Blethering, havering and general Scotsnet style chit chat....

[ElephantOfRisk]

I'm in the car reading a few threads where folks are fed up with the misery and fighting so thought I'd start a new thread. Not for politics or covid or fighting , just general stuff 🙂

I've had a nice day, off work on hols so we took a wee drive down to Peebles and had lunch, bought a few pies from lovely butcher and now heading home.

Guilt might be worth a look at. Only 7.4 on IMdB though so that's not usually high enough to elicit interest in our house! . However there are some things that are rated more highly that we have thought were rubbish/not to our taste.

We have Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve (Danish custom) and it looks like for the 2nd year in a row we'll be having my dad with us (the last few few years he's been going to South Africa and spending it with his lady friend). Hopefully this year we'll be able to have SIL and her family over. Ds will be down from Aberdeen

I'm making contingency plans for the meal (leg or shoulder of lamb to go in the freezer) in case I can't get the turkey from Lidl and the green bacon from a farm butcher in Ayrshire (I make a special trip down to see a friend in the area) that I then boil and bake into a ham.

Danish Christmas pudding which is a sweet rice risotto with cream and chopped blanched almonds folded through it and one whole almond. Whoever gets it gets the "almond prize".

Christmas Day itself is nice and relaxed as we've already done the big meal (usually do roast pheasant but it only takes 45 minutes). And "traditional" British Christmas pudding just needs to be put on to boil (made two last year, so I don't have to make another one this year).

@UmpteenthTime

prettybird that’s interesting. As soon as we saw the beautiful, big, sandstone villa in the second series, we thought Pollokshields! Were we right? We really enjoyed both series. Great to watch something Scottish. ( didn’t enjoy Vigil )

Yes, it is Pollokshields. The film crew used our local rugby club for its vans etc (I believe there was also some shooting in Pollok Park).

If it's the house that they were filming at (very elevated, steep drive), it's much bigger than ours even though ours has been split in two: a horizontal semi as dh describes it

Good to know we were right!
I spent a lot of time in Pollokshields in my teens so thought it looked familiar.

I know pollockshields well too. Worked as a nanny there for years and spent many a fraught hour in the big wide streets teaching ds's to drive

The first series of Guilt was quite comical.
I've only seen 1st episode of 2nd series but it's looking more serious drama

ssd I had driving lessons in Pollokshields, all those three point turns in the wide streets, which became 7 point turns in a normal road !

Annika was good for Glasgow and Clyde scenery

@UmpteenthTime - ds was practicing his three point turn with me in the blocked off street beside Maxwell Park. It was a waste of time as even though the car we had then was a Vectra, with hardly the smallest turning circle in the world, he could complete the manoeuvre as a U-turn without needing to engage reverse gear

We live in a long straight, flat, wide, quiet street very popular with learner drivers

Oh my. DD's boyfriend only eats chocolate cake for pudding. She's offered to buy him the cake😂😂

I like getting everything over and done with on Christmas Day. Last year on Boxing Day we went to the in-laws and I couldn't wait to get home. I really struggled. They asked Dh if I was ok and he said probably not. I just hid under the covers the next day.

Good thread idea

What are you all doing for Halloween? I absolutely love it and decorate the house and garden every year.
I've bought some Halloween craft to do, we'll make some spooky biscuits / cupcakes etc.
Ds1 wee friend is coming over and I'm going to put the disco light on and 'kids Halloween party' on Alexa then they can make their own pizzas for dinner before we go out guising.
I'm more excited than ds.

I've been searching for a fireworks display nearby but there doesn't seem to be much on so I think we'll make a fire in the wood burner. Have soup in cups outside and toast marshmallows then walk up the hill a bit to watch fireworks over the city. As long as it's not chucking it down of course.

Ooh I loooove halloween!
Even though mine are now older teens we still put the pumpkin out and they love seeing the wee ones coming to the door

Ds1 is so excited to go guising, he's been practising some jokes.

Last year a couple of streets put sweets outside and we took him round but there was no door knocking so this year is his first proper experience of it.

Mine used to love guising too. I must admit, i dont miss it . I did it for feckin years, dh leaves stuff like that to me. I'm glad i did it but glad its by too

I think mine just liked the thought of getting sweets, they'd eat some of the decent stuff but the cheap shite would get left and I'd be binning it by December

My children are getting very excited about Halloween. They've had their costumes planned for ages, and are now working on a fashion show for DH and me to enjoy.

Its lovely to see the houses getting done up for it. And its sad when you see a house that was always done up, dark and quiet, and you know the kids are too old for it now, like the end of an era. But then again the little ones are joining in ,so it keeps going. We were in America over 10 years ago when mine were younger and the amount of doing up the house that goes on over there is something else.

We have been crafting like crazy this week and starting to get the house decorated. The kids love it, and they've missed out on so much we go over the top a bit.

The best costumes my DSs had was the year we made them. I'm not good at sewing so they were sort of cobbled together. DS1 wanted to be a Stormtrooper (a star wars baddie?) and we could only get the mask so i "made" the rest of the costume using white clothes drawn on with a black marker - it was surprisingly effective. DS2 wanted to be the mad professor from that Penguin thing they were all into back then so we adapted one of DHs old nurse uniforms and we spray painted his hair green and he had big rubber gloves and swimming goggles on his head and we painted a big yellow lightening strike on his nurses top.

I wish I'd made more effort the other years but life was always so busy.

That sounds impressive @ElephantOfRisk, better than my efforts. I could organise the decorations and the goody bags etc but the actual dress up bit was a bit hit and miss. I remember light sabres being involved here too..

I still put a pumpkin 🎃 out every year and get in a couple of bowls of sweeties and fruit (and insist that they take some from each) for any kids that come round guising. Some of them are quite surprised when I insist on a "piece" before giving them anything In such cases I get a very weak joke

Every year I admire once again my mother's efforts at carving a proper neep lantern I now understand why she cursed so much

oh yes, light sabres too! Honestly it was just stuff lying about the house and some marker pens but it ended up looking decent. I never did bags, one bowl filled with lollies/sweets and the other with little chocolate bars and they could take one thing from each. One year we ran out and had to give chocolate biscuits. Even allowing for the occasional kid taking two, we worked out (based on the bag contents (e.g. contains 30 bars) that we'd had over 200 at the door that year. DH and I used to take turns of going out with DC or staying home to do the door.

oh yes, pumpkins are so much easier to carve. The smell of burning tumshie takes you back though. First we had to steal the turnips from the field...then bend or break half the spoons in the house. One year we tried to burn out the centre with a hot poker.

In those days we were normally invited in to do our turn and would get to do dookin' and other activities in the houses.

I always insist on them doing something as well and to be fair, although the jokes were dire, they pretty much all had something prepared.

Yes, we insisted here if you want a bag you had to do a turn. We still laugh about some of them, like the wee boy who recited a whole Burns poem, thats was impressive. And the odd joke with a swear word thrown in...obviously heard from a bigger sibling