Awful weather - typical Brits talk

Farway

Blue sky & sunshine for me this morning, still windy though

Dustyevsky said:

goldfinches said:

@FarwayThat moustache, oh I'm glad those have gone out of fashion, aren't you?

More coincidences. I've just checked, and that ditty Farway posted is from the very year I had a moustache like that.

So did I, and I had the flared trousers to go with it . I have a photo of me + the kids sitting on my lap which I sometimes send to them on FB just to embarrass them because they have pudding bowl hair cuts at the time.

twopenny said:

I did learn to play the spoons once upon a time. Was taught on a boat going through the Amazon rainforest but that's a story for another time  . 

Still can't get to the soil but may have a go at a couple of pots of bulbs if poss.

Somehow I feel there's a joke to be made about learning the spoons up the Amazon, I asked AI but it was in denial. Boom Boom

Yes, go for bulbs in pots, still some Tete a tete daffs about, and of course hyacinths

YoungBlueEyes said:

How can I turn horse poo or whatever into my soil when a lot of my bulbs are coming up? I don't wanna chop my roses down cos they're still flowering. Like that. *sigh*

Don't bother, just spread it around a bit and the weather + worms will do it for you over winter, same as it does to all those fallen leaves in the woods. Come spring, a light hoeing or scuffing should sort it out once it's dry. You can label it No Dig and feel a green eco glow as you smugly inform your neighbours

ArbitraryRandom said:

Oh, YBE, first bit of Christmas shopping done yesterday - I ended up buying two of those glass lady's gift vouchers for the workshops she does. My dad is a nightmare to buy for but likes trying/learning new things so he and mum can spend an afternoon learning to melt glass and it's almost guaranteed I'll end up with two sun catchers  

Oh that sounds good idea Arbs, glass melting is not easy, or cheap with cost of the energy for the furnace required

Can I throw in my learning as slight balance for spoon playing up the Amazon? I learnt pottery making while working in the Bahamas.

No gardening today, if it keeps dry for the next few days i may get around to pruning

YoungBlueEyes

Ah that made me smile Arb, I hope your parents enjoy it Fingers crossed you get good presents out of it 🤞🏻

Thanks Farway, I’ll just sling some down then and glow greenly. Just need some horses to go past now. 

I’ll half-heartedly chip in with the ‘music learned in foreign climes’ bit. I went to a workshop years ago to build and learn how to play a cigar box guitar, run by a fellah called Dogfinger Steve. He’s a cracking player/picker (vids on yootoob), but I never got the hang of it. Sadly. Still have the guitar though. Does that count..? 😁

No gardening today, food shopping and domestic nonsense and I’m for making a curry after lunch. Not raining out there but the air’s that thick with moisture it might as well be. Windy with it so the washing can stop out there. 

Dustyevsky

YoungBlueEyes said:

I’ll half-heartedly chip in with the ‘music learned in foreign climes’ bit. I went to a workshop years ago to build and learn how to play a cigar box guitar, run by a fellah called Dogfinger Steve. He’s a cracking player/picker (vids on yootoob), but I never got the hang of it. Sadly. Still have the guitar though. Does that count..? 😁

Absolutely. I had a guitar; a nice Telecaster copy, but apart from easy stuff like the riff from 'Smoke on the Water,' etc the coordination was beyond me. Like a mike stand, I sometimes hid behind it when singing, but never plugged it in!

I think  learning guitar, swimming and dancing are all things best started young. It also helps to have a sympathetic and encouraging teacher. In the latter days of my teaching career, I did supply at one school and struck up a conversation with a Year 4 who was at lunchtime guitar club. He was pretty handy and I complemented him on his playing, to which he replied, “Yeah, well, my teacher's one of the best. He's called John Mayall, but you won't have heard of him!”

He either saw me as so youthful my ignorance was guaranteed, or he thought, "This teacher's a straight!" Not sure which.

It did stay dry, and at last, I was able to lay some concrete.

goldfinches

Hilarious co-incidences continue as I confess that nestling at the bottom of my rucksack is a knife accidentally purloined from the cafe in a local museum while tidying up our table before we left, I keep meaning to stop in and return it and then sailing obliviously past on my bike. Shall have another try at remembering tomorrow. Your 'tache tale did make me hoot, I always wondered whether those sorts of styles were annoying so thanks for answering that query.
I don't think I've ever learnt anything the least bit interesting while abroad except for going to school in Sweden for a day in the 70s which I don't really remember much about so it plainly wasn't particularly gripping.
YBE you're right that it was Robert B Parker who wrote the Jesse Stone stories although interestingly all his series are being continued by other writers now that he's dead. His favourite maxim was "if you can think of it, someone else is already doing it" which seems very like Newton's "standing on the shoulders of giants" to me.

I slept very poorly last night due partly to the wild and windy weather which howled around the building trying to blow the roof off for a lot of the night. Then today although it was fairly dry the sky was that ominous slate blue colour and the light was very yellow so I decided not to risk going far and just went for a quick walk. Some of the local trees are being removed and replaced as they've come to the end of their natural span which means lots of kindling and bunches of mistletoe strewn around the path looking rather sad about coming down to earth.

Our current weather window here says 94% humidity, cloudy and 5C so I expect we'll be calling this the city of the drowning spires soon. A pop-up on the forecast window just asked me if 'I liked this experience?' and seemed offended when I clicked on No so presumably the algorithm will now offer me something else instead, hopefully something nice and warm and sunny. 

ArbitraryRandom

Did some tidying in the garden today - uprooted the remnants of the squash and cut my comfy down to the ground; Both good additions to my compost heap.

Also marked up and measured where I think wanting the patio/raised bed so my brain has something to mull over... and I think I need to move the medlar I planted 6ish months ago now the hedge has gone... hopefully it's not rooted in too enthusiastically.

It's bitterly cold now, but it's been dry for a few days (any rain overnight) and Tusky forecast it to stay that way to the weekend at least. I don't mind being out and about when it's dry and the house is warm  

YoungBlueEyes

That made me giggle Dusty. Did you play along ignorantly or tell him? This is making me think I should have a go at my guitar again. I've long fingers so I thought it'd be easy but I couldn't stop myself holding the neck cos the body of it was only little it needed holding up. Shoulda picked a bigger cigar box.

So what about your Bahamian pottery Farway, did you make something interesting? Or was it a black blue and gold ashtray...? Waiting for "another time" so we can hear about 2p's Amazonian spoons. I've got images of Humpty Gokart and Katharine Hepburn in my head.....

How did you end up in Sweden for a day gf? Long way to go for a day is that like, it must have been important to go... I've not read any Robert B Parker, by the time sis discovered him I'd found Robert Crais and Lee Child and James Lee Burke. If anybody’s starting out on those authors, the Jack Reacher films are shoite. Just read the books

That sounds like a decent amount of gardening given the weather Arb, does it all look a bit better now? 

Overcast and nothingy here today they reckon. No sun, no real wind, no rain. We'll see. Me and my black hand need to get up the loft today - I've a wee patch of mould appeared on the bathroom ceiling *sigh* It never ends does it.

Dustyevsky

YoungBlueEyes said:

That made me giggle Dusty. Did you play along ignorantly or tell him? This is making me think I should have a go at my guitar again. I've long fingers so I thought it'd be easy but I couldn't stop myself holding the neck cos the body of it was only little it needed holding up. Shoulda picked a bigger cigar box.

I remember what he said better than my response, but I'm sure I would have told him I'd seen John Mayall's Bluesbreakers at least twice during in the late 60s. I blamed my lack of success with guitar on my stubby, child's fingers, until I saw children finding no great disadvantage with their small hands. Someone like Alejandra Villarreal, for example, handling a full size bass and playing very difficult lines on Muse's 'Hysteria' here at the age of 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hQ7qZo3LA&t=144s

Not one of my favourite tunes, but on most of their early videos she was just coasting!

Pottery is definitely a thing to try if you are not proficient at the drawing/painting side of art, or even if you are. Kids come to it with fewer preconceptions, so I did lots in the 70s and 80s, until the school started paying its own electricity bill! We also did dustbin firings using sawdust and a kind of Japanese Raku, but those were eventually knocked on the head through Elfin Safety. :'( Nowadays, they have 'Forest School' in the same place, and real fires for that, so there's still hope.

And with talk of small children, I will do a clumsy segue into today's picture;a small species fuchsia spotted at Rosemoor last week:

Not much gardening in today's 'nothing' weather, I fear. Friends are visiting, and the light goes at 15.30, so whatever it is will be fitted between hoovering, socialising and drizzle around impending darkness. It's a very grey start and a lighter grey later.

twopenny

So it's not just me then? 
Weather has gone from deep gloom to lighter gloom this morning. I guess at least it's not raining and its on the right side of not cold so being outside would be a good thing. 

Abs, cutting back your comfy made me smile  sums up life nicely at the mo.
How's the hand Bluey? Black doesn't sound great. Take care with the climbing.

Had to look up the boat on the Amazon last night, see if it was still going - and it is.
Will see if I can post a photo later. Enough time has past that I won't be recognisable....
There are photos of plants on the old disc, yes, that long ago.
It rained a lot there too - but it was warm rain. Makes a difference!

Farway

May I join you 2P ? My weather is also in the "Lighter gloom" category this morning, which once the gloom lifts may turn into showers later. Great.

Another non gardening day, I had expected to bimble round Morrisons and peer at the plants, but it is Boiler Service day, fingers crossed he doesn't find some fault with things in there I don't even know exist. He is honest enough & not one to try it on AFAIK, 

I had a service one year, not him, that had some obscure seal inside leaking, but it was not something you'd spot just by using the thing, needed pressure tests etc to find a leak. Boilers are getting like cars now, all magic & computer says Fail, probably only matter of time before it empties your bank account in advance

Amazing the skill & talents of the young on YT, if only I had a little bit of it.

YoungBlueEyes said:

So what about your Bahamian pottery Farway, did you make something interesting? Or was it a black blue and gold ashtray...? Waiting for "another time" so we can hear about 2p's Amazonian spoons. I've got images of Humpty Gokart and Katharine Hepburn in my head.....

Overcast and nothingy here today they reckon. No sun, no real wind, no rain. We'll see. Me and my black hand need to get up the loft today - I've a wee patch of mould appeared on the bathroom ceiling *sigh* It never ends does it.

I finished up with a pint pot, from a poured clay mould but glazed, fired etc by yours truly, still at the back of a cupboard somewhere and I'll try & get photo.

Wee patch of mould, one of those things, isn't it? Let's hope it's nothing awful or expensive.

twopenny

Weather Warning!

I'm about to go into the garden to make a start after ? Months.
Expect rain, high winds in the south west Shortly......