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Reply | When you realised there was no meaning to life and no God
at 15:50 6 Sep 2024
Sorry to get heavy, but I think you can have 'meaning' without necessarily believing in 'God' (however you define it)
Looking out of the window at someone being carted off, a few years before she died, my mum asked me - what do you think?
I said, 'what do i think?'
'You know - life, the after life, all that'
I said, 'seems unlikely, doesn't it?'
She said, so 'what's the point of it all?'
I said, 'this'.
And I kissed her and told her I loved her. And she smiled and we hugged. And our dog, perhaps sensing something, came and nuzzled up too.
I don't know if there's a God, but 'meaning'? Yes. |
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Reply | First film you ever see at the cinema/pictures.
at 09:23 4 Sep 2024
In Scunthorpe in those days there were two cinemas, one was the big one, normally used for blockbusters, and another one, a smaller one used for less mainstream stuff. My dad intended to take me & my brother to Jungle Book at the main cinema, but dad being dad, got muddled and booked us into the wrong cinema. Dad being dad also, he didn't actually bother seeing the film too, just buggered off to the betting shop with a cheery 'see you later.' We stayed for about 10 minutes before being chucked out.
That concludes the case for the defence m'lud as to why the first film I ever saw was Confessions of a Window Cleaner. It made quite an impression on me. [Post edited 4 Sep 9:25]
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Reply | Bird Advice
at 10:20 3 Sep 2024
As dublinr says, they are quite fond of soft fruit such as ripe pears, berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries) and seeds such as oats and cooked rice. He'll love you for life. |
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Reply | Most expensive pub.
at 19:26 30 Aug 2024
Was in one of those places in the City last night, you know, one of those pubs that now looks like a posh hotel foyer - was charged £7 for 330ml (wtf's that?) Which my reckoning isn't even 2/3 of a pint, although I'm still doing the maths. We're well and truly fkd |
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Reply | Where's the Luton Town (w@nk w@nk w@nk) Match Thread Match Thread?
at 16:46 30 Aug 2024
I'd forgotten what a sh*t hole this place is - looks like some film set for Clockwork Orange. Anyway, in a pub calling itself the Jolly Topers, which, despite being Greene King (don't) isn't bad at all, and despite my Dennis the Menace top am being treated surprisingly well by the locals. C'mon team. |
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Reply | Spelling & Grammar Faux Pas
at 15:58 30 Aug 2024
It was in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, itself no stranger to safe-search filters over the years, when the then Conservative government under Ted Heath came up with the bright idea of abolishing counties that had existed since Doomsday Book and coming up with new titles for them. So, North Lincolnshire became South Humberside.
There was this place, North Lindsey College of Technology, NLCT, which, following the logic, had to be renamed. They came up with 'South Humberside Institute of Technology', and proudly exhibited the new four letters, each twenty feet high, at the entrance to the college.
Then, they realised what they'd done. |
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Reply | Smoking outside pubs
at 09:08 30 Aug 2024
Agree. It's not so much this as a) haven't they got more serious things to be going on with and b) what's on the health people's radar next - I fear it's going to be some form of attack on alcohol sales/consumption, which would simply ruin my life. [Post edited 30 Aug 11:29]
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Reply | Corny Joke Warning
at 16:39 28 Aug 2024
My son told me he didn't want to go to school this morning because all the kids made fun of him, called him names and were generally making his life an absolute misery, leaving him in tears at the end of the day.
I had to tell him straight, 'Sorry, mate, you just have to go to school'.
'But why?'
'Because you're the headmaster'. |
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Reply | Corny Joke Warning
at 11:05 23 Aug 2024
I can't believe I locked myself out of the car today.
However, I managed to get in by rubbing my leg on the lock.
Luckily, I was wearing my khaki trousers. |
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Reply | Saito
at 17:14 17 Aug 2024
賛成です |
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Reply | Orange wine
at 12:34 31 Jul 2024
It's basically a form of white wine. It's made from white wine grapes, but the grape skins stay in contact with the juice for much longer. This contrasts with conventional white wine production, which involves crushing the grapes and quickly moving the juice off the skins before fermentation. The skins contain stuff like colour pigment and tannins which give it an amber or more orangey colour. It's an older way (some say the original) of making white wine that became fashionable in some regions from the late 90s onwards. [Post edited 31 Jul 13:05]
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Reply | Orange wine
at 22:54 30 Jul 2024
I'm in the wine trade and Orange wines have been popular for a few years now, although they still tend to be a bit pricier than 'normal' wines.
They're basically white wines that are much deeper in colour than usual, ranging from pale amber to deep orange. (Some countries prefer the term ‘amber’ to avoid exactly this confusion). The winemaking method that results in these deeply-coloured wines is probably the most ancient way of making white wine, a technique that has undergone a revival since the mid-90s (especially led by producers in northeast Italy).
In drinking terms, orange wines can be a little bit of a shock at first to anyone used to clear, pale-coloured, fruity white wines. Orange wines tend not to be fruity but are complex, layered and structured, often with notes of dried fruit, herbs and spices. These are food wines par excellence and can be amazing matches with foods like asparagus, fennel, mushrooms and cheeses, or when you’re looking for a white wine that has the intensity and structure to go with a meat dish. As with anything else, there are increasingly many to choose from, with a variety of different flavours. Enjoy! |
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Reply | Where are all the insects?
at 19:46 22 Jul 2024
Ok, I'll have a go fwiw
So, what we are seeing is a) a decline in the numbers of individual insects, but b) also a collapse of insect diversity. Major causes of this trend are land-use intensification in the form of greater use for agriculture, together with building development, climate change and the spread of invasive animal species. So, while many insect species decline or go extinct, others, including invasive species, thrive, which leads to an increasing homogenisation of the insect communities across habitats.
It's significant because, generally speaking, a decline in insect diversity threatens the stability of ecosystems. Fewer species means that there are fewer insects capable of pollinating plants and keeping pests in check. And, of course, this also means that there is less food available for insect-eating birds and other animals.
We desperately need measures to reduce the dispersal of invasive animal and plant species through our globalised trade and tourism. |
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Reply | Book recommendation
at 10:19 22 Jul 2024
Great book. Another one along similar lines is 'Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI' by American journalist David Grann, which inspired the film by Martin Scorsese (reading the book will probably take you much less time than watching the film which is, or felt like, three years long, and you'll learn an awful lot more in the process). |
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Reply | Book recommendation
at 10:11 22 Jul 2024
For film addicts, I've just finished a new one on Kubrick (Kubrick: An Odyssey
by Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams). Big fat book which I thought would last me the summer but is such a page-turner that I finished it under a week. Concentrates on the making of the films (together with fascinating accounts of those which ended up being never made) rather than being a standard biography, it's full of little gems that significantly improve our understanding of Kubrick's classics. Now trying to find a book to follow it ... |
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Reply | Book recommendation
at 09:34 22 Jul 2024
There's an extensive literature on this. One of the first books to challenge the classical view was 'The Spanish Inquisition' (1965) by Henry Kamen, who argued that the Inquisition was not nearly as cruel or as powerful as commonly believed. The book was very influential and largely responsible for subsequent studies in the 1970s to try to quantify (from archival records) the Inquisition's activities from 1480 to 1834. Those studies showed there was an initial burst of activity against 'conversos' suspected of relapsing into Judaism, and a mid-16th century pursuit of Protestants, but, according to these studies, the Inquisition served principally as a forum Spaniards occasionally used to humiliate and punish people they did not like: blasphemers, bigamists, foreigners, smugglers etc. Kamen went on to publish two more books (both called 'The Spanish Inquisition, A Historical Revision') that incorporated new findings, further supporting the view that the Inquisition was nowhere near as bad as once described by anti-Catholic polemicists. Along similar lines is Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988). |
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Reply | Corny Joke Warning
at 09:07 16 Jul 2024
I wouldn't bother. Bound to be a red herring |
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Reply | Rory Gallagher
at 10:16 10 Jul 2024
I never saw Hendrix, but saw pretty much everyone else (Clapton, Page, Van Halen, Gilmour etc) and Rory was the best rock guitarist I ever heard by a country mile, and a lovely, self-effacing bloke to boot - no trashing hotels or any of that sht. The guitar is a tad beyond my budget, but my most treasured possession is a Qpr Guinness shirt which he kindly signed for me in 1983. [Post edited 10 Jul 14:45]
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Reply | The really best bit about the UK Election
at 12:00 5 Jul 2024
Well said. Me and my cat were thinking the same thing.
Apart from the utterly graceless Liz Truss, so pleasing to see beaten candidates congratulate their opponent and not start sulking or demonising.
For the future, the defeat of Mourdant and the victory of Braverman may be crucial, being on 'left' and 'right' of the party respectively. The mainstream media's obsession with Farage also doesn't help, especially given the Lib Dems' success. I really hope we can avoid the often bitter polarisation we see in the US and parts of Europe. [Post edited 5 Jul 12:01]
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