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…

Corvids are so clever! I know they do some terrible things but they seem to enjoy life so much, and they're so jaunty.

Incidentally, a recommendation: Tana French's Cal Hooper series is IMO great anyway, but "the rooks" are one of the best minor characters, always trying to fuck with people's heads (and sometimes their cars).

My bird spot of the day (which also functions as a weather report).

Late cold spring here in Maine but the tulips are out, the cherry trees have blossom on them, and the maple leaves opened in the six days we were in North Carolina last week and over the weekend for our oldest granddaughter’s college graduation. It was a bit warmer down there but still not as warm as we expected.

I love magpies. Not long after we moved here, we were adopted by a youngster with a ridiculously short tail. We called him Gazza - a variation on the Catalan word for magpie, which is "garsa". He had no fear of us (or perhaps just no sense) and would hop around my feet if I was hanging out laundry. We never fed him, and the many visitor-cats (one of whom murdered a massive wood-pigeon right in front of us, but Knew Shame when we told him off) left him alone. I miss Gazza.

Yes, it was cold enough last night that I put the heating on for an hour. A bit chilly now, too.

My wife is unhappy, the car has been at a garage since Sunday, was supposed to get it back last night. Volvo sent one wrong part, the new part arrived at the dealer's today - in Newcastle under Lyme!

We should have it back tomorrow afternoon.

It was due a timing belt, with the associated water pump, but the clutch went gimpy on Thursday. The slave cylinder inside it has broken.

So, front of the car off, engine out, dual mass flywheel, fibre plate and cylinder, with new fluid. £2,800! I asked if it could be cash in hand - it is! £5 - 6,000 at a main dealer.

Is it worth salvaging? I've paid a few bills in my time, but I've never spent that kind of money trying to save a car. I'm guessing it's a lot newer than mine! 😀

Next time I have to change a car I’m seriously thinking of leasing instead of buying. Given that I’m 76 and DH is 83, I’m not sure how long-term any new car would be, and it would have to be a big loan to buy new - and then it depreciates hugely as soon as you drive it off the lot.

Moto, it's a 10 year old V 60, in otherwise good nick, 80,000 miles. Whilst expensive, it's nowhere near as much as a replacement!

In a WTAF moment, I've just been to the Amazon "track package" page, which also includes a "pick up where you left off" section. This features a series of open-toed, very high-heeled furry stiletto sandals. I can put my hand on my heart and swear on the life of my favourite local cat that I have never browsed any such items.

Sympathies on car woes @SinnerBoy that is a rather eye-watering amount of money!

"Kick a Volvo" was a meme in leafy Wimbledon before Dawkins even coined the term. It was a reference to the middle-class mums driving their single child 200 metres down the road to school and double-parking their Volvo 245s willy-nilly.

My DDiL was in the process of buying a massive SUV type car whilst I was in London at the weekend. Cos apparently it's essential for fitting a buggy in it comfortably. How on earth we ever managed back in the day with Datsun Sunnys and Citroen 2CVs, I'll never know.

That's because buggys (buggies? - no, surely those are small insects) are more like chariots these days.

I'm so ancient we didn't have carseats. You graduated from the pram strapped to the back seat (with long-suffering older sibling -i.e. ME - squished in beside it, to the RED STRAPS which sort of harnessed you to the back seat pretty much as soon as you could sit up for any length of time. God knows how we made it to adulthood. My mother once said "Oh, we knew you were ready for straps when you could climb out of your pram"....

I've never heard of the kick a Volvo thing before. It's ironic, but they are the nemesis of bikers.... it was always a saying to watch out for them, as Volvo drivers wiped out more bikers than any other car.

Carole Nash did an investigation, around the Millennium and found that it was true. The conclusion, after interviewing drivers, was that the drivers were middle aged, middle class, delighted with their very safe cars and just didn't register bikes.

You had straps @SqueakyDinosaur - no such safety precautions in my childhood. Seatbelts were only for front seats and when my dad got an estate car we were allowed to travel loose in the back! Utter madness but different times!

Neither of my parents drove when we were tiny though so walking was the order of the day with pram age children. There was space under the stairs in the bus for a folded up pushchair though.

We just used to roll around on the back seat. Or worse (now I think about it) stand behind, in between, the two front seats so we could see out front - we'd fight to get this prime position and my brother was a biter.

They've got a bit bigger, that's true. But largely because they nowadays offer useful stowage space for shopping, etc. And they fold down easily and neatly.

Yes, no seat belts in the back, when I was a kid, in the 70s and 80s. I remember we had a Beetle when I was six and being allowed in the little storage space behind the back seat.

I didn't have to share with my sisters, till we were going down the A1 one day and got tailgated by a lorry. My mam was screaming, "For God's sake, I'm doing 90 miles and hour!"

She managed to change lanes at some point!

"For God's sake, I'm doing 90 miles and hour!"

Bloody hell, that sounds terrifying!

I had a car seat. My dad built it into the van. Don't know how it would have stood up to modern safety tests, being mostly plywood, but if it came loose the entire interior structure would have come with it and it had a very robust 5-point harness. And a wooden step stool so my feet didn't dangle.

Travelling in friends' parents' cars was the traditional rattle-around-in-the-boot 70s experience.

Oh, the red straps were only in my dad's car, which we used for long journeys. For school runs and so on, no straps - for a start, you couldn't strap 5 or 6 children into a Morris Minor Traveller. We used to fight to go in the boot.

I don’t remember encountering seat belts until the mid-70s

I think our Maxi had front seat belts only.

Lorries used to do all kinds of mad stuff before tachographs - I can remember watching 2 trucks doing 70 on a dual carriageway, passing stuff between the cabs as there was a passenger.

My god. The good old days…
Someone my father knew was driving a sport car in the 1960s and when the lorry in front of him stopped, he didn’t. He died in gruesome circumstances. There are now bars low down on the backs of lorries