Just...................whatever

{{I assume you mean the kettle? An essential item on these isles! As to influence, she still drops by from time to time, I think just to keep me on my toes! }}

Mrs Figg wrote:is Kombucha tea?

Yeah, it's basically fermented tea. May take a bit to get the hang of the flavor if you're expecting tea, though. But when I had some spanish cider I realized it was the same flavor as kombucha, so the fermented spanish cider likely has the same benefits.

{{ Well I tried it. And.....its fine, quite nice for a healthy thing in fact. Consistency wise its not as thick as your average yoghurt, which suits me fine at the moment as it slips down easy. So basically its slightly runny yoghurt.

Hilariously, your kitchen counter is exactly the same material as mine.- Halfy

Well if you get round to visiting you'll feel at home then! Oh and just to point out whiskEy with the E only applies to Irish and American varieties, the real thing is just whisky. }}

 cool.

Oh and just to point out whiskEy with the E only applies to Irish and American varieties, the real thing is just whisky.

Let's just settle on "scamper juice" and be done with it.

{{ Sorry Halfy, cant accept that- there's a big difference between whiskey and whisky, especially the stuff you lot make which most certainly is not whisky! Its basically a completely different drink, may as well call vodka whisky by that standard. }}

So no ratgut, neck oil, tanglefoot, aquirediente, drappie, nose paint, oh-be-joyful, stagger juice, tongue loosener? All ye've got is "whisky".

{{Single, blended, peaty, smoky, Highland, Island, Glen and spring- all the actual good ones, yes And buckie for when you just want your brains smashed in and to go crazy }}

Went to a little event on Friday called 'The Greatest Night of Jazz' based on a early 1930s prohibition era club.

Was quite fun and would recommend. Whets the appetite for some smaller venues in N'Orleans and other places later in the year.

Three random questions. 1. Do any of you talk to yourself? and 2. Are any of you left handed? and do you believe in coincidences?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/13/are-coincidences-real

this article is really interesting, and the personality disorder he talks about, I have defo got it.

Lancebloke wrote:Went to a little event on Friday called 'The Greatest Night of Jazz' based on a early 1930s prohibition era club.

Was quite fun and would recommend. Whets the appetite for some smaller venues in N'Orleans and other places later in the year.

I finally found a way to constantly scratch my My Orleans itch while in New York City. A band called the Grove Street Stompers has been playing every monday night at Arthur's Tavern since 1962; likely the longest continuous jazz gig in history. Half the band are still original members! New Orleans style, of course.

I've know about them for a while and gone several times. Thought both they and the bar were killed off during covid, but the bar was just remodelling and the band wisely taking hiatus at their age. Since they reappeared I've been to see them 3 times and are as good or better than ever. But it was only on the last visit I realized they were filling in for New Orleans for me.

Mrs Figg wrote:Three random questions. 1. Do any of you talk to yourself? and 2. Are any of you left handed? and do you believe in coincidences?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/13/are-coincidences-real

this article is really interesting, and the personality disorder he talks about, I have defo got it.

That's a great article. the following paragraph and those that follow get to the core of coincidence theory for me:

The “world” does not simply present itself through the windowpanes of the eyes and channels of the other senses. The brain’s perceptual systems are proactive. They construct a model of the world by continually attempting to match incoming, “bottom-up” sensory data with “top-down” anticipations and predictions. Raw sensory data serve to refine the brain’s best guesses as to what’s happening, rather than building the world afresh with each passing moment. The brain, simply put, is constantly on the lookout for coincidence.

Three random questions. 1. Do any of you talk to yourself? and 2. Are any of you left handed? and do you believe in coincidences?- Figg

{{1. I dont have to, I have cats. I do think however its not what we say outloud to ourselves thats a concern, its letting internal dialogue run amok without check, its the source of a lot of individual misery.

2. Yes. Sort of. I was left handed, I still throw with my left hand and kick with my left foot, but I can no longer write or draw (much to my sadness) with my left hand, as I was unfortunate to grow up at a time were being left handed was something the education system felt needed beat out of you. So by time I left primary about 12 years old I could no longer write with my left hand. It was doubly annoying as a kid as not only was I not allowed to use my natural hand, my teacher wrote complaining to my parents about my handwriting! As a result my Dad, who was pretty old school on these matters, made me copy out the front page of several newspapers every day and I got the belt if he didnt think it was up to scratch, different times.
On plus side my handwriting with what is my off-hand naturally is quite good and as a side eefct he sparked an interest in politics and world affairs in me at a young age.

3. I believe coincidences happen, I believe human brains are superb at spotting them even when they arent actually there. Syncronicity is a similar concept and its one of those things once you go looking for it it seems to be everywhere. }}

You are still left handed, even if it was pummelled out of you, you cant stop your right side brain dominance.

{{ I was just watching a Paul O' Grady documentary I'd not seen before, about what it meant, and what it means now to be working class in the UK. He dwelt a lot on the sense of community in his own Liverpudlian working class background.

It sparked a memory of my own childhood. I grew up in a working class council scheme, the majority of those around me ranged from labourers through Forestry workers (lot of them back then) to tradesmen like plumbers, carpenters, sparkies, boat builders and fishermen.
Some of the houses in my scheme it was the same family had lived in it for three generations, as back then if the child was still living in the house when the parent died, as an adult, they could take over the rent of the house, so it was not uncommon to find more than one generation living together, which had its benefits, there were grandparents to take some of the weight off housework and child raising, and someone to take care of the grandparents as they aged.
And everyone really did know everyone and their business, and its true no one locked their door- well not their backdoors, whcih always opened onto kitchens, not during daytime at least, for some reason backdoors were always open and kids were in and out of each others houses all the time, you just knocked, opened the door, gave a shout and walked on in.

But the particular memory the program sparked was walking through the village one day with my Dad. He wanted to stay on in his education, but my grandfather (who then was still alive and also lived in the village) had taken my Dad out of school at 15 to apprentice him as a brickie. Which with good reason my Dad resented and so hated the job. But as we walked past a walled garden he pointed out with some pride that the wall, which I'd clambered over, sat on and used to reach the crab apples on the higher branches of the nearby apple tree, was one he had built.
To me it had just always been there, part of the background shape of my world, something you never considered as having been built even, it just existed. But it had been built, and by my own Dad. And it connected me through him to my surroundings in a very tangible manner.

And that's an aspect of the working class it hadn't really occurred to me till something Paul O Grady said about building communities hit me literally, my village was in many ways built by its inhabitants. The workers that built the houses and came to live in them, were the same labourers and tradesmen who were employed by the building companies who made them, those who worked in Forestry shaped the very landscape around the place.
And not a one of them owned a single inch of it.
Yet their was such great pride in it. The same pride that was in my Dads voice when he pointed out the wall he had built, even though it was a job he had hated and had robbed him of his education, it connected him physically with his home, his contribution in a long line of them to the fabric of the village.

The middle and upper classes can purchase and acquire and own, but its a different sort of ownership than the working class have for their communities. It was more a belonging, of a place being more than a mere home or property but intertwined with the place itself and everyone else in it. You didn't just live in those communities, you were blended into it, your fathers and grandfathers and back may be on the war memorial, or listed in the bowling green on the wall of former Club presidents that goes back to the 1800's, or their faces appearing out of old photographs in back issues of the local newspaper. Or your father might have built a wall you played obliviously upon for years.
There was a sense of pride and accomplishment and of being where you were supposed to be about those communities that I fear is largely gone.

By time I was in my late teens my Dad had the good fortune to have been working for the US Navy for many years, I say good fortune because someone with his lack of formal education and working class background could have worked as hard as he liked in a UK company, and never even been considered for promotion. But Americans don't see much class when they are looking who to promote, they look for good, dedicated hard workers who are good at their job, so they promoted him, many times. And Thatchers Right to Buy came into law and when I left home we had been a year in a bought middle class house. That's the house my little brother grew up in, he works in a school and owns his own house now, he was born middle class, as too were my nieces who are off to university soon, as for their generation if you've good grades as they do its just what you do next (a great benefit of a free education policy).

Which oddly leaves me, the last of my family to be still working class, having been but a lowly care worker my working life, for most of which time society preferred to ignore us so they could ignore the broader question of how we treat our elderly, and pay us minimum wage (its only slightly better pay now and killed by double figure inflation currently). But like my older brother, and my Dad, though living middle class they are to their core working class men, as would I be even if I won the lottery tomorrow, its in a set of values instilled in upbringing that is broader and deeper than just your own family, my council scheme was an extended family to a large degree, of familiar faces all of whom you knew by name and who all knew you.
But the next generation of my family will not be working class. And I wonder what they lose, and what they gain by that. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.

On an unrelated note save nostalgia and buckie, I wonder for how the world has changed in a mere half a century, did anyone else live anywhere with only 1 phone, and that was the public payphone (ours was the classic UK wrought iron variety with the little glass panes, painted red and the Royal Crest embossed on it). No one had a house phone when I was a kid, so if you happened to be walking past the pay phone and it rang, it was the unwritten rule you had to answer it and someone would say “Hello, I'd like to talk to Mr such and such, at whatever address”. And you'd have to lay the receiver down on the shelf and run off and chap the door of Mr such and such and tell them there was a phone call for them, and they'd have to come to out to the phone box to answer it, and if there was no one in you'd have to go back yourself and tell them that.
A scenario as arcane and unimaginable to current generations I am sure as morse code was to my generation. }}

Mrs Figg wrote:Three random questions. 1. Do any of you talk to yourself? and 2. Are any of you left handed? and do you believe in coincidences?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/13/are-coincidences-real

this article is really interesting, and the personality disorder he talks about, I have defo got it.

Didn't read the article but always happy to answer a survey!

1) I dont talk out loud to myself but I do think. I wouldn't say I have an internal monologue with myself either outside of things like 'You fucking idiot' when I do something particularly stupid.

2) Nope

3) I'm not sure coincidence is something to believe in, isn't it just a thing? It would be a coincidence that my pen broke and a random stranger happened to find one left on a table to be able to offer it to me.

I also think human brains have evolved to see patterns in things so wrong often see coincidences when they are not.

I very much don't believe in destiny (as in things are 'meant' to happen) or free will for that matter.

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