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

PasturesNew

Off to see my old; went yesterday but the old wasn't even aware I was there the entire time I sat and waited. Purse still not located/old not in this decade.... so no idea really what happened to the old, or where the missing item is (presumed lost; hopefully not mugged; maybe old hid it before wandering)...... maybe we'll never know.

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

Which also raises an interesting point. How many of us had ambitions to do some job or another when we were at school and then ended up doing something totally different?

Growing ujp in the Space age, I spent my childhood thinking I would be working in space in a world of jet packs, robots, space stations, etc Then the US won the space race and gave it all up.

Had my head turned by movies like this:
And series like "UFO" set in a 1980 full of space stations and moonbases.

A wee bit over-optimistic now I come to think about it. :rotfl:

Even Tomorrow's World had endless predictions that never came true!
I'm glad I remember the optimism of the 60s/70s but the paranoia I don't miss! Those too young to remember the seeming inevitablity of global war are probably better off for that.

lemonjelly

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I might nick this idea! The best I've come up with so far is some fancy marmalade jars.

Hope you spent more time eating bratwurst and fried potatoes than shopping, as that is what german markets are really for.

I struggled (but succeeded;)) with a half metre sausage!:eek:

Some good food in those markets.

Wheezy_2

lemonjelly wrote: »

I struggled (but succeeded;)) with a half metre sausage!:eek:

You will need to provide more info on the girth of the sausage, so we can tell if that's an achievement or not.

John_Pierpoint

purch wrote: »

I am trying to convince eldest that Edinburgh or Durham (or anywhere else 500 miles away) is a good option :eek:

Maastricht? Said to be cheaper than the UK and as Dutch is a throat disease, they teach in English, with a good multinational intake.

misskool wrote: »

<raises hand>

I've told you before, please wait until the end of the class.

SingleSue wrote: »

It appeared to have worked for me until hubby left and threw all my plans up in the air. I left school at 16, went full time in what had been my part time job at the arcade and then at nearly 17, found a job in an office.

Over the next 3 years, worked my socks off, did as much overtime as I possibly could, swapped companies (and areas of shipping) a few times and climbed the promotion ladder extremely quickly until at age 20, I was earning in the high rate tax bracket.

This was all during the late 80's, early 90's recession! To be honest, we couldn't see what everyone was moaning about, we had plenty of money and enjoyed a very good life (it is why I can understand why some can't understand what is going on now, they are probably in the same sort of position we were in and not feeling it)

It is only now I am regretting the decision not to further my studies when I was young, years ago I could get away with my attention to detail and enthusiasm over experience and qualifications, or even the word of mouth from the various dock runners I dealt with to other company bosses (which led to me being head hunted), now, everything appears to be qualification based and without a degree, there appears to be begger all chance.

Most of the jobs I apply for I could do standing on my head while singing Phantom of the Opera but because I don't have a piece of paper saying I went to a certain university, or attended a certain course in that area of employment, I rarely get to interview stage, it doesn't seem to matter that I have years of experience.

I remember one phone call I made to ask for an application form, the first question was " Do you have 5 GCSE's?", well, being born when I was and going to school when I did, I didn't do GCSE's, according to her, they had to be GCSE's (I do have one GCSE which I did at night school when eldest was very young).

It is just another "ism" - ageism but not legally a transgression against Political Correctness, unlike the other "isms".

Before they were called "O" levels, they were called "School Cert.", probably the same sort of idea as the USA "graduation". The big skirts, callow youths and stretched limo's seem to have really caught on here in the last 20 years. (we have "done" that topic I think? )

Pennylane

lostinrates wrote: »

it's snowing.

Are you sure someone hasn't put you in a snow globe?:D:rotfl:

lostinrates

Pennylane wrote: »

Are you sure someone hasn't put you in a snow globe?:D:rotfl:

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::T:T:T

very good!

GDB2222

Davesnave wrote: »

My Mum is fertilizing the hillside near Longleat, along with my Dad.

I suppose I could get them a season ticket, but they've been freeloading successfully there since 2006, without being caught. :cool:

I thought of giving my mum and dad's stone a clean for Xmas, but heck it's only a stone. There's nobody there. (Well, there is, if you are being literal about the word, I suppose.)

GDB2222

I laughed out loud over this extract from Stephen Pile's new book of heroic failures:

"The least successful stage set
Never have the possibilities of a sloping stage been more innovatively explored than in the celebrated 1979 Wexford Opera Festival performance of Spontini’s La Vestale. The exciting decision was taken to cover the floor of the vestal virgins’ temple with Formica, which not only looks like marble but also has the added attraction of acute slipperiness. The plan was to cover the stage with lemon juice so the cast’s feet would stick to the floor.

Fortunately, a cleaning lady was so professionally affronted by the state of this stage that she washed and polished it that afternoon, helping to create the most inventive and free-range choreography seen on the operatic stage for 100 years.

The curtain rose and the Roman general Licinio strode onto the stage, fell flat on his back and slithered towards the footlights. Singing throughout, he got to his feet. After several plucky attempts to walk back up stage, he decided to stay where he was, no doubt calculating that the next character to enter, his friend Cinna, would shortly be joining him near the footlights anyway.

On came Cinna, arms waving, who hurtled down the stage and crashed into his chum at speed. They were propelled towards the orchestra pit.

Averting disaster at the last second, they worked their way gingerly along the edge of the stage “like mountaineers seeking a route round an unbridgeable crevasse”, according to the critic Bernard Levin, who looked on with a growing delight.

Still singing and clutching onto each other, the pair decided to make for a pillar bearing the sacred vestal flame that was three feet further up and embedded firmly in the stage floor.

At this point matters were considerably improved by the entrance of the chorus. They also decided to make for the fixed pillar which was now becoming quite crowded.

Happily, this chorus of centurions, gladiators and vestal virgins decided to form a daisy chain of mutual support, leading from the pillar across the stage with everyone clutching on to each other until all were accommodated. The audience was so moved by this performance that most were weeping and some struggled for breath."

GDB2222

And this is how Bernard Levin described it:

""But I can remember at once that 1979 was The Year of the Missing Lemon Juice. The Theatre Royal in Wexford holds 440; it was completely full that night, so there are, allowing for a few who have already died (it is not true, though it might well have been, that some died of laughter at the time), hardly more than four hundred people who now share, to the end of their lives, an experience from which the rest of the world, now and for ever, is excluded. When the last of us dies, the experience will die with us, for although it is already enshrined in legend, no one who was not an eye witness will ever really understand what we felt. Certainly I am aware that these words cannot convey more than the facts, and the facts, as so often and most particularly in this case, are only part, and a small part, too, of the whole truth. But I must try.

The opera that night was La Vestale, by Spontini. It has been described as 'a poor man's Norma', since it tells, in music and drama much inferior to Bellini's, of a vestal virgin who betrays her charge for love. It was revived for Maria Callas, but otherwise figures rarely in the repertoire of the world's leading opera houses. But it is part of Wexford's business to revive operas which other opera houses and festivals unjustly neglect, and I have been repeatedly surprised in a most pleasant manner to discover much of interest and pleasure in some of them; Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys, for instance, or Prokofiev's The Gambler, or Bizet's Les Pecheurs des Perles.........

Well, in 1979 it was La Vestale. The set for Act I of the opera consisted of a platform laid over the stage, raised about a foot at the back and sloping evenly to the footlights. This was meant to represent the interior of the Temple where burned the sacred flame, and had therefore to look like marble; the designer had achieved a convincing alternative by covering the raised stage in Formica. But the Formica was slippery; to avoid the risk of a performer taking a tumble, designer and stage manager had between them discovered that an ample sprinkling of lemon juice would make the surface sufficiently sticky to provide a secure foothold. The story now forks; down one road, there lies the belief that the member of the stage staff whose duty it was to sprinkle the lifesaving liquid, and who had done so without fail at rehearsal and at the earlier performances (this was the last one of the Festival), had simply forgotten. Down the other branch in the road is a much more attractive rumour: that the theatre charlady, inspecting the premises in the afternoon, had seen to her horror and indignation that the stage was covered in the remains of some spilt liquid, and, inspired by professional pride, had thereupon set to and given it a good scrub and polish all over. The roads now join again, for apart from the superior charm of the second version, it makes no difference what the explanation was. What matters is what happened.

What happened began to happen very early. The hero of the opera strides on to the stage immediately after the curtain has gone up. The hero strode; and instantly fell flat on his back. There was a murmur of sympathy and concern from the audience for his embarrassment and for the possibility that he might have been hurt; it was the last such sound that was to be heard that night, and it was very soon to be replaced by sounds of a very different nature.

The hero got to his feet, with considerable difficulty, and, having slid some way down the stage in falling, proceeded to stride up-stage to where he should have been in the first place; he had, of course, gone on singing throughout, for the music had not stopped. Striding up-stage, however, was plainly more difficult than he had reckoned on, for every time he took a step and tried to follow it with another, the foot with which he had taken the first proceeded to slide down-stage again, swiftly followed by its companion; he may not have known it, but he was giving a perfect demonstration of what is called marcher sur place, a graceful manoeuvre normally used in mime, and seen at its best in the work of Marcel Marceau.

Finding progress uphill difficult, indeed impossible, the hero wisely decided to abandon the attempt and stay where he was, singing bravely on, no doubt calculating that, since the stage was brightly lit, the next character to enter would notice him and adjust his own movements accordingly. So it proved, in a sense at least, for the next character to enter was the hero's trusted friend and confidant, who, seeing his hero further down-stage than he was supposed to be, loyally decided to join him there. Truth to tell, he had little choice, for from the moment he had stepped on to the stage he had begun to slide downhill, arms semaphoring, like Scrooge's clerk on the way home to his Christmas dinner. His downhill progress was arrested by his fetching up against his friend with a thud; this, as it happened, was not altogether inappropriate, as the opera called for them to embrace in friendly greeting at that point. It did not, however, call for them, locked in each other's arms and propelled by the impetus of the friend's descent, to careen helplessly further down- stage with the evident intention of going straight into the orchestra pit with vocal accompaniment - for the hero's aria had, on the arrival of his companion, been transformed into a duet.

On the brink of ultimate disaster they managed to arrest their joint progress to destruction and, working their way along the edge of the stage like mountaineers seeking a route round an unbridgeable crevasse, most gallantly began, with infinite pain and by a form of progress most aptly described in the title of Lenin's famous pamphlet, Four Steps Forward, Three Steps Back, to climb up the terrible hill. It speedily became clear that this hazardous ascent was not being made simply from a desire to retain dramatic credibility; it had a much more practical object. The only structure breaking the otherwise all too smooth surface of the stage was a marble pillar, a yard or so high, on which there burned the sacred flame of the rite. This pillar was embedded firmly in the stage, and it had obviously occurred to both mountaineers at once that if they could only reach it it would provide a secure base for their subsequent operations, since if they held on to it for dear life they would at any rate be safe from any further danger of sliding downhill and/or breaking their necks. It was soon borne in upon them that they had undertaken a labour of truly Sisyphean proportions, and would have been most heartily pardoned by the audience if they had abandoned the librettist's words at this point, and fitted to the music instead the old moral verse: The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight; But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night.

By this time the audience - all 440 of us - were in a state of such abandon with laughter that several of us felt that if this were to continue a moment longer we would be in danger of doing ourselves a serious internal mischief, little did we know that the fun was just beginning, for shortly after Mallory and Irvine reached their longed-for goal, the chorus entered, and instantly flung themselves en masse into a very freely choreographed version of Les Patineurs, albeit to the wrong music. The heroine herself, the priestess Giulia, with a survival instinct strong enough to suggest that she would be the one to get close to should any reader of these lines happen to be shipwrecked along with the Wexford opera company, skated into the wings and kicked her shoes off and then, finding on her return that this had hardly improved matters, skated back to the wings and removed her tights as well. Now, however, the singing never having stopped for a moment, the chorus had come to the same conclusion as had the hero and his friend, namely that holding on to the holy pillar was the only way to remain upright and more or less immobile. The trouble with this conclusion was that there was only one such pillar on the stage, and it was a small one; as the cast crowded round it, it seemed that there would be some very unseemly brawling among those seeking a hand-hold, a foothold, even a bare finger-hold, on this tiny island of security in the terrible sea of impermanence. By an instinctive understanding of the principles of co-operation, however, they decided the matter without bloodshed; those nearest the pillar clutched it, those next nearest clutched the clutchers, those farther away still clutched those, and so on until, in a kind of daisy- chain that snaked across the stage, everybody was accommodated.

The condition of the audience was now one of fully extended hysteria, which was having the most extraordinary effect - itself intensifying the audience's condition - on the orchestra. At Wexford, the orchestra pit runs under the stage; only a single row of players - those at the edge of the pit nearest the audience, together, of course, with the conductor -could see what was happening on the stage. The rest realized that something out of the ordinary was going on up there, and would have been singularly dull of wit if they had not, for many members of the audience were now slumped on the floor weeping helplessly in the agony of their mirth, and although the orchestra at Wexford cannot see the stage, it can certainly see the auditorium.

Theologians tell us that the delights of the next world are eternal. Perhaps; but what is certain is that all earthly ones, alas, are temporary, and duly, after giving us a glimpse of the more enduring joy of Heaven that must have strengthened the devout in their faith and caused instant conversion among many of the unbelievers, the entertainment came to an end when the first act of the opera did so, amid such cheering as I had never before heard in an opera house, and can never hope to hear again. In the interval before Act II, a member of the production staff walked back and forth across the stage, sprinkling it with the precious nectar, and we knew that our happiness was at an end. But he who, after such happiness, would have demanded more, would be greedy indeed, and most of us were content to know that, for one crowded half-hour, we on honeydew had fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise"."