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…

<Carefully avoiding all mention of GCSE results ...> I had a bizarre experience yesterday. My right ear was completely blocked (with wax I assume) so I chucked some oil down it and got on with my day. But it wouldn't go away, so I picked up a flyer for the earwax man, who has some sort of arrangement with the local opticians.

By the time I got home (about 10 minutes later) the ear was completely clear ... possibly the power of suggestion ... but the most enormous chunk of wax came out of the other ear! So, now we know how Earol works: it opens up a channel between the two ear canals and washes it out of the other side!

Busy and emotional day today - DDs have got great GCSEs and I am very proud of them both.

DD2 has enrolled at her first choice sixth form this morning, it was very straightforward as this school had an entrance exam and knowledge-based interview, so all she had to do was achieve the required grades.

DD1, having chosen a different college with criteria that put her in the bottom category of priority, will not be able to confirm her place until the 27th - and refuses to enrol at her backup school (even though I have tried to explain that it is standard to do so) - we're rather concerned that both schools will fill up and then where will she be? But she's 16 and knows EVERYTHING. DH is of course leaving it to me to be the bad cop/dumb mother, even though he also knows how this works

Well done DDs! Is it commonplace these days to change schools at 16?

Bad cross-timing on postings there - sorry about that. I'm so glad they both did well! Is it DD1 who has been generally a bit stroppy lately? I will pray - or at least keep my fingers crossed - for your sanity.

It's not uncommon to change schools, is how I'd put it. There are a number of sixth-form only institutions in our city, plus all the school-linked sixth forms also accept external applicants. So whilst plenty of students do stay in the same school for post-16 education, plenty also move.

Yes well remembered, DD1 has been the extra-spicy one but she's cheered up tremendously today, having outperformed her twin by one grade! Trouble is, she now thinks she's guaranteed her place in her preferred college because of her excellent grades - unfortunately it will ultimately come down to whether the places in each subject are filled by the time she gets to her enrolment appointment late next week.

I can't believe that the former Cells are old enough to have done their GCSEs! Congratulations to both of them on their results.

Congratulations on the twins' excellent results, Kuc. I hope it all turns out well for them both. Mine will be choosing her GCSEs in the new year...

I had a flyer through the door yesterday, LWS have an event on at the Spanish City, on Sunday afternoon. I may have wander down, if we're nor doing anything.

Its the last few days of my wife's holidays and I stayed home with Vomiting Vera, whilst she took niece and nephew out for the day. She's fine now, ate her chicken casserole...

Are you sure it's this weekend for LWS at Spanish City? Could have sworn it was Sunday just gone, and I'd seen a video from there.

Oh, bugger!

Sunday 17th. Cack!

Hard luck @SinnerBoy and well done to @RasaSayangEh's DDs!

I have a poem out in a journal today, and have had another accepted that will be published in our local paper next August, so I'm a happy bunny at the moment. If anybody would like to read the poem, since I think quite a few people on this thread know me anyway so it's not outing me any further, send me a DM and I'll send you a link.

Many congrats to The Cells! That's fabulous news! I can't imagine the tension of two getting results at once

My chief memory of O-levels (Yorkshire girls' grammar school, 1967) is the Geography paper, which the entire year failed. At a subsequent leaving interview with the headmistress and my parents - my army father had been posted elsewhere - she remarked that the Geography results had been very strange indeed, but that I had done better than anyone else, failing with a grade 7 or 8 (I forget which) rather than the bottom grade 9 - "has spelled own name correctly".

I kept my mouth firmly shut. I just wanted to get out of there! It was blindingly obvious what had happened: we had been taught not just the wrong course: we had been taught absolutely nothing that didn't relate to the coalfields of Yorkshire. I must have got a few marks for knowing where the Snowy Mountains and the Great Lakes are and being able to roughly locate the Canadian oil & gas fields on a map! For this, I thank my entirely Commonwealth-based lessons at an army primary school. Had any question asked about tea and rubber plantations in Malaysia I'd have aced that exam!

That sounds like a massive cock-up! Did the parents not all complain?

Huge congrats to your DDs @RasaSayangEh - hope the sixth form choices work out properly.

I have been to the dentist today to have a broken tooth extracted and two dodgy fillings sorted out so I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself.

Well done The Cells. And Brit.

That's shocking, Gonners. We had a biology A-Level teacher who skipped one section¹ of the syllabus - I thought that was bad enough.

Hope the teeth are feeling better now, Artant.

I've spent the week sorting the spare room. It's gone from a junk pile to a fully habitable guest room. Even some hanging space in the wardrobe. Not sure what to do about curtains, though. It's a huge bay window with nowhere suitable to fix a curtain rail unless we just curtain off the whole bay, which cuts off a big chunk of the room and makes one side of the bed hard to access. I've found a few blinds that fix directly to the window, but they're all either too narrow or too short.

¹ Reproduction. He couldn't cope with talking to girls, who made up 85% of the class. So it wasn't really surprising he was unable to handle a discussion of sex. Which would have been fine if he'd raised it with the other A-Level biology teacher and they'd juggled who covered what - but she was a woman.

I don't know what (if anything) happened about the Geography exam, as I left within a week of the term starting. Nothing, probably. I also failed Biology (young recently-married female teacher who couldn't even bring herself to mention the word "sex"), but this has not affected my life in any way. They taught no maths/sciences whatsoever in the Sixth Form and the girl who wanted to be a dentist (like both her parents) had to fight tooth and nail to be admitted to lessons at the boys' grammar. Autre temps, autres mœurs.

Shocking about the geography paper @Gonners!

And LOL about reproduction @NoBinturongsHereMate. The closest we had to that was our Lower Certificate (no UK equivalent, national exam taken in 3rd year of secondary school) biology teacher, who was a young, shy, newly-qualified Malay lady. The human reproduction topic was only the last couple of pages in the textbook - she just mumbled, red-faced, "You girls can read those by yourselves" and that was the end of our biology classes

I'm with you all, I can't quite believe TheCells are so grown up!

Oh dear, artant, poor you. Teeth are the worst, aren't they?

I was at secondary school 1961 to 1968 and I don’t remember any lessons about reproduction at all.

I don’t think we had any lessons about reproduction either (secondary 1971-78) but I did drop Biology O Level as it involved too much learning.

Teeth are indeed the worst. Mine are the product of 1960s dentistry when every tiny possible area of decay was drilled and filled so I have many more fillings than teeth (the back ones are mostly filled from two or three directions) and lots of potential for teeth to break as a result. My current dentist has moved on from “they were a bit drilled happy back then” to “it’s criminal, really”.

I just spoke to my neighbour, there's a travelling funfair at the Spanish City. Today, one of the rides broke down and it seems someone has been killed.

I'm just hoping it's not anyone we know, a 13 year old girl drowned there a month ago. My daughter was pally with her sister, but they're at a different school now.

MaBint is just a little older than Brit and tells me there was nothing sex-related on her school curriculum (science only up to O Level), but they had a marvellous biology teacher who have them an unofficial facts-of-life talk. Very comprehensive and matter of fact, and the girls all found it rather unexpected from a prim little old lady who'd been a missionary abroad before taking up teaching.

Very sad, SinnerBoy. Glad you weren't there with your family.

I don't recall ever having a 'facts of life' talk and everything related to sex was a mystery to me when I was young. The most I recall ever being said was a female teacher at my all girls school saying something like 'I assume you've all started your periods by now' and that was it.