Topic for going off topic

[SusanDoris]

NS - passing the open windows - that's an expression I have never heard before! Where does it come from?

[Nearly Sane]

NS - passing the open windows - that's an expression I have never heard before! Where does it come from?

One of my many favourite books


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hotel_New_Hampshire

[Rhiannon]

Just catching up with this, SD, take good care. You are who I want to be when I grow up. 

[SusanDoris]

NS - I have read the synopsis of the book - what a complicated story; it sounds more like half-a-dozen books all rolled into one.

Just catching up with this, SD, take good care. You are who I want to be when I grow up. 

Thank you.

[Udayana]

...
I do not, however, expect this to be necessary for a good long while yet!

Good! 

[SusanDoris]

Locally, there is a social club organised once a month for the blind and partially sighted which I attend occasionally. today the speaker was Denice Ryan who has had a career as a stuntwoman. She is semi-retired now, but finds it amusing that she is now asked to  perform any stunts needed for the older women in various TV series. She was a very good speaker. She has been for quite a few years now a stunt co-ordinator.

[SteveH]

I wonder if any of the parents who name their daughter "Jade" know what the word meant 200-odd years ago...

[SteveH]

It was known as the 'loin stone', reputed to cure conditions of the loins and kidneys, apparently.

The older meaning of "jade", not the stone. Look it up.

[SteveH]

I'll help you out. Scroll down to the second definition. Very roughly, it meant "slag" or "slut". We get the adjective "jaded" from it.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/jade

[Rhiannon]

People use the name because of the stone and colour. The archaic term is, well, archaic.

[SteveH]

People use the name because of the stone and colour. The archaic term is, well, archaic.

Clive James used it in a newspaper column a few years ago.

[Rhiannon]

Clive James used it in a newspaper column a few years ago.

So people will think he was referring to the stone.

Language changes. For the sake of clarity using archaic terms doesn’t serve a purpose in the context of a newspaper colum, however self-satisfied.

[Rhiannon]

We gave our youngest girl her second name because it was associated with my maternal grandmother, of whom I was very fond. We would have given her my grandmother's first name but no child should be saddled with 'Bertha', even as a second name. Besides which, my grandmother disliked it. My husband didn't like her mother's first name, so we settled on, 'Jane', that of her mother-in-law. WHOOPS! we had registered her names before informing my grandmother, it turns out she couldn't stand her mother-in-law!

In my family I’ve found some lovely names dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. I know Henrietta isn’t that unusual but I had no idea it was a family name. There’s also a couple of Roseinas, and a Luke, which I’ve always liked as a man’s name.

[SteveH]

So people will think he was referring to the stone.

Language changes. For the sake of clarity using archaic terms doesn’t serve a purpose in the context of a newspaper colum, however self-satisfied.

He wrote "fortune always was a fickle jade", which can hardly refer to the stone.

[SusanDoris]

I am feeling really fed up with myself.  I got something out of the freezer to defrost last night before I went bed. I discovered this morning I hadn't closed the freezer properly, and everything in it has defrosted! Some stuff I will be able to use in the next day or so, but some I have had to dispose of. I HATE food waste, especially as there are so many people starving in this world! 

That is just so annoying, isn't it. I did that not long ago, but I did take a chance on some of the stuff and have now used all that, so it was okay!

With my Tech chap's help I am now subscribed to the Daily Telegraph crosswords and can print off the cryptic and the quick to work on them on my CCTV. I only tackle about two of the cryptics a week so far, because it takes me several days to almost complete them - the last few clues I look up the answers. It is annoying when you can't work out the reason for the actual answer! It is so nice to have another hobby to do.

[Robbie]

I am feeling really fed up with myself.  I got something out of the freezer to defrost last night before I went bed. I discovered this morning I hadn't closed the freezer properly, and everything in it has defrosted! Some stuff I will be able to use in the next day or so, but some I have had to dispose of. I HATE food waste, especially as there are so many people starving in this world! 

I sympathise with you 100%! Happened to me a couple of years ago - not sure if it was me or husband but I took the blame. The amount of stuff we had to throw away or cook quickly* is dreadful. Since then both of us have been doubly careful when closing freezers.

*Was nice, we cooked things we wouldn'totherwise have cooked routinely  . Not advertising leaving freezer not properly closed tho', just saying.

[SteveH]

One advantage of chest freezers, I suppose - gravity will close the door, even if you forget.

[SusanDoris]

Saw Doctor at Chest Pain clinic today - seems I must go back on to beta blockers so I hope that will solve the problem. When I got home, I phoned the surgery to ask for a prescription to be made up, but the hospital had already phoned them to say. I was most impressed.

Bit of a long story, but I was taken off beta blockers about 15 months ago.

[SusanDoris]

Welll, I got as far as when he got to college and had to pass an exam with some blue book, but I couldn't face reading any more!

[Robbie]

And just when you thought life couldn't get any crazier, I found this on the BBC news website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43700153

Very interesting LR! It often surprises people to know how many adults cannot read & have spent all their lives avoiding situations because of it. Prisons too have a high number of inmates who are illiterate - one can imagine the situations they get into & how they react with violence. A sad business.

I'm glad the man learned to read eventually but I do wish he had had more help when he was at school; he would now! I did think at one time of doing a course on teaching adults to read but really didn't - and still don't - have the time to commit to it; maybe when I retire.

[SteveH]

Be thankful you're not in the House of Commons. There are 300-odd lizards there, on the Tory benches.

[Rhiannon]

HA! HA! 

I have found the lizard and put it in a large glass jar in a sunny position with plenty of foliage to hid under. My daughter would like to see it, I will release it into the wild after her visit this morning.

Are you sure it won’t overheat?

Maybe your daughter could make do with some photos.

[Rhiannon]

Please be careful.

[Rhiannon]

We have decided it is probably a newt and I have made it a small pond in the garden and it seems happy enough, end of story.

Good, I like newts.

I’ve only ever seen a native lizard twice. Once was when I found a slow worm next to a busy road in a nearby town, which I moved into a hedgerow nearby. The other was when a common lizard was stuck on the concrete sea defences on a beach in Norfolk. We took a quick photo before my daughter put him back up in the dunes so he could hide from the gulls in the marram grass. I still have photos of both on my phone.

[SteveH]

The slow worm or blind worm - so called because it's not slow, it's not blind, and it's not a worm.