Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

michaels

SingleSue wrote: »

BIB - When you have a wheelchair and chronic fatigue....

I'm a weird one, I get excited going on the train, even if that is only the little local one for shopping in Ipswich. Buses, I just have panic attacks.

I've also done a few business trips which required a plane...I was like a child in a sweet shop :rotfl:

Yesterday morning I got to the station shortly after 8. As normal there was a long queue to get a ticket from a machine and the platforms were particularly crowded because of over-running engineering work on the other side of London and just because it was just past 8 in the morning. A train arrived a few miutes late and about half the people on the platform managed to squeeze on. Then it sat there for a while until the driver announced a door fault which they would 'shortly rectify. At this point everyone still on the platform went to a different platform as the next train was going to come there instead. After another few minutes the door fault was not as quickj to resolve as expectd so we were all told to get off and go to the other platform. The next train arrived already packed and about 25% of the people on the platform crammed on and it left. Another 10 minutes and a slow train arrived and mos tof the remaining people on the platform including me crammed on for what would now be a 50 minute game of sardines rather than the normal 30 minute one. At that point the 'broken' train also set off from the other platform for its 30 minute journey half empty. Now repeat with variations for the rest of your life.

PasturesNew wrote: »

There's a place for experiences ... when you've got your home sorted.

I'd like it to look like a home - and not a "half inhabited house, with a strange hoarding hermit sitting inside it".

To get to that stage, money needs to be spent on other stuff ... blinds, lampshades, a coffee table .... a rug ....



The list is quite long. I've no curtains in the 'spare bedroom' (junk room) - which I'd like - and I can't buy those until I've a curtain pole fitted. There is one there, half hanging off the wall, so, for now, I've got some random lightweight net curtains hanging off it.

In the kitchen I'd like a table and a "bit of sort of built in seating" for that.

Then there are blinds required for all the other windows... and a pair of curtains for the living room.

And ... well ... just "stuff". Stuff so I'd not be embarrassed to say to somebody "come over". It looks a bit like a squat awaiting eviction a lot of the time

When the house is sorted/finished (this time next year?) I do plan a brief holiday ... not far, it'll just take a small ferry to get there ... and it's all English.

I am so with you on this PN. The BBC news website had one of its weekly no-one can afford a house pieces about the poor couple who were moving into rented from living with parents now they were married because they could not raise the deposit to buy. The wedding was in Vegas. Experiences vs a roof over ones head - not a difficult choice for me.

michaels

PasturesNew wrote: »

You're lucky to have chairs!

When I first moved in, somebody from one of the NP threads came and stayed the weekend. I had a garden lounger and a folding chair in the living room - and she slept on the carpet of the empty 2nd bedroom. I had the blow up airbed in my room. Michaels found me a bed to buy online about 2 years ago, so I do have a proper bed now. I've kept the airbed "in case" as there's no 2nd bedroom bed ... so if anybody did ever come round I'd like to at least be able to offer them a foot pump and airbed.

I've got a chair (free from next door when they bought new stuff) and a sofa (2nd hand, £40) ... and I probably intend to buy a corner sofa next year, when I see "the right one at the right price" ... but not before next year. And it could be 5 years, have to see how this current sofa holds up and how soon a suitable replacement presents itself.

Four bottoms could sit themselves down on a proper chair/sofa here... after that it's a folding chair, a garden lounger, or bring your own.

You could sit on my lap?

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

In my tree of local interest ... during the Civil War there was a famous Castle siege ... barricaded up in the Castle, the soldiers helped themselves to the local church and squatted/lived there while they waited it out for six weeks. During their occupation they destroyed all the records, the rotters. My lot would've been inside the castle - and sitting outside in their homes wondering what'll happen next.

Your rellies were in the Corfe Castle siege? Wow! :j

michaels wrote: »

I am so with you on this PN. The BBC news website had one of its weekly no-one can afford a house pieces about the poor couple who were moving into rented from living with parents now they were married because they could not raise the deposit to buy. The wedding was in Vegas. Experiences vs a roof over ones head - not a difficult choice for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that type of thing.

When I hear what some people spend on a wedding day, I'm really, really shocked, given that most of it is just outward show stuff. It's a bit like paying for a theatre production for a personally-invited audience. One performance only.

Given that that cost would go a long way towards a deposit for a house or flat, it does really seem daft.

Plus, and forgive my cynicism, when you think that the marriage might not last a lifetime, it makes it worse.

Weddings seem to have gone the way of party bags....... very often the contents seem to exceed the value of the presents given to the birthday child/happy couple!


I can't think of anything worse that a wedding where half the guests are there because they are business associates of the parents. Urgh!

Conrad

I've gotten fed up over the years wasting money trying to replant bare patches with grass seed. Very hit n miss no matter how much care I take in preparation, bird avoidance, or buying the greatest ever quick growing Canadian seed coated in seaweed.


I've stumbled across a much more cost effective solution. I noticed that under our bird feeders, grasses come up thick n fast - this is the bird seed of course. No watering, no messing about with fresh compost and raking, it just grows like mad, and it's nothing to do with bird poo fertilising the area as they don't poo there really.


So I've just seeded an area of bare lawn with a few handfuls of this stuff which works out super cheap as we buy big bulk bags of bird seed - lets hope it works. Not quite sure what will pop up tbh, lol.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

Your rellies were in the Corfe Castle siege? Wow! :j

Yes, all my rellies are entirely from there.... since then until even now there would be some if I went to bang on doors. Many are buried in the graveyard there, but no graves as there are actually few graves of anybody's anywhere older than 100-150 years old when you start trying to hunt them down.

My specific lot moved a couple of miles to the seaside at that time too ... and stayed at the seaside, until the black sheep of the family left his wife/child in the workhouse and ran off with his floozy.... and I am the downline of the black sheep and floozy.

At the head of my current tree I have the name of that bailiff chap, from 100 years before... so the bailiff chap is definitely "of the same tree" as me.

It can take awhile to build a tree up/across/down when everybody names their sons by the same name though and I'm not concentrating on that bit at the moment. Right now I'm trying to sort out 1800 to flesh it out.

The tree goes back to 1660 at CC. I've got the tree down from one man, but that man will have had brothers etc.

And, of course, everybody names their children by the same names and they all inter-marry. I type fast as I have 6 fingers.... and webbed feet.

I have to do what I can when there are free weekends - and once one's over I have to wait for the next. ANC have the original Parish Registers.... which is great. But it does take a LONG time if you wish to download every original from 1600-1900 for every parish anybody lived in ... for BMDs. Hundreds of pages!

PasturesNew

Conrad wrote: »

I noticed that under our bird feeders, grasses come up thick n fast - this is the bird seed of course.

Could it be that it gets a good beaking, as birds try to gather seed from the ground, which aerates the ground.... some gardeners buy special shoes for that - spiked shoes they wear while walking across their lawns.

Pyxis

Conrad wrote: »

I've gotten fed up over the years wasting money trying to replant bare patches with grass seed. Very hit n miss no matter how much care I take in preparation, bird avoidance, or buying the greatest ever quick growing Canadian seed coated in seaweed.


I've stumbled across a much more cost effective solution. I noticed that under our bird feeders, grasses come up thick n fast - this is the bird seed of course. No watering, no messing about with fresh compost and raking, it just grows like mad, and it's nothing to do with bird poo fertilising the area as they don't poo there really.


So I've just seeded an area of bare lawn with a few handfuls of this stuff which works out super cheap as we buy big bulk bags of bird seed - lets hope it works. Not quite sure what will pop up tbh, lol.

You might find that you also get some very interesting wild flowers/weeds as well, although it's unlikely these days that you'd also end up with some very attractive but illicit plants as happened to some unsuspecting people in the past! :rotfl:

I did something similar one year, and got some fascinating 'weeds'. The trouble is, as I found, they can take hold very quickly and become an annual nuisance thereafter. However, if you don't let them self-seed, it could make for one interesting year.

I found some tall, architectural plants growing. One day, I saw that they were being stripped of their leaves by some brightly coloured caterpillars. I had never seen such colourful caterpillars, and as they were in full view of passing birds, I was amazed that they weren't picked off and munched.

A little research later and I discovered that I had a colony of cinnabar moth caterpillars, and the plants were ragwort. The caterpillars weren't eaten because they are very poisonous, hence the bright warning colour.
Ragwort is poisonous to horses, so is being eradicated in the countryside, and as a result, the cinnabar moth was becoming rare.

I had never seen a cinnabar moth, which is a day-flying moth, but was rewarded later on by some in my garden!

So, I had inadvertently done my bit for moth conservation!



Ps. I am nowhere near fields where horses are kept, so I felt it was ok to let the ragwort grow. Haven't had any since. The caterpillars denuded the plants, so they didn't seed!

I'll get a pic of the moths, as they are really lovely!

Pyxis

"The Black Sheep and The Floozy"


Would make a great title for your autobiography! :):D




The Cinnabar Moth.......






The Cinnabar Moth caterpillar.........

chris_m

PasturesNew wrote: »

Could it be that it gets a good beaking, as birds try to gather seed from the ground, which aerates the ground.... some gardeners buy special shoes for that - spiked shoes they wear while walking across their lawns.

I've been using an aerator tool instead - a frame containing half a dozen tubes, which seems to work quite well.

I did read up about the aerator spiked overshoes. I was particularly amused at the hint not to put them on whilst still in the shed - else you might never get out of the shed :rotfl:

zagubov

michaels wrote: »

Cinema for us is either free tickets or may be once or twice a year the kids movies for £1 holiday AM shows. £40 plus quid for us is a big spend.


You'll be surprised to hear I am with PN on this. You don't get all excited before getting on a bus or commuting to work on a train and flying is similar but less pleasant plus you then get forced to wait for ages in an overpriced retail environment when you are already spending lots so want to avoid extra expense and anything you buy you will have to lug around with you to whereever you are going and back. In what way does travel and shopping make sense combined?

I loathe airports. Heathrow is OK to arrive at as I can get a bus from there to my door. But leaving from there is a horrible experience. Gatwick's a bit more chilled and City airport is a nice toytown airport.

I like visiting Paris but I'd never fly there now that there's the Eurostar. It's immensely more relaxing to go by train.