MrsDoyle

Do you live in Edinburgh by any chance? Because that all sounds familiar…

It’s not a pipe, it’s a picture of a pipe.

When I lived in Edinburgh’s Old Town in the 90s I had a couple of young guisers come to the door, not trick or treating, but “a penny for the guy”*. I gave them a pound each, they were thrilled.

*The guy is Guy Fawkes, “remember remember the fifth of November”.

I do a lot of water sports in the UK and we use VHF radios. Certain frequencies are used by marinas and the like, and nearby boats will be tuned into them. Then there is a frequency used for emergency calls - the coastguard listens on that and answers, and will move your call to another frequency for more details, leaving the mayday one open again.

We mainly use VHF for boat-to-boat comms, or boat-to-shore. The local range is decent - a few miles from our base, depending on atmospheric conditions, obstacles etc. I honestly have no idea if you could use VHF radios between cars though. It’s not private for a start - everyone can hear you - and once someone is yammering on the marina frequency no-one else can transmit. So it’s just brief messages with protocols.

My friends and neighbours and I all use a variety of messaging services and apps like Spond to organise get-togethers, sporting events, working bees etc etc. I’m in a ridiculous number of WhatsApp groups, all very active, and I see most people in them irl regularly. Without the internet I don’t know how we’d cope. It’s hard enough herding cats in a group chat, imagine the number of phone calls we’d be making!

Swimming works for me. I joined a gym at a hotel that has a pool, reasonable price and usually fairly few people. I like to swim lengths, thinking of nothing at all, for half an hour to an hour. Good for general fitness, stamina.

I thought it was interesting that she was ok with all the neighbourhood surveillance until it was used against her.

Kiwi fruit 🥝 - nature’s scrubbing brush. One per day is all you need.

Ah yes, I should have read all the comments.

https://edmondscooking.co.nz/recipes/sauces-and-chuteny/plum-sauce/

It says to wait at least two weeks before using, but I find it gets even better after a couple of years! Especially delicious on sausages.

I make a lot of jam and am very careful to sterilise the jars beforehand - wash thoroughly, heat in the oven, dry with clean cloth. Lids with that seal strip are trickier, so after washing and drying, I line them up, pour white vinegar into each, and leave them half an hour. Dry off with paper towels. That way I never get mould on the seal.

I’m guessing you didn’t do any of that? The pickles are possibly all right, but… it’s a risk I wouldn’t take. And I’m still getting through a batch of spicy plum sauce I made in 2015! Never had any mould on it.

Thanks! You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. But Norway played it smart with their oil wealth, didn’t they? Tiny country, and there they are lending money to the US.

Who actually owns this debt? Who is getting the interest payments? It seems like every country runs on some kind of deficit - where is all this money coming from?

The best thing about digital photography is that you can keep trying your shot with different settings for exposure, aperture etc. it’s a great way to learn what works best in what situation.

This is the movie Yesterday, where a failed musician gets knocked out and wakes up in a world where the Beatles never existed. A few other things too, but mainly the Beatles. Spoiler: he becomes a mega star.

They’ll be broken down, metal smelted, gems recut if necessary. They’re gone, who cares. It’s not like they were the actual crown jewels, just a few baubles.

It’s my understanding that everyone has sleep paralysis - the brain “switches off” the body (apart from essentials: breathing, heart beat etc) so you don’t come to grief acting out your dreams. What we call sleep paralysis is when you wake, but your body hasn’t been switched back on.

I used to have horrible sleep paralysis nightmares quite often. But then I read about what it really is, and I stopped having them. It was like my brain realised it was out of sync and corrected itself.

I agree - I make a lot of soup, and can use the stick blender directly in the saucepan. So much easier to clean than a jug blender.

Not weird at all. I reach into my left pocket for my phone with my left hand and am ready to operate it with my right hand. Having it in my right pocket would be awkward.

72. I haven’t noticed a great slowdown in healing/recovery - I had a knee replacement six years ago and recovered well from that. Never had COVID, rarely get colds. I feel like my health is generally better now than in my youth, when I drank, smoked and took drugs. When the doc suggests I lose weight I want to show him pix of my speed-addled self in the 70s. I was super slim! But so bloody unwell.

I wish. My WiFi is ZeroGravitas, a ship name from the Culture novels; the only other named WiFi in my vicinity is Routered in Faith. :-(