Thread 20 - TalkLair: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness; that is life"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous Thread 19)

Britain swelters in yet another heatwave.

In the TalkLair, all the curtains are closed against the blazing sun as the denizens lurk like creatures of the night... or maybe we are creatures of the night. But rest assured, despite our scary fangs, 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…

Placemark

And mine.

Thank you, very glad, Kuc.

Thanks Kuc :-)

Ironically, here in the North-ish, it seems that the heatwave is over. Forecast is low 20s the the next 2 weeks, with just a hint of colder wetter weather towards the end of that. Just as, in fact, we're going on our glamping holiday which has no electricity or heating

It's a bit moist here and I had to put a jumper on, yesterday.

That sounds lovely, SinnerBoy, hope we get some of the same very soon. It's dust dry here at the moment.

Cooler here today too, and cloudy. I have to be at a meeting most of today, and it's an hour's drive to get there, so I'm quite glad it isn't as hot as it's been.

It's the annual picnic-on-the-green today, just over the road from us. Cue dramatic drop in temperature, overcast skies and a moderate north-easterly breeze straight down the North Sea from Norway! Once again, only yr.no has got the forecast right.

Hot here in the Home Counties, and humid, with clouds. But it’s still recognisably summer.

We went on to the next small but shitty town this afternoon in search of milk (because our local Co-op seems to have adopted a policy of not selling anything that normal people might want to buy) and neither of their two Co-ops, nor Sainsbury's, had any. Have the cows gone on strike?

I often have a similar problem, but the fault is the useless Morrisons, where the fridge/freezer cabinets seem to fail on a weekly basis, so no dairy at all. And when they do fail, they are not necessarily fixed the next day, it can be ages. For this to be a thing in the 21st century seems ridiculous to me.

Arf @moto748e - our nearest Morrisons is exactly the same! We were there about 3 weeks ago and all the chiller/freezer cabinets had given up the ghost. We went back earlier this week and nothing had changed. It's such a shame, as Morrisons is otherwise by far the best local supermarket for fruit and veg. And they turn the ceiling lights down for an hour every day at 2 o'clock, which is bliss for those of us who aren't good with fluorescent lights. The big Tesco is a no-go area for me!

For this to be a thing in the 21st century seems ridiculous to me.

Not sure I agree. For years now it seems that nearly every update to whatever technology it happens to be just makes things worse. For example, I read the other day that the UK has the worst mobile reception in Europe while those who use landlines get on just fine. Constant 'improvements' seem to make things clunkier than ever which isn't great in such a complex mix of technologies.

I love that picture!

That’s an excellent picture!

It’s definitely cooler here but still too hot for my liking although I didn’t get burnt pegging the washing out yesterday which was a welcome improvement.

I commend this thread as an entertaining read, while cringing at the thought of teenage me and my melodramatic stroppiness.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/teenagers/5557269-what-have-you-done-to-ruin-your-teenagers-summer-so-far?reply=153692778

Hilarious, but good grief - my teens are absolute angels compared to those on that thread

Blimey, there are some stroppy kids on that thread. My dad was quite firm about our behaviour and all hell would have broken loose if we'd behaved like some of the kids described. I can't remember what happened now, but when my older brother was about 14 he was rude to my dad and my dad got hold of him by the collar and threw him out of the house. Brother complained that he didn't have shoes on so my dad thew them out of the window at him. He's quite nice these days.

We're having a fruit fly infestation ChezKuc. Looking back, I think it started about a month ago when we had an excess of bananas in our weekly box and couldn't finish them before they started to ferment in the heatwave.

Since then, we've had more and more fruit flies erupting from our food waste caddy - it gets emptied and washed regularly, but obviously they all buzz away when it is taken out, and then land back in it when it comes back/new food waste goes in and then they get jiggy and new generations of fruit flies are born. The bin drawer and caddy are always closed when not in use, but the little sods are tiny enough to get through the gaps.

My current solution is to flick them to death with a dishcloth whenever one lands, but this is a rather low-throughput method!

Fruit flies are a pain at this time of year, hope you find a way to get rid of them.

I had insect related vileness yesterday morning. Made coffee and sat down to check my emails, took the first slurp and realised there was something in my mouth that shouldn't have been there. Panicked for a second and then spat it out - over the table and my keyboard - and there in the middle of the pool of coffee was a dead shield bug. Gah, gah, gah!

2018 was the worst fruit-fly year here, it was absolutely swarming with them. And when you make as much bread and beer as I do, that is a real issue! Last few years haven't been too bad, mostly now just some pretty muzzy (as my Mum used to say) house-flies.

For those of a sensitive nature, look away now:

My mum has a story from her teenage years, when she had made a mug of Milo (malted chocolate drink) one evening - a great treat in their very poor household. I think she then left it to do some chore, came back and downed most of the drink. Then she felt something unexpected touching her lip, looked down into the mug, and there was a drowned cockroach.

She had a lifelong terror of cockroaches. I mean, they're really gross and dirty and smell horrible and in SE Asia they're fucking gigantic, so it would have been a justified dislike anyway, but with the added trauma...

Xylitol is apparently toxic to fruit flies, so you could try a jam trap with one of the ones that's replaced sugar with sweetener.

Or get some butterworts - one of the easier carnivorous plants to keep alive, and best at catching very small flies. Pretty flowers, too.

One of the things DH has noticed here is the decline in insects generally. He says in the past when you drove in the summer the windscreen would get spattered with insects and this doesn’t happen now. This is, of course, not a good thing when you think of insects as food for birds and vectors of pollination.

I'm just back from a drive round England, following a very similar route and timing to one last year.

Last year, no splats. This year, noticeable splats. Not as many as I remember from the 70s, but that's partly the difference between a modern aerodynamic car and a Type II VW camper with a very flat front.