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Has everybody taken to their beds with influenza?
It's a bit quiet in here.

*pin drops*

I heard that...
Got back to work on Monday, although I still feel like a mucus production line. Got loads of work on though, as I was off for 7 of the previous 10 days. Unfortunately, my boss is off sick now, and the other third of the IT department is on holiday, so I'm the only person available to fix everything (inc hardware - grrrr).
I ain't touching it
I'm not going near the Glow Worms game again until someone gets rid of the one with the badly-metred line about nipples. *blames Software*
[pen] It seems OK to me. Confused.
Addressing the nipple without even a coma
[Phil] I meant it had a typo: you/your. Alternatively 'To you, nipple, I'd be put'. Still weird. Tell me when it's all over.
(pen) The metre's all right - it's just a typo, and a fairly common one.
[penelope] You can come out now.

[Rosie] A common typo? I would challenge that statement - if only because I'm in the mood to challenge pretty much everything this morning ... (insert winky face)
To put it another way - why do we have the 'preview' function' or indeed the 'whoops' escape if not to eradicate such monstrosities? < mode= really going over the top now >
Nobody expects the Monstrous Regiment!
Least of all the Spaniels!
12 minutes, a new record
The time I have just observed a group of three adults, two babies, and a toddler take in a cafe, from their first getting-up-to-go movements to actually getting out of the front door. The previous record was 10 minutes, taken by two women, a baby, and an enormous quantity of shopping.
Today is my Birthday!
thanks to time zones....
...in that case it probably still is for nearly another 10 hours. So Happy Birthday Giertrud :-)
Thanks!!
HBTY Giertrud
Try to keep growing old for as long as possible.
-
%aThis website is great 6cd8212ffc3e2c1f993c2a3d5054d176
Yeah
it is, isn't it?
Hurrah!
Ther evenings will start drawing out in less than a week, at least at this latitude, 51° 19' 06"N. This cannot be too soon.
[Rosie] Spoilsport!
brighter later
[Rosie] Goodie. Ta for that bit of news.
Last time in a long time
A counting date ... 11/12/13 .... It was in November for us who write the month first though...
Dates - USA style
(Giertrude) Surely you have 12/13/14?
Dates . . .
Yes, [Rosie], we had that. We've had a lot of neat dates so far this century. 1/2/3
2/3/4
3/4/5
4/5/6
5/6/7
6/7/8
7/8/9
8/9/10
10/11/12
11/12/13
The Theatre!
Two more performances of "Irving Berlin's White Christmas" for me. The last performance day and cast party will be bittersweet.
about blummin' time too
Only four more working days until the Xmas hols. Next Saturday the windy miller's mill is the starting point for the torchlit midwinterday four-course gastrotour of the tiny village in Zeeland. i'll be serving gluhwijn from the workbench, under a canopy of 200 fairy lights, as they light the torches at sunset (which is about 4pm here). And on Sunday, we're heading over to Blighty for the week.
three more days...
Three more days at work (after this afternoon - although we're halfway through the afternoon so it's mattering less and less) until Friday night's dinner with the windy miller's company (in real life, he runs a construction project management company and employs three people. I have to be the boss's wife...), Saturday's midwinter sunset torch-lit procession around the village on Zonnemaire in Zeeland where the windy miller's mill is. And on Sunday, we depart for Blighty on the ferry to Dover, heading for some friends in Guildford for our first overnight stop. Can't wait.
2.5 more days
After today, I have the aforementioned 2.5 working days this year. Then friday night is the company christmas do, with 63 in attendance - plus these chaps providing entertainment. Plus Mrs Phil & I have been given free B&B at the hotel too. I'm genuinely looking forward to it, which is most out-of-character.
2.5 more days
Haven't posted my Christmas cards yet. And there are some I haven't written yet either. The ones that are ready to go are in a big bag in the car. I'm hoping to get to the post office (stationed in our local village supermarket) tonight.
That's it! I'm leaving!
In an hour or so, I will no longer need to waste so much time in here because I'm heading out for a week-and-a-half off. I'll try and pop in from time to time though. Try and keep up the chatter yourselves, eh?
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas (eve)!
A very Merry Christmas to all at MC5!
Ditto
Ditto
Ditto.
Season's Greetings
Happy Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah Day everyone, and Allah bless us, one and all!
Yes, I'm still here
Hope your Christmases went well and the new year is suitably novel.
Oh, it's you
Indeed. Which novel should we aim to replicate in 2014? HNY, you lot.
Happy New Year!
(Stevie) Thank you for waiting till midnight GMT.
I've started the New Year with bungling and ranting. TYpical.
Pour décourager les autres
(pen) Keep it up. Eliminate the crap. BTW You've made a TYpo. :-)
Watching the defectives
Bungling and rating? Could be ... *wink*
gravity
*drops*
[pen] Burgling and panting?
Dear Scansion Police
Anonymous defamation is simply pathetic. Even if it were justified criticism, which it isn't, posting it anonymously is the behaviour of a half-baked, duplicitous, weak-minded troll.
The chippy misfit
(Phil) He's probably getting at me, for reasons best known to himself, and has hijacked a limerick to do so. Not good. Probably thinks this site cliquey but too dim to realise that firstly, it isn't, and secondly, if he thinks it is then all he needs do to join the clique is simply not be an arsehole. The wit, widsom and wordplay of all is welcomed, as has been proved dozens of times with newcomers.
Wittering, as only I can
Jeez it's tedious doing HTML.in here on an iPhone. *tap tap tappity tap*
East or West Wittering
The capital "P" is no disguise - we know you're in there. Hurry up - I'm dying.
Capital
[Rosie] I laughed out loud. But now I've got to grips with the titchy keyboard on this eyephone, I'm back to my normal self.
foggiest
So... Thursday, eh? And what has the week delivered for you lot? For me: I've finally finished all the satsumas in the house. I'm going to buy some more in a minute from the new supermarket on the university campus. It's a hard habit to break, two per day since November... Exciting times.
I finished up the week by watching penguins emerge from the ocean.
Beat that
[CdM] a penguin automat? I finished the week in the greengrocer's, being reminded that I needed potatoes. I love independent shops.
[CdM] Don't be ridiculous. Amphibians emerged from the oceans, had dinosaur babies who laid penguin eggs. Read a book!
[Dan] I've just reread my bible*, and it says no such thing. In fact it has very little discussion of penguins at all.

[flerdle] I think Coles' and Woolworth's online shopping could probably do that for you as well. And it would save all the pesky hanging around, chatting, making friends and so on.**

*Full disclosure: I do not actually own a bible.
**cf. Sirius Cybercorp.
Store names
If you said "Cole's" in the U.S., we'd assume it was Kohl's.
[CdM] It's better in the original Greek anyway.
[CdM] I think the delivery charge to the Netherlands would be a little steep though, wouldn't it?
[pen] For the first time in my life I live walking distance from a greengrocer, and it really changes things. Also many other things, including a fish market and a bakery, most of which are even closer and all of which have appeared since we moved into the neighborhood. I may not have to emigrate after all.
preëmpt-o-matic
*waits for CdM to say "I thought in the U.S. 'walking distance' means it's in your garage"*
Hmmm, the flerdle/pen conflation. Muss less common than Dan/Dunx
"Muss"?
Muss try harder
I need celery, radishes and apples. And onions. Anyone fancy a stroll to the groentenwinkel?
[pen] I'm afraid I'm not able to walk across oceans, nor swim them even if Google says I should be able to do such a thing.
despite staying late at work, the shop was still just open at 7 when i got there. I was probably their last customer of the day. Now to make that celery soup...
I love radishes. Much underrated.
I discovered king oyster mushrooms the other day, on a market stall. Never knew they existed. Truly, the earth continues to bring forth wonders.
Mushrooms
[Raak] Though art indeed brave if though tasteth of that most vile fruit of the ground, harvested by the light of the New Moon by debased and foul Tcho-Tchos, who tear them from the curséd soil of Leng - which lieth not fully in this Universe, but doth straddle other, forbidden dimensions across which stride Those Who Shudde Notte Bee, in whose footprints sprout these fungi thou doth prize so highly.
me too
I'm not a fan of mushrooms either.
No Entry
Can't seem to get anything into MCiOS, any game. Anybody else having problems?
[Rosie] Is working for me.
(Raak) Works OK now.
Curioser and curioser
There seems to be some sort of caching problem. I can post there fine, but when I get to the page I posted to from the main page, the post doesn't appear. But if I post again, all the posts show up. It's like the moves are being made properly, but the front page links are pointing to a stale cache.
catching up
Not fond of mushrooms. Or stale caches.
stale mushrooms
I'm not fond of mushrooms either. I wonder if the cache is a good place to grow them - it seems dark and undisturbed in there.
Mushrooms
I like much-maligned mushrooms. Yumptious!
(Phil) Yeah, they're great. I had some with a couple of lamb chops last night.
(Raak) I've noticed that too.
[Phil] When a recipe calls for much-maligned mushrooms, how long should I malign them for?
Mushrooms
[Dan] I generally start with disparaging remarks about the overall quality of their gills, then move on to more targeted insults on the subject of stem length and cap diameter.
That takes from between 2 to four minutes.
Mushrooms
[Dan] With all due respect to Stevie, I'd consider his mushrooms to be simply "maligned", not "much-maligned". I can't repeat here the sort of language I use in their presence, but it makes them sweat like an onion.
F****** mushrooms
(Phil) You don't know how many other people malign mushrooms, or with what intensity. That, of course applies to mushrooms in general, not necessarily Stevie's. On the other hand, Stevie's mushroms may have a flea in their ear from those condemned to pick them.
Not that keen on mushrooms, meself. The taste is OK, but I really don't like the texture.In other news, we don't got flooding yet, nor that much snow. UPdates, Rosie?
(pen) No flooding? Of course not - you take it seriously over there, as you have to. I'd be very surprised if you got any snow but you'll get a load more rain and wind Wednesday and Saturday just as we will and probably worse.
"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass - it's about learning how to dance in the rain"
... one of my favourite mottos brought to life by "Flippin' Floods in Salisbury"
It's getting rather breezy here, and the school has sent out an email warning that they might have to close if all three routes into the village get flooded.
Nothing yet
Nothing has happened here yet. I have just waved off my dear colleague as she's flying to City Airport this evening (she gets to go to the London training day tomorrow that I wanted to go to but there's only budget for one of us - even though we both need the skills) and I didn't want to tell her there may be turburence*.
*Turburence is what we have called it in our family ever since my parents were warned about it on a flight back from Japan via Hong Kong in 1993.
British Literature is . . . uh???
British Literature is just fine, really. It's the fact that we were in the medieval period that made it so difficult to read. I couldn't understand all that Middle English. The stories were fun when told in modern English. We just had our first test this past Wednesday. I think I did fine.
Chaucer doth tweet
[KS] Do you Twitter? Try following Chaucer on Twitter for a feel of how Middle English works in the modern world. And it's pretty funny too. There's a whole community of Middle English tweeters out there.
Short week
Only four days in the loathsome office this week. Catching the Eurostar to London on Friday morning (Rosendaal>Brussels>London St P) for a wedding on Saturday. Can't wait!
Zzzzz
Awake for 26.5 hours and counting. Probably still at least an hour till I am united with a bed. And it's bloody cold here too (-12C).
Where the hell are you?
Hello Rab! Where are you? Doing the Iditerod race?
Nowt so glamorous
I'm in Denver, at a ridiculously large conference. Just reading the list of session titles makes me want to have a lie down.
Conferences and their ilk.
Unless such things were local I used to delegate our attendance to a staff member. "Here, Fred, there's a do on down in Melbourne. I'd like you to attend (it'll be good experience for you). Knock up a report and get it to me within the week will you?"
I'm afraid that banging around the country with all the bother of transport etc. has never appealed to me. Others seemed to love it. Maybe they saw it as some sort of status thing rather than a tedious chore. That's not a criticism of your winging your way around the world, rab, just a personal opinion of a bloke who could get out of attending the blasted things.
Not at all
In my line of work, the main reason for these things is so that people remember you still exist. If I could do this without 19hr journeys and leaving my family for a week, I would. People sometimes say "you're being paid to do it so quit your moaning" but my view is that travel is a perk only if it's (a) to places you actually want to go and (b) with people you actually want to go with. Work trips rarely count. (That said I do have some good mates at work and sometimes I get to go to agreeable places like Amsterdam or Vienna with them. I tend to be less fastidious about keeping my receipts on such occasions.)
This is getting silly
The A22 is still closed for 3 miles and a further road off it is now closed as workmen with pumps, pipes and sandbags etc try to contain the stream occupying it. Another few weeks, I reckon. Also the water level at this place is now threatening the roads on both sides.
let me out
Back at work after six days of feeling distinctly under par (and a cancelled trip to London for a wedding, boo hoo). Can anyone persuade me of the benefits of being in the office working through a MASSIVE inbox on a beautiful spring day like today?
Bright side?
Reduced risk of early hayfever?
Annual income......
(pen) Pays the bills.
[penelope] Reduced risk of being mistaken for Lindsey Lohan and being crushed by a mob of crazed paparazzi?
Yay!
I have a game in the Google Play store, and it's ad-supported so it's FREE!

Floored!

himpressive
[Giertrud] Cool. I went over for a peek, but will leave it for others to download and play.
In other news... it's another warm and sunny day here in NL. If my Fashion Phenology project is to be relied upon as an indicator of seasonal drift and an early spring, then yesterday's spotting of a woman wearing a pair of white jeans, and today's observation of a student in teeshirt, shorts and sneakers on campus must be recorded. And here is as good a place as any. Have any other Crescenters seen spurious signs of spring?
As of yesterday afternoon, my lawns have stripes.
There's been a strange yellow ball in the sky a lot of the time in the past few days.
[Phil, Raak] This...means something.
But what could it mean?
Yellow balls cause stripes?
talking of exceptional quality...
The pea & honey recipes have been splendid of late. Witty and clever. And they rhyme and scan too. Coo.
[Phil] Yesyesyes, but were UFOs involved?
[Stevie] No, I identified them all as alien spaceships.
Vernal illusions
(pen, penpenult.) It is spring. Must be - there was a frost here last night but now it's a nice 17°C.
Aww pen :(
http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/03/13/the-predictive-results-for-typing-county-into-google/
If we don't shout about it, no-one will come and spoil it.
[Giertrud]
1. Do you always believe what The Poke Says?
2. The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway
3. It's unscientific.
4. Get orf my laaand.
5. Google doesn't cover Wales.
the sprungness of spring
I have stopped wearing bicycle goggles to keep the cold wind out of my eyes, and started wearing them to keep the insects out of my eyes.
(pen) re no. 5 - Thank God for that. (from the Ghetto)
(Giertrud) There y'are - we're the wittiest nation on earth.
(Raak) But does the cold night air know this?
[Pen] Somewhat topically, I had a strange impulse to apply those responses to Tony Benn's five questions to power:

What power have you got?
Do you always believe what The Poke Says?

"Where did you get it from?
The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway

In whose interests do you use it?
It's unscientific.

To whom are you accountable?
Get orf my laaand.

How do we get rid of you?
Google doesn't cover Wales.

I don't know about you but I think that works perfectly.
1. Do you always believe what The Poke Says?
no, I just thought it was silly.
2. The only people who type '[county] is ...' into Google are the thickos who don't know anything anyway
It can be fun to see what comes up, especially when the name also applies to something else.
3. It's unscientific.
duh.
4. Get orf my laaand.
whyyyyyyy?
5. Google doesn't cover Wales.
Try telling that to Google The Powers That Be! (If you told me Bing didn't cover Wales, I'd be more likely to believe it.)
Y Gwgl
(Giertrude) Hmm, maybe they aren't such bastards after all. Should be Gŵgl, of course, but the title won't accept the HTML.
Even with an English International Keyboard setting---but copy-paste worked! "Gŵgl"
I still can't get those characters up there! Only copy-paste works.
Time for some more banter
Does no-one have any more banter? Tonight I have served a late curry to the very busy windy miller, made his sandwiches for tomorrow, watched a lot of lambs being born and slapped about on the telly, tried to catch up with the strategies of William and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and washed up. Tomorrow I will try to write some sense, then dine at the university before attending a marketing masterclass, hoping to learn something. And then it's Friday.
Bantering
Should we now start calling you 'Wednesday's Child', penelope?
Being called a child of any description would be nice.Sadly it's not true. But talking of times gone past, I did make contact yesterday with two people that I hadn't spoken to for almost 20 years; both I met during formative experiences. One I worked with very early in my first newspaper job (which I didn't start unti I was 30, having had another kind of career before that) and one who organised a road trip to the Arctic Circle and beyond that made me realise that I can't bear very much heat on a summer holiday. That realisation has saved me weeks, if not months, of expensive uncomfortableness.
Friday banter
I went to a marketing masterclass last night, all about how to make social media go viral. Turns out that it's an art not a science, and that you can measure and analyse it all you like and be none the wiser, except knowing that you must 'light a lot of fires' and then 'use the right seeding nodes' to get anything that spreads. Oh, and before any of that, have a great product and hire GREAT creatives. </ marketing discussion>
In other news, I have just done a phone interview, bought birthday chocolates for my sister in VT, USA and am looking forward to Lincolnshire plum bread and Lincolnshire Red cheese [special imports] for Breakfast #2 at my desk. Happy Friday, crescenters.
Gobbledegook
I'm worried about you, pen, you're showing distinct signs of succumbing to marketing bollockspeak. And don't let anything go viral; let it stay bacterial and be amenable to antibiotics. Boo-boom.
Re : Gobbledook
Hear bl@@dy hear. I wish to G@d that "social media" had never crawled out from under the carpet.  My status message on Skype says 'I don't have a "mood message", a "wall", or any other so-called "social networking" nonsense -- I have a life !'.
Mood mode
[Neophyte] Got it, dear. But you don't boycott it? On the other hand, I live in a different country ( with a different language) to all of my family and the vast majority of my friends. I work in an international environment which relies on it. My view is the opposite of yours. Oh, and I also have a life.
Re : Mood mode
[Pen] Yes, I boycott it completely. A binding vow of total lifelong abstinence from Twitter, Facebook, and all of their their ilk, and Linkedln only for professional contacts. I am also extremely intolerant, and shout "f*** Twitter" whenever someone on Radio 4 tells me how to contact the programme through that obscene medium. And a similar reaction whenever I read a newspaper article that cites anything containing commercial-at and hash prefixes.
Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his workroom so he would not be interrupted. Disliking a new medium of communication is not new.
Hyperconnectivity
My mobile is permanently switched off and nobody, except my next of kin, knows the number. Speak to the answerphone if it's important. When I'm out I'm not at rhe office. Like McCavity I'm just not there. The mobile is for me to ring the RAC if the car conks out.
As for Twatter and F*ckbook nobody expects me to be there so I'm not. Anything significant from it will in the papers/on the radio. I wouldn't say I would never use them but at the moment I simply can't see the point. Let others spout their banalities or make fools of themselves. (Just going to update my MCiOS status).
I never get calls on my mobile either. I use it if the car breaks down (which it never has, yet, touch wood), to find out who has the keys to the mill (and how far away from home they have driven before they remembered they forgot them) and to find out what time the windy miller will be home for dinner so I can time the rice. Occasionally I also use it for shouting at cold callers.
My mobile is largely an SMS-powered remote control for my daughter, and an alarm clock. It's paid for by work, but doesn't scroll up, due to dilapidation.
[Rosie] Outside the MCverse I've never adopted social networking in any substantial way, for reasons of privacy and compartmentalization; it always comes down to an insuperable dichotomy: nothing I could post to the whole world is worth posting, anything worth posting is something for which I'd trim the recipient list first. I've a number of chats of between three to six participants on the go in Skype, some of years standing, but their membership is kind of arrived at kind of organically -- or perhaps the word I want is empirically: each came to exist because it did and has lasted because it has.
(all) This site (and a couple of associated sites) is the nearest I want to get to social networking.
Asocial
[Rosie] Honoured! Any Saharan sand-related weather details for us? I have the dust on my car in NL (but the countryside is dry and they're working on the fields non-stop at the mo*, so it could be North African dust or it could be Zuid Hollandsche dust)
*it smells of cow poo everywhere
(pen) The dust comes down with the rain but you only notice it if the rain is very light as it was here early Monday morning. There was so much dust on my car I actually had to wash it, an event of some rarity. Your car dust must be Saharan. It's been a bit breezy there recently and the atmosphere is highly convective, i.e. it's hot and rises rapidly and the upper winds have brought the dust over Europe. It's a fairly common event but the upper winds have to be right for us to experience it and some light rain helps bring it down.
Cow poo is the least offensive poo smell there is, at least to my nose - I rather like it but then I was an industrial chemist.
the hidden past
[Rosie] Oh I dunno. I find the rather sweet and cloying smell of human primary sludge as it enters the treatment works brings back good memories. For seven years after graduating, I worked as a laboratory technician analysing effluent of all kinds - from abattoirs, vegetable processing, and over one whole summer primary sludge during a BOC trial at what was then the UK's largest sewage treatment works just outside Norwich. My laboratory that summer was a caravan. My samples were mostly black and stinky.
This country usually smells of either poo or celery. Mostly.
I was noticeably hazy yesterday, and people have been mentioning itchy throats etc. I a totally unrelated development, I put new wiper blades on my car yesterday, and the difference in visibility is remarkable!
PS, the own brand sets from Halfords would have been £30 for all three. Ordered Bosch wipers from Euro Car Parts, with free 3 day delivery - £17 the lot. Hence, or otherwise, Halfords is a rip-off!
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