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…

Hanging Stones

That looks really interesting!

@PoppySeedBagelRedux That looks like a marvellous walk! If I tell DH about it, he'll be clamouring to go for sure.

I’ll report back!

As seems typical of a Bank Holiday weekend, the weather has turned cold and rainy.

DH will no doubt drag us all out for a soggy walk while trilling "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing!" and for dinner we're doing a slow-roasted shoulder of lamb. Not a bad Sunday, all things considered.

I was scrolling wistfully through my holiday snaps and found another Korean thing I thought might be of interest - we noticed these little stands outside some museums, galleries and naice shops. They're like a beverage creche for visitors, so you don't walk around the precious exhibits/easily-damaged merchandise risking spillage. It's another example of the high-trust society there, the museum trusts that visitors wouldn't dream of risking the exhibits, the visitors trust that nobody is going to steal/spike their drinks.

We noticed the high-trust culture on our very first day in Korea, having just checked in to the hotel, DH insisted on dragging us up to the N-Seoul Tower (amazing views and lovely spring blossom, to be fair) - this turned out to be a zigzagging set of wooden stairs up a cliff face, my phone later informed me I'd climbed 61 flights. It's not a short outing obviously, as you'd make the arduous climb up there, walk around, maybe go up the tower itself, have food & drinks, take photos, then go back down (this did something very bad to my knee which rather ruined my walking around for the next 3 days).

Anyway! We noticed, when we got back down to the bottom of the stairs, neatly parked to one side, several pushchairs/strollers/buggies. Because it would never occur to anyone to interfere with a baby's buggy, so of course they were totally safe for however many hours the owners were away.

That looks amazing, Kuc.

Love the beverage crèche!

Not so keen on the sound of all those stairs though; 61 flights is a lot! I’ve never been great at stairs but after falling down them last year and having dodgy knees anyway I’m unreasonably cautious. Going down is less knackering but it’s much harder on the knees.

One of my best friends has moved to Canada for her job recently, and she's also gobsmacked by the high-trust thing, @Kucinghitam. E.g. going ice skating, you just leave all your stuff in a little hut and everyone knows that it'll still be there when they get back.

I've got a dodgy knee, a result of a 'fall', and the thought of 61 flights of stairs is rather daunting. Falling down a whole flight of stairs sounds awful!

Last year, after another accident, I started fretting a bit about slipping in the shower so got one of those rubberised mats for the bathtub. The nubbles on it feel very stabilising when I'm showering and the bottom of the bath is soapy. This is the start of my Old Woman Kit.

Similarly, umbrella stands outside even Japanese building. Although as virtually everyone has identical black umbrellas I think they rely only on people taking the same number of umberellas as they leave, rather than specifically on not taking someone else's.

I'm intrigued by the 'glass can' in that Korean beverage stand.

Re high trust environments, the one place I feel okay about leaving things is at the hairdresser I've been going to for about 15 years. Coat is hung up, bag on chair while I have my hair washed. Fingers crossed, there's never been an issue.

I've been there and got the tee shirt on those bath mats! I've tried numerous types of design. Currently on an opaque one with a flower pattern. I don't like the see-through type much, and I find they need cleaning regularly because dirt gathers around the suction pads on the back, and it's a fiddley job.

The one I got came with little stick on hooks so you can hang it up, which I do as I've noticed it gathers bits. I've found all sorts in my hair after work. One time a caterpillar fell out onto a customer's kitchen table but I think that's the worst I've found.

This one: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BFRGSM11

What I bought about 15 years ago is a little stool for the shower so I can sit down. No good if your shower is in the bath, but I recommend it for cubicles. I also have a little plastic basin that fills up, so that I can scrub my feet with a long handled brush after they've soaked for a few minutes.

On the stairs subject, I used to live in a 14th floor flat and the lifts were out regularly. Quite a bloody hike, I took shopping bags up for old ladies, a few times. The caretaker used to sit them in his flat, if there was an engineer engineer en route.

That was 17 to 20 years old and I felt fit!

I also have a nubbly bath mat - and when we bought the house the tub had grab bars fitted as the previous owner was disabled, so we just left those in place. As and when we eventually renovate the bathroom (low on the list of priorities at the moment) we may well keep them as I am now 76 and DH is 83 and I doubt whether we'll get fitter than we are now.

We’re currently in a holiday cottage near Hanging Stones. There’s a lovely clear plastic bathmat with pebble shapes on it in the huge bath. Googling offers me one from Sainsburys at £6, and £28 from Croydex.

in Japan every hotel we stayed in offered us umbrellas to borrow, for free (looking at you Hotel du Vin that charged us £2 per hour hire fee for a ridiculously large and heavy umbrella). The ones in Japan were all light, surprisingly strong even in wind and clear plastic, so brilliant when you’re sightseeing. And yes high trust everywhere. It was lovely walking through a busy city looking at Google maps knowing the phone wasn’t going to be stolen. Much like having pothole-free roads*, knowing things won’t get stolen is important.

*North Yorkshire seems pretty pothole free, unlike the southeast.

I think here in Maine it's a higher trust area than I was used to when I lived in Watford. People still go out without locking house or car doors, and it's never occurred to me that my phone might get snatched.

I don't watch many of these BBC4 docus, but i'm enjoying this one on Sammy Davis Jr.

@ProfessorBinturong The clear "cans" are plastic and only from some cafes, they seemed to be somehow assembled on-the-spot for certain sorts of takeaway cold drinks.

Thanks again to @Medee , whose wooden toy suggestions were a big hit with my grand-daughter (first birthday today).

Oh wonderful, I am glad to have helped!

How's the weather? We have thunder, which has been going on for about 10 minutes. Our Ukrainian lady rushed in in a panic, she thought it was a missile. She's OK, now that she knows it's just thunder.

It was bloody freezing here in London this morning - almost literally, it was 2degC. Now just a bit grey but a lot warmer.

I'm jealous - I love thunder and lightning, though if I was Ukrainian I might like them less these days. This is a brilliant site: https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=ses;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;

It was absolutely bloody freezing yesterday, only a degree or so warmer today, and forecast to be similar for the rest of this week at least.

Don't know if this link will work but it's a short BBC video talking about how this mid-May cold snap is something people have observed for centuries.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYNSiIVD0Em/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

It was vile here (East Kent) yesterday, wet and windy, but today has been sunny and calm with a tropical 16C. It's starting to look a bit threatening now, though. As my youngest and maddest aunt once proclaimed: We were able to walk along the seafront "without coat". She was only in her early 30s at the time.

That said, I've just been out into the back garden to find a couple of young magpies investigating my socks, which were out on the airer but somehow ended up in the middle of the lawn. I suspect the wind, but you never know with magpies.