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…

@Britinme Today I have been to the gym and am mostly knackered.

Argh! I haven't been to any gym since the year I did O-levels ... so, that would be pre-exams in 1967. 59 years of completely guiltless gym-freedom! 😁At the school I then moved to, I achieved freedom by never actually letting the gym mistress know who I was.

@Gonnersyou may not be as fat or out of shape as me but I’m tired of clothes I like not fitting. I’m a year older than you and I have only spent time sporadically in attempts to exercise but I guess it’s never too late. Looking at friends in their early 80s I can see how time catches up with all of us but I can at least try and hang on to what I have (except weight…) as long as possible.

I confess all ... I was a long, thin baby who grew into a tall, skinny teenager, bullied mercilessly by my peers until Yippee! Along came Twiggy! I have my dad's (unknown) paternal heritage to thank for it. He came from a small Welsh dockyard town, and my guess would be Yemeni.

I was a reasonably slim teenager and not too bad weight-wise in my twenties. It was the third baby at 36 that did me in!

What a fabulous wedding @BetjemansBear!

@Kucinghitam It really was! We enjoyed every minute.

@BetjemansBear I have to say I'm a bit jalous about the wedding, sounds amazing!

@BezMills I understand that, I've wanted to go to a Sikh wedding for decades - the people, food, music and dancing.

There were some interesting spice combinations and a lot more black cardamom than I taste in western recipes. This is on my list to make: novicehousewife.com/2013/05/08/garam-masala-tuesdays-homemade-punjabi-garam-masala/

That sounds absolutely delicious.

The wedding sounds like it was ace, I'm glad that you had such a marvellous time!

I'm trying to lose weight, too. I've been cycling every couple of days for about 2 weeks and did 6 miles yesterday. I can't walk easily, after doing my much improved knee in again.

That's a huge drag about your knee, @SinnerBoy The way my body is starting to grumble and creak can feel quite dismaying at times

Re losing weight, for me I find it's sugar more than anything else which is likely to add flesh. Fortunately sweet stuff makes me feel like I've overdosed on caffeine so I tend to avoid it.

Sympathies on the knee issue @SinnerBoy . I had problems with my right knee (showed up as arthritis on x-ray and hurt quite a bit) but I've been taking a combination of Synflex (liquid glucosamine - better absorbed than tablets), resveratrol and turmeric for a several years now and have no problems with it at the moment, though it took about six weeks to kick in for me to notice that it wasn't hurting and I could actually go up and down stairs without having to do it one step at a time favouring the right leg.

I also had problems with one knee last winter - the GP basically said "Sorry, but that happens at your age. Topical creams make very little difference, but try confusing your brain by using one to heat it up for a couple of days and then alternating that with a cooling-down one." And bugger me, it worked! I attribute this to the power of suggestion.

I've got a lump behind my kneecap, which they said should dissipate, blowed if I can remember the name of it. It started in August 2024, by December, I had to use a crutch for anything more than a short walk.

I'd tried stopping the Naproxen periodically, from before Christmas and finally stopped at the end of January.

5 weeks ago, my wife and daughter decided to leave a single mattress in the bedroom doorway and I went down on it, in the dark.

I'm not impressed...

That sounds really annoying @SinnerBoy

I have rubbish knees (on account of being old and fat, I assume). I think my left hip is getting a bit arthritic too.

Sikh wedding sounds ace!

My rubbish knee 'treatments' are wearing an elasticated brace at all times, and drinking cocoa (cacao atm) with a teaspoonful of turmeric and a pinch of black pepper (no sugar, the amount of full fat milk I'd put in tea) for my elevenses.

I still need to lose weight, but my knee is not just much less painful than it was a few years ago, it is also smaller - I used to have difficulty squeezing into the extra large brace, now the large is quite loose and I'm thinking of buying medium. I'm assuming the reduced swelling = reduced inflammation in the joint.

I’ve been away on holiday for the past couple of weeks (more on that another time, perhaps) and should have been home tucked up in my bed right now. I am very jet lagged and I have to be back at work tomorrow morning.

But instead, our train has been halted just outside Peterborough for nearly 2 hours. Apparently there is a suicidal man on the track somewhere on our route and the emergency services have been negotiating with him this whole time. Nobody knows how much longer this will continue.

There is a train full of weary people, quite a few younger children too.

So yay.

That sounds frustrating @Kucinghitam - hope the emergency services get him somewhere safe very soon and get you in the move.

It’s now more than three hours since you posted Kuc, so I hope you’re home and asleep.

DH and I went out to a regular open mic poetry thing we go to once a month, about a 40 minute drive away, only to find the venue was closed because of an active shooter at the nearby college - a suicidal guy heading there with a gun. This town had a very bad shooting event a couple of years ago so they were not taking any chances. As it turned out, we and other members of our group were invited into a local artist’s studio next door to our usual place, so we ended up doing our thing there along with some of the artists who were there, so all was not lost.

The shooting part of that sounds scary @Britinme but the alternative venue and cross art form interaction sounds like a very good thing!

It was! The artists googled up other people’s poems on their phones and shared them so it was very pleasant all round.

And the police got hold of the guy before any harm was done I think, so that was good too.

That sounds far more terrifying than our situation @Britinme

But to update: At the time you posted originally (around 3am UK time), we were still not home!

Just after midnight, our train got moving again, to general rejoicing. Then as we were pulling into Peterborough, they announced that the train would be terminating there and everyone was to disembark. We were directed to "form an orderly queue" (hah!) outside the station for further information; just imagine 100s of disgruntled people, at half past midnight, forming any kind of order.

The queue, it turned out, was so we could be organised into groups and taxis ordered to drive us to our destinations. It took over an hour of standing in the coldbefore we could get assigned a taxi order claim thing.

Then we were told to wait by the station road for a text message giving us the taxi number. We waited and waited, gradually the groups were whittled away, and yet we had no taxi assigned. Peterborough isn't that big a city, I imagine it was quite hard to find enough drivers willing to crawl out of bed at that time and drive an over 200-mile return journey. The station staff had no idea what to suggest except to keep waiting. Some groups I think had given up waiting and managed to order their own taxis.

Finally, with only a handful of people left, we got our taxi. It was past 2:30 am. Fortunately our driver was a remarkably cheery fellow, kept up a stream of chatter with DH all the way to Leeds. DDs both managed to doze off, but in the middle rear seat I didn't manage much shuteye.

We arrived home at 5am.

Then I had 2 hours sleep, and had to get up for work 😭

I'm "at work" now but have been told to take as many breaks as I need (lovely understanding boss).

Oh how awful Kuc! And a taxi all the way from Peterborough to Leeds! Mega-sympathies from me. We were really not terrified - safely tucked inside an artist’s studio up a couple of steep flights of stairs. Any gunman would have been knackered before he got to us!