i had no idea that with the advancement of years one easily slips into becoming a grumpy old bast&@d eager to gripe on an on about nothing in particular but finding having a right good old 'bitch' about anything can give such a daily pleasure to an otherwise uneventful day.

and today's 'bitch' is... teapots and jugs but especially kettles.
what is it with designers of today that nothing pours from one container to another without a spout that serves its purpose... having spent months cursing my old electric kettle, and the one before that... and the one before that... my new one is just as useless... pouring its boiling contents into the teapot is like pi&*ing in the wind... now if the kettle was manufactured from metal i could have refashioned the spout by beating it with the array of hammers from my toolbox and with a good grunt swinging on the end of a pair of stilsons enough of a twist to the end of the spout to direct the liquid downwards, clear of the kettle and into whatever i wish to pour it into...
but i cant do that coz its plastic... god sakes... whoever designs these things needs standing against a wall and shooting...

Just got back from a trip to London. Tried a coat on in the Gucci Designer Shop in Harrods. It cost £20,000 - I had to read the label several times to check the price - and it made me look like an eccentric old bag lady who had got dressed in the dark in an Oxfam shop. Then had a very interesting conversation with the young sales assistant (a textiles student from St. Martins) about the mishmash of styles that now passes for postmodern fashion. Anything goes - if you can carry it off (even the young and very beautiful struggle with this chaotic look). That's the point, of course, but is this all a cynical exploitation of the rich? We both agreed it probably was. Being a fashion victim doesn't come cheap these days.

She was a bit sheepish (my word of the month) admitting the truth, but there was a definite meeting of minds between the old (me) and the young (her) which I think we both found very illuminating.

It's still a mad world, my masters, at least in Harrods.


 That's the coat on the left: purple and green Dayglo nylon, but lined with the most exquisite pale blue brocade - 21st century vulgarity contrasted with 18th century delicacy and opulence. And undoubtedly beautifully made - real craftsmanship, but who on earth would pay £20,000 for such a garment? The line-up in the picture - Oxfam shop meets Gucci - all thee outfits would set you back about a hundred thousand pounds.

Forgot to mention that the parrot accessory is extra.

My current fashion search is for wellies. We have a local issue with storm water run off - not long lasting but needing quick action.......possibly also might search for something instant to help the 'quick' bit too.

A strident woman from down the road suggests we share flood water and not to block off our properties from it. Now I need wellies like her to make sure my patch is well blocked off. I foresee sandbag wars ahead - and wait till me hydra snakes get an outing. That will cause a backwash. Perhaps I'll get  matching orange boots. I think we may become like the sunken lost land of Lyonesse after the vote and just be another part of the Silly Isles group.

OK, let's return to the domestically trivial for a moment - my courgettes are flourishing and flowering profusely but, every single flower on every plant is male. There's not a baby courgette to be seen and I'm sick of paying £2 a kg. for the little green b*ggers.
Would shouting at them help? Or pleading?

You could always put a photo of a sexy female courgette flower in front of your males and see if that encourages.....er some growing.

Wouldn't that just make the male flowers more, er, rampant? It's a sex change I'm looking for so I don't think zucchini porn would do the business.

Ah so some piccies of drag queen zucchinis then?

That's quite a frightning thought actually, rampant courgettes...... shades of Triffids there.

Normally all male flowers to start with, female ones following later.

Thanks for the reassurance, Gil, I'll keep checking.

Islanddawn wrote:

drag queen zucchinis

"We are the courgette girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear short dungarees
To show our zucchini knees."

Oops, wrong thread.

How are your courgettes Ferval? Mine did the same thing back in early June, but they are all now fully in touch with their female side whilst nevertheless starting to be suitably engorged and priapic. I harvested the first few yesterday and I noted that I now have a good three dozen courgettes all at about the three inch stage. So I'm going to be inundated in just a few days. Time to dig out all those recipes for Provençale tians, gratins and rataouille; North African couscous and tagines; Catalan tourte aux courgettes; and Greek boureki.

If only my tomatoes, peppers and aubergines were ready too.....

The zucchini flowers are yummy stuffed and fried as well of course.

And another Greek speciality, very common in the summer when there is a glut of the buggers and to die for, stuffed with egg and lemon sauce. Receipe says minced beef but pork mince is just as good or half pork half beef.

http://www.kalofagas.ca/2013/08/25/stuffed-courgettes-kolokithakia-gemista-with-avgolemeno-sauce/

Thanks for that recipe link ID ... I'll freely admit I am rather partial to stuffing things . Courgette/zucchini flowers are also good just lightly battered and then deep-fried until crisp.


But while we're ranting about vegetables ....

I had a couple of guests stay here two nights ago, who had phoned the day before to say they might be a bit late in the evening and could I do some food ... I said yes. In the event they turned up mid-afternoon at about 15:00 hours ... and so the local restaurant (just 2 km away) was still on its lunchtime service, let alone its evening business. Nevertheless having got me to agree to an evening meal, they held me to that and expected me to cook for them.

But before they set off on an afternoon's sight-seeing, they then for the first time mentioned that she was vegetarian, ... though she said she ate dairy and eggs. Her husband then piped up with, "... yes but I eat fish", in such a manner that suggested to me that he was a weekend vegetarian when at home with his wife, but who probably happily tucked into pork chops or steak every weekday in his work's canteen ... and that he was rather hoping I'd do some nice and very expensive fish, just for him. 

I did a cauliflower/blue cheese/walnut pie, with minty new potatoes, and a salad ... for them both. She said it was delicious - he didn't comment.

But that's only half of my rant. The week before I'd had another couple who again had tricked me into agreeing to cook an evening meal ... "but just something simple, we're not fussy ... only we're both vegetarian, though not vegan or anything difficult like that."

Again I said no problem, and so I planned to use the same cauliflower/cheese/walnut pie. In fact I intended to use exactly the same dish since this was the week before. Only that when they finally arrived (they were genuinly late), they suddenly announced that he was lactose-intolerant with a nut allergy, while she had to eat gluten-free! Hence my lovingly made cauliflower/cheese/nut pie went into the freezer until a few days later. In the end they got a simple salad (no dressing until demanded) and a wild mushroom risotto ... and cooked with olive oil not butter (luckily for them I'd gathered some girolles that afternoon but hadn't had time to sauté them in butter, which is usual before freezing, as olive oil tends to impart its own, rather strong flavour).

I suppose I should relish the cooking challenges these people present ... but I do find fussy eaters difficult. And that is not by any means to downplay or trivialise the seriousness of food allergies, nor of cultural food habits. But I do suspect that a lot of the gluten free and lactose intolerance guff is often, not always but often, just part of the modern, narcissistic, look-at-me-I'm-special, fad.

Frankly when I was brought up we ate everything my mum put on our plates ... if you didn't, then you just went hungry.

Don't mention courgettes, I have one, ONE, tiny little one beginning to swell but still masses of the male blooms. I do love fiori di zucca stuffed with cheese and anchovies and fried in batter but it's a fouter to make and really only a nibble or starter, I want a more substantial stuffed one, thanks for the recipe ID, but between the gender imbalance of the plants and the rotten weather we're having (the kids are off school now so situation normal) heaven when I'll be able to have any.

What sort of daft headline is this?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/06/belgian-neanderthals-were-eating-each-other-40000-years-ago

Neanderthal were Belgian or French or Spanish or German or Greek?

And I don't get the continued shock over cannibalism either in Neanderthal or HS, it isn't like they could just toddle off to the kitchen cupboard when food was scarse.

Dumbing down again..

I share your dislike of assigning modern nationalities to archaeological finds based on the location in which they are found. It is a shorthand method of establishing locale but is often misleading in its inferred assignment of character and culture to the artefacts' original owners. However my main beef with that particular press release is the total assuredness on the part of the report (in which the theorists behind the claim are not even name-checked) that dissection of remains automatically means they were being prepared for cooking/eating. This practice among equivalent cultures from the period has been examined by more open minded archaeologists in the past as indicative of intelligent re-employment of the deceased's remains in the form of tools, ornaments etc made from their bones in the context of beliefs and rituals surrounding death and honouring the memory of the departed. While this does not preclude the possibility that the flesh, once expertly rendered, was also eaten, it is extremely trite to label the practice (obviously a complex, skilled and labour intensive process producing much more than a meal) as mere "cannibalism".

https://www.southdowns.gov.uk/mysterious-prehistoric-farmers-and-missing-roman-road-revealed/

Neutral historians? I'd settle for accurate reporting of all things historical. The BBC news has just covered this but somehow a perfectly good lidar survey that revealed extensive farming systems from at least the time of the Roman occupation and probably before has morphed into being '1500 BC' and 'Some of the oldest and most extensive ever discovered' and then it became '5000 years ago'. 

Clearly nobody has ever told them about the Achaidh Cheide.   

The item is about 25 minutes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07k0skw/bbc-news-at-six-12072016

This might be more informative Paul, it's more usually referred to in the english version, Céide Fields.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9ide_Fields

Ferval,

I copied this from my message to you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9ide_Fields
You didn't read my message hein

Your friend Paul.

Good God in heaven - BoJo is Foreign Secretary. Words fail me...............


edit: - sorry Paul, it was very late indeed when I replied to you, I must have been half asleep.

ferval wrote:

Good God in heaven - BoJo is Foreign Secretary. Words fail me...............

The story is that Theresa wrote "F Off" beside Boris' name and her staff misinterpreted it.

Thank you, Trike, this kind of fawlty [sorry, can't always help myself] interpretations has thoughout my life brought many a smile to - at least - my face.

I don't think I'm ever going to listen to the news again nor read a newspaper. Threatening my (2) courgettes, tickling the cat, only opening a book that deals with stuff from before I was born and limiting my TV viewing to cooking programmes and ancient history, that's enough for me. I just don't want to know anymore, the world can continue to go to hell on a hand cart  without me: my getting upset and stressed about it all makes no difference so - exactly where are those caves?

As an ex-speleologist I can tell you that there are caves, natural limestone caves that is, in every single département of France (and of equal importance, every French département also produces some sort of wine). There are some well-decorated show-caves just the other side of the mountain from me and there are quite a few wild potholes hidden in the woods within a couple of kilometres ... but perhaps more to your liking, Ferval, would be all the ancient adits and drift mines, again just a kilometre or so further up the river valley. Some of these date back a good 2000 plus years: the iron mines were being worked by the celts well before Rome muscled in on the act, and they were worked almost continually from then until the 1960s, when it was decided it was cheaper to get the iron ore from Australia.

As to wanting to shut the door on the rest of the world, well that's me too. People come here, people go ... and people tell me they've been sat in a traffic jam on the autoroute for 3 hours because the French authorities have reinstated full border controls (and the tail back from the Spanish border at Le Perthus was 30km long last Saturday) ... and I just think: why do you all bother going on holiday?. But then I do admit that I am very lucky to live in a haven of peace and tranquility, in a forested valley with just trees and hills visible out of every window. I haven't had a "holiday" - as in going somewhere else - since 2008 (that's when I last went back to the UK, for my mum's funeral), and the only times I've spent a single night away from the house since then have been a couple of occasions camped overnight up in the mountains in a tent with Doggy-Dog. I'm dirt poor on a day to day basis, but much happier than when I was working as a, still dirt-poor, scientist and engineer in the UK. I note, with some bitter amusement, that people are still wittering on about Britain's desperate need for STEM graduates .... but when I worked, albeit for only 18 months, as a "science journalist" for the BBC (Tomorrows World, Horizon, Walking with Dinosaurs, etc ...) I made more than twice what I had previously been earning as head of research and development (with a staff of 20 technicians, scientists, and doctorates, located in three sites throughout the UK, and with an annual budget of about £1million), for a major British industrial company. I'm not bitter ... well not much ... just very disappointed. And yet people still wonder why so many of Britain's STEM graduates leave the country. 

But we are living in interesting times aren't we Ferval. I'm just glad I am 500 metres above sea level, well away from any urban centre, increasingly self-sufficient with a good vegetable garden, water from a spring, enough woodland to heat the house (and even cook if necessary) and always with about 6 months worth of food in store. And with good neighbours, a loyal dog and a couple of loving cats, what more could I want?

Meles meles wrote:

I note, with some bitter amusement, that people are still wittering on about Britain's desperate need for STEM graduates .... but when I worked, albeit for only 18 months, as a "science journalist" for the BBC (Tomorrows World, Horizon, Walking with Dinosaurs, etc ...) I made more than twice what I had previously been earning as head of research and development (with a staff of 20 technicians, scientists, and doctorates, located in three sites throughout the UK, and with an annual budget of about £1million), for a major British industrial company. I'm not bitter ... well not much ... just very disappointed. And yet people still wonder why so many of Britain's STEM graduates leave the country. 

But we are living in interesting times aren't we Ferval. I'm just glad I am 500 metres above sea level, well away from any urban centre, increasingly self-sufficient with a good vegetable garden, water from a spring, enough woodland to heat the house (and even cook if necessary) and always with about 6 months worth of food in store. And with good neighbours, a loyal dog and a couple of loving cats, what more could I want?

Part 1 - yes, I earned nearly double working for a company sticking fags in pub vending machines as did when engaged in the programming and integration of an 8-cell 16-axis machining complex, and they wonder why there are no British engineers (apart from Kwik-Fit fitters, which are what they seem to think an "engineer" is in reality).

You also need hens, MM.

MM and Trike,

Apparently  the - Danish (sorry for the translation) - saying that, 'if you want a job done, and are only willing to pay peanuts, why be surprised when only monkeys apply', holds some validity in Britain as well.


Edited for grammatical and spelling reasons.

Oook!

I was relieved to find I'm not the only person who finds some of the Barclays ads irritating. http://adturds.co.uk/?s=barclays    Also, although Barclays aren't responsible for that I'm not the only person who hates the "Secret Escapes" advert either.

I don't even bank with Barclays.  Besides the "Mortgage quicker" travesty from a few months ago it's the ad for their app that appears whenever I am trying to sign into my email account (and I can't block it with Adblock plus to add insult to injury) and the current TV ad about "We're a nation of shopkeepers because we're a nation of shoppers - take that M. Bonaparte" (apparently Barclays thinks it's funny!) that drives me crackers.  I really do wonder what planet some of the folk who dream up some of the adverts come from - adverts that annoy are hardly likely to endear a brand to the public.

The battle of the shoes, Merkel's are worn and badly in need of a clean and her pant legs are different lengths. Round one to May.

Islanddawn,

up to what I read about Merkel, she is quite another woman than May, up to my recent summarily data about May from "the papers" and from internet, among others BBC World.
I read a book about her life
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/matthew-qvortrup/angela-merkel/

And I think that her stay in East-Germany has also something to do with her behaviour...
http://www.biography.com/people/angela-merkel-9406424

Early years.
German stateswoman and chancellor Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, Germany. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor and teacher who moved his family east to pursue his theology studies, Merkel grew up in a rural area north of Berlin in the then German Democratic Republic. She studied physics at the University of Leipzig, earning a doctorate in 1978, and later worked as a chemist at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1990.

She was the daugther of a Lutheran pastor, one of the extremely few who moved from West-Germany to the East. I don't know if was then already the Honnecker- Germany...

Kind regards, Paul.

I saw the day before yesterday a French documentary (in fact it was a German one dubbed in French)
http://television.telerama.fr/tele/documentaire/berlin-1936,21336860,emission106353304.php
And my daily rant was that I got enerved by the played interferences in colour alternated with the real footage also commented...at the end I fastened the video on 64 speedier ech time that there was a fictional part...how I hankered for the old fashion BBC and ITV documentaries...but now I see in this critique:
La critique TV de télérama du 16/07/2016

En 1936, aux JO de Berlin, l'important n'est pas de participer : l'Allemagne a prévu de gagner coûte que coûte, dans une compétition plus politique que sportive qui ressemble à une démonstration de force. Le pays remportera à l'arrivée quatre-vingt-neuf médailles et fera de son stade la vitrine du nazisme, célébrant la suprématie de la race aryenne (malgré les quatre médailles d'or de l'athlète afro-américain Jesse Owens). Ce docu-fiction relate les coulisses de la création du village olympique sous la direction du commandant Wolfgang Fürstner, qui sera finalement démis de ses fonctions pendant les Jeux — du fait de son ascendance juive — et se suicidera trois jours après la clôture de la compétition. Autre personnage clé : la championne de saut en hauteur Gretel Bergmann, qui sera privée de sélection quelques jours avant les épreuves à cause des lois de Nuremberg...
"Ce docu-fiction relate les coulisses de la création du village olympique sous la direction du commandant Wolfgang Fürstner, qui sera finalement démis de ses fonctions pendant les Jeux — du fait de son ascendance juive — et se suicidera trois jours après la clôture de la compétition. Autre personnage clé : la championne de saut en hauteur Gretel Bergmann, qui sera privée de sélection quelques jours avant les épreuves à cause des lois de Nuremberg..."
This docu-fiction relates the background of the creation of the olympic village under the direction of Wolgang Fûrstner, who will be finally be excempted of his duties during the Games because of his Jewish ascendency. And he commited suicide three days after the closure of the competition. Other key figure: the champion in jumping in the height Gretel Bergmann, who will be not allowed in the selection some days before the tests because of the laws of Nuremberg..."
Now that seeing I had perhaps better viewed the complete documentary/fiction...
And after all the real footage was quite interesting showing some all day life of the Germans in Berlin in 1936...

I did some research to find a docu about the games of 1936 in Berlin but didn't find one


But one can always fall back on the film of Leni Riefenstahl...
For fear of loosing my message I will put it in an addendum...

Kind regards, Paul.

Addendum to the previous message:




https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/olympics/?content=nazi_propaganda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl


Kind regards, Paul.

Are we getting too litigious?  I had a phone call from some ambulance chasers the other day - they had heard that someone in this household had had a road traffic accident.  I did get bumped by a car just under 2 years ago but it was only going at 5 mph so apart from being shaken and a bit bruised I was okay.  I played the daft card, "No, sorry mate", that type of thing.

However I see that somebody is going to sue a fee-paying school because his son didn't do as well as he had hoped

http://metro.co.uk/2016/08/18/father-sues-private-school-after-son-fails-all-but-one-of-his-gcses-6075117/

I do feel folk need to take some responsibility for what happens to them. It can't always be the other person's fault. Then again I've heard stories of students (more at tertiary than secondary education level) having to do a lot of their studying off their own bat with limited contact with tutors.  Of course, I don't know the full facts of this case so I don't want to judge the Dad too harshly but kids do sometimes go down in their exams, surprisingly so, it's just one of those things.  I know in my time I've passed exams I thought I'd failed and failed exams I thought I'd passed.  I never contemplated suing my teachers though (mind you I didn't work as hard as I could have at school and my parents didn't pay for my primary or secondary education).  I re-took (and passed fortunately) a couple of A levels at night school - of course the fact I was paying out of my own hard earned cash may have spurred me on to put the work in.

The Charity Business. Today I tossed out yet another appeal from an organisation I had long supported. After  a casual on line search into them I learned that it had changed radically over the years with a huge infra structure and the original caring hands protection approach being replaced by financial help and home counselling with great blame being put onto reduced govt funding and nowhere was there  mention of feckless parenting, awful neglect and down right cruelty.

Likewise, so found a relation who worked  raising funds and as a volunteer hands on for many years for an animal charity - and always at Christmas and such times when paid staff sloped off, finding out about a huge invested fund,  very smart new offices and enormous salaries to the engaged top people who never go near the sanctuaries their charity supports. (Unless there was a big wig jolly put on.)

Locally, many people  raise the odd thousand for the support groups of those suffering rather obscure conditions. What help such funds can do is debatable. Every week the local paper high lights  yet another one and people are very generous in wanting to help - but in the long run do they? Somehow it all seems to be going wrong.

This site and Olympics.

So 16 days of endless sport and none of us has time to make comment or slant opinion.  Shame on us. Sorry if anyone died during this time. I exclude you. I shall rap my own knuckles - and ignore a feeling that perhaps any posts by me were not exactly welcome. No offence taken, if that i the case of course. Life is far too short and complex for fitting in attitude as well.......Garrfield has his bowl filled daily. I have to be a filler of bowls

Excuses and denials here please. Like I said, the already dead are excused.

Well, people do travel about in August. We visit, and others visit us. Kids - grand and not so grand - are on holiday and have to be amused, and gardens have to be tended.

I can't think anyone's posts are unwelcome here, least of all yours, P., although I do suspect incessant moggy things annoy, even when we try to pretend they are vaguely historical - well, sort of historical, at least vaguely political. Controversy threads do well; perhaps we need a good heated argument again. Too much pussyfooting around is bad for viewing numbers?

I have a genuine distressed rant, but I shall keep it for later. I'm going to post something about David Rizzio on my Ninnycocks/Fine Young Lobsters thread first, but before I do, I must go and buy some food.

I do hope no one has died. Reminds me of that awful news story about a Chinese take-away in Bolton that had a corpse in the back room. The chip shop was so busy that the proprietors didn't have time to sort out a dead granny. She had to wait until the last customer had gone.

No dead granny here but running a b&b in August is rather a full time job. Then on Monday afternoon the water pipe from the spring blocked ... so no water at all in the house (thankfully I'd no guests either). Two days of no water but a rising feeling of panic as I struggled to clear the blockage in a pipe hidden in the depths of the forest - while getting bitten by mossies, stung by nettles, scratched by brambles, scraped and cut by sharp stones and rough concrete - was not particularly conducive to historical thought.

But my rant turns into a rave. In desperation, having located the blockage but unable to shift it, I called one of the guys that works for the village council. Within half an hour he was here, and after some chin stroking went off to get a petrol-driven compressor (since obviously in the forest there's no electricity) from the council equipment store. And so together we eventually got it sorted. Bear in mind that the spring and pipework in question are entirely on private land and are not by any means the responsibility of the council. But it is a small village and people do tend to help others out simply as a matter of course. He likes red wine so I've left a bottle of good stuff with a thankyou note for him at the Mairie.

As to the Olympics ... well, as usual, I haven't watched any of it, they being a matter of complete indifference to me.

No dead grannies here either. Well, not unless you include my granddaughter's great granny on the 'other side'. She expired in her nineties and so there was a large family funeral in Barra from whence she originally hailed. True to form, this generated much internecine unpleasantness and considerable  resentment: fortunately I had never met her and was not invited but still had to make soothing noises when my son-not-in-law was ranting about his family's failings. Ah well, when my disposal via a black bin bag comes round, there's so few folk left that I'm related to that any ensuing recriminations will be limited and intimate.

As to not posting, I find these days I either can't think of any useful response or there's too many and then once I have organised my thoughts, it seems neither apposite or worth expressing. The weather has been mostly dull and damp, the world's too depressing to think about and the media are filled with irrelevant tripe about medals and train seats so retreating to feline goings-on and GBBO give at least a few moments of respite.

Interesting you mention Rizzio, Temp, I was thinking about him in relation to your thread. And Bothwell - now there's a fine coistrel. Recently on the radio, I heard Mary, QoS referred to as The Kardashian of the Stewart dynasty, fair or not, it made me laugh.

ferval wrote:

Interesting you mention Rizzio, Temp, I was thinking about him in relation to your thread. And Bothwell - now there's a fine coistrel. Recently on the radio, I heard Mary, QoS referred to as The Kardashian of the Stewart dynasty, fair or not, it made me laugh.

As far as I know, ferval, Mary Stuart's bottom was of a perfectly normal size. Neither Fraser nor Guy indicates that it was not. However, she and her ladies incurred the wrath of John Knox by a certain fashion (was it originally French?) for long trains trailing from the back of their dresses. To Knox's disgust what were called "targets" or "tassels" were then attached rather provocatively to these trains, presumably to draw attention to a pleasing rear. "The stinking pride of their targeted tails," Knox fulminated from his pulpit, "will provoke God's vengeance not only against these foolish women, but against the whole realm."

Crikey. What would Knox have thought of Kim and her tribe?

North Devon during a hot, sunny Bank Holiday week - grockles everywhere. The Atlantic's full of 'em.

Temperance wrote:

North Devon during a hot, sunny Bank Holiday week - grockles everywhere. The Atlantic's full of 'em.

You, you have me again...
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grockle

And what have we to say then at Ostend...no place on the beach, no place on the sea wall, nor in town. Especially with last week's hot days...but it are big earnings for the local middle class...last week best week since years...

Your Paul.

Making it up. Journalistic guff - I knew a Reuters chap who wrote up about a serious conflict (war, even) from his pad 1000 miles away. I questioned this - having heard a report on world BBC and he said his stringers kept him informed. Lies. The overseas phone connections in our region were dead at that time. He was sorted by head office eventually - having stirred further trouble and was relegated to a cupboard somewhere, or so I was told by a reporter I trusted..... the sort who only did wars if he was in the thick of it.
Now I live a far quieter life but get just as angry about journalistic guff on considerably lesser issues. Where for instance are all the women seemingly swooning about Poldark's chest - and now that rather wimpy Albert? It's all made up and we have a constant barrage of journalists feeding off one another's  plates of offal.

My central heating boiler is leaking rather badly and I have tried in vain to turn off the stop cock which appears to be jammed. I am surrounded by buckets, large metal containers used for jam-making by my neighbour and at least half a dozen extremely soggy bath towels. I await the arrival of the boiler man - like the one on the tele who works for British Gas.

I do not expect any sympthathy because, as my friend has observed, "This is a first-world problem and you will survive, ***."

This is true, but I have deleted my denial of the existence of the Star of Bethlehem having no doubt incurred the wrath of the Almighty by that silly post.

I do hope the kitchen ceiling doesn't come down. It's looking a bit saggy at the moment.

A needlessly worried Temp wrote:

This is true, but I have deleted my denial of the existence of the Star of Bethlehem having no doubt incurred the wrath of the Almighty by that silly post.

I wasn't angry in the slightest.

There should be at least two stop cocks between the water mains and an internally situated boiler, for precisely the reason you have discovered. Ideally three - the water mains, the house and then the appliance.

Not sure if that helps you but at least it's more info than you got from the Star Man.

Thank you. The jam-making neighbour's partner is making similar suggestions, talking about plumbing mysteries such as "split-feeds". They are going to turn off their water and see if that stops the deluge in my house. Not as mad as it sounds, as the three cottage here were originally one big house. There's the thing in the road if all else fails, but it's down a big hole.

Feminism seems pretty useless at such moments, I am ashamed to admit. I think I've broken the stop cock. I do hope the homme de gas arrives soon.

I want one of these - a boiler that knows when it's going to break down...

https://recombu.com/digital/article/british-gas-trials-hive-ready-connected-boiler-that-reports-faults-on-its-own#

British Gas is trialling broadband-connected boilers which can report faults automatically and connect to Hive smart heating.

The boiler from Worcester Bosch connects to your home broadband and reports to British Gas customer service to detect faults even before it breaks down.