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…

But actually, it seems nothing much has happened today. Was hoping for Phone Man, but doubt that'll happen today now.

Is it me, or is MN more than usually fractious at the moment? Maybe it's the prospect of no respite from the children until September ...

Today on tribunal tweets was quite exciting.

It was. And more to come!

I attempt to read the Fife threads but not regularly enough to actually follow them. As soon as I start reading the newest thread it fills up and before I know it we’re two or three threads further on.

Suffice to say, Fife go from bad to worse.

I can’t keep up with the Fife threads. I occasionally catch a morsel of jaw-dropping testimony as the threads flow swiftly past - like a dipper in a mountain stream.

Meanwhile here is a waterspout we saw from our beach yesterday. Hotel staff later told us it was about 4km away. There’s another hotel only about 1km away and apparently they had to make preparations to evacuate. But all was well and the waterspout dissipated before it reached land.

Which is more exciting NHSFife or waterspouts? About equal I suggest.

This poster on X is worth following for their twice daily updates, so you don’t have to read everything, and this summary of the most egregious ‘evidence’ is enraging:

https://x.com/boswelltoday/status/1947899353554722910?s=61

I think I would be quite scared if I was in the sea and saw a waterspout on the horizon!

The sea can be terrifying even when it's not doing much. We were at a beach known for Eocene fossils and should have been happily collecting fossilised shark's teeth but it was one of those days when the tide and air pressure, or whatever the name is, was making the water really high. It wasn't where I was used to seeing it and I had to look up at the waves and it looked like the whole lot was about to crash down on me which just felt terribly wrong. I kept running away up the beach which felt both silly and sensible at the same time.

Apart from the waterspout, it’s been lovely weather here (if you like sunny, hot and humid). We’ve seen tons of wildlife around the resort.

Highlights include the Oriental pied hornbill (loud and boisterous) and the Giant hornbill (enormous and dignified), the pygmy flying squirrel (fast) and a family of otters (busybodies). Top creatures were the troupes of dusky leaf monkeys with their orange babies (curious and gentle) and the colugos or Sunda flying lemurs (not in fact lemurs).

Lowlights were the mob of long-tailed macaques that literally cornered us on our chalet doorstep (evil) and today the orange centipede that ran swiftly across my lap and under my t-shirt, before thankfully exiting down the back of my chair while I sat frozen in terror. Put a damper on my lunch, that one.

My buttocks clenched as I read about the centipede... not surprised you were frozen @RasaSayangEh

I've just (rather weirdly) shed a tear at the death of Tom Lehrer. I say weirdly because he was 97! A few years back he put all his recordings online, downloadable for free, with the warning that once he was dead they would disappear PDQ. So if anyone wants them, go for it here ...

tomlehrersongs.com/albums/

Have done, so, thanks! Whether I'll get round to listening to all that, though...

Yes, RIP Tom Lehrer, his songs have long been a family favourite ChezKuc.

I think it's fair to say it's a fair few decades since I heard him!

A good ripe age, and he hasn't performed for quite a long time now. Great songs though. Always made me laugh.

Monday in Fife was bonkers!!

As a distraction, here is a weird cluster of eggs I found by the ornamental pond at my hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Google tells me these are from the apple snail, an invasive species in many parts of the world (including SE Asia). Apparently I should have crushed them!

It looks like a squashed Licorice Allsort.

More like a Rowntrees fruit pastille to me :-)

Sat here in my living room eating my tea, and there's a fuck-off BANG, and a shower of glass falls past the window. Go out to investigate, and some little scroat has bunged a ball and broken my bedroom (double-glazed) window. So there's glass all over the pavement and road. Wouldn't have thought a rubber ball would break a window, but it was on an elastic 'string', and the string broke. Have tracked down the parents (more accurately, grand-parents), they are only round the corner, and got onto a glazier.

What a pain, moto! I'm glad you were able to track down the grandparents - hope they're going to cough up for the glazier.

I hope so too! I expect they will.

That sounds both annoying and scary! Hope grandparents pay up but would building insurance be an option if not.