The "I'm Such a Fecking Div" Thread

[ian]

Changing the pool depth requires a foot note too for those who don’t live in the future like you. Does the floor move or is there a huge drop from the sides?

I'm guessing the floor lifts/lowers. Not uncommon in modern swimming pools.

The are, and they scare me like all good underwater mechanisms should. Fortunately my local pool* doesn't do this, it's an old school slope to the depths. Yes, I budgie-smuggle in a slinky pair of Speedos. Back in the days I swam in Beckenham there used to be this old guy who'd wear high-leg super-tight trunks in leopard print. Now that was a look.

*bog standard, council issue 25m, ostensibly for the general public but block booked empty by local schools, other than the evenings fortunately. The Crystal Palace 50-m pool still seems to be closed for refurbishment, bah.

[citoyen]

The pool I regularly swim in raises and lowers the floor on a roughly 7hr cycle. If I go at the right (ie wrong) time, I can be 200m from the edge and still barely in over my knees.

I used to love going to the Crystal Palace 50m pool when I lived in South London. It's nice just not having to turn round so often.

[ian]

The pool I regularly swim in raises and lowers the floor on a roughly 7hr cycle. If I go at the right (ie wrong) time, I can be 200m from the edge and still barely in over my knees.

I used to love going to the Crystal Palace 50m pool when I lived in South London. It's nice just not having to turn round so often.

Indeed, I always used to go on Sunday afternoons, after a week of 25 metre lengths, it was a gorgeous to have 50 metres to just stretch out.

It's in a forever cycle of trying to find funding to fix it (though I think City Hall have finally confirmed they'll provide funding). It's ridiculous though, we have two fifty-metre pools in the capital and one of them has been closed for a couple of years now while they bicker about funding for repairs.

[Kim]

Changing the pool depth requires a foot note too for those who don’t live in the future like you. Does the floor move or is there a huge drop from the sides?

The floor (and the divider between the two sections) moves on hydraulics.  It's controlled by a rubbish touchscreen, secured by the same code than an idiot would have on his luggage (DAHIKT).  There's also a ~1.5m square section in the corner that moves independently, for lowering wheelchair users in and out of the water at a rate of approximately 2mm/hour - risking severe finger-fatigue on the part of the touchscreen operator, and hypothermia on the part of whoever's getting out of the pool.

They have mildly clever stairs that fold flat as the floor of the pool rises.  This is entirely non-obvious when viewed from above the water.

When the pool's split in half, they usually jibble the depth between 1.2m and 0.9m, depending on whether smalls are having swimming lessons.

Molisher's website: https://variopool.nl/

[T42]

Put in a LED strip so that I can actually see into my wardrobe (eugh!). Once it was up it looked crooked, but my 1-metre spirit level showed it wasn't: the beam it's mounted on the side of is slightly curved underneath so that it just looks that way.  I should have ignored the spirit level and done it by eye.

This house is >180 years old and almost nothing is level.

[Mr Larrington]

Note to self: your tea will be a lot less wishy and, moreover, washy if you pour boiling water over the tea bags rather than into an empty mug

[Mrs Pingu]

Note to self: your tea will be a lot less wishy and, moreover, washy if you pour boiling water over the tea bags rather than into an empty mug

OK Mr L
Over the last few years, I have been labouring under the impression that your 'brown drink' was carp instant coffee.

Tonight I find out that Pingu has been thinking it is tea.

Who is correct?

[Kim]

Note to self: your tea will be a lot less wishy and, moreover, washy if you pour boiling water over the tea bags rather than into an empty mug

It's even more washy if you miss the mug entirely (DAHIKT)

[andrewc]

Note to self: your tea will be a lot less wishy and, moreover, washy if you pour boiling water over the tea bags rather than into an empty mug

It's even more washy if you miss the mug entirely (DAHIKT)

An entirely different drink can be concocted if a misfiring early morning teenage brane causes you to pour boiling water into the sugar bowl*.....     


*I recently acquired some Nice China via Ebay.  It included a sugar bowl.  I don't know anyone who takes sugar in tea or coffee anymore.

[Mr Larrington]

Note to self: your tea will be a lot less wishy and, moreover, washy if you pour boiling water over the tea bags rather than into an empty mug

OK Mr L
Over the last few years, I have been labouring under the impression that your 'brown drink' was carp instant coffee.

Tonight I find out that Pingu has been thinking it is tea.

Who is correct?

You are.  Brown Drink is consumed in the morning, or the nearest available approximation to same, and comes out of a jar with “Douwe Egberts” written on the label in large friendly letters.  Proper Tea, on the other hand, is drunk after dinner and is made with two (2) Yorkshire Tea bags per large* mug.

* It originally had the word “Bubba” written on the side to emphasise its biglitude, coming as it did from a branch of Wolmart just outside Couer d'Alene ID, but the lettering wore off yonks ago.

[TheLurker]

... Proper Tea, on the other hand, is drunk after dinner...

Is this what civilised people call dinner, i.e. the midday meal or what others call dinner, i.e. the much delayed meal that civilised types call tea?

[andytheflyer]

... Proper Tea, on the other hand, is drunk after dinner...

Is this what civilised people call dinner, i.e. the midday meal or what others call dinner, i.e. the much delayed meal that civilised types call tea?

Now I'm really confused.  I was invited to a friend's house this past week for 'supper', but at 7pm.  Now I call that 'dinner', or possibly, 'tea' (as immortalised by Hamish and Dougal, and I was once asked for real turning up in the mid evening at a friend's mum's house in Carnoustie!).  I thought supper was what you might have had just before bedtime.

Someone enlighten me, please.

[hatler]

This might help - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner

[Beardy]

Mealtime nomenclature aside, the word civilised cannot be used within a country mile of a description of the barbaric practise of pouring boiling water over teabags placed within a mug. Now, I’ve long since accepted the containment of leaves within little perforated bags¹ as a necessary evil, but to dispense with the use of proper tea pot as a mashing vessel is utterly improper. Anyone indulging in such despicable behaviour really does deserve whatever calamity befalls them.

1. Although, I am now questioning the environmental impact of the same because I recently became aware that most teabags are some form of unbiodegradable plastic.

[Mr Larrington]

If making tea inna mug is good enough for the Honest BRITISH Builder then it's good enough for me.  Although I will admit to preferring it without a spoonful of Portland cement, even though that may lead to accusations of inauthenticity.  Also ICBA to lug a teapot around Abroad, where the FOREIGNS don’t understand tea*.  Bad enough having haul around a kettle and a Tupperware box full of tea bags.

* Though Yorkshire Tea can be found in the wild in Canuckistan.

[woollypigs]

Mealtime nomenclature aside, the word civilised cannot be used within a country mile of a description of the barbaric practise of pouring boiling water over teabags placed within a mug. Now, I’ve long since accepted the containment of leaves within little perforated bags¹ as a necessary evil, but to dispense with the use of proper tea pot as a mashing vessel is utterly improper. Anyone indulging in such despicable behaviour really does deserve whatever calamity befalls them.

1. Although, I am now questioning the environmental impact of the same because I recently became aware that most teabags are some form of unbiodegradable plastic.

That's why you should have a proper brew https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-news/an-update-on-plant-based-tea-bags

[Beardy]

This as a Yorkshire household and Yorkshire tea has been the bag of choice for many years, and I wasn’t aware of that. Splendid.

To return to the uncivilised behaviour of Mr Larrington. While I do believe that some leeway can be accepted when one is travelling in abroad where the foreigns live, while in the homestead one really should comport oneself to an acceptable standard. One will leave aside WHY one would want to travel to a place where a simple thing like tea is not understood by the locals.

As an aside, the making of tea in a mug was introduced to this unit in his apprenticeship by the group of individuals known then as ‘hairy arsed¹jointers²’  to whit, kettle to boil on propane stove in the back of the van, two teaspoons of leaf tea in the mug, boiling water added. Stir and leave to mash. When a suitable time has passed add two or three healthy squirts of condensed milk from a tube, or a heaped teaspoon of the same from a tin. Stir and savour.

1. Hairy arsed due to their working practice of sitting on the ground on the edge of a footway box. I can verify the working practice from direct personal observation. I verify the hairyness or otherwise that this causes on the arse.

2. Jointers because their profession was the jointing of cables. A skill of varied practices which at the time still included soldering of wires and the plumbing of lead joint enclosures. Some of the old boys still working in the time of my apprenticeship were artisans when it came to that plumbing.

[Mr Larrington]

The “Why” of travelling in the Tealess Zones west of the stormy North Atlantic is because that's where they keep Nevada's State Highway 305, obv.  And if you’re going to all the trouble and expense of getting there you might as well drink tea in regions of Abroad not adjacent to NV-305, because some of them can be quite picturesque.  As you can see here:


Smoke on the water by Mr Larrington, on Flickr

[Mrs Pingu]

Ah good, I win 

I make tea inna mug (well, actually I make it in a stainless steel flask for a)more and b)safer carrying of hot liquids (this is a hangover from WFH up the loft ladder at the previous Pingu Towers but hey, more) but with an infuser.
No, not one of those crappy little round balls, but a decent sized receptacle that half fills the mug and allows the leaves to move. Earl Grey Darjeeling, since you ask.

[andrewc]

During out sojourn at the excellent Mad Hatters campsite near Ely, Wowbagger, Canardly & myself were served Proper Tea in a lovely pot, wrapped in a cosy.  The lady who made it put the leaves in a little muslin bag rather than one of the infuser balls.


I'm currently on my 3rd mug of something from a Women's Cooperative coffee farm in Colombia.

[Kim]

... Proper Tea, on the other hand, is drunk after dinner...

Is this what civilised people call dinner, i.e. the midday meal or what others call dinner, i.e. the much delayed meal that civilised types call tea?

Now I'm really confused.  I was invited to a friend's house this past week for 'supper', but at 7pm.  Now I call that 'dinner', or possibly, 'tea' (as immortalised by Hamish and Dougal, and I was once asked for real turning up in the mid evening at a friend's mum's house in Carnoustie!).  I thought supper was what you might have had just before bedtime.

Someone enlighten me, please.

Dinner is a main evening meal, synonymous with tea unless:

- It's a School Dinner, which as the name doesn't suggest is served at lunchtime (and distinct from a packed lunch), and should be composed of one of more of: mushy peas, concrete chips, soggy semolina and/or Jamie Oliver.

- You're a northerner.

Supper, OTOH, is either:

- Another word for dinner

- An archaic term for what barakta would refer to as 'pre-bed munchies'.

[Pingu]

...Supper, OTOH, is either:

- Another word for dinner

- An archaic term for what barakta would refer to as 'pre-bed munchies'.

Unless it's a fish supper.

[Polar Bear]

I enjoy breakfast, morning coffee, brunch, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, high tea, dinner and supper.  If I get a tad peckish I have been known to snack as well.  😋

[andrewc]

I enjoy breakfast, morning coffee, brunch, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, high tea, dinner and supper.  If I get a tad peckish I have been known to snack as well.  😋

You are a Hobbit AICMFP. 

[ElyDave]

Ah good, I win 

I make tea inna mug (well, actually I make it in a stainless steel flask for a)more and b)safer carrying of hot liquids (this is a hangover from WFH up the loft ladder at the previous Pingu Towers but hey, more) but with an infuser.
No, not one of those crappy little round balls, but a decent sized receptacle that half fills the mug and allows the leaves to move. Earl Grey Darjeeling, since you ask.

Everybody  knows decent Earl Grey is made with China tea. Everybody also knows that any tea really needs to be loose leaf, suitable sized pinch in the bottom of a mug, left to infuse and sink to the bottom