Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

As far as water abstraction is concerned, I have riparian rights, so there! We have a rhyne (drainage stream) bordering our property, giving us certain ancient rights.

A person, who has a water course passing through or bordering their land, has a right to abstract water from that watercourse.

We've never used it but if there was ever a hosepipe ban we could pump water out for personal use. I wouldn't want to drink it, but it would be perfectly okay for watering plants or hooking up to a pressure washer to clean the patio.


Your comment Jem about having to pour your missus into the coffin made me chuckle.

Apparently when my cousin/SiL was little she was taken ill and had to go to the doctor. She was very worried when he solemnly told her she had a nasty case of rising damp.


Our tap water used to taste 'orrible when I first moved here, but after a lot of work by Wessex Water replacing water pipes it improved to the point that it is now quite palatable, despite the chemicals.

When my Uncle/FiL used to live in Bristol, he said it was not unusual to get the odd tiny freshwater shrimp come out the taps.

I don't know if it is still like it, but water in and around Bristol used to come out of the tap almost effervescent, then it would settle down after a few seconds. It was something to do with the calcium content although I don't understand the physics/chemistry behind it.


bret, I remember an experiment in a school chemistry lesson. The teacher rigged up a glass H shaped tube affair that looked like a set of rugby posts, the tubes being filled with water.

There were taps at the top of each "post", and an electrode at the bottom of each leg, one pos and one neg. Passing a DC current through reverted the water to its individual elements.

A column of gas gradually appeared in each leg, one being twice as high as the other. At the end of the lesson, the teacher opened the leg with the taller gas column then applied a burning taper, at which point the Hydrogen flared off.

He then collected the gas from the other leg in a jar before plunging the burning taper into it, at which point the flame increased greatly in intensity as it gobbled up the Oxygen.

I didn't always enjoy chemistry lessons, but that was one of the more interesting ones, and was a great visual aid to showing what H2O actually consisted of.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

That’s interesting about your ‘spare’ water Fruity. I’m sure if ever you had a real emergency (God forbid) there would be some way, or machine to purify it, there used to be a self sufficient fella here who had his own water purifying machine, he had all the survival gear ready and waiting for the bomb to drop, boy am I glad he was disappointed.


Aha Bret, you mention “a goo drinker”. Different cultures have different meanings I suppose.

The word “Goo” over here refers to a tippler hankering for a drink, he/she would have “a goo on them”.

An example, two wives are talking over the garden fence.

“As I was saying Molly, there was I doing the dishes as usual, and there was himself sitting in the armchair, not a penny in his pocket and a goo on him like a fish outta water, gaspin' for a pint he was, but he wasn’t getting any sympathy from me”

“Ah sure I know Rita, men, they’re all the bloody same aren’t they, all they think about is their belly and the thing that hangs out of it”

Ah yes lads, tis an awful infliction having to suffer out a bad dose of the goo.

******

Jaysus is there no end to the death ads on TV during daytime?, especially on Talking Pictures TV, It’s enough to make you throw in the towel altogether. They seem to have doubled up on the ads now since the pandemic is on the retreat, the greedy gits are not satisfied with the death toll bonanza they had during the pandemic, now they’re going after the survivors, repeating the same thing ad nauseam, God spare us all.

That one with the cherry faced old geezer talking to “June” about getting his new policy and smiling like a Cheshire Cat is so painfully acted that I cringe when it comes on.

And what about the one offering “Pure Cremations”, how’s that worked?, do they use eco friendly fuel?, well I’m not oven ready yet and I wouldn’t be in a position to care what type of fuel they burn when they do roast my carcass.
Better hurry up and die folks of you’ll lose out on the special welcoming voucher and the free pen, actually that’s about all they’re short of saying.

Beats me why undertakers and insurance companies need to advertise for bodies in the first place, it’s not like their livelihood was threatened, folks have been dying since human life began, and somebody always got paid or rewarded for getting rid of the deceased, I’ve never heard of an undertaker going bankrupt, besides families have always had their own traditional insurance firms, we had the Royal Liver for years but they are now the Royal London, same thing only different as the granny used to say.

*******

This here is a corncrake, otters love them, I wonder when an otters’s kids are nattering away at breakfast time, does daddy otter say “Shut up and eat your corncrakes”.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

ah be jeyzus and be jameus - you don't need to be so picky - I just missed the 'd' off that's all but come ta think of it he was both heh?

we used to have a tradition in oz cities called the 6 oclock swill - they bars on certain days used to to required to close at 6pm - probably Sundays - when that bell was rung twice there was a mad rush to the bar three or four thick and all asking for 4 pints for them and their mates [they had no mates] - so as long as they had purchased a beer within 5mins of the bell they were ok and could sit and enjoy there 4 pints as their mates had disappeared and they were allowed to consume. OMG a dreadful practice for social and health reasons - not least the health of the barman!!

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

My apologies Bret, but the words “Goo” and “Drinker” go together a lot over here, so I honestly didn’t know you meant to type “Good”.

I was talking to a fella today who said he knew me from when he was a lad, to be honest I didn’t know him from Adam, he was passing by me and said hello, then he stopped to say that as a boy he used to see me in the local with his grandfather playing dominoes, I didn’t remember his grandfather until he said that I was with him when he died in the local in 1992. Then it all flowed back to me, this is a true fact by the way.

It was in the local on a Monday at about 12.15pm just before the lunchtime gang come in at 1.pm.

I had a day off work on account of the bosses father dying and I’d just got back from the funeral, the crowd all went back to a swanky Southside pub but I decided to go to me own local instead to toast the deceased on his merry way to wherever he was destined to go.

I got me pint and sat down beside old Frankie Moran, there was a reason I chose to sit with him, Frankie was never one to complain, always in good form, he was a real sufferer in silence type of fella (a bit like meself).

After a few minutes two more locals came in and we decided to have a game of dominoes, the TV was on and showing a John Wayne western, Rio Bravo I think it was, I was trying to follow the film, drink, smoke, and play dominoes all at the same time, who said men are not multitaskable.

The play came round to me and I got rid of a double four, then it was Frankie’s turn, I waited but although he still had the dominoes in his hand clutched to his chest he didn’t move, I gave him a slight nudge on the elbow, still no movement.

“I think he’s nodded off asleep Jem” says Bill Ryan who sat facing him.

Just then the film went into an ad break and we tried to wake Frankie up, but there wasn’t murmur nor movement outta him, he was as dead as a doornail rest his soul. He was 89.

The pub doors were locked and the police and an ambulance were called.

It was all so unreal, so quiet, so peaceful, not a bad way to go at all, some sort of a rare brain haemorrhage I heard later, but whatever it was he was gone out like a light without as much as a gasp, probably a fitting end for a chap who never complained about anything, live contented, die contented.

I’m reminded of a line in this old recording, Landlord: “Don’t drop dead in the pub lad, it looks bad”

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

yes great song by holloway Jem he was a great entertainer - it's all got to swishy now show offy - just get on and do ya things and don't mess about in the wings heh? now this is a true story too :

had a mate of mine who used to do amateur theatre - pantomime etc - but when he had a break would sneak down to the orchestra pit [remember them things?] where his fancy girl was a fiddle player and as there were a few of them she would have a break and fiddle with him! right still wiv me

well he was gettin so excited one night he forgot his cue to be back on stage and missed it - the show continued but someone called out " where pussin boots then?" and a mate of his who was getting pissed off shouted out " he's darn in the pit gettin his boot in the p......y - well it got the biggest laugh in the show that night - and they did consider for a moment leaving it in but the rest of the band threatened to resign on mass - they were gettin peanuts for wages anyways!

god loved that that story of your domino playing with ya mate and the old fella - what a hoot - those stories only ever seem to happen in Ireland and nowhere else? is that what they call the "blarney stories" ?

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Pussy galore the fiddle player, and zing went the strings of yerman’s heart.

Truth.
Indeed the truth is often stranger that fiction. you can’t make up truth, it already happened, if you try to change truth it becomes the opposite, a lie, therefore it’s not the truth any more.
Fiction is a secondhand story, it’s the product of a single human mind and what that mind has imagined over the course of time, whereas truth doesn’t need mind nor imagination, it’s out there on it’s own where it remains independent and untouchable, truth is a diamond, but just like a diamond, getting harder to find.
The truth may not always be to our liking but without it mankind is doomed.

When you think about it Hollywood was probably the greatest media around for instilling thoughts of what’s right and what’s wrong into my generation when we were kids, kids are not interested in boring newsreels or newspapers.
But by all accounts and in today's world it seems they were the ones who got it wrong.

For instance, when watching an old western film, we as kids would always hope that the Cavalry or the Cowboys shot more Native Americans than the other way round, us kids would cheer when an ‘Indian savage’ was shot off the top of a rocky hill or had his throat slit by a Cavalry scout seeking up behind him, and when we played Cowboys and Indians nobody wanted to be an Indian, being an Indian was ‘bad medicine’ and the slightly dense kids would be forced to fill the ranks of the ‘enemy’.

Not one of us ever set foot in America, and most never will, yet we cheered for who we were told was ’the good guys’ ‘our lads’.

I am ashamed of myself now that I never volunteered to be an Indian as a kid, but then how was I to know that they were really the good guys?

When the settlers circled the wagons and started shooting you would see at least ten Indians bite the dust to every settler, and what you don’t realise was that the settlers were stealing the land from the natives, the natives are the real patriots here, and yet we all cheered for the thieves!
Something wrong in that don’t you think?
I mean what would you do if wagon loads of complete strangers turned up outside your house and demanded you get out to let them have it?
That’s basically what happened, no matter how they try to twist it.

When you are a child you trust adults and what they show you and tell you automatically believe, you take it as the last word, gospel truth it you like.

Amazing how times change but the message is still the same ain’t it, we were all brain washed as kids at the Saturday afternoon matinee, now we have the internet doing the same thing.

Some important people throughout history have managed to convince whole populations that wrong doing is right, they said taking peoples land from them is for their own good, we will educate them and teach them our ways and they will be happy, alas, as time has proved, the opposite is the truth.

Yes Hollywood’s portrayal of these once proud people has to lot to answer for, in my humble opinion that is.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Been sayin this for years Jembo, but it was lost in the whisper of time.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Upon a visit to US Indian Nation lands in the USA, I bought a T shirt with this printed upon it. I think it backs up your point our Jem.

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Yea but look where it got us all ?? - to Trumpland eh?? the land of the big yellow quiff!!

Re: Leisurely Scribbles (part 5)

Great poster that Fruity, I hope you don’t mind if I copy it and send it off to my son, he’ll love it.

Well Phyllis and me finally get a break in the country, we’re off later today by train to her brother’s place in Wexford, she’s all excited about it, God love her she deserves a good holiday.

See you all whenever, and behave yerselves.