewhere like that.

I'm hoping to make some use of the British Library this year for research on a book I want to write. I'm currently reading mostly secondary but one primary source on the information I'm looking into and I am having SO much fun with it.

The weather was beautiful here today and it seemed to stay light far longer than usual. I had a lovely wander around the shops and the seafront before getting a bus the very short way home. I think it's going to be a hot water bottle night tonight.

Definitely a hot water bottle kind of night!

I nipped out to the post box a while ago in my new winter coat and found it (the coat, not the weather) pleasingly warm. The sleeves are too long but that means warm hands even without gloves so it’s fine by me. Its waterproofness has yet to be tested but I’m hopeful.

Not totally convinced the birthday card I posted will reach its intended recipient on Monday though.

Ooh @FagsMagsandBags I want to hear all about that book when you've done it!

Did I tell you guys that the book I thought was going to be out in April is no longer happening? Apparently the publishing company's accountant put a freeze on all new contracts for 2025, and at that point I only had a verbal agreement, not a written contract. I was majorly bummed out about that. I've sent the ms off elsewhere but I need to shop it round more widely. Now DS1 has left I might be able to find some energy to do that.

Oh what's shame Brit. What's it about?

I was interested by this:

I once traced the sole surviving beneficiary of a family trust via microfiche in the Guildhall Library.

What happened after that?

That sounds like a good adventure for your daughter, @SinnerBoy. Was she okay eating the bbq?

Yes, it was my wife, daughter and I came back to the apartment. She refused to get up for breakfast today, but yesterday, she had a couple of pouches of drinkable baby / toddler food.

We're supposed to be going ice skating today, don't know if she will now. I'd be spectating anyway, with my gammy knee.

What a bummer, Brit all that effort for maybe naught. I hope that you can get it published somewhere else, or fingers crossed, next year.

Sorry to hear that, Brit, how disappointing! I hope you can find another publisher soon.

I am delighted by all the library/research nerds here

BTW, is everybody suitably prepared for the incoming SNOW? I noticed a thread about panic-buying already. We will apparently be in an Amber alert from this evening, but are assuming this is a general Yorkshire warning rather than the city. We have a lot of mince pies and stollen slices leftover from Christmas, that's our emergency food. Planned preparations today will be as follows: move more logs from the side-of-house big log store, to the little log store in the porch.