The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

Pyxis

silvercar wrote: »

If you put the flight details into flightaware.com, you can see a map of the route your flight took.

Yes, just got that!
Couldn't see the weather, though, even though I ticked to enable the weather option.

I hadn't registered, though. Maybe that's why?



It was strange, because it showed the circling, but on the map, the circling was over land, yet we deffo circled over the coastline three times.

PasturesNew

The other year there were fierce windy storms ... the press said at the time that they were "worst for X years" - and it seemed to be some "peak activity" and part of a long-many-years cycle of such things occurring.

I distinctly remember a chappie called michaels remarking that I now knew my house would hold up under severe weather as it'd just had the biggest battering ever.

Time to eat words and hats it seems....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4870256/Britain-set-hit-three-tropical-storms.html

vivatifosi

Katia is blowing itself out and Irma looks set to travel up the Tennessee valley, but we could get the tail end of Jose.

Pyxis

Talking of Hurricanes............

In 1987 I was living in the path of the Great Michael Fish Hurricane. My bedroom was taking the brunt of it, and it felt like the windows were about to come in, so I went and slept in the spare room.

I say 'slept'. Didn't really sleep much!
I was lucky: I only lost two roof tiles and the asphalt roofing from my shed, and one fence panel went flop-bot.

It was a bit scary, though, so God only knows how awful it must be to live under the real monster ones.




Talking of dishwashers..............

When I had my kitchen fitted 16 years ago, I was about to get my very first dishwasher. I was going for a full-size one at first, but then we found that that would leave a useless gap, so I decided to switch it for a slimline version which would leave me a gap big enough for an extra small cupboard.
That slimline one was a Bosch and I've been dead pleased with it.
I remember the first time I used it. I was thrilled! Something other than me doing the washing up! And I was doubly thrilled because I hadn't realised that it sort of 'dried' the things as well!

Yes, I buy Finish tabs when they're on offer. I have tried other brands but they aren't as good at the cleaning, I find.




Did you know that if you're staying in a place with lots of huge, massive terracotta pots, you develop an irresistible urge to look inside them to see if there are any bodies immersed in oil.

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

Talking of Hurricanes............
In 1987 I was living in the path of the Great Michael Fish Hurricane. My bedroom was taking the brunt of it, and it felt like the windows were about to come in, so I went and slept in the spare room.
I say 'slept'. Didn't really sleep much!

I was in the path of that one too - I didn't sleep much either, my bedroom was at the front of the house and all the dustbins seemed to be doing the tango up and down the road.

Getting to work was fun too, the bus had to make several diversions to avoid fallen trees. The dual carriageway at the back of the docks was down to one lane because the stacks of 40' shipping containers just inside the fence had been playing "ten in the bed" - the top ones all shifting one stack across with the inevitable result when they got to the end of the rows

We didn't have much damage at home - about all it was was that we never found the plastic sheet roof that used to be between the back fence and the shed.

ivyleaf

I remember we visited Chartwell the Spring after the '87 storm. All the trees on the hill across the lake were lying down.....
We all came down to the kitchen-diner the night of the storm. Not too much damage; a couple of next door's hip tiles came off and smashed a hole in our roof. Eventually we found a roofer, but he had trouble convincing our insurer that he was qualified, as he'd been so busy that week he'd run out of headed stationery. He had to give them his VAT number before they'd pay for the repair.

SingleSue

The trees outside my bedroom window woke me up the night of the 1987 storms, so loud. We should have known it was not going to be good when we saw the neighbours garage at the end of our garden being moved up and down by the tree roots under ground.

My friend's dad had all the windows in his new greenhouse smashed and his old greenhouse end up in the garden of next door. My parent's carport had its roof ripped off, houses a few roads over had structural damage as gable ends had collapsed, load of trees down in the park over the road and the port was shut due to a ship slipping its moorings and being tossed around the port basin.

Oh and no power, we were all without power for a couple of days....great experience to be sat in the pub by candle light or going to a gig where everything was acoustic and we all had to be quiet as the singer had no mic he could use. The best thing to come out of it though was the sense of community, those who had gas cookers or camping equipment, helped those out who only had electric..it was a real blitz mentality in the area.

PasturesNew

I must've been in a protected area in 1987. I am petrified of wind/storms, but don't remember anything happening except spotting a couple of trees down round town and the local newspaper covering the story. I've got most of my "knowledge" from the repeats and re-runs of the weather forecast broadcast each time there's a show about "Biggest Storms" or "Biggest Things People Got Wrong".

We lived at the edge of the village with just fields and fields and fields as far as the eye could see .... so "exposed", but must've just been in the right place.

I guess one could google to see the places worst affected - and maybe it wasn't the middle of East Anglia.

I just typed into google: 1987 storm and then my village name ...and nothing came up. Maybe we were just all bumpkins who didn't notice much

Back then, though, there were fewer cameras, fewer newspeople about - and they'll have taken their crews and cameras to the big town 3-4 miles away. So I googled that town name ...and there wasn't a lot mentioned.

GDB2222

I don't think you are a wuss for being afraid of storms, PN. It's normal sensible behaviour.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

I don't think you are a wuss for being afraid of storms, PN. It's normal sensible behaviour.

It's not the storm as such, it's the idea of having to live through any damage, then evacuate, then deal with a broken property for weeks afterwards and all the trouble that could amount to... the whole having to find people to fix it, how much will it cost, how long would it take, what damage, is the house secure while unoccupied, etc etc.

The idea that the roof will be ripped off and suddenly everything's blowing everywhere, half a wall gone, having to get up, get dressed, grab stuff, get out, in the dark, in the rain, in the wind ..... etc etc.