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…

There's clearly an attraction to being cheeky after you die and no one being able to tell you off for it. I'll have to come up with something for when my time comes.

My DB wanted The Muppets' version of Time in a Bottle but it wasn't on the catalogue for the crematorium. We couldn't use the YT version for copyright reasons so we had to have Jim Croce's version.

But here it is, with bonus chickens at the end.

My other funeral story happened about a year later, when my absolutely favourite uncle (by marriage) died in bizarre circumstances - he had a massive heart attack while singing "Immortal, invisible, God only wise" at the top of a ladder, working on the roof. An inquest concluded that he was probably dead before he hit the ground.

I was greeted in the Methodist chapel (uncle was nominally Methodist) by his nephew, who was my age. We'd known each other since childhood and he was a lovely, kind person but quite severely physically and mentally handicapped by a birth injury. So his behaviour was often inappropriate. He saw me, lolloped over, clasped me in his arms, bent me over backwards and delivered a passionate old-fashioned-movie-style kiss on the lips. Goodness, how the Methodists stared!

That must have been really strange for you, Gonners, and in the chapel too. As for you uncle, what a way to go!

My dad's funeral is in a couple of weeks. He was a popular man and I'm told there will be a lot of people coming, which increases the chance of something odd happening. He could be quite mischievous so I think he'd be quite pleased if it did. We shall see.

Heh! My dad also had the church funeral he wouldn’t have wanted courtesy of my stepmother. I was though very annoyed by the vicar saying pointedly “I am told that Pa Seedbagel was…” and then we all were expected to go to the wake, leaving poor dad to go to the crem on his own. We were not that close latterly but I wish I had insisted on accompanying his coffin. I was newly pregnant though and feeling sick so allowed myself to be dissuaded.

In non-funereal news, I have been struggling to read in bed - specifically Private Eye. You'd think given their demographic they'd improve the tiny, grey print, but no. Then I wondered how long it was since I'd had new reading glasses - it was 11 years. I picked the new ones up today and well, it's a miracle, I tell you!

Private Eye is like that. The only time I read it is when I have a train journey to London to see DS. I haven't read it recently, but as corruption/inefficiency in local government and the civil service is one of their big obsessions, I'd assume they are all over the recent court cases and tribunals. Are they?

I haven't read Private Eye for a good while as it went a bit crap, but know what you mean about struggling to read in bed. Reckon I need new glasses too.

@moto748e I'd assume they are all over the recent court cases and tribunals. Are they?

I'll let you know when I catch up - I have quite a pile to get through! I wish Phil Hammond would give the Lucy Letby case a rest, though.

That is like me and my constant pile of NS's! The backlog is never cleared.

I’m glad that’s not just me!

In our wood shed, there's a hanging organiser thing on the wall for small garden and bbq tools and when I went in there today to fill the log basket I noticed that one of the unzipped pockets of the organiser is absolutely stuffed full of dry leaves. Guessing it's a mouse's winter nest but I'm not sure what route it's taken to get into that pocket. We're semi-rural and find evidence of mice and voles outside all the time, so I'm not going to do anything about it, but I do wonder who is in there. It should be a safe and cosy spot for winter.

I'm in two minds about mice. I think they're very cute and feel terribly sorry every time Mochi brings one in. But also I realise they are vermin which carry various diseases, piss and crap all over the house, chew cables, etc.

Thankfully, they haven't been into the house and stay outside. They may be classed as vermin but outside is their space too and unless they come indoors I'm content to let them get on with their lives. There are plenty of cats around to deal with the excess.

I only object to housemice. Most of the others have no interest in coming indoors.

Friends of mine couldn't start their bike one spring and I went round with jump leads, expecting a flat battery. No, the air box had a mouse nest in it, they'd chewed the coating off loads of the wiring, as well as the air filter material.

£1,200 to have a new harness installed!

I've never asked for an introduction to any of the unfortunate victims Mochi brings in - the very rapid procedure is (1) if still alive and feisty, separate mouse from cat, usher mouse outside, lock cat-flap; (2) if not looking promising, usher mouse and cat outside, lock cat-flap.

Meanwhile - remember a couple of years ago I was back home for Chinese New Year and told you all about the decorations in the shopping malls? Here's a few examples of shopping malls decorated for Christmas:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRW78zJE__o/

The Petronas Twin Towers apparently have installed an actual ice skating rink outdoors. This sounds extremely bonkers and I'm not sure I approve.

That's going to cost an absolute fortune to keep frozen! According to the BBC, the current temperature is 25C ... and that's at 2:30 in the morning. Still, at least the humidity will stop it evaporating. 😅

My car once couldn't be MOT'd because there was a rats' nest in the engine. I'd had an operation and not been able to drive for a couple of months, and the clever-but-horrible rats had climbed up into the engine housing and chewed up all the insulation to make a nice cosy nest. I'm not a particularly shrieky person but when the garage called, you could have used me to evacuate a fairly large building.

I have had recent mouse activity in my kitchen which I am not happy about but I think rats nesting in my car would freak me out more. That’s terrifying!

Loving the Christmas in Malaysian shopping mall pictures but not impressed by the idea of an outdoor ice rink in a hot climate. That just seems like a very bad idea.

I've been asked to speak at the funeral, not only that but to try and make it humorous!!! 😬

I'm no public speaker and being asked made my blood run cold and my mind go completely blank. A stroke of luck - my computer packed up a couple of days ago and nice Mr Veg has sorted me out a spare one that we had and put everything he could rescue from the old one onto the new one. I also asked him to install an old email programme which miraculously has a good ten years worth of emails, back to 2008, from my dad and today I started going through them. There is so much material there! Jokes, opinions, his funny quirks and absolutely endless pedantry on the blogs I was publishing at the time. He was so embarrassed at how pedantic he was that I offered him the position of becoming my editor so he could be pedantic officially and he was thrilled. I reckon I should be able to put together something half decent from it all.

What a find!

I do a lot of public speaking and I've spoken at a lot of funerals. What I have found is that if you are speaking fondly of someone and giving examples of their personality, your listeners will be warm towards you.

One of my DBs said at another DB's funeral, "Like our dad, he will be sorely missed by the second-hand car dealers of the region. Never able to properly assess a car, he had the unique knack of spending a fortune, only to return a year later ready to buy the latest lemon they couldn't pass onto anyone else."

Everyone laughed because it was absolutely true.

if you are speaking fondly of someone and giving examples of their personality, your listeners will be warm towards you

That's what I was hoping, Myrtle. I will be speaking very fondly too.

I found this gem yesterday, which followed a link I'd sent him:

"When I get my head round my new style computer I'll try the link. It kept telling me my version of Safari (browser) was no longer supported, although it worked very well, so I upgraded it and now it's all different and I can't get the hang of it. It's like moving into a new house when you know everything's there but you can't find it. Or as someone once said, reading another man's newspaper is like sleeping with another man's wife, nothing is quite where you expect it and when you do find it you're not sure what to do with it"

It's just the sort of thing he came out with and people will recognise his sense of humour in the words.

That's excellent from you brother. Did he get a good laugh?

God yes!

He was buying my mother's cars all the time. Her latest car died about two weeks before he died, barely a year after he'd bought it and I was ferrying her around to see him.

My other DBs and I bought her a new, much better car a month later. Nearly two years later it's still going strong.

And so many of those present knew my dad who used to buy rubbish cars at auction. Six weeks after he bought one car, it caught fire at some traffic lights, and a week after he bought another the exhaust dropped off because it had been tied on with rope.

So much wasted money and my DB made it into a brilliant joke that landed really well.