Thread 19 - TalkLair: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 18)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

In the TalkLair, the fairy lights are festooned on the mantlepiece, the tree is twinkling with baubles, the mince pies are in the oven, the MN legendary chicken is ready to feed the hordes. 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…

It was clear through the day, but overcast by evening, so no sparkler show here. My daughter managed to pull her Velux window out today and I, then I and Shameless spent some time trying to fix the expletive.

Well, managed to avoid severing a fingertip (ouch, don't ask..) and get one of the runners in arrangements out and the window coerced into position to keep 99% of the weather out.

Buggy bloodery etc. Strict instructions to DON'T OPEN IT AGAIN. DON'T TOUCH IT. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT LOOKING AT THE CURSED THING, BECAUSE IT WILL FALL ON YOUR HEAD AND SMASH.

Anyway, I'm going to drive a few screws into it tomorrow.

Just in case

Ouch, that sounds painful and really annoying @SinnerBoy

No aurora here, just clouds.

Goodness @SinnerBoy, I didn't even realise Velux windows could be pulled out! As the youngsters say, "New fear unlocked!"

Dumping a few more photos here, vegetables and fruit edition: a couple from an economy supermarket (like an even cheaper Costco) in KL showing one aisle of (mostly) aubergine and cucurbit varieties plus giant pile of ginger, one photo of a table of banana varieties in a local market in Penang (I can't actually name them all, but they are so different and much superior to your bog-standard Cavendish).

I brought a bunch of DH's favourite bananas (Pisang Mas/Emas, literally meaning gold bananas) back in my luggage. Bought them very green for robustness and they'll be ripe within a few days.

very interesting photos Kuc. I thought there were just 2 varieties of bananas and I’m glad to be wrong, bringing back favourite bananas is a very loving thing to do, given that how big and heavy the things are.

Try My Exotic Fruit online, I buy their fancy bananas online. I can't remember them all, but we've had red ones and apple ones. The Heavenly Mountain (?) ones were a bit steep as I'm skint from Christmas.

The Velux woodwork and metal trims around the window panel frame all cracked. There are pegs in the panel frame, which move through a half moon slot in the frame in the roof - that wouldn't engage, as the pin came out at the bottom, so she tugged and tugged.

That sounds like stuff you really don't need, SinnerBoy, hope the window and your thumb are soon better.

Lovely fruit and veg pictures, Kuc!

No sky colours here. I looked out about 7pm and it was raining and again about 2am to see a clear sky full of stars, but no aurora. It's now raining again.

For a brief period in the 90s it was possible to get both apple bananas and one of the small red varieties in Tesco.

Goodness, that would have been brilliant if only I'd known!

The internet is somewhat confusing, but various sources suggest that apple bananas are pisang rastali, our second favourite variety. Pisang emas are very very similar in appearance and texture, the flavour is more honey-like and the fruit are usually rather smaller - they might possibly be called lady's fingers bananas. Another nice variety is pisang berangan, which because they're larger than the previous two, some have mislabelled as Cavendish - they're not, being smaller and more thin-skinned, and importantly having a firmer less floury texture and a lovely fragrant sweet-sour flavour.

There are many other varieties, some being preferred for cooking (e.g. banana fritters, battered bananas).

One of the biggest is pisang tanduk the horn banana, each fruit is as long as a forearm!

Note that my local Tesco at the time was unusually large and the local one to the CEO. Stock may not have been entirely representative of the general offering (although I definitely saw the pisang rastali (thank you) in Camden as well.

I'm attempting to make vegan cheese - old-style cashew type, not the 'realistic-looking' stuff that supermarkets sell. It's had its first fermentation and blending, and now needs to age for a couple more days to develop the flavour. So far it seems promising. Nothing like actual cheese, of course, but pleasant enough.

@ProfessorBinturong Nothing like actual cheese, of course, but pleasant enough.

This reminds me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Nutri-Matic machine which provided Arthur Dent with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

I want to replace my sofa. It's given good service, but it's getting old and tired now. But the biggest problem by far is, how to dispose of the old one? Put it on Freecycle (or similar), people say. But the drawbacks are, too many tyre-kickers who'll mess you around, the risk of dodgy characters casing you up for burglary, etc. Most shops offer delivery, but few will take your own one away. John Lewis have a 'partner' that will remove an old one, but it's a separate deal that has to be arranged,and it costs £109. And the problem then is, in the short term, where do you store it? You can't leave it outside (even under cover), cos no-one will take them damp. I found another firm locally who will do it for £70, but again it's the short-term storage. The dream that someone could deliver you a new sofa, and take the old one away in the same damned van seems a hope too far. Grr!

BTW, the council option: Yes, the council will remove it. And for free, too. But there's a waiting list, and it's tricky to book a spot, and they work in 5 week modules, so you could have the short-term storage issue for five weeks! I suppose there is one last option: attack it with rip saw and lump hammer, saw as much timber up as poss and burn it on the log-burner, take the cushion squabs etc to the Dump? Anyone found any good solutions?

British Heart Foundation? Provided it has its fire labels still.

Lateral thinking time, @moto748e. My solution would be - assuming you can live without a sofa for a short-ish time - to get rid of the old one before the new one is delivered.

(I had a sofa experience when I sold my London flat - first floor Edwardian purpose-built maisonette - because in the years between acquiring a very nice sofa-bed and moving out, the people downstairs (who owned the freehold) had added an external outer door, leading into our two front doors. This was great in terms of security and insulation, but it was absolutely impossible to get the sofa out without removing the upstairs windows! Lateral thinking led to me calling the buyers and offering it to them for free.)

Sofas are really hard to smash up. I did one in my first house, the sellers couldn't get it out. I tried to help, by taking the feet off, but over an hour of every manipulation we could think of wouldn't work.

He said he'd break it up, or I could, so I did.

A few days later, I got home and a double glazing van was there, with the previous owner. Apparently, he was - without thinking to ask - going to take the window out to get the sofa!

He tried to get me to buy them a new one and his mate weighed in, too. I asked why he hadn't called to ask and he claimed not to have my number.

I rang Andy House and his phone displayed SinnerBoy... cue hang dog expressions, some muttering and general getting in the van and pissing off.

I’d go with @Gonners suggestion, @moto748e. That’s what we did when we replaced our sofa a few years ago. Paid Clearabee (I think it was called) to remove the old one a day or so before the new one was due to be delivered. Sat on the floor in the interim.

Cheers, all. I actually was coming to the same conclusion. I have the sofa and a matching armchair, which I was intending to hang on to, since it's in much better nick, so it's not like I'll have to sit on the floor. Cos I figure if you had to prop the old one up on its end in a corner of the room, say, even for 24/48 hours, that'd be a real pain. I think it was Clearabee that JL use, so that was the £109

That's an option, and BHF say they will take the old away, if it has the fire tags. Usually. But it depends on the driver; he'll have a look, and if he doesn't want to take it, he won't. So it's not guaranteed. But then if I'm going with that much cheaper option, I can hardly complain at 70 quid to get rid of the old one anyway.

Anyway, I'm glad it's not just me! 😃

Goneril was a clue in House of Games tonight. They blank two words for the other team, who have to work out the words (Cordelia & Shakespeare) and guess the answer: King Lear.

I slapped my leg (I don't have a buzzer) and shouted,

"Mumsnet! King Lear!"

My daughter gave me a funny look, but didn't question me. Neill off The Young Ones got it eventually.

When we got rid of our old sofa we cut it up and took it to the tip. The very nice sofa we have now came from our neighbours. She'd had a sofa bed in a spare room and wanted to replace it with an actual bed and she'd arranged for a charity to come and pick it up the day before the new bed arrived. When they got there, they refused to take it because it was upstairs and apparently they weren't allowed to carry things downstairs. It weighed a ton and the neighbours were in their 80s and couldn't shift it, so we did and got a lovely new sofa for free.

The epitome of a win-win.

It really was. I'd given her a call, the woman next door, because I'd made some especially fine peach and apricot compote and thought she'd like some. When I spoke to her, she was in a weeping panic about the sofa not being taken away so it was all hands on deck while we sorted it out. Once we'd finished she said 'Why were you calling?' and I said 'I just wanted to give you some compote' and then we all fell about laughing. It worked out perfectly, a sofa in exchange for a pot of compote.

Mambo no. 5 as you've never heard it before:

Ha! He's wonderful, isn't he?

As well as the brilliant arrangement, I liked the looks between singers.