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…

Alligator moat?

If so, Gonners may wish to drop a Canadian bank or 2 into it.

Their website is bilingual. The business on the phone is pure arseholery.

If you’re going to get another bike @moto748e then I’d say go for it ASAP. Waiting til winter would mean missing out on a summer of biking pleasure and that’s just not worth it.

I’m pretty sure there are Neville Shute novels here but I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually read any. Maybe I should.

I feel that, @artant ; I wonder how many more biking years I have in me, and if I wait until next year, that's another half a summer gone. OTOH, I'm not rushing.

GROUND ANCHOR and OXFORD CHAIN, he tells you, from bitter experience!

On the moaning wife, my sister's FiL gave up at the age of 82, after coming off his BMW 850 on ice. It was pleading and appealing to common sense, rather than moaning. Sis and B'siL (plural) had a hand, too.

I did a 230 mile trip home with my daughter yesterday, on the bike; knackered!

I came back South today, 4 hours to do 220, with a stop - A19-A1 and a few miles on the A47. Then 3 hours on the A47, 78 bloody miles of semi-rural and roadworks.

Including a slow section with a pair of farmers herding a fugitive cow off the Acle Straight.

Yesterday, horror of horrors, I had no internet. I decided to do the right thing, and clean up the forest of cables and dust behind the TV, router, and Virgin box, and of course, no good deed goes unpunished, and when I finished, no internet. Switched off and on again, checked cables, rang VM, eventually got an engineer visit booked. He's just been, and fixed problem in five mins, some widget thing got disconnected that I would never have sussed, anyway, all good. I was told to expect him between 8 and 12 today, so getting up at 7.30 is very much not part of my daily routine! But on a beautiful summer's morning like today walking out of the front door and catching the morning sun reminded me of nothing so much as that feeling of having the bike all loaded up ready to go to head to the port (would usually have been Portsmouth) for a holiday adventure. It's a great feeling, and I'd like to do it again. Trouble is, the South coast is such a haul from here. Ireland is an option, though.
I'm sure that was a nice trip, Sinner, North Yorkshire is a great biking area. Was on the A47 for the first time in many years when I went to the school reunion in Peterborough the other week.

Some of the terrified descriptions of Leeds are just... glorious
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5559916-to-say-12-is-still-too-young-to-be-going-into-leeds-with-friends-in-the-holidays?

There's a lot of paranoia on that thread. I feel for kids today, they seem to have so little freedom compared to what we had.

Wow. At that age I was hopping on the train to Cambridge or even (horror!) London with friends. With an A-Z and a few coins for the phone box as my emergency backup.

Mind you, at that age MaBint was sitting on the bonnet of a moving car and shooting rabbits. So she may have had an unusual perception of acceptable risk levels.

sitting on the bonnet of a moving car and shooting rabbits

That sounds like such good fun.

When I was 12 we used to spend a lot of weekends at the gliding club on the Long Mynd and while the adults flew us kids disappeared into the heather and bracken and we'd often be gone until dark. The only time there was an issue was when a thick fog came down and we got a bit lost, but we were still going in the right direction for the club house when we heard our names being called. I know it's not the same as going into town but the memories of having that freedom is something I appreciate more than I can articulate and it saddens me that kids today don't have that.

I was certainly going on the bus into town in Hull when I was 11. I haven’t read that thread but I don’t remember Leeds being at all scary when I lived there for about three months - but that was in 1968 and I was 18 so I guess it could have changed!

There's definitely some bits of the city centre (as mentioned in that thread) which are definitely dodgy. And sadly, like everywhere it seems, a lot of homeless/disturbed-seeming people around in some of those areas. Also like everywhere, a lot of rowdy drunkenness of an evening.

But thus far I've never felt like I need a bodyguard in order to go to the theatre or get the bus home at night. I'd like to think that most of the residents of Leeds are not in fact cowering in our barricaded houses all the time.

Where I do agree with the OP is that a load of silly 12 year olds winding each other up, in an unfamiliar place, could lead to undesirable outcomes.

I travelled by bus and tube to school so banning me from getting the bus and/or tube in the holidays would have been a bit ridiculous. Different times though. I was off to the pub with my brother and his mates at 14 and off out dancing with a friend at about 15 or 16 (at a different pub). I think I was a horrible teen.

Pubs were way laxer with underage drinking back in the day. I had my own regular, with my tankard hanging up behind the bar, when I was 15.

In other news, I seem to have bought a motorbike!

I seem to have bought a motorbike!

Ooh, what've you got?

Ducati Monster 696. Haven't got it yet, though.

<googles>

Ooh, nice. And you get an opportunity to use the word 'desmodromic'.

I don't know what desmodromic means, but I love the sound of it and wish I could write a poem using it.

I love the sound of desmodromic
Which (sadly) only rhymes with comic ...

There's also antidromic. Diatomic and anatomic.

Tricky to fit them to a coherent theme for a poem though.

Thank you @ProfessorBinturong ... we are getting there!

I love the sound of desmodromic
Which (sadly) only rhymes with comic ..
And antidronic, diatomic
And (some might argue) anatomic.

No help to know that it's a valve
When that word only rhymes with salve.

'Reciprocating's even worse
If trying to write coherent verse.

I've been desmoing for a long time now; since T reg, I think, which was a long time ago. It's an ingenious system.

It must be getting late over here - I read that as “an igneous system” and kept trying to figure it out in terms of geology.