Today, I shall mostly be... Showing 251-300 of 4,717

[Collette]

So relieved for you, Lez. Like Helen, I found your post on Friday really upsetting. D and I are about 40 odd mins away from Falkirk by car. If anything like this happens to you again, message me. I have plenty of pasta, rice, tuna fish, cuppa soups etc. I'd make you a bag up and leave it on your doorstep. We're all in this together. 🙂

[Lez]

Thanks so much for your offer Collette. Xxx

[Helen The Melon]

I'm happy to try & send stuff by post. Errr, oatcakes, tablet, shortbread and umm spurtles, anyone? 😁

[nocheese]

Helen The Melon wrote: "I'm happy to try & send stuff by post. Errr, oatcakes, tablet, shortbread and umm spurtles, anyone? 😁"

😂

[nocheese]

Lez wrote: "Received my Sainsbury’s order, not too bad but missing UHT milk, tissues and bog-roll. I’ve managed to order some smaller packs of milk on ebay. I do have bog-roll to last a while but have invested..."

I heard the Cheeky Wipes woman on the radio the other day. She said to just put them in the washing machine with the rest of the wash. I thought the interviewer was going to throw up.

[Craig White]

what machine cycle might you put it on.........'extra claggy'?

[Isabella]

theDuke wrote: "Lez wrote: "Very worried and upset. I have little food and am relying on Wiltshire Farm Foods to deliver. The supermarkets have a 3 week waiting delivery list but say they will give priority to the..."

The Duke makes the point that the supermarkets need to get more vans and drivers. Yesterday we had an email from Sainsburys telling us that we were on the priority list for home deliveries. Today we had another which boils down to a very polite and circumspect "Don't hold your breath." Fortunately we're not in need of assistance at the moment - being vegetarian (me) and near-vegetarian (the DH) - we have our normal store of dry stuff like lentils and beans etc which can be used with the fresh veg we can still get.
Clearly, though they mean well, the supermarkets don't yet have the capacity to deal with the inevitable demand. We will run out eventually, I only hope that we can get a delivery when we do.

[Serial]

Nice sunny morning in Ireland this morning.

Did 2 hours of calf feeding from 8am, then into our eerie quiet town to the builders suppliers. Can't get in store anymore, 3 people allowed at a table across entrance at a time, 2 metres between the 3. Then you have to ask what you want and they go get it. Which is fine if you know exactly what you need. Got some line marking spray and headed to the chemist. Can't get in the chemist either, people wait well apart in the street, waiting to use the 1 person space just inside the door.
Weird as hell.
Dropped Eggs to a neighbour on the way home, having a farcical money, eggs exchange and then a chat at distance.
Spend a while marking out for the house extension I'm planning to build, with the line spray. Weeded the garden a bit.
Tried not to listen/watch the news too much :)

[Serial]

"I heard the Cheeky Wipes woman on the radio the other day. She said to just put them in the washing machine with the rest of the wash. I thought the interviewer was going to throw up."

What do you do with them until then? Have a bin full of shit covered rags in the bathroom..
Nice

I wonder have sales of Bidets increased :0

[Craig White]

"Did 2 hours of calf feeding from 8am"

christ, that's good stamina! how many did you manage to eat?

[Serial]

Tech XXIII (Chadicle Fellowes Society) wrote: ""Did 2 hours of calf feeding from 8am"

christ, that's good stamina! how many did you manage to eat?"

Ha ha ! Very good

[theDuke]

Still building me new deck. Have forgone the continuing work on me mancave...now focusing on building some raised plant beds..for growing our own veg......that's after the deck is done....the garden path ripped up, repositioned and relayed...several new gates to make, and sections of fencing that still need need to be replaced at some point. I hardly going out atm..so this current self isolation situation..has kinda become 2nd nature to me! :)

[Gordon]

nocheese wrote: "Fossicking in the safe confines of the garden on a day that feels like summer."

The landlord of the local pills & escort exchange was relaxing on the street outside his hostelry this afternoon with a glass of lager and wearing nothing but a pair of Tom-Daleyesque budgie-smugglers. I couldn't help wishing he had a safely confined garden.

[Gordon]

Lez wrote: "The supermarket sites still have loads of special offers, adding insult to injury..."

Not just the web sites. I did some shopping for my mum on Saturday: her local Morrison's had a 6-for-£4 offer on tins of soup. Shouldn't be allowing people to buy six tins, really, much less encouraging them to.

[Lez]

Serial wrote: ""I heard the Cheeky Wipes woman on the radio the other day. She said to just put them in the washing machine with the rest of the wash. I thought the interviewer was going to throw up."

What do yo..."

Isn’t it the same as washing nappies, only on a smaller scale?

[Val]

Lez wrote: "Isn’t it the same as washing nappies, only on a smaller scale? ..."

That makes sense. I suppose you'd have to have a pail of water with sterilising solution in it and do a wash load every few days.

[nocheese]

I've never understood the British distaste for the bidet.

Today I shall mostly be starting a new knitting project, a sweater with a design of pansies.

[Brass Neck]

nocheese wrote: "I've never understood the British distaste for the bidet.

Today I shall mostly be starting a new knitting project, a sweater with a design of pansies."

In the mid-70s the Brass family homestead was extended and the new bathroom, now a very unfashionable shade of pampas, had a bidet fitted on the reverse side of the toilet. We marvelled at it and played with its water jets but if any member of my family used it for its designated purpose I'd be highly surprised. Its positioning would have entailed the most undignified and potentially lethal shuffle round the cistern 'island' with trousers round ankles (almost as faff-bound as needing to spend a penny in a onesie …. I imagine!). Meanwhile, decades back before the great Covid-19 bog roll drought, there was the familiar roll of Andrex within arm's length so traditional methods of chocolate starfish cleaning always won out.

[Sera69]

If anybody needs me, i'll be in my blanket fort...

[Lez]

British bathrooms are often too small to house a bidet. Mine’s tiny (6’6” x 5’ 6”) and I only have a shower and a wash-basin. The separate loo is also tiny (6’6” x 3’ 3”)and there’s hardly room to open and close the doors in either of them.

* for the younger folk here, 2m x 165cm and 2m x 1m

[Isabella]

Trying to convince myself that 'I must stay in,' is no different from 'I don't want to go out'.

Lots of things to do, no inclination to do them.

Contrary? Me?

[theDuke]

I'm leaving the house everyday......just to me garden! :)

[Gordon]

Today, I shall mostly be trtying to work from home in a part of the coutry without fast broadband and with all the neighbours online gaming or watching Netflix.

[[deleted user]]

"* for the younger folk here, 2m x 165cm and 2m x 1m"

Despite being one of those younger folks, I actually prefer to work in imperial :)
What puzzles me at work is how the length of our trailers is calculated in metres but the height is in feet and inches i.e. a 10m trailer is 13' 4" high, a 13m is 13' 8" and a 15m is 14' , and also the way in which the height is calculated - a typical trailer being 9' 6" but connecting onto a unit with a 5th wheel height of 1250mm so you add the two together to get the overall height.

Anyway, I'm going to spend the rest of the day wondering where the hell I have left my other pair of glasses - they've been lost since yesterday morning and no, they're not on the top of my head!

[Lez]

They’ll be where you last had them, Grizzly.

I’m delighted to be told my two hospital clinic appointments have been cancelled and there’ll be phone consultations instead. I’ve often thought I don’t really need to be physically present, so this could be a good thing. It’s also just as well as my volunteer transport has had to cancel all services.

[Lez]

Message from Patient Access says 2 metres is 6’ or ‘a broom’s length’!

[Gordon]

2 metres is 6½ feet.

What kind of broom is 6½ - or even 6 - feet long?

[[deleted user]]

Lez wrote: "Message from Patient Access says 2 metres is 6’ or ‘a broom’s length’!"

Does that include the reach of the person wielding the broom to keep people away from themselves?

[Sera69]

Gordon wrote: "2 metres is 6½ feet.

What kind of broom is 6½ - or even 6 - feet long?"

A 2m broom, obviously.

:P

[theDuke]

Grizzlygrump wrote: ""* for the younger folk here, 2m x 165cm and 2m x 1m"

Despite being one of those younger folks, I actually prefer to work in imperial :)
What puzzles me at work is how the length of our trailers i..."

Have you asked Phoebe about them, Grizzly?!

[Isabella]

Grizzlygrump wrote: ""* for the younger folk here, 2m x 165cm and 2m x 1m"

Despite being one of those younger folks, I actually prefer to work in imperial :)
What puzzles me at work is how the length of our trailers i..."

I'm with you. Can't beat imperial when you want accuracy on a small scale. Metric isn't flexible enough.

[theDuke]

As one of the Generation X lot, i grew up learning both imperial & metric....and so use both. I do think the Gen X lot got the best of both worlds in that respect...as i also use both kilos/grams & pounds/ounces, pints/gallons and litres/millilitres, PSI & BAR, VHS (&Betamax)/Cassette & CD & DVDs (!)..and so on.

The only 'imperialism' i can think of that i still to this day cannot phathom out..is the old British currency. I was born in 1974, so grew up only knowing decimal currency..which i think is whole lot easier to grasp, than the old system. There were too many coins and names for them to get me bonce around! And why 'd' for pence?

Mum used to try out on me some examples of the old currency, just to see if could work out the metric equivilent of....and had examples like this....1/19/​11 3⁄4d. £1, 19 shillings, 11 pennies & 3 farthings. Or perhaps this example...

2/6d - 2 shillings and " 'ALF A CRAN!"

Now then...those names, starting with the wee Farthing...

this one, conjured up an image of either, an oversized and tricky to ride Victorian bicycle..or if one says the word quickly....a coin that breaks wind!

The Shilling....this one always felt a cold, dark, moody coin to me...always gave me the 'shills' that one.

The Halfpenny, to give it it's correct spelling....was apparently pronounced Ha'penny......so that one sounded to me like a coin having a laugh.

And those blasted Florins! Right..now then...these ones, to me anyway...i'd regarded these as the devil coins! I could never remember their values..always thought they were more than they were, when me mum was testing' me then as wee lad.

And..now the pound...there was a 20 shilling note (£1), but not a pound note....for that..we had the Sovereign, which was made of gold, worth a quid, and a coin!

And finally....just to confuse things further..here's the worse one..the Guinea. Now then..i do not get this one at all! 21 shillings is it's value...equivilent to £1.05p. All i'll say of this oddity...is....why did that ever exist?! It doesn't even fit in with the '12' system, does it?

I can see why they dumped it in the end!

PS:...No..i don't know why my mother thought it necessary to try and educate me of this defunct currency, when my school was 'pushing' metric values on us kids back then!

A last act of rebellion on her part, mibbe?! :)

Anyway..as i was saying.....us middle 'agers' might have the best of it in terms of have grown up with both old and new systems.

[Tim]

theDuke wrote: "As one of the Generation X lot, i grew up learning both imperial & metric....and so use both. I do think the Gen X lot got the best of both worlds in that respect...as i also use both kilos/grams &..."

There certainly was a pound note, Duke. I remember them vaguely. 😀 No twenty shilling note though; there was a ten shilling note (hence the expression 'bent as a nine bob note')

The farthing disappeared in 1961. The name comes from old English 'fēorðing' meaning a fourth. As for 'd' for penny, that is simply the old Roman penny, the denarius. The whole system dates back to King Henry II.

http://projectbritain.com/moneyold.htm

Have to laugh at the snootiness of the Guinea being used for more 'gentlemanly' payments than the humble quid. Like a coin with a built-in tip!

[Isabella]

I remember farthings and pound notes but the ten bob note was probably more used, I think. (Well, we was poor, pound notes weren't for the likes of us :o( ). I remember my Mum sitting at the kitchen table on payday, with a notebook and little piles of cash, carefully allocating the week's money. Plenty of overtime and she was smiling. No overtime and she was shuffling bits here and there for ages...

Inflation changed a lot in the sixties/seventies. As a student, my week's rent for dinner, bed and breakfast, with lunch at the weekend, was five pounds. In the week, lunch was an apple, cheese, bread roll and tea for something like a shilling (5p), in the students' union.

Today, I shall be putting together an order for the supermarket where nearly every item costs more than ten per cent of my Dad's basic pay when I was a kid.

[Lez]

Pound notes bore different scenes/portraits, like notes do now. They got tatty very quickly. When the currency changed, many older people were very suspicious that it was some dastardly plot and it wasn’t real money.
The old system was ridiculously complicated with 3 columns of figures and multiples of 12. Before calculators it sometimes took a whole morning to balance the library cash!

[SussexWelsh]

Attending too many online team meetings :-(

[Craig White]

....remembering pound notes - surely wisnae that long ago!

i remember feeling like a very rich wee boy when jimmy broon (brown - famous killie goalie who owned a pub in stewarton) used to pass me 10 bob notes over the bar when my papa (who was obviously supposed to be looking after me!) dropped in for the odd (5? 7?) pint with me in tow. other times i was deposited on the front steps with a wee bottle of currie's gingur (lemonade) and a poke o' smith's crisps. those were the good old days when casual child neglect was no biggie!

[Derek]

Did we miss out the threepenny bit, silver and octagonal versions?

[Craig White]

or the tanner. the humble 6d, sixpence.
gave my wife a tanner made in her year of birth on our wedding day!, which remains in her purse today.

collective forum howls - cheap bastid! 😁

[Brass Neck]

Immediately post-decimalisation my nan used to helplessly proffer a handful of coins and invite the shop assistant to take what was owing; never quite sure whether this was borne of genuine befuddlement or just disdain for the new currency.

[nocheese]

I think we had our poond notes longer than England, tech.

[Helen The Melon]

Feeling relatively young (being born post-decimalisation). Thank you X

[Gordon]

theDuke wrote: "There were too many coins and names for them to get me bonce around! And why 'd' for pence?..."

It's Latin, Duke:

£ = libra = pound (hence lb for pound weight)
s = sestertius = shilling
d = denarius = penny

[Gordon]

"2/6d - 2 shillings and " 'ALF A CRAN!""

"2 shillings, or 12 pence. (10p metric)"

A half-crown (or half-dollar) was 2/6 (2 shillings & 6 pence = 30d: would be 12½p post-decimalization).

A florin was 2 bob (2/-), i.e. 24d: would be 10p post-decimalization (there were 20s or 240d in a pound; 1/10 of a pound [24d] was 1/10 of a pound [10p]).

[Val]

I loved Latin at school - did it for 6 years at high school and am the proud owner of the Latin Cup for 1967 (I was the only student!). We, that is Mother Bertranda (who came to Rhodesia in the Pioneer Column in a covered wagon in 1890!) and I, did Winnie the Pooh in Latin - Winnie Ille Pu. It's really irritating that the Rigby textbooks "Latin For Today" are so expensive.

[Lez]

I loved Latin too. I remember reading Pliny’s gardening?/botanical? essays for pleasure. My linguist nephew is teaching himself as they didn’t offer it at school.

[Isabella]

Val wrote: "I loved Latin at school - did it for 6 years at high school and am the proud owner of the Latin Cup for 1967 (I was the only student!). We, that is Mother Bertranda (who came to Rhodesia in the Pio..."

I'm jealous, we were stuck with part of Caesar's Gallic Wars, full of glorification of his victories over the Gauls. The bit of the Aeneid we did wasn't so bad, though. I still remember the first line we had to translate.

It's beyond me now except for the (very) occasional clue but the Times has a Latin crossword on Saturdays.

[Val]

Isabella wrote: "I'm jealous, we were stuck with part of Caesar's Gallic Wars, full of glorification of his victories over the Gauls. The bit of the Aeneid we did wasn't so bad, though. I still remember the first line we had to translate.

It's beyond me now except for the (very) occasional clue but the Times has a Latin crossword on Saturdays. ..."

The Aeneid is great reading! I doubt I'd be much use at a Latin crossword these days though I do still have my Collins pocket Latin-English dictionary from when I was in Form 4. I appear to have purloined it from one Susan Marshall who went to the same school but I don't remember her. It's been 55 years but I do apologise Susan.

[Derek]

Trying to find out if P7O ferries will still be running passenger services from Calais to Dover next Saturday.

[Lez]

Trying to source a small freezer for extra supplies. Unfortunately, others have had the same idea and most are out of stock.