Tales of Home

{{ Goes back I think to the Victorian zoo fad for Chimps teaparties, you know dress a bunch of chimpanzee's up in top hat and tails, complete with cigars and set them a big table of messy food, combined with their big cheeky toothy grin and you have the phrase. Utterly unrelated to race or skin colour or comparisons with humans, beyond dressing them like posh Victorian white humans for entertainment purposes that is.
Mind you in Scotland we tend to skip the replacement word all together, for a work colleague you'd just call them a 'cheeky bastard' but if it was a close friend a 'cheeky c*nt'. But it's just our way of being friendly .
I'd probably still use 'cheeky monkey' talking to or about a kid though, in fact I'm sure I did when my little brother was growing up. And I've heard it commonly enough in relation especially to kids, "He's a great lad, but he's a cheeky wee monkey." That sort of thing. }}

yeah, next time I will go straight for 'cheeky c*nt'

Love these vids of Perth. Might be biased, but has to be one of the best places to live.

It definitely doesn't get much press, but looks like it should. A kangaroo sanctuary within sight of downtown is way cool. The fact that they trust the general public to walk right up to them is even cooler.

{{ Did you get shook up in the earthquake Halfy?}}

I was on a subway at the time, so with all that shaking around it would have to be more than a measley 4.7 to be noticed.  But other people said they didn't notice it.  

We had one years ago while I was teaching a class, and the students reacted; I just thought my mind had gone blurry for a second so couldn't figure out why what I said got them so riled up.  It seems when you are concentrating on something a momentary disturbance of reality tends to pass you right by. We are totally used to our frazzled wondering minds.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-epic-history-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-tickets-868503175377?aff=oddtdtcreator&fbclid=IwAR1ruaY-1TQghwK-avbBnkzRu3owx-AXrvMxnZCZkBKeFsDsZe5HsK-B9i4_aem_AXbjTo5SS3hEAb7OZE6JZCzrzy9EC61Q6XCxVGvqfTMj4bsN_psrDF96SHKzR0_tHUKqt8WVNeLd7_Tjt9Mj3L2x

This is happening in the next town to me. I wont be going. I dont even know if Id be interested ? I dont have the money to do the travelling or to buy a ticket, and I wouldnt be home till really late, which in my town is not a good idea !

If it was somebody you were really interested in hearing the cost would be worth it; doesn't look exhorbitant. But John Garth seem only familiar rather than somebody like Humphrey Carpenter I'd definitely slap down some cash to see.

Just taken this video. It's the duck pond at the bottom of our street. 12.30pm July 18th.

Lovely !

{{ Those aren't ducks! }}

I saw this as I walked the dog the other evening, My first thought went to the old "War of The Worlds" film . In my imagination I saw a long neck atop this cloud.  ( No other clouds about for miles ) Im sure perhaps Petty with his box of tricks could make this more sinister

{{ Very, very quick bash at it Az, just to see if it was possible. Couldn't get the 50's Martian 'tripod' to work as it meant changing the shape of the cloud too much-



works much better with its original shape as a generic 50's 'flying saucer' however- }}

The cloud is produced by
1. stable conditions so that waves will form that oscillate around an equilibrium point
2. Some ridge upwind to push up some air to oscillate
3. strong to moderate winds

Air is rising at a wave crest and cooling, condensing a cloud. You may probably see others rather evenly spaced up and downwind of this one.

I like it when you explain things Halfy, How you explained this cloud interested me because I was stupid enough not to stay at school and learn anything, Ive picked things up along the way and am still learning. I left school at 14, pretended I was 16 and went straight to work.
I think you did a good job of my cloud Petty, If I saw that coming down the street I for one would shat myself ! Years and years ago some DJ sent off a lazer light at one of his gigs, It flied across the night sky and I fecking panicked big time. I really thought I was seeing something I didnt want.

Oh it's a very unusual type of cloud that you wouldn't hear about in high school, so you didn't miss anything. I learned about these "lenticular" clouds from hang gliding, and though it was mentioned tangentially in meteorology grad school I likely wouldn't have remembered it as it has little relevance to the weather that most people are interested in.

You can look up lenticular clouds and see even more space alien looking images, but what's closest to what you saw is explained in a page for glider pilots.

https://chessintheair.com/how-can-i-see-wave/

So I was out on a hang gliding trip, but due to rain the day before nobody was there yet except me.  I took a morning flight then started hiking back up the mountain.  The path goes up through a ravine cut by a stream, and I appreciated the shade.  I was happily looking at the trees and the stream down below, so almost stepped on this fellow laying across one side of the path:



Yep, that's a rattlesnake.  I thought they were only yellow in the deserts, but I'm glad he was bright colored or I would have stepped on him or right next to him for sure.  And being in a ravine, there was no cell phone service, so unless I managed to make it the last 10-15 minutes to the road to flag down help after being bit I would have had a rough go of it.

I had to circle around on the uphill side of the path, and he only began rattling after I passed.  I had this happen once before when I only heard rattling behind me; doesn't seem like much use as a warning system, does it?  Maybe they're just slow on the uptake, which is a good thing, in retrospect.

I've just realized, though Ireland is famous for a lack of snakes, does Britain or Europe have any poisonous snakes? I don't recall hearing of it. No poison ivy either I reckon.

{{ We have one poisonous snake in the UK, the adder, and it isn't all that poisonous as snakes go (14 people have died from adder bites in the past 145 years and there are about 100 reported bites per year) they also don't like people and tend to stay out the way and come with a handy diamond pattern down their back making them easy to recognise on the rare occasion you do see one. I spent my entire childhood on adder invested hills and I could count the number of them I saw on one hand, far more commonly slow worms and grass snakes. Only real time you'll see an adder is early in the morning when they are basking on a rock heating up. }}

Basking on a warm rock is where this rattlesnake should have been; I wasn't expecting to have to look out for them in a cool ravine on slightly damp soil.

{{ If it makes you feel any better we do have poison ivy, and that got me once as a kid, you only let it get you once stinging nettles, you get got by them a lot as a kid round here, hard to avoid which is where you need to grab a docken leaf and crunch it up and rub it on, fortunately they tend to grow near each other in a handy nature punish/cure deal! In fact we are quite decent on the poisonous plants and fungi department, quite a lot of them are deadly, we got taught about death caps, fly agaric, foxglove and such very early on, and a host of berries, general rule was eat nothing unless you know 100% what it is and fungi is best left alone altogether, so we mainly gorged on blackberries, rhubarb, gooseberries, apples and hazelnuts, it's just the wildlife isn't too dangerous - stags are best avoided, especially during rutting, mothers with fawns too, any mother and young in fact, cows just be sensible and give a wide berth don't go in fields with a bull, ticks are a general threat, midges a general annoyance, sheep will just try to hide underneath each other, but that's about it. }}

You've got poison ivy? That's a shame. Thought that curse was confined to North America.

I agree with Petty on that list, we pretty much get all that down here in the South.