Thread 18 - TalkLair: "That's no moon. It's a space station!"

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 17)

We've had our heatwave - is this it for the summer? All is lush and green in our LairGarden, flowers are blooming, berries are ripening...

In the TalkLair, all the windows are open, the Pimms is chilled, the MN massive salad is ready to serve. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, 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…

I had forgotten Anoia! All praise be to her.

I hadn't heard of Anoia before but she sounds fun!

Just watched this rather lovely short film about the Sumburgh Foghorn and the equipment and preparation that is needed for it to work. It's so beautiful and precise. Excellent sound quality too. No music or talking, just ambient sounds.

Imagine being asked what your job is and being able to say 'foghorn technician'.

Cherries. On impulse, I bought some black cherries the other day in Lidl. It's donkey's years since I've eaten (or bought) a cherry, and as for black cherries, it could literally be going back till childhood! Well, I was quite blown away! So sweet, so tasty, so juicy! Big and fat, too! I suspect the gene whizz-kids have been at it with cherries, removing any sharpness or bitterness, in a similar fashion to what has happened to modern tomatoes,

It also made me wonder about cherry gin...🤔

I could quite easily bankrupt myself for cherries in season!

I have access to a few cherry trees at work so am in cherry heaven.

I bloody love cherries. When I was working it was always a treat if we had a cross-campus meeting in Canterbury in the summer as the walk to and from the station passed countless cherry stalls.

I know nothing of Anoia. I really need to read more Discworld.

I thought we were going to get a few cherries from our trees this year, but they vanished before ripening. I'll need to work out a bird/squirrel defence system for next year.

We had a tremendous harvest from our morello cherry tree this year. We planted it when we moved in, so it's less than 10 years old. Every year we've either had no cherries developing at all, or the immature fruit being eaten by birds, or (best case) ripening while we've been on holiday. This year we had tons of cherries on the tree and they ripened earlier than usual so we got to enjoy them before our holiday. They were marvellous!

This is amusing and still relevant with 16-year-olds (although some posters clearly don't get it!).

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/AMA/5389223-im-14-and-know-everything-so-ama?

We have access to a morello and it's not ours, but the client is very generous and always insists we take plenty. This tree also had a wonderful harvest this year and ripened early too, they were so damned good. There was more than enough fruit for humans and birds.

I luuuuurrrrrvvvve cherries. I eat bowlfuls of them during cherry season. The frozen ones are pretty good too.

Fresh or frozen, it's all good to me. We have some in the freezer and I really want to scoff the lot but have promised my brother that I'd save some for him.

Is there anyone who doesn't love cherries?

I always forget about cherries unless I spot them in the greengrocers. I shall stop at the one in the next village tomorrow (conveniently on the way to and from from the dentist!) and hope they haven't finished. If they're available, I shall buy some extra for the dental reception team, who are just fab-u-lous and so kind and helpful.

I'd just like to say,

FUCKING Virgin Media!! 😡😡

OK, as you were.

Oh, I have them, too. They always come up with some blah blah to avoid knocking money off for outages.

I have Plusnet and they have always been pretty good at dealing quickly with outages, though I've never asked for money back. I changed to them from Virgin. Also, if you're in a rural area, worth finding out if Gigaclear have put fibre b/band in your postcode - my mother now has it and has roughly 225mbps. My brother and I are thinking of starting a dodgy web business in her attic.

I need to investigate new broadband options now that my mum’s pendant alarm has gone digital and we’re no longer tied to maintaining an old school land line.

FiL had a bad time with Virgin Media, although his account of the long-running dispute was so garbled that we never quite understood what the original problem had been. He doesn't have a landline or internet in his new flat (by choice), just a smartphone and the free council wifi in the communal areas.

By contrast, we've been with Virgin Media for yonks, through several city moves, and hardly had a problem with them, generally had excellent fibre speeds and reliability (I may have jinxed it now). In fact last week they sent us a brand new hub, free of charge, because our original one was so old.

In other me me me ramblings, I'm finding that my brain is becoming much slower and more easily muddled. I don't know if it's menopause or early-onset dementia (from spending too much time with my dad ), being constantly ridiculed by know-it-all teens, DH being an agent of chaos, or just age slowly degrading my synapses.

Kitchen work started yesterday, will take 3 weeks.

Now some time ago, DH had said, "Let's book away for a weekend to get away from the building work" and made some arrangements and put it in the family calendar. Yesterday morning, he suddenly said, "How are the builders going to manage next week when we're away?" and I was like "Huh?" (on the inside). Turns out DH has booked for us to be away Sun-Tues, not over a weekend - it's been there in black and white in the calendar for ages, I just never twigged! Anyway, on the outside I blithely replied, "Oh, I'll give them a set of keys!"

So yesterday afternoon, as kitchen-ripping-out man was finishing up, I duly offered him a set of keys. "Oh," he said, "it's not going to be me for the rest of this week - it's the electricians/plumbers/plasterers - so I won't need them yet!" And like a total fucking idiot, I forgot the reason why he had to have the bloody keys. So I just cheerfully said, "OK, see you next week!" 😡

Ha! Hopefully you can put that right before then.

I had no idea this was a thing. I have no interest in night-clubs, obviously, but I'd welcome similar measures at gigs too. I just find it more and more horrifying that epople can't seem to function any more without staring into a screen. You can't even play a game of pool in the pub without someone pulling out their phone half-way through.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4001x1mdlo

Try a multi B vitamin last thing at night before you go to sleep.

Says the woman who took about 15 turns to reverse into a parking space she uses most weeks, then got half way round town before remembering she hadn't paid and displayed, then after zooming back to the car (in time, hooray), finding her key after much rummaging through bags and decanting the first half of her shopping, did pay, but nearly walked away with the display ticket still in her (very) hot little hand.

such larks

By the time I had driven to Lidl and shopped there, the town centre on my way back was FULL of Traffic Wardens (TWO of them!) looking very warm in their big hats, I'm sure they would not have been in merciful mood.

More likely menopause-related for you young things than age-related. My DD is 44 and blames it on pre-menopause.