Author Topic: You know you're middle aged when  (Read 186347 times)

ian

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #325 on: 27 February, 2017, 08:42:24 pm »
Usually these days it's a case of go to the pub to discover it's (a) closed and boarded up or (b) it's been turned into a stack of overpriced suburban fuckhutches. (b) is generally a corollary to (a).

Kim

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #326 on: 27 February, 2017, 08:46:15 pm »
More middle-aged would be when old people do that thing of giving directions using the names of pubs that aren't there, and you realise that you're understanding them.

Mr Larrington

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #327 on: 27 February, 2017, 08:48:23 pm »
Last time I looked at beerintheevening.com there was still a review of a pub not far from Larrington Towers which was bulldozed about quarter of a century ago to widen the A406.
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ian

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #328 on: 27 February, 2017, 09:17:35 pm »
There's a curious archeology of once-upon-a-pub names on the local bus route home.

Though I guess it's better alternative than labelling the stops alternately 'Tesco Express' and 'Sainsbury's Local'.

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #329 on: 31 March, 2017, 06:30:41 pm »
I've just had a very thorough eye test & examination, carried out most efficiently by Abigail (Bsc.Hons), who appeared to be about 14.  It's not just policemen....
Not fast & rarely furious

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hellymedic

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #330 on: 31 March, 2017, 06:33:56 pm »
A medical contemporary of mine underwent some surgery performed by a consultant born after she graduated...

essexian

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #331 on: 31 March, 2017, 06:41:39 pm »
Last time I looked at beerintheevening.com there was still a review of a pub not far from Larrington Towers which was bulldozed about quarter of a century ago to widen the A406.

If you are talking about the Crooked Billet, that was our local when I was in the 6th Form at what was McEntee senior school....also now gone....back in 1978 to 80!

Now that makes me feel old! I remember going to an 18th birthday party there which ended up with the birthday girl in hospital after an almighty fight with the girlfriend of a boy she was snogging and no, it wasn't me!


Mr Larrington

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #332 on: 31 March, 2017, 07:00:44 pm »
Yes, the Crooked Billet.
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ian

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #333 on: 02 April, 2017, 06:40:23 pm »
Yes, it's an experience when you find yourself in a situation that requires dropping your undergarments for a perilously young female GP. I squeaked (literally) something about seeing a male doctor (yeah, yeah, I know I should have thought of that first, but I've never seen a female GP at the practice and as anyone who's ever tried to communicate with the type of Gorgon that staffs a GP surgery's reception knows, it's best not to try and communicate with them). Not one of my finer moments. My only saving grace was that I didn't try to crack a joke about it, because there are so, so many ways that could have gone wrong.

On the plus side, I just went to a see my wife perform some Sunday concert at a local church. I must have been the youngest person in the audience by a few decades.

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #334 on: 03 April, 2017, 12:38:49 am »
Usually these days it's a case of go to the pub to discover it's (a) closed and boarded up or (b) it's been turned into a stack of overpriced suburban fuckhutches. (b) is generally a corollary to (a).
Or completely disappeared, turned into a mini-Tesco (I know of a few), or even, like what used to be the nearest pub to me (& which this street is named after) a Sprinkles ice-cream parlour.

The pub my teachers went to when I was a sixth former is now a Deobandi Islamic Culture and Community Centre.

http://www.closedpubs.co.uk is a very sad site.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Mr Larrington

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #335 on: 03 April, 2017, 02:58:48 am »
One pub close to Larrington Towers got turned into a Tesco-ette, to the relief of the neighbours, the police and, in fact, anyone who wasn't a drug dealer or amateur cage fighter.
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ian

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #336 on: 03 April, 2017, 10:28:06 am »
To be fair, the one at the end of my road back in the day (The Maypole, SE4) was without a doubt the least friendly and most unpleasant pub in the entire world, so not a lot of tears were shed when that was pulled down (for some reason it took umpteen years to turn the vacant lot into fuckhutches, but I can understand the urgency to just pull the place down, probably with the grumpy fuckers still inside).

Jaded

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #337 on: 03 April, 2017, 10:33:19 am »
The problem is that when the pub was pulled down they went home to vote Leave and post comment on the bottom of the internet.
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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #338 on: 03 April, 2017, 10:34:57 am »
Round where I grew up  there were 2 or 3 decent pubs and one which you wouldn't go into without a stab vest. Guess which is the only one not to have been  turned into either housing or a burger restruant.
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T42

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #339 on: 03 April, 2017, 11:27:32 am »
When the f*king pensions tw*ts badger you for details of your employment 40 years ago and you find that the mice got there first.
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ian

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #340 on: 03 April, 2017, 12:29:59 pm »
The problem is that when the pub was pulled down they went home to vote Leave and post comment on the bottom of the internet.

Probably. It was one of those places that genuinely went silent when you walked in (OK, we only went once, and that was once too often). And stayed silent for the entire five minutes it took to get served in a virtually empty pub and the next 30 seconds it took to down my pint and run back out the door.

I don't think they wanted any further customers than the four surly fuckers they already had.

It is a bit sad to see pubs disappear though and turn into anonymous flats or supermarkets (how many supermarkets do we need, they all sell the same stuff and usually within a few pence of the same price?).

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #341 on: 03 April, 2017, 12:36:55 pm »
You* feel stiffer and sorer two days after replacing fence posts than you* did on the day after. All I can say is thank goodness the builders had been cheap with both the length of the posts and the concrete so there was far less to dig out.



* for you read I  :-[.

Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #342 on: 03 April, 2017, 12:40:29 pm »
When you spend a couple of days wondering where the screwdriver that's just the right size for fettleing the PIR has got to and then see it lying in plain view at the back of the kitchen worktop.
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
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Kim

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #343 on: 03 April, 2017, 12:44:36 pm »
When you spend a couple of days wondering where the screwdriver that's just the right size for fettleing the PIR has got to and then see it lying in plain view at the back of the kitchen worktop.

Objection:  That's normal screwdriver behaviour, whatever your age.

Torslanda

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #344 on: 03 April, 2017, 12:47:46 pm »
...and 5mm hex keys!
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

robgul

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #345 on: 03 April, 2017, 02:01:43 pm »
Yes, the Crooked Billet.

I used to go in there in the mid-70s when I worked in Higham Hill Road - the one thing I remembered about the roundabout was that if you entered from Billet Road you were supposed to do a complete circuit rather than sneaking across the A406/N Circ to get into Chingford Road and past the Stow dog track.

Last time I was around there I came off the M11 going south - past Gates Corner, Water works etc and was at Edmonton before I realised it had all disappeared!  Ted's cafe at Woodford, opposite the Roundabout pub went when the M11 was built :-(

Rob

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #346 on: 03 April, 2017, 06:16:57 pm »
It's no great secret that Larrington Towers is actually located in Higham Hill Road.
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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #347 on: 03 April, 2017, 07:39:25 pm »
...and 5mm hex keys!

I tried to get round this by having at least 3 of these in the garage.  They're in cahoots or somethings, they all hide.

Cudzoziemiec

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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #348 on: 16 May, 2017, 08:59:28 am »
George Eliot was about 41 when she wrote:
Quote
The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood whom life has consecrated and disciplined to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair.
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Re: You know you're middle aged when
« Reply #349 on: 16 May, 2017, 11:58:05 am »
Yes, the Crooked Billet.

I used to go in there in the mid-70s when I worked in Higham Hill Road - the one thing I remembered about the roundabout was that if you entered from Billet Road you were supposed to do a complete circuit rather than sneaking across the A406/N Circ to get into Chingford Road and past the Stow dog track.

Last time I was around there I came off the M11 going south - past Gates Corner, Water works etc and was at Edmonton before I realised it had all disappeared!  Ted's cafe at Woodford, opposite the Roundabout pub went when the M11 was built :-(

Rob

.... while I lived in Highams Park