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…

The background colour is bluer than it looks in the photo. A pale robin's egg shade.

Wow! Those look lovely and very professional.

That looks wonderful and very neatly done! What wallpaper is it?

It always happens, it's some sort of poorly understood cosmic law. Along with the one where you have to send the plasterer and chippie away, because the sparkie and plumber haven't been.

It's this wallpaper. Don't know why they describe it as metallic.

www.diy.com/departments/boutique-biyu-mint-metallic-effect-floral-smooth-wallpaper/5011583413922_BQ.prd

Well it’s certainly very pretty.

ChatGPT has cheered me up:

Characters:
VLADIMIR: A tenant.
ESTRAGON: Another tenant.

A bare kitchen. A gleaming cooker sits center stage, unplugged. A kettle rests uselessly on top.

ESTRAGON: (patting his stomach) I’m hungry.
VLADIMIR: Naturally.
ESTRAGON: He said he’d connect it before supper.
VLADIMIR: Supper has been postponed.
ESTRAGON: Until when?
VLADIMIR: Until the electrician comes.
ESTRAGON: And when will he come?
VLADIMIR: Tomorrow.
ESTRAGON: Always tomorrow. Meanwhile, the cooker waits.
VLADIMIR: At least it proves the cooker is patient.
ESTRAGON: Or that it is useless.
VLADIMIR: Which amounts to the same thing.

(Pause. Silence. The kettle sits cold.)

ESTRAGON: (brightening) We could connect it ourselves.
VLADIMIR: Impossible. We haven’t the wires.
ESTRAGON: Or the fuses.
VLADIMIR: Or the faintest idea.
ESTRAGON: Then what shall we eat?
VLADIMIR: We shall wait.

(They sit. Their stomachs rumble audibly. The cooker gleams silently, inert. They do not notice.)

Update: Hob is connected! Cookery can commence! 🎉

However, we also had one old 3-gang light switch that needed replacing (grotty, broken, hanging off wall). Electrician #2 was deeply disgruntled, "Electrician #1 didn't tell me about this, I don't have a spare switch with me" and so he'll have to arrange to pop in again, next week. DH simply muttered, "Not paying the final instalment until every last thing is done."

Door people very busy with power tools. Gale blowing through house. They estimated it'll be done by lunchtime... but it basically is lunchtime already Unusually they have turned down all offers of beverages and biscuits.

That screen looks really lovely, @NoBinturongsHereMate you must be pleased with the result.

Hurray for getting the cooker sorted, @RasaSayangEh - hope the rest follows suit quickly.

Hooray for functioning cooker! And I love the Godoy take-off.

That would be Godot of course.

I can't believe Channel 4 are advertising C4+ as 'less ads'!

Fewer, FFS! is nothing sacred?

DH and have a habit of shouting “fewer!” at the TV when somebody makes that particular error - a habit from GUT days.

I say "fewer" to DDs too, albeit without the "FFS"

MiniPSB has the difference between less and fewer, and his use of English is generally very good, but he almost always uses bring and take wrongly. Thinking about it, it’s an American thing. And really annoying.

That's from Hiberno English, a form as old as standard English, and no less 'correct'.

forum.wordreference.com/threads/bring-take-irish-english.1487497/

Fair enough in areas where they speak Hiberno English, but he lives in southern England and speaks RP. And uses no other Hiberno English constructions.

But it isn't 'an American thing'.

I don’t know why very typical Scottish or Irish phrases (or holidays!) are so often assumed to be American 🤔

It's people* who confuse "lend" and "borrow" who really wind me up. I read somewhere that this too is a regional thing.

(*Excepting those whose native language doesn't distinguish, e.g. Chinese and Malay).

Something I can find annoying, but I forgive easily is the use of "since" instead of "for".

The best example is in Fernando by Abba. Since many years I haven’t seen a rifle in your hands. Obviously "since" should be "for".

But in many languages (e.g. depuis in French) they use since rather than for, so I am very forgiving.

Yes, the use of 'since' (and the tense of the verb accompanying it) is something even the most fluent French English-speakers seldom get grammatically correct.

One thing that still throws me in NI English is the use of whenever/wherever for when/where.

In Yorkshire it's the unconventional use of 'while' (=until) and 'since' (=ago) which got me when I first met PiLs.

The language that confused me when we first lived in Lincolnshire was 'back end of' rather than 'last'. So 'back end of last year' instead of 'last winter'. Don't recall hearing it elsewhere.