Haydninvienna tastes some books

So this is the new thread. The reference is of course to Francis Bacon's essay "Of studies", where he writes "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." (Essay L in the Gutenberg text.) Evidently he would have approved of the Pearl rule.

The new topic also gives me an excuse to talk about food. With Mrs H's increasing disbility I have been the family cook for the last two and a half years, and it has rekindled an interest that I had as a child — reading cookbooks, but of course now cooking from them as well. What prompted this post wasn't a book though. It was a reference I found on the net, to a cake and the recipe for making it. The recipe is here: Zebra cake. It's called a cake but if i read the recipe correctly it's a pudding, more like a cheesecake, although no cheese is involved. I have to say that despite my affection for nearly all things Finnish, i have not acquired a taste for salty liquorice. Be sure to watch the video in which she demonstrates the technique of making it. In principle, not hard but you would need a steady hand. The technique should be adaptable to other contrasting combinations. Maybe a cherry-coloured mixture instead of the salty liquorice one?

>1 haydninvienna: That is fascinating. It would be very impressive for a tea party.

>1 haydninvienna: Happy New Thread! I couldn't see anything on the linked page without clicking on something, and since all the options were in Finnish I decided to take a pass.

>3 clamairy: Thanks Clam! And for anyone who shares Clam's reluctance to click links in a very foreign language, here's a couple of pictures of the "cake":



and the recipe should be available in English by link from this page (scroll about halfway down).

ETA And of course I missed the reference to vanilla-flavoured quark, which is cheese, as an alternative to vanilla pudding mix. So it could be (but doesn't have to be) a cheesecake.

>1 haydninvienna: Happy new thread! I love licorice but salted licorice is the worst!

I was quite taken by the video of her pouring the liquids. I suspect that a certain amount of patience might be required, not to mention a really steady hand. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38DUTCmNmO8)

Happy new thread!

>5 Karlstar: Thanks! I agree on both points.

>6 jillmwo: Yes indeed. I actually read the recipe (properly this time) to see if there was a mention of the need to get a pourable consistency. There isn't seem to be.

>4 haydninvienna: Happy new thread. That cheesecake sure is visually striking.

>4 haydninvienna: I would be tempted to attempt that if the baby shower in giving was zoo or safari animal related. Thankfully it isn't, because my patience levels and careful cooking days are pretty much over.

>4 haydninvienna: That is gorgeous! Thank you for the photos.

Realising that tomorrow is Bloomsday, I was making myself a shopping list so I could sort of duplicate the lunch that Bloom orders in Davy Byrne's pub*. For some reason I looked at the Wikipedia article on Burgundy (wine), to note with distaste the reference to burgundies being promoted as investment wines. "Investment wine" is IMHO a totally barbarous idea — the whole point of wine is to drink it, not stow it away in a vault. I remember that Corinna Chapman, the hero of Kerry Greenwood's "baking" series (The Corinna Chapman Mysteries), had a friend who left her pompous, boring but wealthy wine-snob husband and got revenge for years of tedium by soaking all the labels off his expensive bottles.

*The pub is still there in Dublin and I've been in it. Never had the nerve to order a sandwich and a glass of burgundy in case they thought I was taking the you-know-what, but subsequently found that they actually offer it, although I think that €12 is a bit steep for a cheese sandwich. Still, I miss Dublin.

That's two connections between books and food.

>11 haydninvienna: Don't know if it's an urban legend or a fact, but the story is: a homeowner put all his expensive wine bottles in the swimming pool to save them during one of our California wildfires. He lost his house, but the wine was saved. With all the labels floating on the top of the pool.

HA!

>12 MrsLee: One can only hope it's true.

We are now watching a rerun of Bake Off: the Professionals, one of the spin-offs from The Great British Bake-Off/BaKing Show. The spin-off show irritates me because it almost looks like a parody of the earlier show, with the judges willing to be far more brutal than Paul Hollywood ever is. Also, they frequently mess around with classics. Now it's the turn of the Battenberg cake.

>12 MrsLee: That's an amazing story. As haydninvienna says, I sincerely hope it is true.

>12 MrsLee: >15 jillmwo: Which reminds me of this, from The Wizard of Id decades ago:
Rodney: "How do you know if a wine is vintage, Bung?"
Bung: "I give it the Lip Test."
Rodney: "What's that, Bung?"
Bung: "If it's wet enough to pass through the old lips, it's vintage.".

I rarely buy CDs but another quick browse in the charity shops found me a Deutsche Grammophon CD of a performance of Beethoven's 9th, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. This is the performance that Bernstein conducted in Berlin on 25 December 1989, where the word "Freude" ("joy") in Schiiler's Ode was replaced by "Freiheit" (freedom"). The Wall had just come down.

Update on >11 haydninvienna: the supermarket didn't have gorgonzola, which is what Bloom ate ("Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust, pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese."). Maybe with some olives. But what on earth was the mustard doing there? I made do with some dolcelatte, which is at least Italian, and I had some decent Australian red wine instead of the burgundy.

>18 haydninvienna: How do you make "relish of disgust?"

>19 MrsLee: No idea. But we know that Joyce was a bit weird in some ways, and so was Bloom. I think he is telling us that a feeling of disgust at mouldy cheese makes him relish it more, hence the "feety savour".

I finished a book! This was The Meaning of Everything, a brief history of the OED. In it one encounters amazing people like the great editors James Murray and Henry Bradley, some delightful weirdos, and some that are not so delightful. One of the more interesting ones is "the magnificently named Hereward Thimbleby Price, who was conscripted into the German army, captured by the Russians, and escaped overland to China — he wrote a book in 1919 called Boche and Bolshevik: Experiences of an Englishman in the German Army and in Russian Prisons...". Price became Professor of English at the University of Michigan, according to Wikipedia. (The book is available from Project Gutenberg.) J R R Tolkien gets a mention, as an editor of the letter W.

Murray had the "Scriptorium" (the second Scriptorium in fact) at his house at 78 Banbury Road, Oxford. Every time I travel down Banbury Road I look for the red mail box in front, put there by the Post Office as a small service to Murray because of the immense quantities of mail he sent out — early in the time at Oxford the Scriptorium was receiving 1000 slips (that is, entries for single words with illustrative quotations) every day. Many of the volunteers who contributed the slips had to be replied to, and Murray sent out many written inquiries to experts. Dozens of letters a day, all in Murray's own hand, and all written out twice because no carbon paper or photocopiers.

I still regret not having €500 (I think it was) to spare when I saw a full set of the OED in its bookcase in a charity shop in Dublin.

>18 haydninvienna: Was he disgusted at the clean white bread?

>21 Karlstar: No idea. As I said, Joyce/Bloom was a bit odd, so it's possible. Among the millions upon millions of words written about Ulysses, someone must have written about Joyce's attitudes to food.

This has nothing to do with books, but it has to do with food (sort of), and with one of my absolute favourite films — one of the very few that I'd see again at any time: Ghostbusters. Have you ever wondered about the 600-foot-long Twinkie that "Egon" uses to give an idea of how much psychic activity is going on in New York? Now you know.

Relevantly, there's a somewhat famous essay by J B S Haldane called "on Being the Right Size".

>23 haydninvienna: "That's a big Twinkie" for sure! 🤣🤣🤣

>23 haydninvienna: One of those questions one wouldn't think to ask!! (And as it happens, I hadn't been aware that they'd changed the twinkies back in the '80s'. I wonder if it had to do with the infamous Twinkie defense used in a criminal case...

>25 jillmwo: I had typed, and posted a reply about the "Twinkie defence" but then deleted it when I realised that I wasn't answering your question. The expression "Twinkie defence" originated with the trial of one Dan White in 1979. Hostess Brands, the owner of the "Twinkie" trade mark, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012. Wiki sez:

Before Hostess Brands filed for bankruptcy, Twinkies were reduced in size. They now contain 135 kilocalories (560 kJ) and have a mass of 38.5 grams, while the original Twinkies contained 150 kilocalories (630 kJ) and had a mass of 42.5 grams. The new Twinkies also have a longer shelf life of 45 days, which was also a change made before bankruptcy, compared to the 26 days of the original Twinkies.(source)

Lopez-Alt's article doesn't give a precise date for the change in Twinkies but says "Twinkies were discontinued briefly a couple of years back and reemerged from Hostess's bankruptcy as shorter, less dense versions of their previous form. " So I doubt that there's a connection. Just the usual process of increasing the price by reducing the contents.

>24 PlatinumWarlock: What you said!

>23 haydninvienna: That was a fun read, thanks.

>23 haydninvienna: I enjoyed that fact-checking article. :-)

>28 Karlstar:
Having been heavily into Pricing Theory for the last few years of my working life, I can let you know that reducing the size of products while keeping the price the same, an all too common practice as far as I am concerned, is referred to as “shrinkflation”.

I read another book! This time it was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I found in the Tesco bookswap yesterday. As it happened, I had until then never read anything by Bryson, so I picked it up partly to see why he seems to be so popular.

As you probably know, the book is a very broad-brush survey of a number of areas of science — cosmology, physics, geology, some biology and anthropology. It's an impressive achievement. Bryson is very good at assembling a large body of material and reducing it to order, and writes clearly and entertainingly. The most impressive part though, for me, is that he manages to connect it all together is a way that makes the story flow. This is no small feat.

Along the way we get introduced to some memorable eccentrics: Cavendish, who was almost pathologically shy and discovered oxygen without realising it; Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, who shared a cabin with Charles Darwin for five years without ever mentioning the woman he married very soon after the voyage ended; Rosalind Franklin, who had a major role in the discovery of the DNA double helix and died of ovarian cancer possibly brought on by her casual laboratory habits around X-ray machines (and Marie Curie, one of the discoverers of radium, whose laboratory records are still too radioactive to handle); and Buckland, who tried to sample the flesh of every animal on earth.

The book was published in 2004 and is starting to look a little dated in spots (notably in the statement that the existence of the Higgs boson is a matter for twenty-first century science), but still not bad as a general introduction. Lots of notes and a decent-looking bibliography (which would need to be brought up to date). All in all, great fun, except for the bits about how human life, or all life on this planet, might be abruptly terminated.

>30 haydninvienna: Thanks for the review, Richard - I've had the audiobook in my collection for years but have never listened to it. Sounds like a fascinating and very accessible book.

>30 haydninvienna: Sounds like a good one.

>31 PlatinumWarlock: >32 Karlstar: Thanks. It was a good one. But bear in mind that some of it is a bit dated, as I said. Which invites the question: should we expect Bryson to prepare an updated second edition? I think not — it's unlikely that a second edition would sell well enough to recoup the not-insignificant labour and other cost of preparing it.

>33 haydninvienna: That reminds me of a list of Asimov's old non-fiction books I was looking at recently. He wrote a lot of 'beginner' type books about science which must be hopelessly outdated by now.

>34 Karlstar: There's 3 of Asimov's books in Bryson's "further reading". They had some things in common — I remember an essay of Asimov's called "View from a Height", in which he suggested that what he did as a non-fiction writer was to sort of drift over the landscape of a subject like a person in a balloon, just getting a general idea of it all, rather than trying to understand a single topic in detail. That's basically what Bryson does. On the other hand, there's mention in the Bryson book of a fellow who had spent 42 years in the Natural History Museum in London studying a single species of plant (St John's Wort, if it matters). He was very thorough, apparently.

>30 haydninvienna: I read this when it was new, and then I listened to the audiobook roughly one decade later. At that point it hadn't aged too badly, but by now I'm sure those (almost) two decades are showing.
I loved it.

>35 haydninvienna:
I am very fond of St. John’s Wort. We have several spots in our gardens where it does very well. It does need a little assistance in very hot and dry weather.

>30 haydninvienna: & >36 clamairy:
This is one of those books I bought and have always intended to read but have not quite gotten around to just yet. I have couple of books like that.

>38 pgmcc: Ha. A couple thousand, more likely. You're not alone in that.

>39 clamairy:
You know me too well.

>34 Karlstar: and >35 haydninvienna: Asimov did indeed write that way. As an example, Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare provides precisely that type of useful overview. My husband swears by it.

O. M. G! watching one of the Comic Relief episodes of The Great British Bake-Off and there's Dame Edna!

>42 haydninvienna:
She got everywhere. Always welcome.

Dame Edna and her alter ego Barry Humphries — national treasures, both of them, for us Australians.

I've been a bit quiet over the last few days, partly because we still haven't exchanged contracts for our house sale, but we are now assured that it's imminent. Once it happens I will go seriously quiet because I will have an enormous amount to do, even though we are outsourcing the packing and cleaning to professionals.

"Once it happens I will go seriously quiet because I will have an enormous amount to do, even though we are outsourcing the packing and cleaning to professionals."

We understand completely. And professional packers & cleaners are the only way to go, especially once we hit a certain age.

>44 haydninvienna: I hope your legal people are more efficient than our lawyers are at that process! Good luck with all of the packing and sorting and whatnot, you may be paying people to do it, but you'll still have a lot to do.

>44 haydninvienna: and >45 clamairy: Clam is right. We'll absolutely understand. Everyone in the Pub will also be crossing all kinds of digits on your behalf. Moving is just generally stressful, even when professional packers and cleaners are involved.

>45 clamairy: >46 Karlstar: >47 jillmwo: Thanks all! I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve moved and I still hate it.

All the best with the move. You know well how stressful it is. All I can do is wish you well and hope for a smooth process and good packers and movers.

We will be here when you want to vent about the process or the professionals, and will be looking forward to your stories that will inevitably come from your move.

>44 haydninvienna: No problem at all. Good luck with everything!

Not a book, but possibly of interest to the cheese lovers in the GD: I recently discovered the Smitten Kitchen blog. Here's her way of dealing with leftover cheese: fromage fort. Note that more than one commenter had problems with the concepts of "leftover cheese" and "leftover wine".

>51 haydninvienna: I will check it out, but I am much more likely to have leftover wine than I am to have leftover cheese. 🤣 But I have been known to lose the occasional small cube in the bottom of my cheese bin.

>51 haydninvienna: HAHAHAHAHAHA! Leftover cheese or wine.

I can see that as being a yummy thing, but I am more likely to simply eat the cheese in my fridge with more wine, some tasty olives, nuts or fruit. I never, never, never, throw it out after a party! Of course, I rarely have parties, either. :)

A book that I don't intend to read right through, but bought because of its back-story: The Superior Person's Book of Words by Peter Bowler. Bowler wrote this some time in the 1970s while he was a senior bureaucrat in rthe Department of Education in Canberra. He used to do the occasional book review in the Canberra Times. I had a copy when it was The Superior Person's Little Book of Words (IIRC) but seem to have lost it. Anyway, I found this book in a charity shop in Bicester this afternoon. Cost me all of £1. Now published by Bloomsbury in London no less!

As to the book's content: rather than having a Preface or a Foreword*, it has a Prolegomena. The Prolegomena gives a good idea of the book's tone:

Words are not only tools; they are also weapons. The first object of this book is to provide the ordinary man in the street with new and better verbal weapons — words which until now have been available only to philologists, lexicographers, and art critics. Hitherto, the man who has known the precise meaning of egregious, pejorative, exigent, pusillanimous and usufruct has been able to enjoy a position of unfair advantage over the rest of us. We yield to him in debate, not because his arguments are more cogent, but because they are less intelligible. We accept him as a Superior Person because his vocabulary is a badge of rank as compelling as a top hat or a painted forehead.

Society may confine the ownership of top hats or painted foreheads to a favored few; but words are free, and available to all who aspire to them. There is nothing to prevent the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker from larding his speech with as many pejoratives as the Professor of English. All that is required is the simple effort of learning a mere hundred or so of those impressive words that lie just beyond the boundary of the average person's vocabulary — words that all of us have occasionally seen or heard without ever being quite sure exactly what they mean. And very little extra effort is needed to learn a further hundred or so words that are even less familiar — in some cases, virtually unheard of, but genuine and usable words nonetheless.

Although at the end of the Prolegomena he admits that he may have introduced 1 or 2 deliberate errors ...

*Not "forward", please. This is a curiously common error or malapropism.

And on another matter: I'm somewhat unsure whether I should put up this post but — we may actually have a real sale of our house. All the finance in the chain of sales and purchases is now approved, we are told, and now we all just have to agree on a date. The earliest that the movers can get started will be 27 July and it's projected to take 3 days to pack and load. Then a day to clean, and add a day to give a bit of margin for error, and we would be completing on 1 August. Our solicitors are now feeding that proposed date back through the chain to see if all agree. If they do, we have a deal.

>55 haydninvienna: Crossing thumbs and hoping all goes according to plan!!!

>54 haydninvienna: I hope I wasn't supposed to spot an error in that quote.

>55 haydninvienna: Good luck, I hope the date becomes actual this time, the delays have been egregious.

Congrats on the progress with the house. I hope it comes through for you.

I have two of Bowler's Superior Person's Books of Words and I love them to pieces. I found them in the 90s and won't let go of them ever.

>57 Karlstar: I didn't spot any errors, either Peter Bowler's or ones introduced by Microsoft Lens. Er, have you been reading the book, or are you a Superior Person? "Egregious" is in there.

>58 Bookmarque: There was a second one, I know, and I have or have had that too.

>56 jillmwo: >57 Karlstar: >58 Bookmarque: Thanks for the good wishes. The delays have been not only egregious but also bloody frustrating and expensive, in that we have had to shell out several thousand extra pounds in interest to the bank.

>55 haydninvienna: Hoping and hoping for you!

>60 MrsLee: Thank you!

>55 haydninvienna:
Wishing you the best for the chain working out for you.

>55 haydninvienna: Got my fingers crossed and my thumbs held!

>55 haydninvienna: Keeping my fingers crossed!

>62 pgmcc: >63 clamairy: >64 Sakerfalcon: Thank you!

>59 haydninvienna: 'Egregious' was in the list in the quote, it is somewhat common; I hear it or read it occasionally. 'Usufruct' had me though, had to look that one up.

Latest in the Keystone Konveyancing Klown Kar house sale. We have now been through a week of being told that exchange of contracts would happen Real Soon Now, and uncertainty about the settlement date — see >55 haydninvienna: . Having heard nothing up to this afternoon, I rang the agent — our solicitor is WFHing today and I can email but not ring. Apparently the latest delay is because there was a small error in a mortgage offer further down the chain, and the error has to be corrected. (Since this is down at the end of the chain, our solicitor wouldn't necessarily know of it.) After I peeled myself off the ceiling, I asked for and received an assurance that the revised offer wouldn't be sent by second class post as well.

But seriously!

>67 haydninvienna: You don't need that kind of stress! Why is our housebuying system so screwed up???

>68 Sakerfalcon: To provide comic relief to those not involved, I suppose. BTW I agree — I don't need it. My immediate response was to find the only possibly palatable strong alcohol in the house — a split-size bottle of Whitley Neill "blackcurrant gin" which I originally bought so I could try the Cthulhutini. I now know why the Cthulhutini was as bad as it was. (See also here — scroll down to about comment no 167.)

>68 Sakerfalcon: Because lawyers (or solicitors?) are involved, just to keep them in business. I apologize to any lawyers in the group, but really, selling a non-commercial property shouldn't require one.

>70 Karlstar: Um, I'm one, sort of. However: one of my sisters in law became quite a successful property investor. She has bought several properties and did all her own conveyancing. But that was in Brisbane. (Interesting lady — she first began working as a call centre worker (or something like that) in the TAB (the government horse betting agency) in the 1970s or so. By the time she retired she had raised two daughters (her husband having died of cancer some time in the mid-90s), and become a senior manager in the agency, senior enough to be sent overseas to set up a new operation. She is a few years older than me, but about 10 years ago she drove her motorhome right round Australia on her own. Probably my favourite sister in law, and definitely my kids' favourite aunt.)

>70 Karlstar: Sorry! I expect sometime in the near future putting the paperwork together for a house sale will be something the AI's do.

>72 Karlstar: Don't worry, I have been known to malign my professional colleagues. As to AIs putting together the conveyancing paperwork, that's a definite maybe. It would be easier anywhere there is a proper registered title system, but not so sure in other jurisdictions.

We’ve just been told that our buyers’ sale has fallen over. Our buyers are, we are assured, still committed to buying our place, but have to sell their own. The agent will re-market it over the weekend, and points out that last time they had a sale within 3 days. However, the prospects of us moving on the 27th don’t look good.

>74 haydninvienna:
I am sorry to hear about this dreadfully disheartening situation. Wishing you the best.

>75 pgmcc: Thanks Peter. It's unfortunately a fairly common experience right now, apparently.

>76 haydninvienna:
I hope it is resolved quickly, as I am sure you must do to. It is very frustrating and distracting for you.

>77 pgmcc: very frustrating and distracting : Indeed yes. I have to reflect that our buyers, who apparently very much want our place, have lost their sale too.

>74 haydninvienna: That stinks. Fingers crossed that you have new buyers or the original solves their issue soon.

>74 haydninvienna: &%$@#!!!! I am so sorry. :o(

>74 haydninvienna: Horrible circumstances (and one or two idiotic errors) keep thwarting a successful house sale. If you weren't swearing up a blue streak before, you'd be entirely justified in letting loose now! I am so sorry you're having to cope with this.

>74 haydninvienna: :( what >80 clamairy: said. She curses better than I do.

>74 haydninvienna: Oh no! Very sorry to hear that, I hope they find another buyer soon.

>79 Narilka: >80 clamairy: >81 jillmwo: >82 MrsLee: >83 Karlstar: Thanks all. Jill, I uttered one very coarse word only, but very loudly.

>84 haydninvienna:
Let me guess:
“supercalifragilisticexpialidocious“

>85 pgmcc: Of course it was. Started with the same letter anyway.

>74 haydninvienna: Oh no. My heart sank when I read this. I can only imagine how frustrating this latest setback is.

>87 Sakerfalcon: Exactly. Very unwelcome news. Still, we persevere.

Just occasionally, Amazon gets it right. (Their last BB, Starship Titanic, seems to have been a dud. I still haven't finished it.) Today the Kindle store has British Rail, by Christian Wolmar, for 99p. Insta-buy. This is Wolmar's history of BR from its creation in 1948 to its dismantling under John Major. I've just started reading and we are already getting stuck into the supposed justification for privatising BR. I liked this bit from his introduction:

I would like to emphasize that I am not motivated by nostalgia. For me, steam engines are rightly consigned to history, and rattling along branch lines at 30 mph is not something I miss. Indeed, in writing more than a dozen books about the railway I have never indulged in melancholic moans on the theme of ‘it was so much better in the old days’. Rather, my deep affection for the railway stems from the sheer pleasure of what is undoubtedly the best form of travel – apart from the bicycle for shorter journeys – and in learning about the role it has played in its near two centuries of existence.

Ahem. I agree about the demise of the steam engine, and that the railways are the best form of travel, although I know that there is at least one GD-er who is likely to disagree about the steam engines. Having said which, I remember the Brisbane suburban trains of the steam era. Not fun. Electrifying the suburban railway system was the smartest bit of transport policy-making ever in Queensland. Now if we could just get Brisbane's trams back ....

And an update on the sale situation as I was typing the previous post. As I said in #74, our buyers have to sell their own place. The agent rang to say that they have a couple of people interested enough to justify a certain degree of hope.

>89 haydninvienna: The abandonment of trams has been a big error repeated in many cities. Many places are bringing them back.

>90 haydninvienna:
Fingers crossed that the degree of hope blossoms into a successful transaction and an end to your uncertainty. Best wishes.

>89 haydninvienna: Yes indeed. Steam locos are undoubtedly (one of) the messiest, dirtiest and least efficient form(s) of motive power ever invented. However, they do have a certain charm on preserved lines, as witnessed by the amount of money made and crowds of tourists attracted where they exist. Fully agree about the trams, though. Melbourne's tram system was nothing short of magic when I visited in 2011 (even despite the municipal rubbish cart that parked in the tram stop precisely 30 seconds before the tram arrived, every day). Kimberley, Northern Cape, counts among its tourist attractions an open-sided museum tram that trundles through the middle of town several times a day.

>93 hfglen: You may not have noticed, but Sydney used to have a tram system too. In its heyday the system was one of the largest in the world. It got closed down in the late 50s. A single “light rail”* line was built about 20 years ago to serve Darling Harbour. Now there are 3 “light rail” lines and a fourth under construction. Canberra now has a light rail line too, which is being extended.
Melbourne had the good sense or good fortune to keep its trams when Sydney and Brisbane got rid of theirs.

*Light rail: looks like a tram to me. I’ve been on both systems. Melbourne too, and the tourist tram in Adelaide. And of course the LUAS in Dublin.

And I’ve now read Starship Titanic. If you haven’t already read it, I wouldn’t bother. The average LT rating of 3.2 is, I think, generous.

>90 haydninvienna: Sometimes I think it would be better for the seller (possibly the buyer, too) if they didn't get every little update. Just ring me when it's final, thank you very much! What a roller coaster.

>96 MrsLee: You may well be right, but I don't have that luxury. Mrs H believes that, to put it kindly, one needs to be continuously informed.

ETA I think it's actually easier sleeping at night if you know rather than worrying about what you don't know.

>94 haydninvienna: Never made it to Sydney. Sorry pardon.

>97 haydninvienna: I hope they find an all-cash buyer. Takes a lot of the drama and stress out of the process. I know it isn't likely, I just hope that's what happens.

>99 Karlstar: Me too (on both points).

Finished the book by Christian Wolmar that I mentioned in >89 haydninvienna: . I now regret that I never experienced a British railway journey until 2006, by which time the malign effects of privatisation were apparent. Wolmar is a provocative and interesting writer on public transport issues — I have another book by him called Are Trams Socialist: Why Britain Has No Transport Policy. It may have been from him that I picked up the idea that one reason (not the only one) why Switzerland is a rich country today, after being a very poor country for centuries, is the excellence of its public transport, in terms of its punctuality, comfort, cheapness and the fact that it goes basically everywhere in the country.

>100 haydninvienna:
Why Britain Has No Transport Policy.

There is an episode of Yes Minister, that explains the absence of a transport policy. This episode explains that no matter what you want to do with transport you will not keep everyone happy. Whatever you plan will annoy a sizeable proportion of the community and hence there are very few votes in it as you will lose as many votes for a given transport policy as you will win with that policy. The message to the Minister was, "TOUCH TRANSPORT AT YOUR ELECTORAL PERIL".

ETA: In the late 1960s, I believe it was 1968, a friend and I cycled to Carrickfergus and got the train back to Belfast. We were in the Guard's carriage with our bikes on what was one of the last steam engine drawn routes in Northern Ireland. I have a certain satisfaction with having travelled on a regular service drawn by a steam train.

>101 pgmcc: Whatever you plan will annoy a sizeable proportion of the community and hence there are very few votes in it as you will lose as many votes for a given transport policy as you will win with that policy is true of most policy issues. Since you mention Northern Ireland's railways, Wolmar says they are still under Government control because privatising them wasn't thought worth the effort and electoral grief.

Interesting that in Australia the regular passenger services are still under government control everywhere. Freight is mostly privatised, and so are the long-haul luxury passenger services like the Indian-Pacific and the Ghan. There are votes, lots of them, in the city commuter services, but few in long-haul passenger services.

Found accidentally while looking for something else: an Me262 at an RAF airfield.

Coincidentally, 2 images from Roque de los Muchachos in the Canary Islands: other worlds and other-worldly wildlife.

ETA oh dear.

>103 haydninvienna: What!! I was super excited until I read it was a replica. Still, that's awesome.

>105 Karlstar: Yes, sorry about that. I think there are no flyable original ones left. Wikipedia sez that a museum in Everett WA was restoring one, but there's no mention of it on the museum's website (http://www.flyingheritage.org/).

>106 haydninvienna: Like so many other planes, they weren't focused on preservation after the war. Quite a shame.

>107 Karlstar: British and American ones have understandably survived best — there seem to be no flyable survivors of German types other than a few Merlin-engined Bf 109s which survived in Spain. Apparently at least one has now been re-engined with a Daimler-Benz DB605, as it should have had in the first place.

>108 haydninvienna: Partially because of who won, partially due to quantity, too. If I remember correctly, didn't the early Israeli Air Force have some German planes? Did those all end up scrapped as well?

No news on the house buyer?

>109 Karlstar: No news other than the agent assuring us that things are going OK. Oh well.

Some non-German air forces (notably the Finnish Air Force) acquired some Bf 109s during the war and after WW2 ended, several air forces inherited some former Luftwaffe aircraft. Some of those aircraft survive. Most of the survivors seem to be Bf 109s or light types such as trainers or the Fi 156. I don't think I've come across any other surviving fighters or multi-engined aircraft other than a few Ju 52 transports.

Well, you learn something every day. There appears to be a surviving airworthy Fw 190, with its original BMW engine.

>110 haydninvienna: To the best of my knowledge and belief, South African Airways Historic Flight has a not totally original Ju 52 in flying condition. They were SAA's flagships briefly before WW2 started, and were instantly taken over by the air force. When the SAA Museum (at Rand Airport) was founded they acquired -- from Spain, I believe -- a Ju 52, and restored it to flying condition as an airliner.

I think the Swiss Air Force has or had a Ju 52 or two as well.

Apropos airplanes, but not necessarily the models mentioned above, The Bray Air Show is on today and tomorrow. Some of the planes are based at Weston Aerodrome which is beside were I live. I have been in the garden taking snaps of some of the planes as they pass over our house on their way to land. I will present a few in my thread when I have had a look at them. One picture I took showed me that a formation team taking part is The Royal Jordanian Falcons.

I will not pretend to know any of the plane types, but I am sure someone here will identify them for us when I post them.

>113 pgmcc: Awesome! That's so convenient that you can even see them from your house.

I do not, repeat not, want to start a discussion about ChatGPT — I think the whole idea is too horrifying and I'm certainly not in the mood. But this comment on a thread on Tor.com was just too good not to share:

From the sound of it, asking a question of a supposed AI (like ChatGPT) now is a lot like asking your elderly relative who is highly educated but has incipient dementia. You may get back “facts” (some true and some otherwise) and you may also get confabulation, where a story gets made up because the person (or AI) can’t admit to not knowing.

From here (comment 3, by Paul Connolly).

>115 haydninvienna: That is good. Hopefully not too much of that goes on or we'll have a whole new fountain of mis-information.

I know you're all just panting to know the latest drama with our house sale. As a result of a few phone calls and some googling this afternoon, the position now is that our buyers' buyers are expecting to exchange contracts next week; all inquiries have been done and answers supplied; and all looks good to go.

BUT: it has to be settled by the end of August (which would suit us just fine). The reason is that the buyers' buyers' solicitors are a law firm in Aylesbury who were part of the late unlamented Metamorph Law. I had never heard of this till this afternoon, but apparently it was a "consolidator" that was buying up high street legal firms around the country and got into major trouble involving unfiled company accounts, disputes over audit, unpaid staff, unpaid taxes, lawsuits by real-estate agents for unpaid commissions, you name it. The Aylesbury firm apparently had kept its own bank accounts so was not directly caught, but the legal liability insurers here are so scared (understandably) of the possibility of huge claims against any firm connected with Metamorph that they Aylesbury firm can no longer obtain liability insurance and therefore is going out of business at the end of August, after 250 years. All the other firms that were part of the Metamorph group have now been closed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up.

Minor catch (!) is that the only dates our movers can pack and ship us in time for settlement before the end of August are 16 to 18 August, which is uncomfortably soon.

>117 haydninvienna: Wow, you're right, you can't make that stuff up, that's just incredible. I hope it gets done in time and you aren't caught in that deadline.

The world of law practice here is vastly different from the one I was used to in oz when I was part of it. Then and there, a "law firm"was a group of individuals, whose names you knew, in partnership — which is the legal relationship between group of individuals carrying on business with a view to profit. All of their names would be on the letterhead. The trouble was, that in a partnership, the liability of each partner for the business's debts is unlimited. In an age when the liability for a negligence claim might run into millions, this was seen as undesirable even when protected by liability insurance. So we get the idea of a legal practice that is incorporated, as a company or as a limited-liability partnership. Trouble then is, it is no longer easily knowable who actually owns a "law firm". Once you get to that point, the idea of buying up and consolidating law firms, in the interests of cutting overheads, is not far away. As is the possibility of the sort of corporate shenanigans that are all to familiar elsewhere. The guy at the centre of Metamorph apparently has form, having been involved some years ago with another consolidator that collapsed.

>117 haydninvienna: I honestly thought you were using Metamorph as a euphemism of sorts to disguise the real corporate villain. But a google search indicates that it is a real name of a real legal group. (I admit to wondering what they might have been thinking when doing their branding. The trust factor in that name struck me as lacking. It sounds like a giant robot.)

And yes, 16-18 August does sound uncomfortably soon. But I'm glad you updated on the situation. I'd wondered.

>117 haydninvienna: OOOH! Best of luck with the timing. Keeping my fingers & toes crossed.

>120 jillmwo: Wasn't that a race of aliens from Star Trek:TNG? *wink*

>121 clamairy: Probably. Although it also brought up memories of my failure as a parent in not getting my sons one of the real Mighty Morphin Power Rangers the Christmas that they were the hot toy.

>122 jillmwo: Bwahaahaa! I know I caved and bought them. I seem to recall hanging one in the packaging from the bathroom lights as a reward when we were in the potty training phase.

>123 clamairy: Hey all you law firms that want to cut overhead, come in with Metamorph! Then you too can be a potty training incentive!

>121 clamairy: When I was describing the setup to Mrs H (who found it hard to follow and even harder to believe) I referred to Metamorph as “the Borg”.

>120 jillmwo: I have no idea what they were thinking either.

Another good little essay on Tor.com: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the TBR Pile.

>126 haydninvienna: Truth. 😊

Latest on the house sale. Get a cup of tea or something and sit down.

This morning started with an email from Pickfords the movers saying that I absolutely had to confirm a booking for the 16th by noon today or they wouldn't be able to hold the date. After some fairly frantic telephoning it transpired that the buyers' buyers would not be ready to exchange today — Friday was more likely. This left us with 3 alternatives, all of them unpalatable: take a leap in the dark and move out, hoping for the best; start again with a new removalist; just let things stay as they are, not settle by 30 August, and face an indefinite further delay until new solicitors could be instructed. Yes, the 30th, not the 31st: close of business on 30, not 31, August is the end. Don't ask me why. Also, don't ask me why the buyers' buyers' solicitors took on a job in which there was a more than remote chance that they wouldn't finish in time.

Pickfords tells me that the earliest they can offer now to begin an uplift is the 30th, which isn't soon enough. I'm now, as they say, "exploring our options", not that we have many.

As Ogden Nash put it so eloquently:

PRAYER AT THE END OF A ROPE

Dear Lord, observe this bended knee,
This visage meek and humble,
And heed this confidential plea,
Voiced in a reverent mumble.

I ask no miracles nor stunts,
No heavenly radiogram;
I only ask for once, just once,
To not be in a jam.

One little moment thy servant craves
Of being his own master;
One placid vale between the waves
Of duty and disaster.

Oh, when the postman’s whistle shrills
Just once, Lord, let me grin:
Let me have settled last month’s bills
Before this month’s come in.

Let me not bite more off the cob
Then I have teeth to chew;
Please let me finish just one job
Before the next is due.

Consider, too, my social life,
Sporadic though it be;
Why is it only mental strife
That pleasure brings to me?

For months, when people entertain,
Me they do not invite;
Then suddenly invitations rain,
All for the self-same night.

R.S.V.P.’s I pray thee send
Alone and not in bunches,
Or teach me I cannot attend
\Two dinners or two lunches.

Let me my hostess not insult
Not call her diamonds topaz;
Else harden me to the result
Of my fantastic faux pas.

One little lull, Lord, that’s my plea,
Then loose the storm again;
Just once, this once, I beg to be
Not in a jam. Amen.

I've quoted the whole thing although the bits about his social life are not particularly relevant.

>128 haydninvienna:
I am sorry about your house situation, but you brought a smile to my face with the poem. I hope you get that respite from disappointments and delays. As always, wishing you the best of luck. You are due a break.

>128 haydninvienna: A very apt poem for you. I am hoping, praying, thinking and wishing good and timely results for you. And peace of mind.

>128 haydninvienna: "Exploring options" -- one of those phrases that makes everyone sigh in shared misery. I'm so sorry that this planned move has proven to be so awfully unpredictable.

OTOH, I love the Ogden Nash. You have a gift for bringing up the most wonderful bits!

>128 haydninvienna: Oh no. I am keeping all of my fingers and toes crossed. I realize you have no choice but to deal with it, but I'm sure this would make my head explode.

>128 haydninvienna: That is quite the conundrum, sorry it is still not resolved. How likely does Friday look for them to complete their sale? Thanks for the poem, it was very fitting.

Thanks all. I laugh that I may not scream or punch something ...

Apropos, we were in the supermarket this morning and I looked at the row that has the spirits in it, since I had a velleity (now there's an unusual word: look it up) to buy a half-bottle of rye or bourbon*. I decided that under present circumstances it probably wouldn't be a good idea, but have you noticed how gin is taking over the universe? That row in our Tesco has the alcopops and RTDs**, the ports and other fortified wines, and the spirits. The alcopops, RTDs and ports take up about a third; gin and vodka takes up another third; and the rest of the row is everything else: whisky, whiskeys (all varieties), rum, brandy and cognac .... I suppose one shouldn't look for grappa or armagnac or akvavit (or brennvin!) in Tesco, but I might actually have bought any of them.

What do US-ians call a 375ml bottle of spirits? Usually here a "bottle" has either 750ml or 1 litre. The 750ml size is the metric version of the old 26 fluid ounce "bottle". There's 128 (16 x 8) fluid ounces in a US gallon, right? So 5 x 26 fluid ounces is 130 fluid ounces, close enough to 1 US gallon, so the 26-fluid-ounce bottle gets called a "fifth" because it's a fifth of a gallon. But what would a bottle half that size be called?

*I promised you food in this thread. At times like these I'm tempted to consider bourbon, rye and Irish whiskey a food group. I don't much care for gin (except as a G&T or a martini) and not at all for vodka.

**Ready To Drink. Mixtures of spirits and soft stuff — rum and cola, say. I assume I don't need to explain "alcopop".

>134 haydninvienna: Ooo, I like velleity. That describes so much of my life now.

I can only assume alcopop is a ready mix alcohol with soda pop? Blech.

About 5 years ago, I was lucky to find 3 special varieties of gin in our supermarket. Now there are at least 10, along with the standards. I can't help but think this is a good thing. Sadly, my body reacts badly to hard alcohol now, so I rarely drink it. Virgin cocktails are tasty, but not the same. I don't mean the kick, I mean the flavor.

I will let someone more math inclined answer your volume questions.

>134 haydninvienna:
Nice word, "velleity". I had to look it up, but it perfectly described the urge I had to buy Birnam Wood while in Hodges Figgis yesterday. The inclination was due to my currently enjoying Catton's The Luminaries and my thinking I would like to read more of her work.

I am amazed at the growth in gins. Like yourself I like a gin in a G&T, but gin is gin. The marketing of all these varieties is a wonderful example of the power of marketing.

"alcopop" is well known to me. I have never drunk one, but they have been successful and bringing a lot of young people to drink to excess.

>135 MrsLee: “Alcopop” is a fruity or sweet drink with alcohol, like an alcoholic soda. Soda = pop = sweet fizzy soft drink; “alcopop”: the same plus alcohol. The Wikipedia article on Alcopop is pretty good, except that, for this Australia, RTD means specifically a mixture of a named spirit and a soft drink, but “Alcopop” means just an alcoholic quasi-soft drink.

>136 pgmcc: I’ve never drunk either one. I like my tea and coffee black and my spirits neat.

I may have just taken a BB from Jo Walton on Tor.com in a slightly odd way. While reading Jo Walton's reading list for February 2023, I saw that she says that The Hands of the Emperor "... was ineluctably Canadian because it held “peace, order, and good government” to be virtues.". She goes on to say:

This seemed so unusual in a fantasy novel (or any genre novel, really) that I picked it up. It’s long. Very long. And it’s good, and indeed, this is a rare book where government is a good thing. It’s also about friendship, and holding on to minority culture. It has a health service and UBI and yes, in a fantasy world with magic and an interestingly odd tech level, and a huge complex fantasy world. It’s not perfect, there are certainly parts of it that could have been tightened up, but on the whole this is a very good book that one can sink into and enjoy. The world needs more things like this.

I completely agree, both about government being a good thing (at least when done right), and the idea of a good government being rare in genre fiction. In most of what I've read, governments are either invisible or bad.

The point of the comment about "peace, order and good government" being ineluctably Canadian isn't just the legendary Canadian niceness. The Canadian Constitution (so to call it; it's really a combination of a number of United Kingdom acts, Canadian acts and I gather even some Provincial acts on specific issues) says, in section 91:

It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces ...

Text here. The point is that, as I understand it, Canadian practice treats "peace, order and good government" almost as a separate head of power, referring to it as the "POGG power" — not unreasonably given the following statement about everything not within the specific powers of the provincial legislatures.

By contrast, the corresponding section (section 51) in the Australian Constitution (which is a unitary document) begins: "The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to ..." and then follows a list of specific powers (text here). So in Australia, the Commonwealth Parliament has power to make laws with relation to, say, defence, without any need to justify them as being for the peace, order and good government of Australia. As far as I know, there is no Australian constitutional learning on what "peace, order and good government" in section 51 actually does, if indeed it does anything.

And that's enough lawyering for today. On the other ongoing matter: there have been developments and matters are beginning to look promising (said he hopefully). More on that on Monday, maybe.

>138 haydninvienna: I know very little of Canadian politics, but The Hands of the Emperor is a wonderful book, and should be a guide for governments the world over.

>139 clamairy: Hear, hear!

For the last few days I've been pondering why genre fiction has so little to say about government. In fact it's probably true of most fiction: there isn't much fiction I know of that deals with government as an issue, and when it does the government is generally a bad one — 1984, anyone? But I realised about 1 AM this morning that there's not only a book, but a whole series of books, which is not "ineluctably Canadian" but does have "peace, order and good government" as a central virtue: the Discworld series. Lord Vetinari certainly does prize the "peace, order and good government" of Ankh-Morpork, and works tirelessly to preserve it. Granted, his methods might be a little unusual by our standards, and he is not a democrat (he believes in "one man, one vote" — he is the Man and he has the Vote). Also, his views of what is "peace, order and good government" are idiosyncratic, such as abolishing street theft by making it legal — if a footpad steals your wallet in Ankh-Morpork, he gives you a receipt. Still, the wellbeing of the city is his central concern. So I'll see your The Hands of the Emperor, and raise you Night Watch.

Ha. Just spent £70 to be told there was nothing wrong with me. Been having pain on the right side of my jaw for some days and went to the dentist. He poked and prodded and looked and asked me if I were under stress. (Yes, yes, yes.) Apparently I didn’t present as a typical case of bruxism or jaw clenching but that’s probably what it is. Note I’ve been going to this guy for some years and he remembered x-raying me last year.

And I've just ordered a couple of oddities: The Neglected C. S. Lewis (odd that this won't touchstone: there are several copies on LT) and The Decade in Tory. The Lewis book is about some of his supposedly "neglected" works, such as The Discarded Image and The Allegory of Love — in short, his literary studies. I think the deal is that the literary scholar and the Christian apologist are one person (as of course they were) and that the literary work throws light on the apologetics. We'll see. I think I have all of the neglected works and have even read them.

The Tory one does what it says on the tin. In deference to Pub rules, I'll say no more about it.

>142 haydninvienna: Make a habit of putting your tongue between your teeth. Helps you be more aware when clenching happens.

>142 haydninvienna: I can't tell from your post if you think it was good that he remembered x-raying you last year, or if you were surprised he remembered?

I'm glad there is nothing wrong, I do that from time to time as well.

>143 MrsLee: Ouch!

>144 Karlstar: Not actually sure what I thought, but probably "I believe this guy knows what he's talking about".

Another discovery from Tor.com: "competence porn". This is enough of A Thing that there's a TVTropes page about it. It's "the thrill of watching bright, talented people plan, banter, and work together to solve problems. It's not just "characters being good at a thing," particularly if that thing is fighting—otherwise, the term would apply to virtually all fiction—but specifically about using cleverness and hard work.". (Note that just googling the expression gives you a few hits that you might not have wanted.) Interestingly, The Martian (book or film) gets a mention in most of the discussions. For other examples, see the TVTropes page.

>145 haydninvienna: Would you include the amateur cooks on Masterchef Australia under that heading? I think I would, and the judges as teachers.

>146 hfglen: I've never actually seen Masterchef Australia.

The Neglected C S Lewis* arrived this afternoon. I wonder even more now. Why would the followers of Lewis as religious writer care about what he said about obscure authors of five hundred years ago? And could they ever have used a decent editor! "Westminster Abby"! And "The Fairie Queene" as the title of the long poem by Edmund Spenser!

*Figured out how to force a touchstone!

>143 MrsLee: Very clever, I see what you did there.

>145 haydninvienna: OH my mind went a whole 'nother direction when I read, "competence porn". I was thinking it must be books/movies with competent sex scenes as opposed to awkward ones?

>150 MrsLee:
I love the way your mind works. Do you give sex scenes a star rating based on how competent the actors are?

>150 MrsLee: Of course I wouldn't know about that.

And now The Decade in Tory has arrived. I hadn't looked to see how bulky it is — 686 pages total, of which 36 pages are index, and 135 pages of references. As I said, I won't comment further on it other than to say that it might well make a good answer to another book I have but haven't read, WTF? by Robert Peston. I won't be reading either one while I'm still in this country: it would be too depressing.

>151 pgmcc: Yes. :) Actually, I haven't watched a real porn movie and I avert my eyes during movies with sex, but do appreciate some quality attraction-temptation scenes leading up to the fade out as things get bouncy.

It's Friday. Jaw still hurts from time to time and I probably should go to the doctor about it but today was always going to be a crock — we were supposed to be exchanging contracts today and I would've had to accept Pickfords' quote and do some other stuff ...

As the subjunctive mood in that sentence should make clear, we haven't exchanged any contracts. Latest issue to crawl out of the woodwork goes like this. We ("A") are selling to some people called Rees ("B") who are selling to some people called Wayburn ("C") who are selling to someone whose name I don't know ("D"). C's house apparently has a slight sag in the roofline (not uncommon in truss-roofed houses). At this late stage, with exchange of contracts imminent (said he hopefully), D has sought an allowance off C's price of £6,000 to fix the sag in the roof. C's answer of course was no. The agent (realtor to US-ians) is on the case and has said very firmly that if it happens neither B nor A will be contributing. If all this eventually sorts itself out, before we leave the country I'm taking the Rees-es up to the pub. It's quite a good pub, it will be their local, and I think they've earned it, having stuck with us since February. There is some prospect of an exchange next Friday, apparently. If that happens it will be six months almost to the day since we accepted Rees' offer.

>154 haydninvienna:
Good luck!

>154 haydninvienna: I hope there is some reward for you somewhere for your fortitude through all of this.

>154 haydninvienna: Good luck!

>154 haydninvienna: Oh boy. I am so sorry. Best of luck with the next attempt!

>155 pgmcc: >156 MrsLee: >157 Karlstar: >158 clamairy: Thanks all. >156 MrsLee: The reward we are looking for involves a couple of flight tickets.

How about this: "In short, he is one of the greatest novelists of all time.". Of Terry Pratchett! Here.

>160 haydninvienna: Key insight from that article (at least in my view):

But when we come to any screen adaptation of Pratchett, there is almost no narration, either in voice or text form...This is a problem, as it is this narration that is the soul of his books, and when removed wholesale all that is left is a series of events that have been robbed of their context. The adventures may be fun, the characters eccentrically diverting, but little more.

The point about Death in ALL CAPS is equally valid.

Chin up on the whole transfer-of-residence thing. (Not that keeping your chin up would necessarily help with the jaw-clenching issue.)

>161 jillmwo: I agree, that might explain why I felt something was missing from Good Omens season 1. Haven't watched season 2 yet.

>161 jillmwo: Yes indeed. I've seen the TV adaptation of Hogfather 2 or 3 times, and while it gets many things right (such as Michelle Dockery being perfect as Susan), there's something missing, as >162 Karlstar: says.

Did anyone look at the article that The Conversation linked to? I didn't until just now. Another The Conversation piece comparing Pterry with Jane Austen (here, to save a couple of clicks).

ETA Actually, I don't give a rat's you-know-what whether he is a literary genius or not. I will still be reading him as the shades close around and Susan's grandfather is looming over the horizon.

>162 Karlstar: I Haven't watched season 2 of Good Omens either. Although I enjoyed season 1, I haven't been inclined to season 2. My so watched it and was disappointed. >161 jillmwo: The lack of something is how I feel every time I watch a Pratchett film. Now I know what it is. Makes perfect sense. In the films of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they did have little bits of narration to fill in. It worked well.

>163 haydninvienna: Thank you so much for drawing attention to that second article (Pratchett and Austen). Wonderfully serendipitous as it happens! I have just spent the past hour thinking through an outline for a blog post about a self-published book on Austen and this might factor it.

This why I love the internet (sometimes, anyway). I discovered that Dallas not only has an operating heritage streetcar line, but one of the cars/trams/whatever is called "The Green Dragon". See here (you may have to click through the slideshow).

>166 haydninvienna: Not all original, but over 100 years old is impressive.

>154 haydninvienna: Keeping my fingers crossed that you will be exchanging soon.

Exchanged! Thanks for all the good wishes. The agent rang me yesterday and said all the chain were ready, but C's solicitors were insisting on settlement no later than 8 September, since they were keeping staff on after 30 August to do completions--but only till 8 September. I went slightly ballistic because I strongly doubted that Pickfords would be able to do a removal in time and I strongly dislike being blackmailed like that, but to my surprise the nice lady at Pickfords said in effect "sure, no problem". So all is now set for completion on 8 September and then we are outta here.

OMG what a saga! So glad it's nearing the end. I hope I never have to buy a piece of real estate ever again.

>170 haydninvienna: Congratulations! Phew! So when do you board the plane to Oz?

>170 haydninvienna: Great news! And I sincerely hope it's all smooth transitioning from here.

>171 Bookmarque: >172 clamairy: >173 jillmwo: Thanks all. >172 clamairy: As soon after 8 Sept as we can.

>170 haydninvienna: Brilliant news! I wish you and Mrs. Haydninvienna all the very best with your sale and new adventure. Save journey and wishing you well in your new home. We look forward to your blow-by-blow accounts of the transition. The two of you must be so relieved that the project is approaching this critical stage.
Bon voyage and bon chance!

>175 pgmcc: Thanks Peter. Relieved hardly begins to describe it. Don’t know about blow by blow accounts but be sure I’ll keep you all posted.

>170 haydninvienna: Great news! I hope it all wraps up smoothly and neatly!

>170 haydninvienna: Woot! Doing the happy Snoopy dance with you!

>170 haydninvienna: Lots of happiness! And strength with the actual move. You have extra sympathy, as SWMBO has decreed that WE MUST DOWNSIZE, which at present seems to include a move to the Western Cape.

>179 hfglen: Thanks Hugh! Same goes for you. why move to the Wesrtern cape? I thought where you were was pretty nice.

Congratulations! I can imagine the relief you must be feeling now that is settled. Best of luck with the packing, moving, and settling in to your new place.

And now the blow-by-blow accounts start.

Removalists are paid for (ouch) and start next Monday morning.

House cleaning is booked for 7 September (not quite so ouch).

Air travel is booked (double ouch) for 13 September.

Hotel accommodation between next Monday and 13 September is booked.

Emergency passport is applied for.

Didn't I tell you about the passport issue? I have both British and Australian passports. Australia requires me, as a citizen, to enter Australia on an Australian passport. And it has to be a valid one — which means, in part, not expired. The joke is that I knew back in October last year, when we listed the house, that my Australian passport would expire this past April, but at the time the High Commission* in London was quoting such outrageous lead times that I wasn't game to send the application off in case it didn't get back in time. Had I But Known ... Then it took until February before we got a buyer, and then the first sale collapsed in July, and I sort of lost track of minor issues like passports. So here we are now in September waiting for the High Commission to issue a temporary one (and I will have to apply for a proper one first thing when we get back to Australia). But the High Commission were actually quite helpful: I sent the application in by courier on Wednesday afternoon and a nice lady rang me yesterday morning to discuss whether I should get just a temporary one or both a temp one and a real one. In the circumstances we agreed a temporary one was safer (because the real one takes longer and we won't be here to receive it, inshallah) and I should have it early next week.

In the middle of all of this I have put about 70 hours on my August timesheet, which will produce a nice chunk of cash when they pay me.

* Members of the Commonwealth of Nations (including the countries that still recognise His Majesty King Charles III as sovereign, but not only them) have High Commissions to each other, not embassies.

ETA: Just had an email from the high Commission with a receipt for my payment. If they get the passport in the mail this afternoon I should have it in the morning.

EATA I see that Jill has just suggested on Peter's thread that a crook back is the best reason to upgrade. We are flying to Oz in Qatar Airways' business class precisely because of Mrs H's back. Mind you, 24 hours in business class beats 24 hours in economy any day.

>182 haydninvienna: Hooray! Things are Moving Forward! Hope your purse strings don't get too bent out of shape before it is all over.

>183 MrsLee: Thanks, but the purse strings got totally bent a while ago. The most expensive piece of bending involved a polite letter from His Majesty's Revenue and Customs suggesting that it would be appreciated if I actually paid the tax instalment that was due on 31 July. I had been hoping to put it off until after the sale was completed. On the up side, we now get to keep a bit more of the sale proceeds.

Yikes. The passport thing to me would have been a much more hair-raising concern. Bureaucracies are not noted for their willingness to be flexible when it comes to crossing sovereign borders.

All this sorting-out seems to be having an effect. Last night I had the best night's sleep I've had for months. And I actually managed to read a book, even though it's a short book of short essays: Chewing the Fat by Jay Rayner. Rayner is a restaurant critic famous for his acerbically witty reviews of bad restaurants. (On the other hand, his review of Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, which is not negative, is pure poetry.) The book is a nice little collection of short articles written for a British newspaper. Quite good fun.

>182 haydninvienna: Congrats! Sounds like things are now moving at warp speed. The passport issue would have kept me up at night.

>182 haydninvienna:
Thank you for the blow-by-blow account. I am pleased to hear the passport issue is being sorted out and that you met with some common sense and humanity from the officials.

A small piece of good fortune. Mrs H and I both take a number of prescription drugs daily. I have 3, 2 blood-pressure drugs and a statin. She has both of those and a number of others, including a couple of potent analgesics. I have asked for, and received, 2 months' supply of all of them. Since we are both over 60, prescription drugs are free to us here; they wouldn't be in Australia. So the National Health Service has just given us a small subsidy for our move overseas.

>189 haydninvienna:
Little victories are great.

Any guesses at the source of this:

... before Franklin was fully aware of what had happened he was out of the building, buffeting his way through the shirt-sleeved crowds in George Street, and being steered into a minute bar opposite the new post office. The noise of the city subsided, though through the tinted glass walls Franklin could see the shadowy shapes of the pedestrians moving to and fro. It was pleasantly cool here after the torrid streets; whether or not Brisbane should be air-conditioned—and if so, who should have the resulting multimillion-dollar contract—was still being argued by the local politicians, and meanwhile the citizens sweltered every summer.

I was chatting with Mrs H over dinner and suddenly remembered this reference. I haven't been in Brisbane in high summer for a while, but I have no doubt that it's even hotter and sweatier than I remember — and still not air-conditioned. And I hope that there are still pubs in George Street, which used to be legendary for them.

It's from Arthur C Clarke's early novel, The Deep Range.

Monday morning and the movers are here.

>192 haydninvienna:
Good luck. Make sure they do not break any of your books.

>192 haydninvienna: Best of luck! May everything proceed smoothly!

>192 haydninvienna: Good luck with everything! Sounds like you've gone from nought to sixty in no time flat!

>191 haydninvienna: Wild guess - On the Beach?

Best of luck with the move!!!

>196 Karlstar: Wrong (see the spoiler). Wrong city anyway — I believe On the Beach is set in Melbourne. Of which Ava Gardner is supposed to have said that it was the ideal city to spend the last week of your life because it would feel like an eternity.

>193 pgmcc: >194 clamairy: >195 Sakerfalcon: >196 Karlstar: >197 PlatinumWarlock: Thanks all. First day is finished and the guys are coming back today (Tuesday). Pleasant so far — nice guys, professional, polite and careful. First thing they did was to lay down strips of clear plastic to act as walkways over the carpets. At the moment they are clearing out my storage unit. >193 pgmcc: I don't fear them breaking any books.

Third day. The house is looking very bare.

My emergency passport arrived!

Woo hoo! Glad that official necessity is sorted. I never believe any government employee until I have something in my hands.

>199 haydninvienna: Hope all continues to go well!

>199 haydninvienna:
Great news. Best wishes.

>199 haydninvienna: and the timer didn't even have to get down to one! So glad things are finally moving. Literally.

Latest: we have now officially moved out. The house is empty except for dust and spiders and the cleaners are coming tomorrow, inshallah.

Much praise for the movers BTW—Pickfords, which I recommend wholeheartedly. Turned up on time, did the job, clean, careful and polite. Not cheap but on their showing so far, thoroughly worth it.

>195 Sakerfalcon: yes, it was a bit like that. I could have done without the bit about the passport (which was basically my own fault) but everything else went more or less according to plan. Really, the worst bit has been not being able to relax with LT in the evenings.

>200 Bookmarque: My experience with Australian consular and diplomatic officials has been limited, but I have no reason not to rely on what they tell me.

>204 haydninvienna: Wow, that was fast! Good luck with the rest of your move.

>204 haydninvienna: Congrats on finding good movers/packers! If they did what they said they'd do with no fuss, arguing or extra charges, that's a good thing.

>204 haydninvienna:. What everyone else has said! Congratulations on the smooth operation and hoping all goes equally well throughout the next phase!!

>204 haydninvienna: woohoo! even in spite of a long list of tasks, you are finally on your way! It must be a relief to finally reach this stage of the process. good luck on your journey!

>206 Narilka: >207 Karlstar: >208 jillmwo: >209 Darth-Heather: Thanks all. Today it looked for a while like the wheels were at least wobbling if not falling off. I had arranged with a “professional” cleaning company to do an “end of lease” clean, because we’ve been there a long time and the general clutter meant that it could not be properly cleaned. The company that I contracted with had not, in retrospect, investigated the job: they quoted a price without looking at the house. When their worker finally showed up this morning (an hour late), she was appalled at the work necessary but knuckled down anyway. But it was not going to be possible to clean the oven or steam-clean the carpets. She was clearly right and I recall the company saying at one point that it looked like a two-person job. Anyway I left her to it and told our solicitor and the agent that I was undertaking to have those jobs done, and pay for it , if the buyer wanted. I was rather surprised to be told that by getting a professional cleaning I was going “above and beyond”. So that was that.

Then the agent rang me this afternoon and said that “Adam” was asking a favour. I thought at first that he was talking about our solicitor, whose name also happens to be Adam. But I twigged eventually that he meant Adam the buyer, and the favour was to be allowed to put a flat-packed trampoline in the backyard. By this time I was too far gone to do anything but agree. Then later I got a message from the cleaner to say that she had finished and left, but that she had met Mrs Rees who was “very happy with the cleaning”. So maybe we are OK for tomorrow.

>210 haydninvienna:
I am glad the wheels stayed on the wagon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsXoMS9-xxg

Keep singing a happy song.

So what with all the excitement of selling this house and getting things packed and cleaned and your passports, I've forgotten what you are going to be moving into in Australia. Do you have a home there, or temporary lodgings until you find a place?

It’s all over. We have settled/completed/whatever. We went back to the house a couple of hours ago to read the electricity and gas meters and drop the one remaining key and not only was the trampoline there, but a couple of ladders, something that looked like a rabbit hutch and a few other bits plus they had taken down the For Sale sign. Our solicitor rang me a few minutes ago to tell me it was all done. Odd sensation, looking at what used to be your house and knowing that within a few hours it would be someone else’s house. And now it is.

I haven’t told Mrs H yet—she is having an afternoon snooze. After all the drama of the last six months or so, I don’t even feel relief— I’m just glad it’s all over and we can fly out on Wednesday without leaving too many loose ends.

>213 haydninvienna:
Well done. You both deserve a rest after what you have been through.

>214 pgmcc: Thanks Peter. And thank you for the link in >211 pgmcc: that was hilarious. The New Christy Minstrels for goodness’ sake.

Glad it's going somewhat smoothly. When is your flight to Oz?

>210 haydninvienna: Glad that is finally over and the cleaning worked out all right. Congrats!! I don't know about you, but when we finally sold our house, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out.

>213 haydninvienna: Congratulations!

>216 clamairy: >217 Karlstar: >218 Narilka: Thanks all. Flight out is on Wednesday morning.

And >217 Karlstar: , my “dinner” was a lovely new MacBook Pro that I bought this morning. The justification for that is that I may well have to work in the next couple of months, while my usual work computer is in a shipping container on the high seas.

>220 haydninvienna: Very nice!

>213 haydninvienna: Congratulations! That's wonderful news! Wishing you a safe and smooth flight to your new home!

Now in the Qatar Airways lounge at Heathrow. Despite cringing paranoia all the way down the M40 that I might have left the passports behind or something, we are here and so far everything has gone smoothly. Flight boards at 1005–it’s now 0855. I’m reading Invisible Cities for the umpteenth time.

>223 haydninvienna: Excellent choice of reading! Safe travels and happy landings!

>223 haydninvienna:
You are probably in the air at the moment. Wishing you and Mrs H a safe journey and wonderful experiences when you reach your destination.

Invisible Cities is a BB from your good self. I have yet to read it, but it is sitting in a prominent position on my bookshelves; cover facing out to raise visibility.

Now in the hotel in Brisbane and absolutely knackered but all well.

Yay!!! Welcome home!

>226 haydninvienna:
What Clam said.

Glad to hear you've arrived safely!

>226 haydninvienna: Welcome home to the top half of the world!

>226 haydninvienna:. Moving is exhausting. Try to allow sufficient opportunities for rest and relaxation. But at least you've landed!!!

>226 haydninvienna: Glad you arrived on the continent safely! And boy, do I understand that cringing paranoia!!

>226 haydninvienna: Glad the trip is finished, hope you get some time to rest and recover!

>226 haydninvienna: Huzzah!

>227 clamairy: >228 pgmcc: >229 Sakerfalcon:> >230 hfglen: >231 jillmwo: >232 PlatinumWarlock: >233 Karlstar: >234 Narilka: Thanks all. Brisbane of today is a wildly different place to the city I moved away from in 1970: it's taller, louder, busier and much less white. I don't have any problem with the last one, but not sure about the others. Still, it's good to be back.

Hugh: just noticed that the building next door has a roof garden, and the roof garden has a plantation of strelitzias.

The hip-high orange one, I hope. The tall white-and-purple flowered Tree Strelitzia indigenous here has all the makings of a garden thug, though it may need a troop of monkeys (which we also have here) in the gang to spread the seeds and make it a pest.

>236 hfglen: It is indeed the hip-high orange one. They grow well here: my mother used to grow them.

So here we are, more or less planted in our new home town, and have to get serious about finding a permanent place to live. First things first though (sort of): I've just spent a while installing Microsoft Office on my new MacBook. For me, as long as I'm working, Microsoft Office is non-negotiable.

Beautiful morning in Brisbane, although a bit warm for pushing Mrs H around in the wheelchair. We went on a very small bookshop crawl and I bought a copy of Stiletto by Daniel O'Malley. I used to have a copy which seems to have gone walkabout somewhere. I have a very vague recollection of lending it to my daughter Katherine but she swears she doesn't have it.

>237 haydninvienna: I really dislike how much office is integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem these days, nearly impossible to use without a cloud account, using One Drive, etc.

I have a few books that have vanished the same way, I really wish I could remember where they ended up.

Now the process of finding a permanent home has to begin in earnest. I have a phone appointment with a mortgage broker on Monday. But something must be settling down — I'm reading again. For months while the house sale was dragging on I could hardly read, but now I've finished Invisible Cities, and started Babel-17, both of which I brought with me. After the bookshop crawl that I mentioned in >237 haydninvienna:, Mrs H got interested in Daniel O'Malley's first book, The Rook, so we went back to the shop and bought that and The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, by Garth Nix, which I started reading from the Bicester library before we left England and never finished. I have now read both. The Sinister Booksellers ... is pretty good, although I'm finding Garth's concern with specific types of weapons and whatever a trifle irritating — characters don't just carry submachine guns but Sterling submachine guns; Merlin sports two different, specified types of Colt Magnum revolvers, and so on. but that's a minor quibble.

I also have Einstein's Dreams and To Be Taught if Fortunate in my luggage.

The fellow behind the counter at the bookshop is from Canberra as well, but moved north to a warmer, more humid climate for the sale of his asthma. He well remembered Dalton's Bookshop in Canberra, where Garth Nix once worked.

>239 haydninvienna: I'm so glad you're able to read again! It might not seem like a big deal to a non-reader, but stress and trauma are so detrimental to the reading process. Best of luck with the house search!

>239 haydninvienna: So glad you're settling down (at least in some senses of the phrase). I am intrigued by the Garth Nix title. I'm not sure I've ever read any of his books.

>239 haydninvienna: Enjoy the reading and good luck with the house search!

>240 clamairy: >241 jillmwo: >242 Karlstar: Thanks all. Now spoken to the mortgage broker and that went OK, so we should be doing some serious house hunting very soon.

>243 haydninvienna:
Happy hunting!

>244 pgmcc: Thanks Peter. Good to see that you’re back from the dangerous wilds of Target and Kroger.

I mentioned Einstein’s Dreams above. I’ve now read it, as much as I’m likely to. It’s a kind of meditation on time and the Special Theory of Relativity, and it sort of reminded me of Invisible Cities, with time substituted for geography. Einstein himself appears in person a time or two. Not likely to become a favourite book—or perhaps I’m just not in the mood for it.

pgmcc was comparing US and Irish supermarkets in his thread just now. I can confirm that anywhere in the world I’ve been, supermarkets are much the same. I even remember once being in a supermarket in St Petersburg and being surprised by how similar it was to a Woolworths in Australia.

The thing that always has interested me about British supermarkets is how they are sorted by social class. In Australia there are 2 big supermarket chains that compete fiercely with each other, and anybody might go to either one solely as a matter of personal preference. In the UK, Waitrose is clearly at the top of the socio-economic tree, then comes Sainsbury’s, then Tesco, then Morrisons at the bottom. I’m not sure if M&S Food counts as a supermarket, but if it does it would slot in below Waitrose. FWIW we used to go mostly to Tesco, but M&S usually has better fruit&veg.

We’ve already discovered one thing that British supermarkets do better than Australian ones (at least better than Woolworths): ready-prepared meals. We are still in a hotel, with very limited cooking facilities, and have been buying ready meals from Woolworths. All the supermarkets in the UK have extensive ranges of ready-prepared meals or meal components—everything from complete roast dinners to cooked vegetables, curries, paella, Chinese, Indian and Thai dishes, whatever. Just bung it in the oven or microwave and serve. Woolworths has some but they have been pretty poor stuff in comparison. Just comparing in my mind a fettuccini with ragù bolognese from M&S with the nearest equivalent from Woolworths is depressing. Come to think of it, the supermarkets I used to go to in Doha had none of this either.

I did promise you food at some point! We’ve been watching the SBS food channel here and it’s been quite fascinating. The UK. Food Network has mainly British presenters—Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein, Nadiya Hussein—but SBS has shown us, apart from the Australian presenters, not only Rick Stein but some Canadian and NZ people and I think there’s a South African show around that I haven’t seen yet. The ubiquitous host on SBS Food, Adam Liaw, is ethnically Malaysian Chinese* and he and his co-host Poh Ling Yeow have been seeking the Australian national dishes. Big reveal: the Australian national dish is the democracy sausage.

This needs some explanation. Since forever, a popular fund raiser on Saturday mornings for clubs, scout groups, any kind of group has been the “sausage sizzle”. The basic idea is that you get a portable gas grill, sausages, sliced onions, bread, tomato sauce, mustard and anything else you fancy. Cook sausages and onions and sell a sausage wrapped in a slice of bread with or without onions etc. Often held outside polling places on election days (always Saturday in Australia), or in the car park at Bunnings hardware stores. Quick, simple and cheap, and democratic in that most people partake. Now I’m craving a sausage wrapped in a slice of white bread.

*Edited to correct the impression that Adam is Malaysian. He is very definitely Australian, whatever his roots.

EATA that we weren't aware of the "democracy sausage" thing, having lived outside Australia since 2006. The sausage sizzle, and its predecessor and sometimes partner the cake stall, has of course been going since forever — my mother was a stalwart at the church cake stalls. But now there's even a website that shows you which polling places will or might have a cake stall or sausage sizzle (or even both) on a particular polling day. The map is for the referendum on 14 October. (A referendum is a big deal — it's a binding vote on a proposed alteration to the Constitution. Note that in Australia voting is compulsory for both elections and referenda.)

>245 haydninvienna: The 'sausage sizzle' sounds great! I would not mind that at all. Around here, we have chicken 'BBQ' (actually grilled, not smoked, but cooked on a large grill) for fund raisers. It the 'good old days' these were cooked by someone associated with the organization, now there are companies that (mostly) do the cooking.

>247 Karlstar: Of course, in today's world the sausage sizzle has had to adapt to whole-grain and gluten-free bread, vegetarian and vegan sausages, and so on, but the basic idea stands. It's still largely a voluntary thing AFAIK: that is, the people who do the cooking etc are members of the club or whatever. Although we won't be voting in the referendum (couldn't enrol in time), we might see if we can find a polling place just for the sake of the sausage sizzle.

>246 haydninvienna: Interesting. Adam Liaw won his year in Masterchef Australia, and Poh Ling Yeow came second in hers (to Julie Goodwin, who seems to pop up everywhere, IIRC). And if you replace the Oz sausage with boerewors (UK readers: think Cumberland sausage made with beef) it's a "boerie roll", as found at all major and minor gatherings around here. I live in hope that our church fete on Saturday will have them.

>248 haydninvienna: For fundraising here, it is usually a spaghetti feed, or pancake breakfast. Some organizations have been stepping it up to crab feeds though.

Been a bit quiet, haven't I? But I have some news.

We've bought a house! After scanning the real estate websites and finding that every house we found interesting was already sold, we were called yesterday by an agent who we had previously made an inquiry of. He had a town house that had just been passed in at auction that the owner was very keen to sell, and perhaps we might be interested? He took us to see it this morning and we made an offer on the spot. That offer has now been accepted.

This house is a good deal smaller than the one we had in England, but we don't need a huge house. There is a spare bedroom that I'll use as a study and library. First thing will be to put in a stairlift to accommodate Mrs H's lack of mobility.

I think this conveyance will run a lot more smoothly than the one we have just been through in England.

>251 haydninvienna:
Congratulations with your new house. I hope you and Mrs H enjoy getting your new home the way you want it.

Woo hoo! That's good news - congratulations!

>251 haydninvienna: That wonderful. Hope all goes well and you're in it soon.

>251 haydninvienna: Wonderful! May it soon be a home sweet home for you.

>251 haydninvienna: Happy New Home!

>251 haydninvienna: What a huge wave of relief you must be feeling. Hope all continues well as you settle in. Out of curiosity, how long does it take to get a chair lift installed?

Congratulations! That's great news! Hope all goes smoothly for you.

>251 haydninvienna: Congratulations!

>251 haydninvienna: Congratulations!

>251 haydninvienna: Congratulations! How long to finish the paperwork, do you think?

>252 pgmcc:  — >261 Karlstar: Thanks all. We're not quite there yet (there will be a smallish mortgage involved because we need to do a few things, but that's under way). We have suggested the end of this month for completion (or earlier if possible), and we are told that our vendor has apparently already bought another house (nearby, so we need to be polite).

In other news, I finally got to try my new MBP on some real office-type work. It's going through the stuff like a blue streak! I find I can open two 300-page documents at once and edit both of them without it noticeably slowing down. In other words, purchase thoroughly justified. I did need it (because I did get called on to work while my regular work computer was in transit) and the bigger, clearer screen makes editing less of a pain in the eyeballs.

>263 haydninvienna: So nice when a purchase works as you hoped. Anything that helps the eyeballs is a good thing. Save those puppies for reading what you want to read.

>263 haydninvienna: Hmm, I must be spoiled by my work laptop, I don't think that would slow it down at all, I'll have to test it out.

>265 Karlstar: These are unusual documents--lots of complex formatting, tables, equations and the worst bits are the running headers. Going on experience with my usual iMac (and the fact that one document in particular is nearly unusable on a standard-ish Windows box), I expected there to be some issues, but there weren't.

Well. After a day of confusion and drama beginning with a systems failure of some sort at National Australia Bank (our mortgage lender) this morning, we have a loan approved and hopefully are on track for settlement. I've been a customer of this bank for 50-plus years and am seriously considering my position after all the confusion (just what you want for the bank that looks after your money).

>267 haydninvienna:
In a previous employ my desk neighbour was the company treasury manager. He was dealing with banks all day long moving money here and there to maximise interest return. One piece of wisdom he passed on to me was, “If you ever find yourself in dispute over your account it will always be due to an error your bank made.”

>268 pgmcc: Having spent a fair part of the last 15 years dealing with the fallout of the banks' excesses or trying to prevent a recurrence, I hate banks and the whole "industry". But I wasn't going to say so to the bank.

>266 haydninvienna: If I have a document that long open, it is PDF form and I'm just reading, so I doubt I'm stressing my system that much, though I almost always have a couple of spreadsheets and a powerpoint open too. Unfortunately these days, the browser is where we do most of our work.

>267 haydninvienna: Yikes! I hope it's all smooth sailing from here!

>269 haydninvienna: Undoubtedly that was the most sensible strategy to adopt. That said, I hope things settle down now and allow you to move forward in terms of getting settled into a house.

>267 haydninvienna: Congrats on getting that far, I hope the rest of the process goes smoothly!

A propos of nothing in particular, I have discovered the word vellichor. It has apparently been around the 'net since 2013, but I hadn't noticed it until I was looking at the website for a used bookstore in Brisbane. Here is Michael Quinion's definition.