Early Risers.

[Tony_S]

19 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Is that with chips?

More likely to be Spaetzle.

[grandadbob]

Apart from the traffic (half an hour to do 5.3 miles) my hospital trip went well.*  Got there 10 minutes early and was seen almost immediately and all done, dusted and back home by 9.10.  Now breakfasted and enjoying a coffee.

 

* Almost. I'm a couple of pounds heavier than I thought and half an inch shorter.  I seem to have lost an inch and three quarters over the years.

[iL Dottore]

20 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Is that with chips?

No.

If it's Schlager Musik then it probably comes with a Bratwurst vom Grill, Kartoffelsalat and eine große

[PhilJ W]

Happy birthday @iL Dottore

[Winslow Boy]

18 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Happy birthday @iL Dottore

 

What he said and if you think I'm saying that in Latin forget it.

[iL Dottore]

2 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

What he said and if you think I'm saying that in Latin forget it.

That's OK, I appreciate the good wishes, Thanks (and if you can't manage felix natalis  perhaps go for お誕生日おめでとうございます instead? 😁)

[tigerburnie]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Good morning all,

A pleasantly quiet birthday awaits me today. The Wolfpack and Mrs ID are off in the Holiday Hovel and we will have a suitable birthday celebration when I join them this weekend (on Saturday we will be taking part in a Hunde Military – a sort of obstacle course for man and dog).

 

Meanwhile, back at the salt mines , I have a little bit of paperwork to do and a teleconference to attend but otherwise I will be spending some time in the workshop – working on getting the “corporate“ helicopter and the “corporate“ executive jet ready for service 🤣). Some “retail therapy” may also be contemplated.

 

After which I have the onerous task of working my way from left to right through the following:

 

A celebratory – to quote Kipling* – “dusky beauty“ (a cigar) may also be enjoyed. 
 

Happy Hump Day

 

* a most amusing poem https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_betrothed.htm

Which contains the immortal words: And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Happy birthday.

A question..........................do you know that once opened whisky begins to oxidise with contact to the "new air", ie it starts going off? You have some serious drinking to do today to prevent that from happening, of course you could send a plane and I'll help in this vital work.

[jamie92208]

15 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Same for me. My schoolboy French (three years) is not good enough to read a newspaper, let alone literature, and I am hopelessly slow with any conversation beyond "ça va?".

 

 

 

 

If I have a go in French most people are very helpful and many want to practice  their English so we trade words.

14 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Mrs iD despairs of my French and is none too happy with my German (although I can converse adequately in French and my German speaking friends and colleagues say my German is perfectly OK), I am reasonably coherent in English (no sniggering in the back) ditto for Italian and my Spanish is enough to get by with.  I've also managed to pick up a few useful phrases in Arabic and Japanese as well. (Mrs iD speaks English, French, German [High- and Swiss-German] and has a basic command of Italian).

 

Yet neither I or Mrs iD consider ourselves to be unusual or exceptional - nearly all our friends and colleagues are fluent (to a greater or lesser degree) in at least 3 languages: usually German/Swiss German, English and French and often Italian as well. Polish, Czech, Portuguese and Arabic are not unknown, either.

 

It doesn't hurt that Switzerland has 5 languages: 4 official (German, French, Italian and Rumansch) and 1 unofficial (English - most official websites have English pages in addition to the four official languages).

 

Traveling back from Brig after meeting with @jamie92208 it struck me that the onboard train announcements (and most platform announcements) were always in German, English and -until we got into the Swiss German cantons proper - French.

 

I wonder how the passengers would react if, tomorrow, @Gwiwer were to announce.... The next train to Reading is approaching platform 4 - Der nächste Zug nach Reading fährt auf Gleis 4 ein - Le prochain train pour Reading s'approche du quai 4 - Il prossimo treno per Reading si sta avvicinando al binario 4

My recent experience was interesting, having visited Italian, Swiss German and French speaking Cantons.  On several trains the announcements, both pre recorded, live and on screen, changed at the borders to the local flavour.  Our last journey from Biel to Geneva crissed what I believe is known as the rossti ditch, (the French/German speaking border) 3 times and the langauges changed each time.

 

Anyway, Bon Anniversaire  á Flavio.  BON Journée.  Here we have been jabbed with our 2nd boosters and this after I'm off trainspotting.  O Happy day.

 

Jamie

Edited June 8, 2022 by jamie92208

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. A bit grey this morning but it seems to be brightening up. Saw the foxes again this morning, the vixen and one of the older cubs but no sign of the little one. Interesting about dialects, my maternal grandmother came from Brentwood and spoke with a distinctive Essex dialect. My mother was born in north east London and moved to Hornchurch with my grandparents when she was a teenager before the war. For the first half of my life I spoke what was generally referred to as Estuary English, however when I went to live in quite rural Essex (Burnham-on-Crouch) I found myself slipping into the Essex dialect. Some of my colleagues accused me of faking it but I just picked it up naturally. It was only when I heard one of the local ladies talking and it sounded so much like my mum that my mums accent was Essex through and through. This was why I think that I picked up the accent quite quickly. 

50 minutes ago, DaveF said:

Then in the afternoon a friend took me to the flat and we brought back a few pieces of furniture I want to keep - I now have to reorganise my house to fit them in, that will be today's task.  I think one item, a desk , was made by the coachbuilding and furniture making business which was once owned by a part of the family from the nineteenth century.  In addition both my Great Uncle and my Great Aunts had their own antiques businesses, I think a few small items of no great value came from them.

David

My maternal grandfather was a cabinet maker and a few of the pieces made by him still survive. His father had his own furniture making business producing bespoke furniture for the west end stores. The business occupied a couple of the arches under Broad Street station. I do wonder sometimes if a late Victorian furniture item from such as Selfridges comes up on Antiques Roadshow I cant help wondering if it was made by my great grandfather.

[PhilJ W]

This was on the forum jokes thread, the fourth and final song about home decorating immediately brought to mind @polybear's trials and tribulations with decorating.

 

[The White Rabbit]

14 hours ago, polybear said:

The Fun Factory had an office on a certain MoD site in West Wales - one of the two guys who worked there (who was a very staunch & proud Welshman) was on the phone, speaking in Welsh - it went something like this:

(with apologies to fellow ER'ers who may be Welsh)

 

"Gibber gibber gibber, jabber jabber jabber TRACTOR jabber jabber jabber......"

 

Afterwards a certain Bear quizzed him on the use of the word Tractor  - he explained that it's the same word in Welsh as in English.  So Bear pressed him on this.....

 

"Ah, it's because the welsh language is a very old and ancient language - and Tractors hadn't been invented back then"

(His wife was a Welsh language teacher - and I've a feeling there was some influence here too).....

 

I've heard similar stories, though with other words, such as microwave, computer and airport. 

 

1 hour ago, polybear said:

....After that I may get really adventurous and do some paperwork; I have an outstanding recurring reminder on the laptop that mentions "Updating the Beary Will" - the reminder may have been placed in March 2018.  Oops.  Not an easy task, however - the lack of (a) many Family members, and (b) those that are around either wouldn't be too interested in many (or any) of Bear's prized possessions, and (b) Bear doesn't feel too inclined (or indeed actually disinclined) to leave things to them anyway.  Bear can very, very easily get into Black Dog Mode just pondering the problem.  Turdycurses.

 

Snap... One problem facing me is the potential lack of an executor. Having done this recently for my mother, I have an idea what's involved and know that if a 'professional' executor gets involved at £[lots of LDC] per hour, it's going to eat into the estate in a big way. Covering the option of all my surviving relatives pre-deceasing me, I have approached four charities (as potential residual/sole beneficiaries) and asked about either them using a sympathetic firm which would only charge them 'mates rates' or using local volunteers. We're not talking pennies, it would be worth their while. In the case of a certain well-known railway, it could pay for a sizeable chunk of an extension or a new engine or two. But no, we don't do that. (I'm not asking for a guarantee, I'm only asking you to say maybe, so I can get appropriate wording/authority in the will to give you the option - and BTW, maximise the £ coming to you). No, * off! (OK, I will then...).  Most unimpressed. 

 

I may have a solution now but if I do, it's been hard to get there. Can't even give £ away... sheesh! 

 

[The White Rabbit]

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

... After which I have the onerous task of working my way from left to right through the following:

 

 

😲

 

 

30 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

Happy birthday.

A question..........................do you know that once opened whisky begins to oxidise with contact to the "new air", ie it starts going off? You have some serious drinking to do today to prevent that from happening, of course you could send a plane and I'll help in this vital work.

 

My thoughts exactly! 

 

When il D said 'working his way through', I initially took that to mean emptying the bottles (Finnish style?). But even at one measure per brand... hic... 

 

Happy (if slightly inebriated) Birthday. 

[The Lurker]

18 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Language is strange. If I ask Aditi how to say something in Hindi or Punjabi she looks blank but drop her into a conversation, she is fine. 

When i was a child, the vicar's wife was French and spoke English with a very strong French accent, despite having been in this country for many many years. She once said that she would think in English, even dream in English, but she always prayed in French!

[TheQ]

Surely everyone knows the Welsh for microwave is popty ping!!!

 

 

 

Though official dictionaries claim its. meicrodon

[BoD]

Gosh, miss a couple of days or so and the number of new pages overwhelms.  Best wishes where needed.

 

I was given a prize for French at Junior school. It must have been something of an innovation to have it in Junior schools back in the sixties but as I remember it, it comprised two classes sitting cross legged in the hall twice a week watching a fifteen minute programme on a small, by today's standards, black and white TV.  I can't for the life of me remember what the programme was called but I did enjoy it.   The language teachers in my first two years of senior school soon extinguished my enthusiasm and any interest I had and so I never took a language as an option.  Something I often regret now.

 

Not knowing when I was to have my cataract op we hadn't booked any holidays this year. I have just rectified that by booking a few days in the Orkneys of all places. I fancy it will be a holiday of history and myth with perhaps a visit to Highland Park distillery too.  I am particularly looking forward to seeing the chapel built by Italian POWs.

 

Stay safe folks

 

 

[Tony_S]

37 minutes ago, The White Rabbit said:

(Finnish style?).

My son told me about a conference (European  geography student association) he  went to in Helsinki. It was one of the Dutch students who needed medical assistance after a sauna drinking incident. 
@BlackRat mentioning the Schlagermusik reminded me of one of our first trips to Austria. There were lots of evening boat trips on the lake that we could hear. These were organised by different travel agents. The cruises for Germans sounded very jolly as they passed by. 
Tony

[polybear]

1 hour ago, The White Rabbit said:

Snap... One problem facing me is the potential lack of an executor. Having done this recently for my mother, I have an idea what's involved and know that if a 'professional' executor gets involved at £[lots of LDC] per hour, it's going to eat into the estate in a big way. Covering the option of all my surviving relatives pre-deceasing me, I have approached four charities (as potential residual/sole beneficiaries) and asked about either them using a sympathetic firm which would only charge them 'mates rates' or using local volunteers. We're not talking pennies, it would be worth their while. In the case of a certain well-known railway, it could pay for a sizeable chunk of an extension or a new engine or two. But no, we don't do that. (I'm not asking for a guarantee, I'm only asking you to say maybe, so I can get appropriate wording/authority in the will to give you the option - and BTW, maximise the £ coming to you). No, * off! (OK, I will then...).  Most unimpressed. 

 

I may have a solution now but if I do, it's been hard to get there. Can't even give £ away... sheesh! 

 

 

Bear has attempted to have several wills made professionally via the various "Wills Week" schemes that run with the aim of raising funds for Charity - it turned out that the Solicitor I chose was a Trustee of one of the charities (that was to "do rather nicely, thanks very much") was named as a beneficiary (purely by chance as it happens).  I'd gone along with a (even I do say so myself) a very carefully drafted DIY Will on a USB stick (plus paper copy) - similar documents of Bear's (for others) have gone thru' Probate with no problems whatsoever - and she never pointed out any errors, despite reading thru' it at the meeting.  It was a simple Will - but with numerous bequests.  Once it was done she contacted me to say that as it was rather long "it fell outside the normal scope of the scheme blah blah blah" and that under normal circumstances it would cost in the region of a grand.  FRO.....

She then went onto say that she'd do it for half that as it was a part of the scheme.  Bear argued that no mention of this was made at our meeting, at which point she got the 'ump, threw her toys out of her cot and said that "the Solicitor - Client relationship had broken down and she could no longer represent me".  Suits this Bear.

As I'd got plenty of useful info at the meeting I made a donation to the Charity anyway so they wouldn't lose out.  The Solicitor got sweet F.A.  They must've realised they'd dropped a tab cos' they never chased me for any money.

 

Several years later I tried again under the scheme with a different Solicitor - they gave me a draft copy that had so many basic errors (e.g. Beneficiary "A" living at Beneficiary "B"'s address) that I tried to get them to correct several times it became a joke - they'd sort some and it'd come back with new ones added.  I ditched them - and they got now't as well.  T0ssers.

 

In other news.....

The check of the skirting went very well - a Happy Bear.  Then a morning of paperwork - still ongoing; this was interrupted at one point by a Neighbour calling briefly (she with the busted - but now fixed mower) to deliver 27 two-finger KitKats...YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 😁😁😁

Edited June 8, 2022 by polybear

[The Lurker]

17 hours ago, TheQ said:

Bor, thassa lud a squit’ ,

 

I suppose Parisian french is equivalent to "received pronounciation" in English.

 

Me languages no chance, I know words but brain isn't fast enough to make up sentences..

I think there is also the hangover that at least until the Revolution and probably later, the majority of the French did not speak French as their first language. They spoke Occitan (closer to Catalan) or Breton or any number of other minor languages. I presume that this is why the Academie Francaise is so keen on ruling that there should not be imported words and that there should be a French word instead - I remember le Parking came under fire, probably back in the 80's (something like stationment de voiture, certainly "un e-mail" was supposed to something like "un courriel" and only yesterday I heard that they were insisting that gamers should not use common English terms for what ever it is that gamers mention but use proper French phrases instead.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/france-mandates-french-language-replacements-english-gaming-words-streamer-2022-5?r=US&IR=T

 

I guess that is one of the joys of speaking English  - it's a language born of continual immigrations and emigrations and has a bit of a magpie nature. Why make up a word if there's a perfectly good one elsewhere that we can nick?

[The Lurker]

Happy Birthday iD

[Tony_S]

11 minutes ago, The Lurker said:

gamers should not use common English terms for what ever it is that gamers mention but use proper French phrases instead.

I wonder what the French for “laggin’ noob” is?
Tony

[The Lurker]

7 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I wonder what the French for “laggin’ noob” is?
Tony

never mind the French, I wonder what the English is!

[Coombe Barton]

31 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Though official dictionaries claim its. meicrodon

Sounds like that it's a very small dinosaur

[Barry O]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

No.

If it's Schlager Musik then it probably comes with a Bratwurst vom Grill, Kartoffelsalat and eine große

Bratwurst mit Frites und "Chip Sauce" bitte!     something which kept the BAOR and Schnellies going for years!

 

Baz

[simontaylor484]

Afternoon 

Happy Birthday @iL Dottore

 

Not much to report on this morning 

According to Facebook some barsteward has left dried dog food in the park laced with tablets.

I would love to get hold of said individual with car batteries jump leads and a bucket of water and no medical aid.

 

 

[polybear]

14 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

I would love to get hold of said individual with car batteries jump leads and a bucket of water and no medical aid.

 

 

Hmm....nice starter (did you see what Bear did there?) - now what's for main course?

 

In other news....

BBC have just reported that a Garage in Swansea is now selling unleaded at 202.9 - yesterday was the biggest jump in fuel prices in a day apparently