What are you doing right now?

[T42]

Eating a fresh oatcake with !butter melting into it.

[Ham]

.... !butter melting into it.

Not butter, and you're proud of it?

[Kim]

vacuum of BT technicians

New collective noun?

[T42]

.... !butter melting into it.

Not butter, and you're proud of it?

"Proud"?

[ian]

Breaking the bestest plates/bowl. Oh woe. Wiggling another plate under them, they committed a suicidal leap to the tiled floor. Ka-boom. All four of them.

Scramble plan Obscured Guilt.

I can

(a) dispose of evidence at bottom of bin, disavow all knowledge of said plates. What plates? I've not seen them for ages.

(b) blame a cat.

(c) order take-outs and rave about how much I like soup until identical replacements can be sourced and hope she doesn't notice. I have no idea where they came from. Possibly a shop.

(d) Leave the country, have plastic surgery and assume a new identity.

[Mr Larrington]

Waiting for the man from BT to install some piece of internet gubbins while wondering whether Nice Man Mike from Andrews & Arnold really meant "Monday" or "December 4" in the e-mail confirming the date

Which discrepancy I only noticed at 11 pm yesterday chiz.

This ^^^^ again.

[T42]

Breaking the bestest plates/bowl. Oh woe. Wiggling another plate under them, they committed a suicidal leap to the tiled floor. Ka-boom. All four of them.

Scramble plan Obscured Guilt.

I can

(a) dispose of evidence at bottom of bin, disavow all knowledge of said plates. What plates? I've not seen them for ages.

(b) blame a cat.

(c) order take-outs and rave about how much I like soup until identical replacements can be sourced and hope she doesn't notice. I have no idea where they came from. Possibly a shop.

(d) Leave the country, have plastic surgery and assume a new identity.

Or adopt MrsT's approach and say "WTF, they're only things".

[ian]

To be fair, I wouldn't have dislodged them if the cupboards weren't already overfull of plates and stuff (inlaws keep bringing stuff they don't want, which we don't want either, nor need for that matter, but out of politeness my wife doesn't dispose of in the fashion preferred by the Greeks). Alas, I broke the ones we do routinely use so I foretell a trip to the Scandic wastelands of Croydon Ikea at some point in our future. Possibly on my way home tonight though that combines the delights of CS7 and the urban ville of Toots-le-Mitcham. Oh be still my beating heart.

Anyway, in the end, as she was late home and I hid under the bedclothes. Message this morning declares YOU BROKE ALL THE PLATES! If only my breakage wasn't so strategic we'd have more cupboard space.

[T42]

MrsT dropped most of a tea-set when our block was hit by lightning soon after we moved to Paris. That was gratifying; it was a ghastly wedding-present.

[Kim]

To be fair, I wouldn't have dislodged them if the cupboards weren't already overfull of plates and stuff (inlaws keep bringing stuff they don't want, which we don't want either, nor need for that matter, but out of politeness my wife doesn't dispose of in the fashion preferred by the Greeks).

I think that's a generational thing.  Mrs Barakta's-Mum comes from a time when housing was cheap and Household Things were expensive, and consequently has an urge to buy us bedding that we don't need or have space for, and is ultimately worth about 10 hours rent.

[ian]

To be fair, I wouldn't have dislodged them if the cupboards weren't already overfull of plates and stuff (inlaws keep bringing stuff they don't want, which we don't want either, nor need for that matter, but out of politeness my wife doesn't dispose of in the fashion preferred by the Greeks).

I think that's a generational thing.  Mrs Barakta's-Mum comes from a time when housing was cheap and Household Things were expensive, and consequently has an urge to buy us bedding that we don't need or have space for, and is ultimately worth about 10 hours rent.

Some of it's from her grandparents and I guess it was traditional to hang onto that stuff, whereas we're the pop to Ikea generation and buy four plates for £12.50 generation. Plus there's only two of us. My wife's mother is convinced she's going to go ga-ga like her mother (no unlikely, but it'll be hard to tell) so she's disposing of stuff by leaving it our house. Also random sums of money deposited in our bank account. The last one was so you can buy a vacuum cleaner. We have a vacuum cleaner. We don't have an actual cleaner (because she's unwell).

[Mr Larrington]

Woo-hoo!  I haz wizzo internets!  Thank you, Nice Man Errol from Openreach.

It then took me twice as long as it took NME to install his kit to diagnose why the doorbell had stopped working.  Partly because NME had put a nail through the wire 'twixt push and bonger, but mostly because the blue wire on the mains cable had come adrift from the transformer.  At least I remembered to unplug it before faffage commenced.

[Kim]

Kudos for having a doorbell with a transformer, rather than any of this newfangled of-course-it-doesn't-work-it's-wireless or internet-of-shit rubbish.

[spesh]

I've always fancied having an Edwardian-style mechanical bell-pull system.

Until I saw how much they can cost... 

[Kim]

Friend of mine moved into a house and discovered the Edwardian-style bell-pull operated an impressive mercury switch from the days before health & safety.  Bonus.

[L CC]

Eating.
One of our customers just dropped off 144 stroopwafels. O my.

[Ham]

Are you certain that wasn't 100? Maybe?

[ian]

Contemplating cordless vacuum cleaners. Is there any more strident symptom of disappointment in being an adult than buying a vacuum cleaner? Remember when you were on the cusp of your teenage years, thinking of all the stuff you'd be able to do when you were an adult, the fun you would have? Whatever you want! Sex. Vodka. Chocolate cake for breakfast. Vodka, sex, and chocolate cake for breakfast. A smorgasbord of decadence. The all-you-can-eat buffet of sensual pleasures.

This is what it comes down to. Being a grown-up. Buying a vacuum cleaner. Other than the case studies of gorily misplaced amour that occasionally grace the back pages of esteemed medical journals, there's nothing exciting about vacuum cleaners. No one dies and thinks, oh god, if only I'd bought more vacuum cleaners. The emptiness at the heart of my life. Probably sucked out by a big existential vacuum cleaner.

I have a chunker Dyson somewhere but that's a faff of power leads and oh it's a Dyson and he can fuck off and then fuck off some more. We drove past his estate in the Cotswolds at the weekend and I leaned out of the car window and dopplered WANKERRRRRRRRR! over the wall. Well, I didn't because decorum dear, but I wanted to, I really did. See, that's the sort of stuff you should be able to do as an adult and, let's face it, wouldn't that be a lot more fun than buying a vacuum cleaner. Unless you shoved the hose up his arse and hit the mighty suck button. That said, then he'd have to thank the EU, were it not for their cruel limits on suckability, his entrails would be cyclonically reeled out of him. Then he would have his very own grisly intestine bobbin. He'd probably have to try and reinsert it. If so, I hope something important snaps off in the process.

OK, I've evidently not bought a vacuum cleaner in the modern age, but really, there's one (ok, lots) called Shark. Don't call a vacuum cleaner Shark. It doesn't make it any cooler. It's a vacuum cleaner. In fish terms, it's probably down there with haddock.

All this is because our cleaner is sick and apparently, so I'm told, hiring another cleaner in the meantime is like announcing that you expect her to die. Modern life, it's a poorly mapped minefield of social mores that you've been asked to navigate while wearing snowshoes on your feet and a bucket on your head.

[Mr Larrington]

"Cordless" and "Wireless" are the twin banes of the New Elizabethan era, and they probably cause cancer too.

[ian]

No one wants to fight with vacuum cleaner cables, they just get tangled around the random stuff that inhabits my house (mostly soft toy otters, occasional live cats, and gin bottles). It's the same with lawnmowers, a task that was never much fun in the first place is rendered even less fun by trying not to run over the cable and electrofry yourself and then having to bodge the cable back to together with tape in a thoroughly non-H&S-approved fashion. I don't want to be hanged in a frightening house cleaning incident that will likely be incorrectly classified somewhere towards the end of the autoeroticism spectrum.

If the powers-that-be hadn't hushed up Tesla's wireless electrickery my house would be a lot better.

I tried to delegate the vacuum purchase to my wife, though she simply pointed out why, I'm not going to be using it, am I? in a manner that suggested the question mark was an optimistic addition on my part. Then reminded me how useful it will be the next time I drop all the plates.

[Kim]

Nobody wants to fight with batteries or small petrol engines, either, thobut.

Dirty house surrounded by jungle.  It's the only way to be sure.

[Jurek]

Friend of mine moved into a house and discovered the Edwardian-style bell-pull operated an impressive mercury switch from the days before health & safety.  Bonus.

Late to this party, but somewhere, in amongst my Dymo ^TM labelled drawers, I have a mercury tilt switch which used to activate the under-bonnet lights of my first car when the bonnet was lifted.

[spesh]

Nobody wants to fight with batteries or small petrol engines, either, thobut.

Dirty house surrounded by jungle.  It's the only way to be sure.

Alternatively, those with lawns could keep goats or geese - not only will they keeping the grass trimmed - they'll also provide a measure of security and if the election results in what one considers a doomsday scenario in accordance with personal ideological conditioning, they will be a handy source of protein. 

[spesh]

Friend of mine moved into a house and discovered the Edwardian-style bell-pull operated an impressive mercury switch from the days before health & safety.  Bonus.

Late to this party, but somewhere, in amongst my Dymo ^TM labelled drawers, I have a mercury tilt switch which used to activate the under-bonnet lights of my first car when the bonnet was lifted.

Unless I'm in line to make a post in the "Today I learned..." thread, that doesn't sound like something that came as original factory-fitted equipment.

[ian]

Nobody wants to fight with batteries or small petrol engines, either, thobut.

Dirty house surrounded by jungle.  It's the only way to be sure.

Batteries are fine till they demand being charged, then it's more cable-o-geddon. I'd like a goat though, got to be cheaper than gardeners.

Liquid mercury is fine, I've swirled it with my finger, and not died. OK, I have died, but that was unrelated. It's the vapour, but at room temperature that's not much of an issue. One the world's largest supplies of mercury is actually my mouth. Basically, they put the entire mercury output of the late 70s in there.