Bits and bobs, this and that

I thought I'd start a more general thread where we can just post little things, like how our day has been, funny incidents etc that don't need much in the way of answer, but just everyday nonsense.

I'm covered in little catty claw pin *** marks, from newly returned Boris cat reaching up and trying to pull my trousers down! He's realised that one of the best ways to get a human to do what he wants is to stretch up and stick his claws into the fabric of your trousers just below your bum and then sit down taking the trousers with him. If you're wearing a skirt of nightie he grabs hold of the hem and shakees it!

I'm to hot, I hope it will cool down soon, I'm having trouble sleeping.

I'm reading a really interseting book by Professor Dame Sue Black, called All That Remains and is about the skeleton and what it tells forensic anthropologists. Some of you might know her from TV, things like History Cold Cases.

  • Black Shuk the spectoral dog seem to be quite specific to East Anglia, whereas big cat sightings seem to be all over the country. I'm sure many of them are mistaken, I had a very large cat, who was part Norwegian Forest cat, he was big dark brown and very fluffy, a new neighbour saw him coming down her garden and freaked out, wondering what on earth it was until she heard me call him and then saw us together. In the half light of dusk I can well imagine him looking very big and indistinct. But if these new findings are right, then it's evidence that there is a breeding population in the UK.

  • Acording the the Fortean Times Middle Aged Mulder Syndrome is a real thing, it happens to people as they get older and so many things that they wanted to believe has been explained, so they get jaded.

    Personally I'm a bit dubious about some of the explainations, they're not totally satisfactory and not because I want a totally strange answer. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I just believe that its a big universe out there and theres plenty of things left to discover and a lot of it is strange, very strange.

    One of the things that facinates me is that the number of sightings and encounters with fairies and a fairey world have decreased in proprtion to the increase in sightings and encounters with extraterestials. Looking at this makes me wonder what people are experiencing? You can either dismiss it all as nonsense, halucinations etc, but I'm more of a view that most people are genuinely experiencing something real, but exactly what remains unknown. As long as people deny anything unusual and call it nonsense the less proper research will be done and these people will be left to charletans or just left to wonder and in some cases suffer in silence. I mean it's not that long ago that "science" denied ball lightening, prefering to believe that those who saw it were lying or had seen something else, now they all know about it, even if they don't properly understand it.

  • Does anyone else read the Fortean Times?

    I was an avid reader / subscriber from issue 40 for about 20 years - used to love reading it.

    My mother used to call them "weirdie magazines" that made me enjoy them even more for some reason, but when she was talking about some piece of folklore from her childhood I could recall the articles and tell her loads about the background and research on the subject.

    I must have been insufferable back then LOL. Some say I still am...

  • It seems that there maybe DNA evidence of big cats in the UK, samples taken from a fresh kill, show not just cat tooth marks, but DNA taken from saliva traces. I bet if this is confirmed, it will cause a big flap, or it will be shut down quickly.

    I remember as a child living in rural Ayrshire 50 years ago there being  newspaper stories talked about in our village about a black panther that had been killing sheep - as we were a few miles from one of the kill sites it caused quite a stir.

    50 years on it seems the same tales still persisit. I wonder if there is perhaps something in the folklore about the black dog spirit as it is so common amongst celtic history.

  • I can't make this alliterate as well as you did, but I was more of a Teenaged Mulder and am now a Middle Aged Scully.

    When I was a kid I subscribed to The Unexplained. I loved that magazine. It's funny when I look back as to what my peers at school were into - it would be so obvious today that I was autistic Slight smile It cost more than my pocket money, so everything I had went into it and my mum made up the rest.

    I have to thank you, actually, because I have just had a look on archive.org and there are over 60 of them scanned! You have reminded me of happy times. Slight smile

  • I still love all that stuff, I'm a bit sceptical too, but one of the things I like about Fortean Times is that all their articles give the sources so as you can check yourself. 

    Have you become a Middle Aged Mulder?

    Given the amount of new animals being found I wouldn't give up on bigfoot just yet.

    I do think a lot of UFO's were black projects, some were misidentified things like weather balloons, but theres some weird stuff going on up in the skies. If you go somewhere where it's properly dark, theres all sort of stuff whizzing around.

    It seems that there maybe DNA evidence of big cats in the UK, samples taken from a fresh kill, show not just cat tooth marks, but DNA taken from saliva traces. I bet if this is confirmed, it will cause a big flap, or it will be shut down quickly.

  • I used to love all that kind of stuff when I was younger. I've become too skeptical as I got older, but I miss those days when I thought that Bigfoot was real and UFOs were visiting regularly. I loved the X Files. Close Encounters is a film that could only have ever been made in the 70s.

  • Does anyone else read the Fortean Times?

  • Iain did you try scratching a bar of soap and did it work?

    That big yellow thing in the sky has gone again and the weather has returned to normal, grey, wt and windy and a lot cooler, I actually slept properly last night.

  • I would love a green pesto coloured fur coat.

  • How can you leave pesto long enough that it grows a fur coat?

    Maybe you could use it as a culture for penicillin - that way you can self cure any infections.

    Or turn yourself into someone from "The Last of Us" TV series - depending on what fungus is growning.

    Anyway, I digress - a big chest (keep it down ) freezer is the way to go.

  • I'm starting to think I need a bigger freezer, we have so many raspberries! Almost a whole freezer drawer full and they're not done yet. Mum like to have fresh fruit on her cereal so they won't go to waste.

    My aubergene curry was very nice, but I need to tweek it a bit.

    How can you leave pesto long enough that it grows a fur coat?

    Mark can you not get pro-biotic powder?

  • They shouldn't be going hard though!

    I wouldn't have a leg to stand on

    I think you'd need some stronger supplements for that 

  • Ha ha - yes! But, it's me that opens the capsules. They are meant to be swallowed all at once. I wouldn't have a leg to stand on Slight smile

  • I'd be writing a strongly worded email!

  • A bit less fun than pesto, but I buy pro-biotic capsules to sprinkle over food (to help with IBS). After several weeks the powder inside the capsules has solidified which makes it much harder. I can't just swallow whole as that upsets my stomach too. The first time I did it, I got 3 larger bottles of them because of a 3rd one for free offer. Was a total waste!

  • Does anyone here ever get through a full jar of pesto before it starts to turn? Why don't they make the jars smaller!

  • I've been cooking today,

    That is one of the great things about this time of the year in the UK - so much fruit and veg is appearing in the markets at low prices so you can do lots of this sort of thing.

    I love to do big batches of roast veg and freeze them in smaller portions to bring out when doing meals where a side dish is nice. I even learned that you can do a big tray of caramelised onions in the oven (takes ages in a pan and often burns if you don't keep an eye on it) so it is great for French onion soup and for adding to things like cooked liver.

    For fruit it is even better - I chop up apples, pears, plums or whatever is cheap and plentiful and add some sweetener to make a sort of fruit stew. Freeze it in portion sized containers and defrost to have with Greek yogurt - delish!

    You can freeze enough for as long as your freezer keeps the food (up to 3 months in a chest freezer) if you have the space.

  • Lestat, you would, wouldn't you, I do that sort of thing all the time, dyslexia can be such fun at times, do have dyslexic hearing too?

    Boris cat has been sleeping off his adventures, I get told to sit down and have nothing on my lap so as he can sit on me, I get told to go to bed so as he can come and snuggle up, he likes me taking Fearn dog out as it means treats when we get home. Muriel cat is nick named Little Worm as she sleeps under the blanket on Mums bed and has to be poked to wake her up, then she worms her way out from the blanket for her treat.

    I've been cooking today, I've made an aubergene curry, and a potato and cashew curry, I will have a lot more cooking to do this week as I've eaten nearly everything in the freezer. I batch cook and cook about 6 or 8 portions in one go and then box them up and freeze them. I think the next week is going to be busy.

  • I left over the Carbon Monoxide Alarms, for my two rentals, over at the Estate Agency. Then, I returned my friend's underwear. He lent them to me, Wednesday, after I had skiddies on mine.

    Now at home. Bad shower, outside, which made me shut the windows in my room. I feel lethargic and need rest.

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