Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

michaels

Isn't it a class / snobbery thing? Lower class and chavs like me watch American TV and hope to take our families to Disney in Florida whereas intellectual middle-class dinner party goers look done on the unsophisticated Americans

Generali wrote: »

Don't get me wrong. I have a mini mission in life to drive out anti-American racism. It seems to be the socially acceptable form of racism in the UK (& Aus for that matter).

Well if I was a landlord paying for the electric and water I would want the shower to be carp...

PasturesNew wrote: »

Looking at NDG's bed.... didn't expect that.

Looking at the "before" pics, it's my dream to live in a place as posh and everything as the before pics

I am still in awe of this place I am in at the moment ... and it's nowhere near as nice as NDG's before. Shower here's !!!! though.... if I owned this place that'd have to come out in a few years as it's a dribbler not a waker-upper.

lostinrates

michaels wrote: »

Isn't it a class / snobbery thing? Lower class and chavs like me watch American TV and hope to take our families to Disney in Florida whereas intellectual middle-class dinner party goers look done on the unsophisticated Americans

Its very unsophisticated to consider all Americans unsophisticated..IMO . Some really are. America is a hugely diverse country, and DH's experience of NY for example, and other northern state cities could be a different world from my southern states experience. Its like ''Europe''...the brits are fairly different from some of our neighbours in culture and national ''identity''. There are some universal truths, shames and vitues though I think.

zagubov

Road_Hog wrote: »

My view of the Americans (having travelled extensively to the States), is that a kinder way of explaining it would be to say that they are not worldly. They seem to be very self (America) centric.

However, on the flipside, I'd say that the majority are lovely people, who have a sort of innocence that we have forgotten over here.

Without going into details, I was in the States a few years ago, arrived that night, and had a meal and beer (with wife) at a diner and because of our useless bank (Abbey/Santander) neither of our cards would work.

Over here we'd probably have been hauled away by the police, called by the restaurant staff. A quick explanation to the staff, that we were staying in the Holiday Inn across the road and we'd be back in first thing when the bank had opened, to pay the bill, was more than enough to satisfy them. No accusations, no hassle, no ID required, just a, we'll see you tomorrow, don't worry about it.

A very generous-natured people IME. Being mean-spirited (what here might be called a "bit of a character") is not a right but is seen as a serious character flaw. Which it is!

But being well-informed about the rest of the world? Their media and their education system has serious shortcomings.

When there was a conflict somewhere (maybe Chad) that the US didn't have obvious connections with, the news programme just stopped a random passerby (in the US) and asked what he thought of it.

No details of the conflict country or region, just a local man saying how awful he thought it was. That counted as news. Intensely worrying.

Wheezy_2

lostinrates wrote: »

that Ockham common....IIRC had a bit of a reputation as a meeting zone for previously unaquainted gentlemen who wanted to get to know each other. I'm guessing that's not the case anymore?

I have no idea. :whistle:

zagubov wrote: »

I know Ockham too.
But if there's mud, I'm definitely not taking our cairn there. He rolls in bad enough stuff as it is.:eek:

There's mud in some places

lostinrates

Wheezy wrote: »

There's mud in some places

OMG, your dog is the coolest westie EVER. It looks like fun was had.

those ball throwy things...dog dog has learned to look out for people with those when we go out. she doesn't understand the want to chase balls, but she does like chasing dogs who are chasing balls. so really, other people exercise my dog for me, Big dog and I just walk around while that happens:o

LydiaJ

lostinrates wrote: »

OMG, your dog is the coolest westie EVER. It looks like fun was had.

those ball throwy things...dog dog has learned to look out for people with those when we go out. she doesn't understand the want to chase balls, but she does like chasing dogs who are chasing balls. so really, other people exercise my dog for me, Big dog and I just walk around while that happens:o

Wheezy-dog looks great fun, I agree.

Avatar-dog was absolutely unable to resist balls. If he was tired or hot, he might try to keep hold of the ball so we couldn't throw it for him, but if we threw it, he had to run after it. In the eight & a half years we had him, he only ever once let the ball go without chasing it, and that was when he was really old. He was great at retrieving it, too, and carrying it about. We used to say that the greyhound half ran after the ball and the black lab half brought it back, but maybe that wasn't right, if dog-dog doesn't see the point of them.

Avatar-dog was not terribly clever about balls, though. He would happily carry the ball to the park, and look after it all the time we were there. He would hold onto it tightly until part way home - somewhere randomly between 10% and 90% of the way home. Then it would apparently occur to him that the ball-chasing was over for that walk, and he would quietly drop it. He never worked out that this would cause a problem with ball-less-ness for the next walk. The number of times I got home, only to have to turn round and go back out, nearly all the way to the park, to look for his wretched dropped ball....

I miss him.

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

if dog-dog doesn't see the point of them.

.

well...she will run after them a bit sometimes, if she's forgotten they aren't tastey and I throw one she'll go once to investigate, then when she sees a ball, will wander off bored. If I want her to chase something though I use an apple.....because balls don't taste good so dog dog quickly figured out there is no point. Apples taste good...so there is a small point.

She likes chacing crows and magpies a lot...they also taste good.

Dag dog is the first dog I have had who likes toys. I'll never forget giving her her first squeaky toy...she quickly established it was a small part of the thing that sqeaked and so methodically went over it with her teeth, then found the squeak, put her paw on it, opened the seam with her teeth and fished out the squeak:eek:. Took about fifteen mins in all.

What sh ereally likes is nature programmes on tv or you;ve been framed, especially the animal ones. She goes berserk for those.

lostinrates

LydiaJ wrote: »

I miss him.

when you get more settled at home, although it won't be him, maybe you could consider another? Someone easy to live with who'd run with ds and be pampered by dd (though you'd move down on the love list behind hamster and dog!) and be there for you to throw an arm around in the evening?


How are you feeling dear thing? Are you coping ok ATM? Is there anything we can do? and have you tried lists to help yet?

misskool

LydiaJ wrote: »

I am also Dr, although I didn't get the Dr bit until after I was married, so I've always been Dr J, not Dr B. Dr B is my dad, although if I ever do go back to being B, it'll be me, too. When I first got the PhD (well, DPhil actually), I only bothered using it where I felt it was professionally relevant, and carried on with Mrs J in other situations. After LNE filed for divorce, though, I found Mrs no longer feels right, so I use Dr all the time. It covers over all kinds of issues one might not want to have to explain - for me it's just marital status, but I heard the other day of a friend of a friend who's changing gender, and finds Dr helpful for that, too.

I'm hoping the whole DS changing name thing will blow over. For now I'm sticking to what I said last night - that I'm not altogether ruling it out but I'm not going to let him do it in a hurry. His initial psych appointment is tomorrow, so we'll see how he feels about names when he's done a lot more working through his bereavement. I may well end up telling him to wait until he's 16, which is the age when he would have been able to change it without LNE's consent if he were still alive.

It might be helpful for him to informally change his name and see how he feels about it? A step change.

OH has reminded me that I'm not consistent with my name, I'm still miss kool at the doctors, but mrs oh-last-name at the garage, ms kool at the opticians and dr kool at work :rotfl:

PasturesNew

Years ago, somebody I knew had a double-barrelled name .... but were as common as muck (actually got caught stealing milk from neighbours' doorsteps as they couldn't afford milk themselves) ... and their sister's first name was Lady. I really considered changing my name so that my first name was that... no other changes required