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'd imagine (or hope!) that the cost would be less than the excess on home insurance.

That sounds incredibly annoying @moto748e! the kid must have really kicked it hard! I hope the grandparents pay up and the glazier can get you a new window quickly. I know it takes longer with double glazing because they have to make the whole unit.

Do they? Oh, that doesn't sound good. I expect I'll find out more tomorrow. He didn't kick it, he threw it. Not a football, only tennis-ball size.

That’s some throwing arm! A future bowler for England cricket Perhaps the ball hit near a corner of the window. I remember reading that if you want to break a window (e.g. in case of fire) that you should use a small implement and attack near the corners - not chuck a chair through the middle of it like in the movies.

Blimey, that must have been some throw to break the window, but maybe it hit a corner, as Rasa says. Hope you get it sorted quickly.

The ball on on a length of elastic. Other end of of the elastic is attached to a glove thing you put on your hand. I assume you throw it away, and something, something, potential energy... it flies back quick. Especially if the string breaks. I think.

I have some great pix, but they're a bit outing!

In news to make the penguins laugh, the BBC reports that Trump has imposed tariffs on the Australian territory of Heard & Macdonald Islands, human population zero. Presumably they'll be paying in guano and volcanic ash.

I’d be very happy to help them heap both on Trump.

I read a good piece on Trump in the NS this morning. It begins

The world is not exactly lacking conspiracy theories about Donald Trump, but here’s another: the President of the United States of America still thinks he’s on a reality show. For years, the people around him have simply referred to the whole business – the elections, the criminal trials, the assassination attempt, the Epstein subplot, the presidency itself – as The Show. As far as he’s concerned, this is all for the cameras. Summits and speeches are talked about as shoots and episodes; other world leaders are referred to as characters. Before a meeting or a press conference, aides will brief him on his script for the scene. Hundreds of people spend their time reassuring a nearly 80-year-old man in charge of 5,244 nuclear warheads that he and everyone he meets are just characters in a loosely scripted series.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/the-sketch/2025/07/donald-trump-the-king-of-scotland

@moto748e OMG that is terrifyingly plausible!

oh wow what a brilliant article.

Burrowing into family history I've found a couple of pleasing snippets.

One will mean little to those unfamiliar with the Princess Louise in Holborn, but it seems one of my great aunts worked there. A proper cockney barmaid, named Mabel, working in a glorious gin palace at the height of the roaring 20s.

And a little before that, one of my other ancestors was a clerk of no particular remarkability. Until he married a dressmaker and, in contravention of expectations, joined his wife's business. Over the course of several censuses from the late 19th to the early 20th cetury she works her way up from dressmaker to the rather more swish 'costumer', while he goes from trainee blouse cutter to ladies gown maker - always with him listed as employee and her as the business owner.

Great Trump article. It would explain a lot.

And that’s some excellent family discoveries, Bint!

Where has @SinnerBoy got to? I hope he's okay.

Just posted on the Fife thread.

It is my 23rd wedding anniversary today and I am musing on how extraordinarily lucky I am. Not to lose my first DH after thirty years of happy marriage that would undoubtedly be continuing to this day, all else being well, but to find DH2 so unexpectedly and to have a second happy marriage. If I believed in a God that had that kind of power I would no doubt be thanking Her, but as it is I am grateful to whatever fate made it happen that way. Our celebration is to go and see a funny movie and go out for a nice meal at a hotel by the sea in whose gardens we got married overlooking the ocean. Luckily it has an excellent restaurant with that view.

Congratulations, Brit, that sounds lovely!

Happy anniversary, Brit!

What film are you seeing?

Happy anniversary, @Britinme - sounds like a lovely day there!

Oh yes, just seen it. Glad he's just been on holiday.

The dumbest comedy we could find - the reboot of The Naked Gun :-)

Hi, I got back from sea and a few days later took my daughter to family near Huntingdon and to London for a few days. I couldn't keep up with the riveting Fife threads, they were all i found time for.

Home now, maybe back to the briny in a few days.

We stayed in a hotel in Brentford, opposite Kew Gardens, which was ace. Watched the ladies' final in a boozer where my daughter brought the average age down to about 57. Loads of very excited women moved chairs to monopolise the telly.

Highlight was a family of 3 green woodpeckers in Kew Gardens.

There is sometimes a green woodpecker pecking away at my lawn. Only one though these days.

Happy anniversary @Britinme - definitely fortunate to have a long and happy second marriage after losing your first husband. And that hotel sounds so lovely!

And I wish I had the energy for the Fife threads!

Inn by the Sea . It was lovely. I had a corn bisque, scallops with succotash and a vegan dark chocolate mousse with a pistachio vegan cream because I didn't fancy anything else on the dessert menu, but DH had a whoopie pie, which is a classic Maine dessert. I had a cocktail beforehand and an Irish coffee afterwards and feel quite pleasantly melllow at the moment.