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…

I don't know, @Britinme I followed a link to the DM about it so it may or may not be rubbish, but it still made my hair stand on end.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15605847/Europe-Iran-Tehran-missiles-continen-sleeper-terror-cells-ready-Middle-East-war.html

I’m slightly dubious about that - seems overblown to me considering Iran’s been under sanctions and struggling financially for years, but I can certainly believe they’re well equipped with drones, which the Ukrainians have shown to be relatively cheap and effective.

Apparently, gas prices have surged by 45% thanks to Trump's latest insanity.

Maybe it is overblown but the idea still freaked me out.

Reminds me of the famous cartoon: "The price of petrol has been increased by one penny".

Not here, not today anyway. Same as it was a week ago when I filled up. Between $2.64 and $2.80 a US gallon according to the website GasBuddy.

I’m stuck somewhere between doom scrolling and thinking it’s the end of times and optimistically thinking it’ll sort itself out somehow and oh look, sunshine and pretty flowers. But the optimistic part seems ridiculous given that no one actually seems prepared to say no to Trump or Netanyahu.

You've been the US too long, Brit! 'gas' ≠ petrol. But yeah, the price of crude oil is bound to go up, and with that, everything.

I think it’s safe to assume that energy prices generally will be going up (and with them pretty much all other prices) especially if the Strait of Hormuz is closed for any length of time.

DDs are getting quite upset about things since the weekend. It's the first serious war thing that they've been old enough to really understand.

They were quite tearful seeing the images of damage at Dubai airport, I suppose because they've actually travelled through it so many times. And then really upset about the attack on Cyprus when we talked about it this morning - we have close family friends from there, so it's the sort of thing DDs can really get, I suppose.

DH was mumbling that we oughtn't talk much about horrible grown-up stuff like the escalating war situation, but I pointed out that there was no way Sixth Formers wouldn't be following the news or talking about it, so DDs were going to be encountering it anyway. And I was proved right because their phones are buzzing with WhatsApp messages in their friend groups!

It's domestic heating / cooking gas, but I assume that car fuel will go up. It seems that a major LNG plant has been blown up.

In other news, pre-empting me, the butterfly has butterflown. I was waiting for my daughter to put it outside. I left the garage door open for a while, I hope it got out.

My daughter's (Year 8) friend is in Dubai on holiday and she sent a selfie video with the aftermath of explosions in the background.

I pointed out that there was no way Sixth Formers wouldn't be following the news or talking about it

I was in 6th form for Gulf War I, and we were all glued to the coverage and involved in the (in retrospect somewhat odd) write-to-a-soldier campaign.

Qatar has shut down its LNG refinery, one of the biggest in the world, which could make things interesting.

DH was mumbling that we oughtn't talk much about horrible grown-up stuff like the escalating war situation

They're 16, aren't they? That's old enough to know what's happening.

(Note for foreign/younger readers: there was a national campaign to send letters and parcels to British forces. You could get free airmail forms from the post office, and there were lists of suggested items for parcels - I remember only chocolate yes, aftershave no because of the alcohol content. I don't remember there being any way of assigning names, so I think it just got sent off to 'a soldier' and handed out randomly.)

Yes @BetjemansBear DDs will be 17 next month! And like @ProfessorBinturong I was 16-17 during the first Gulf War and we followed all the news very closely indeed, a major topic of conversation at school.

Most 17 year olds would be all over news like that, there's no keeping them away from it.

I learned about war at school but was also a serious child and read 'All Quiet on the Western Front' when I was 14.

DH is a big softy when it comes to DDs.

That's understandable, @Kucinghitam

My dad was the opposite with us, maybe from growing up during WW2. He wanted us to know early on how bad people can be, and how naive.

I've never got round to All Quiet on the Western Front. I really should. But as a teenager I devoured as many of the Colditz autobiographies as I could get my hands on¹, as well as the one by the only German to make a successful escape in the other direction. And of course war films were bank holiday staples then, too.

¹ Not Yes, Farewell, which I only tracked down recently and is very different from Reid and Neave's gung ho, Boys' Own Adventure accounts. That one's definitely better read as an adult.

It's pretty wretched, @ProfessorBinturong but there's some interesting stuff in there about how the soldiers got by when they were building/finding shelter, hungry or needed replacement boots.

A poster from the old place used to live in Erich Maria Remarque's house (he wrote All Quiet on the Western Front) IIRC.

Really? What was it like, I wonder?

Just found it and it looks lovely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Monte_Tabor

I'm glad I took a photo of the now departed lepidopteran: