Best pizza ever was 3 euros, from a scruffy cafe in Herculano, a suburb of Naples. My mother and I had thoroughly examined the Roman ruins in the old town of Herculaneum, which was destroyed by the same volcano that did for Pompeii. However, instead of being covered with hot ash, it was covered with a mudslide, which preserved the internal decorations of the villas - I have some fab photos of the murals and wall decorations, which are still very, very clear. Anyway, we passed this cafe on the way back to the train, argued with the patron to sit inside (I think he thought we looked like we could afford to sit outside, where they add a premium to the price of your meal)and had just the freshest, tastiest, thinnest crusty pizza ever. And paid less than 10 euros for two people, with drinks. Oooh, flerdle, another gong! Happy Birthday :o)
(Tuj) You naughty boy, you nicked that from Humph in tonight's show, where it had a certain resonance. It doesn't seem we actually discuss the show very much. Maybe it's just bad form to do so rather like middle-aged jazz fans not actually talking about (or even listening to) the music they're hearing but preferring to exchange jazz-related gossip, news, who's good, who's crap, who's playing where etc. The actual raison d'être for the yakking is taken for granted in both cases.
[Tuj] Some of us don't think the show is much good. The fact that I haven't actually listened to the show since before you were born is irrelevant to this observation.
[Rosie] Not stolen, quoted as a preface... Nice to see it wasn't just me listening! Your reasoning is pretty much what I expected... less so CdM, but then one can't argue with the old "before you were born" argument... Might as well start saying "things were better in my day" (which mind you gets by with less justification). [SM] A popular outlet for the game of Mornington Crescent is the long-running BBC radio prgramme I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue. It's currently available through the BBC's listen again service, which is smashing.
(Tuj) Parts of the show don't always work but I suspend my critical faculties, remembering that the whole thing is a kind of in-joke, like Red Dwarf or Blake's Seven. But other parts have me creased with laughter. How does CdM know how old you are? Is he your Dad or sunnink?
It's 14.45 here, and it's dark already - due to very heavy rainclouds, I suspect, but it's very, very gloomy for this time of day. Incidentally, I drove around the Crescent at around midnight last night. I thought I saw the ghost of Willie Rushton crossing the road in front of me.
[Rosie] Probably working off the fact I mentioned starting my second year of university not long ago. Maybe? As far as I know CdM is not my father... but you never know...
(Tuj) Ah, so you're about 20. Such bliss! (pen) Same here. I put the light on at half two, expecting the end of the world meteorologically but no, bit of rain, bit breezy, mild, boring. It's about time we had an event which I can go on and on about.
[Rosie] A good 7 months 'til I'm that venerable ;) Terribly gloomy weather today here in the Midlands. Sitting listening to Test Match Special, ah what bliss.
Good weather on the 5 day forecast for round here over the weekend, so will probably do a trip to Westonbirt. I'll be avoiding the Ashes and watching the second match between England and South Africa to see whether the win by England was a flash in the pan. World Cup next September and still rebuilding the team.
[Tuj] I knew your approximate age from long before that -- I think you identified yourself as 16 or 17 when you first started posting, didn't you? And I wasn't trying to make a serious "before you were born" argument. I used to listen to the show about 25 years ago, and thought it was only moderately funny. I haven't listened since, since I wasn't in radio range, and haven't bothered since these new-fangled internets came along. So my comment was supposed to be mainly tongue-in-cheek: that it is perhaps ridiculous of me to comment on the quality of the show when it is so long since I have heard it. On the other hand, nothing I have heard quoted at any of these sites actually makes me think it is any better than it used to be.
[CdM] I actually found it genuinely interesting to make such a "before you were born" statement. I have a feeling I identified myself as 14 the first time I posted... 5 years ago come April. How very very peculiar. Anyway... aren't you tempted to give it a listen from time to time?
[CdM] Odd question perhaps, but why did you get involved in the online MC sites if you don't like the show? (For what it's worth, I do like it and listen to it a lot.)
[Tuj] Genuinely interesting how? It was, as I said, meant tongue-in-cheek -- I thought it was pretty funny when I realized that it was indeed before you were born that I last listened to the show, and so I couldn't resist the chance to play the old fogey. And is it really five years since you started posting?? Wow. I definitely remember when you first showed up.
[Darren] I think we are funnier than they are. :-) (The one time I don't like these sites very much is when people simply use them as an excuse to recycle old jokes/monty python skits/etc. I think that the original humor that people create here is, at its best, really impressive.) Also, I prefer the active participation to passive listening.
I'm not trying to think how long I've been pottering around the crescent. I think its about four years.... I don't really listen to the show as I forget its on, and I don't participate much as I'm really not that amusing. But I do appreciate other people's fine wit and wisdom.
[CdM] I don't know, I'm easily pleased I guess! And I apologise profusely for whatever you remember me for, as it's a fairly safe bet it wasn't anything amusing. I'd sum up myself the same way Lib does, except a bit longer time, listen a bit more and am much less amusing.
[Tuj] Gosh Tuj, you are having a bit of a crisis of confidence, with your comments elsewhere and here. Hope you're all right. *hug* I think you're very amusing and witty. But in my opinion that's why the crescent is great. There are a lot of witty people around who all appreciate the finer puns in life, some who realise how witty they are and others who do not. All together it makes a good mix.
[CdM] I tend to think that ISIHAC is funnier on average than these sites, but that these sites achieve far more impressive things (like Stratford-on-Crescent). [Tuj] I remember you as being nascently witty and very mature at fourteen. Certainly more so than I was at that age. I've always been rather grateful that there was no web until I was about nineteen. God knows what gaucheness I should have committed to amber otherwise. :)
I always feel that my attitude to the Internet must be similar to that of my grandparents to, say, television, in that since it didn't exist until I was over the age of 18, that its somehow unsuitable for minors.
(rab) I think a more prevalent attitude among older people is that the Internet, far from being unsuitable for minors, is in fact suitable only for these youngsters, who are suckers for any new technology. I don't agree with this view and think the Internet has now become something extremely useful for people of all ages and you all know how old I am. One less agreeable feature it has revealed is the large number of people who cannot marshal their thoughts into a coherent written form and are frankly a bit stupid. That's the price we pay for Extreme Democracy, but it's worth it.
This site is an ISIHAC spin-off and is not meant to be the live show, which is both greater and lesser than the Morniverse, as Projoy implies. For instance, I think The Game Of Mornington Crescent only works live (like Pick-up Song) and attempts to reproduce it here lack the edge of ISIHAC. But other games (and the chat) are great and much more suited to the written word.
Saw Casino Royale in Holloway last night. Pretty good - entertaining - which is the least I'd expect. Inexplicably dizzy this morning - I think this long running cold is affecting my ears. Also got an invitation to a N Yorks cocktail party (pint of bitter with a cherry in it) to be held just before Christmas from some friends I haven't seen for months, if not years, which was lovely. And there are still three unopened packets of biscuits in the office, which is good, because I'm flat out this week. :o)
[Rab] Wonderful. Have you thought about venetian blinds? Just remember, if it wasn't for blinds, it'd be curtains for all of us. *groans* so you don't have to
Pardon me for barging in like this, but thought I'd mention that MCiOS is down and will remain down until at least midday today (Sunday 3 Dec). Apologies for the inconvenience.
Okay, she ees back. Sorry and all that. Congratulations on the windows. Useful for defenestration purposes windows are, ye carn't defenestrate sans fenêtres y'know. By the way, given that I don't know what your place looks like, will a mental image of the flat from Shallow Grave serve? That's sort of my mental placeholder for Edinburgh dwellings.
(Oh, in case you haven't seen/can't remember it, the flat in that film was super awesome, like. Just in case it sounded like I was saying something negative because, like, I wasn't and stuff.) (Oh, and my wife made the curtains for the back of our house and they're really nice.)
Not quite as grand as the one on Shallow Grave - imagine one scaled down so as to be affordable by a junior academic and environmental consultant. I'll stick some pics up when the windows are done.
For the sake of keeping this going I hereby announce that I have had 68 mm rain this month, about three-quarters of the normal monthly total, and it's getting a bit squelchy. There's a lot more to come but fortunately up here we're unfloodable (almost).
Thanks Rosie. I *was* actually wondering if this December had been wetter than average or not. And I also wondered if the aquifers were filling up. If they're not, I'm going to give my hosepipe away.
Sometime just before November and NaNoWriMo, a game of Long Winded Crescent was suggested. There is a slot available ideal for the game and one which I never had the pleasure to play first time round. The tornado in London shook people up, distance from the smoke being all, the 20 or so properties stuck in mid Wales last week did not register with the headline makers.
Fairly dry here, though I note Sunday is supposed to be wet and windy. One weather site is suggesting winds of 21mph, another (the BBC) 35mph. I note that 35kph=21mph, so I'm hoping the BBC has made a metric-imperial error...
(pen) If it carries on like this it'll be an extraordinarily wet month, but extrapolation based merely on the first week is always a bit fanciful. It has been quite a bit wetter south of London than to the north this time. The aquifers take a long time to fill up and are still quite low, I believe. When there's a long wet spell our local Bourne flows, the last time being in December 2000 when it shut the A22 at Whyteleafe for 3 weeks. There was sewage in it as well. It's hardly the Mississippi but it seemed quite beyond the local council to do anything about it.
(rab) You're in Edinburgh, are you not? 35 mph (force 7) looks about right from a look at the forecast synoptic chart. (Néa) The latest from GFS (American computer model) suggests that the lowest temperature in Stockholm in the next week will be 3°C and you will have yet more molten snow. I know that this is most unusual. The info comes from a German weather site called wetter3, oxymoronic in English if said in German, if you see what I mean.
Lovely and warm and dry here. The fruit trees are laden with ripening fruit and the vege patch is loaded. The roma tomatoes look particularly fine. Will have to bribe someone to look after it all over the Christmas-NewYear break (we're heading north, unfortunately). Any takers? Must prepare to be seriously confused about the Orstrayan Chrissie (sunny, hot, lack of snow and log fires, sun in wrong place, moon upside down, etc).
Forecast here for today (Sat.) is warm - around the 30ºC mark. We even had some rain overnight, a whole 0.7mm. It's probably already evaporated. Good luck with the fires down south, flerdle, we had our turn a couple of weeks ago. Most of them were up the mountains from me - probably 20Km or so - but we did have the choppers water bombing an outbreak just a few hundred metres away for a while. Probably an arsonist or carelessness on someone's part as we haven't had any lightning. Sydney's water supply is getting perilously low; last figures I saw indicated around the 38% level. This is not good when 4 to 5 million people rely on it. The long term prognosis for decent rain is not good so I guess we'll have to move to even tighter water restrictions. My wife, who's the gardner in our family, will not be impressed.
[Dujon] The fires are a long way from the city (over in the east and northeast of the state), but the smoke is here. The forecast temperature for today in some of those areas is 39°C. What does she grow, Dujon? I do vegetables because they're interesting and edible, and the fruit trees are just part of the place; the fruit is a bonus. If we're serious about water conservation in Aus, all dwellings should have tanks (like they used to), water-efficient appliances and greywater recycling systems, and as little lawn as possible; until then, I have little patience for complaints about water restrictions. Some of the more basic water restrictions are just common sense, such as not watering in the heat of the day. Unfortunately, renters (about 1/3 of households here) have no say in what their dwelling has, as the owners usually couldn't give a Hidden textfig about it.
[flerdle] For ourselves, at least as far as vegetables go, not all that much. A few tomato plants, parsley, beans and the like; no spuds or other root stock (though she's been threatened with such - by me). The only fruit we have is one of each of Lemon, Orange and Grapefruit trees. When we bought the place a few years ago they were dreadful looking excuses for citrus trees but a little TLC and they are now bearing quite well. The rest is shared between her 'garden' stuff and her interest in rearing native plants. 'Tis not unusual to have a couple of thousand tube stock around the place. These vary from seedlings to 'ready to plant' stock. Oh joy, oh joy, carting around a watering can to keep them all satisfied and looking perky. I'd love a water tank, I really would, but cost and the lack of water makes it somewhat unlikely at the moment. Still 'n all I only have a shower once a week so that should make up for some of my infelicity. ;-(
[Rosie] Tough luck :-) [Dujon] Commiserations. What does she do with it all? My vege patch is only about 3 sq m, possibly extendable by another 2 sq m if I ever get the time and energy (hah!). I'm still working out what grows here and what doesn't, and what the new pests are. Earwigs love silverbeet, it seems.
[flerdle] It's amazing what can be grown in a relatively small area of a garden so I reckon the extra couple of square metres would be worth cultivating. While a couple of thousand tube stock sounds a lot, they too don't take up all that much space. The tubes sit in trays each of which holds 40 tubes and are about 400mm x 250mm (approx.). What she does with them is a long story but, in essence, she is custodian of some of the stock of a local (Katoomba) wildplant rescue service. Earwigs and silverbeet? It sounds an unlikely combination - isn't Mother Nature wonderful? There you go, Rosie, not a mention of our evening noise makers.
(Duj, flerdle) Very gentlemanly and ladylike respectively. In any case winning is rather vulgar, doncha think? (Duj) Iceland is running out of air - have a look at this.
937! Blimey, I see what you mean. I wonder if someone's making a killing shipping in oxygen tanks. Then again choppers may not stay afloat in that low a pressure. Rosie, winning is only vulgar if you claim to have backed the victor with your local bookie and then refuse to buy a round. :-)
(Dujon) It's down to 932 now. Won't go any lower though. N. Atlantic record is 915 mb, UK 925. There's a piece about Bourke NSW in today's Observer which says the current drought is on its way to turning the place into a ghost town and it all looks a bit serious. I assume this is the same regional drought that is affecting your area. We have the opposite problem here, especially in Scotland and Wales but floods occur in most winters here somewhere or other.
Am I right in saying that the correct technical term for "trying to get your living room the same temperature as the bedroom" is "balancing the central heating system"? If so, or indeed, if not, does anyone know how to go about it. (Probably never achieve this completely, as living room is 2x size of said bedroom, is furthest from the boiler, and north-facing, but currently the former is too cold, and the latter too hot...).