General Chat

Hello all:))

Janet I'm glad you're feeling better - a night out tonight is just what you need. I'm also going out - to a trivia night.

I've had such a busy day. I helped my mum for a few hours in her garden doing some of the heavier stuff she finds difficult to do now. We're running a charity bbq on Sunday at our local hardware store - some of you Aussies will know Bunnings which is the equivalent to the B&Q? stores in the UK. I've been running around with a couple of others picking up stuff for the bbq. Then I went and did some shopping because for some reason the food in the house disappears. After I put the shopping away I went to visit the new mum next door who is having her first day at home by herself with the baby now that hubby has gone back to work.

Enjoy the rest of your day Aussies and have a good day Poms.

Sue xx

A bleary eyed good morning to everyone. I am so tired because we had such a disturbed night.

The next door neighbour is away on holiday and since she went at the weekend her burglar alarm has gone off three times. It comes up with an error message when it is reset,so it obviuosly has a fault. It went off at 12.45am this morning, so we had to go in and switch the thing off. It is going to stay off until they get home and can get it fixed.

Then at 3.30am our smoke alarm went off, no reason other than it felt like it. It then kept beeping, so OH had to disconnect it from the ceiling and put it out in the garage so we couldn't hear the thing. If it was the usual stick up battery type,it would be easy to deal with, but it isn't, it is wired into the mains and a real pain to deal with. We have been going to get a new system put in for a while, but haven't got round to it.

Plus I have had to get up early because we have workmen coming sometime between 8-9 am. Well it is now 8.30am and there is no sign of them yet.

I feel a grumpy day coming on

Well they did turn up in reasonable time and started drilling holes in the walls. We are having cavity wall insualtion put in. The house is only twelve years old, but we haven't owned it from new. When we bought it,we just assumed that there would be cavity wall insulation, but apparently was one of the last houses to be built under the old building regs. Having said that it was built with special five inch thermal insulation blocks on the inside,so it was not so bad.

We added loads of extra insulation in the loft and it has double glazing,so we thought that we were up to spec.If we had known that there was no insulation in the walls, we would have put it in as we did in the previous two houses we owned.

We only found out a couple of weeks ago when the energy company came round doing a survey. it seems the government is trying to get all houses insulated. I couldn't believe that they only wanted £99 to do it,as it is a fairly large L shaped house,so has lots of walls to fill.

So this morning two fine examples of British workmen turned up, ciggies in mouth and set about the work. I have had to close all the windows because of all the dust, outside looks like a snow storm on a red desert. They moved the patio furniture,but before I realised what they were up to,they had covered all my salad crops in red brick dust.Oh well.

OH of course decided that he must go to the cinema to do a couple of jobs, leaving me to it. Little does he realise that I am going offto have my hair cut this afternoon,so he can clear up the horrendous mess outside all on his own.

Oh and just for the record, even at my advanced age,I still have natural blonde hair,so no blonde jokes gentlemen!

Good morning to everyone in here. I hope you are all feeling well and you all have a good day (or should that be night)? xxxx

Hello, just a couple of quick comments. I don't usually chat on this board, as I tend not to stay on very long. Sorry, but I do try to come back as often as possible.B usy trying to enlarge my tree on Ancestry. "Hints" are all very well, but when some trees are added or merged with my tree I get strange places like Windsor, Vermont, US or Sydney, Stuts, New York when the events happened in Windsor or Sydney NSW. It also comes up with the infamous double comma. We don't use "counties" in the US sense here. I think they are only used on land titles. OK, I am in the county of Cumberland as is Berona I think, but not SueMaid. It is obvious that Ancestry was set up using US practice. Rant over.

The next is a defence of time zones. I remember when Britain ran on GMT. One hour behind Western Europe. Was it changed to harmonise with the continent?
Australia, like Canada and the US, is too big for just one time zone.
I think there is an argument for South Australia and the Northern Territory to come into line either with the Eastern states, or go a full hour behind us instead of 30 minutes, but that is a matter for the respective governments.
As Allan has previously mentioned, his state is two hours behind us (7 hours ahead of BST). They recently rejected daylight saving altogether. Queensland is a different matter. Daylight saving was never accepted there, originally bloodymindedness by a now deceased state premier but daylight saving would probably still be rejected there too. It upsets the cattle and fades the curtains. As someone mentioned, it causes real problems at Tweed Heads-Coolangatta. Buses leave the former and arrive nearly an hour earlier. On the return journey they leave Coolangatta and arrive over an hour later. Such fun.
More seriously, I have mixed feelings. It is lovely to have the extra hour of daylight in the afternoon, not so sure of the dark mornings in late spring and early autumn. And the changeover affects my emotional health for a couple of weeks.
Hello to all.

Hi Posh, I haven't said hello before. Interesting name. It is supposed to originate on voyages of the upper classes to British India. Port Out, Starboard Home. Referring to the side of the vessel where you had your cabin. The best cabins were on the side not in direct sun. The story may be complete nonsense but I rather like it.

I'll add my two cents on Pommie. Not that we have 1 or 2 cent coins anymore, and now they want to get rid of the 5.

There are numerous stories about the origin but it is definitely not Prisoner of Mother England. Convicts were referrred to as Government Servants. It may be a derivation of the pomegranite-like complexion of the recent arrival.

Blow. this was supposed to be a short post and it's going l e t t e r by l e t t e r. My last one was done by cut and paste because it was long.
xx Colin

Hi all,

Janet, I hope that your dinner was not postponed due to unforeseen circumstances. lol

The weather here has been lousy..gale force winds all day with intermittent rain, then about 5.30 pm the heavens opened.

Made a beaut pea and ham soup today...my OH made some bread....fantastic comfort food.

Weather not cold but bl**dy miserable

Allan

Hi Everyone,

Allan.........If it's any consolation to you, it is a grey miserable day here today.
Not cold, but that fine soaking mountain mist drifting along in waves on the breeze - not nice at all. Rain forecast for tomorrow too.

Colin......Your explanation of the word POSH is correct, and was the official explanation given on P&O liners that I worked on for many years.

Regards
Tec

As a senior citizen was driving down the motorway, his car phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him,
"George, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on the motorway. Please be careful"
"Heck," said George,
"It's not just one car, It's hundreds of them"

Tec.

G'day all

Firstly, my apologies to Janet. My response to her post had a totally different meaning to the one I should have posted which was " I hope your dinner was not pstponed due to unforeen circumstances" In my oeiginal psot I missed out the very important word 'not'. I have now edited it

Moral of this tale is either proof read correctly or more importantly, don't post when all you've had to eat is a couple of bowls of soup and a couple of glasses of red!

Tec, soaking mists I can cope with. but yesterday the rain was so heavy that you couldn't see 10 metres in front of you. 15mm of rain since 9.00am yesterday and I reckon it all fell in one go

I like the joke Tec

It reminded me of that very old one where a man is pulled over by the police for driving the wrong way down a one way stree

"Didn't you see the Arrows? asks the copper "no" replied the driver "and I never saw the indians, either!"


Allan

Noooo, Tec. That was as bad as Allan's jokes.

Janet, did you have a good night out? I went to the trivia night last night and had a really good time. Plenty of laughs and, although we didn't win, we did ourselves proud. Only 7 points off the winners score. We had a good mixture of young and old people so that always helps.

Linda I bet you're already in bed. What a day you've had. The alarms going off wouldn't help. I hate any kind of home renovations. We had the bathroom redone a few years ago and the dust - especially on the first day - drove me to distraction. When we had our kitchen remodelled a couple of years ago it wasn't so bad and it was done in a day.

Tec I hope your wife is feeling so much better.

Enjoy your day Aussies and your evening, Poms:))

Sue xx

Edit - the jokes are getting worse, guys:)

Hi SueMaid

Surely you meant that Tec's jokes are as good mine!!

Allan

Good Morning Allan,

Gosh - That's a lot of rain in one go, I hope your property is on a slope, or your have good drainage.

We live at the bottom of a mountain, the land then slopes down to the sea, so excess water tends to flow past. When we have extremely heavy rain, the nearby river becomes a torrent of white water as it makes it's way to the beach.

Good joke re the arrows and the indians

Tec.

Hi, Allan. No I said what I meant - the jokes are getting worse and you're as bad as each other. Hey don't take it personally you're both nice guys but.....

Sue xx

Hi SueMaid,

If you continue to be rude about my jokes, I shall inflict more on you - and I'm sure Allan has a whole catalogue (?) of jokes.
We could drive you insane between us.

Pleased you did well at the Trivia Quiz - they have a quiz night at my local pub, but I haven't been for ages - brain rusting up!

Tec.

Sue I forgot to say my wife is much better today - thank you for asking.

Tec

Hi Tec. Glad your wife is much better. As for driving me insane - you're too late. My OH has the same sense of humour and he drove me insane years ago:))

Sue xx

Good evening Tec,

The house is on a slope but the garden is terraced. Also the soil is very sandy as we are on what is known as the Swan Coastal Plain. Flooding is not usually a problem, but parts of Bunbury and Busselton which are low lying do tend to flood on occasions

Having said that, the soils due in fact become water repellent, which is a b*gger in summer and you have to apply a wetting agent otherwise water just runs off: and with the cost of water you have to do something!

I remember going to Paris some time ago.

It was so hot that I stripped off and jumped in the river


The police charged me with indecent exposure.....

I pleaded guilty but in Seine

lol

Allan

At least I wasn't in De Nile!!