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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Floyd1 said:
Three/four weeks ago I was waiting for Mrs F outside a shop in town ('Refill your Boots' if you're interested next time you're over this way Scargy) - you take your own receptacle(s) and fill 'em up. Herbs and spices are a fraction of supermarket prices and taste better.

Anyway, I was sat on the stone window cill of the shop, waiting for 10-15 minutes. When she came out I stood up and then felt absolutely terrible. A shiver kept running down my spine every 5 seconds or so, I had a weird headache, and a general ill feeling allround. Got home and a bit later thought a warm shower would sort it- it didn't, and I still felt odd for a couple of days later. What is even odder though, is that whenever I think back to that day, I get the same horrible shiver.
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I aint been shopping with the wife for years Floyd. Don’t mind going grocery shopping with her, but I refuse to do so for anything else.

The last time I did an embarrassing incident occurred, which until this very day, she doesn’t know the true story.

I was standing outside a shoe shop on Bethnal green road, while she’s inside the shop with my eldest daughter (who at that time was only 18 months old).

Suddenly a girl came out of the shop, tripped slightly, and dropped her handbag with its contents spilling out onto the pavement. Being helpful, I helped her to pick up the items and put them back into the handbag for her. The girl then ran off down the road with not even a word of thanks to me. Rude I thought.

10 seconds later Mrs DT came out of the shop saying her handbag has been snatched from the handles of my daughter’s buggy.

Yes……….it was the same bloody handbag. I never told her that I helped pick up the contents, so she is still unaware that I helped the bag snatcher, and I know she doesn’t come onto this forum, but if she ever found out then:rcard: for this marriage lol
 
Trevp666 said:
'If'.

I think if it was sufficiently long ago then you might be ok by now.
But then in my experience I have had arguments restarted after many years of silence on the subject, with the most insignificant of things being held for use as ammunition.....
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That will be the '...and for another thing...' section of reasoned debate.
 
Dick Turpin said:
I aint been shopping with the wife for years Floyd. Don’t mind going grocery shopping with her, but I refuse to do so for anything else.

The last time I did an embarrassing incident occurred, which until this very day, she doesn’t know the true story.

I was standing outside a shoe shop on Bethnal green road, while she’s inside the shop with my eldest daughter (who at that time was only 18 months old).

Suddenly a girl came out of the shop, tripped slightly, and dropped her handbag with its contents spilling out onto the pavement. Being helpful, I helped her to pick up the items and put them back into the handbag for her. The girl then ran off down the road with not even a word of thanks to me. Rude I thought.

10 seconds later Mrs DT came out of the shop saying her handbag has been snatched from the handles of my daughter’s buggy.

Yes……….it was the same bloody handbag. I never told her that I helped pick up the contents, so she is still unaware that I helped the bag snatcher, and I know she doesn’t come onto this forum, but if she ever found out then:rcard: for this marriage lol
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Good God!! -Maybe what they say is true ''no good deed goes unpunished''!!
 
Trevp666 said:
'If'.

I think if it was sufficiently long ago then you might be ok by now.
But then in my experience I have had arguments restarted after many years of silence on the subject, with the most insignificant of things being held for use as ammunition.....
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Oh man, I'm still occassionally getting stuff brought up from 20 years ago! I wouldn't mind so much, but I genuinely don't know if what she is accusing me of actually happened or not, as it's been so long.
 
Just another minor minor strangeness.

Most people know about the 'only two packets of painkillers at any time' rule of shopping, right? It's not two paracetamol and two ibruprofen, it's one of each or two of either one. It very clearly states this on the shelf edge of the painkiller section.

On my Saturday shift I had four separate people try to buy two lots of each. Occasionally I will have one customer, maybe two, but FOUR on one day? One of them told me that the rule was two of each kind (wrong) and one told me that we should have prominent labelling telling the customer about this rule (we have).

I suppose it's only minorly strange as we're approaching the cold and flu season, but for this many people to misunderstand the regulation on one day is most unusual.
 
catseye said:
I know a lot of alcoholics can be very high-functioning. You'd simply never guess how much they'd drunk to see them at work.
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That's a thing in my family, where people on the sauce at home can stay off it for work.

A close relation who used to drive for a living would drink wine/vodka all evening and be hardly able to get dressed in the mornings.
To avoid being caught on a random police stop, canny Relation would bike to and from work and rely on the eminently respectable image of their profession to avoid the attention of t'filth.

Heavy drinking, especially done furtively, is a bad example to children. They always know what's going on and are often co-opted into helping cover it up. They grow up thinking it's normal.

Dunno how I dodged the boozing-bullet but unlike some of my lot I'm unscathed.
 
catseye said:
I know a lot of alcoholics can be very high-functioning. You'd simply never guess how much they'd drunk to see them at work.
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Mythopoeika said:
I know 2 people like this and I've never noticed any impairment in their behaviour, even though they've drunk a lot.
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I've known four chronic alcoholics who managed to maintain a persistent steady state of mild inebriation and function adequately for years without being obviously drunk. In these cases it's not so much the result of a physical tolerance to alcohol as constantly balancing themselves between excessive intoxication and withdrawal symptoms (up to and including massive seizures).

The benign version of this situation is reflected in the trope of the little old lady who's mildly potted at all times.

The real-world version isn't benign at all. The twilight zone balancing act such folks perform comes at a cost of behavioral / social / personality problems and a host of seemingly inexplicable health issues. The four classic cases with which I'm most familiar were all males, and they all died relatively young (ages 53, 57, 58 and 60; 2 from massive stroke, 2 from aggressive cancers) after decades of such a daily tightrope walk. All four were known for diligence and productivity in their respective jobs.

It's not a lifestyle - it's a deathstyle of slow-motion suicide.
 
catseye said:
I've mentioned my elderly friend John on here before. He used to perform as a stand up act in the Working Men's Clubs up here in the north, and worked with a lot of the late and greats, like Tommy Cooper, Les Dawson, Tony Hancock etc. Virtually ALL of the stories he tells me involve how much all of them used to drink. Many of the acts would sink a bottle of whisky, perform, then go on to drink another when they came off. I can only assume that they all had all developed a huge tolerance for alcohol to be able to remember any of their act!
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Yes. There's a good interview with Ian McShane talking of when he was in a film in the early 70s with Burton and he went to his cabin/caravan early one morning to rehearse their lines and he had already started on the vodka.
 
I went on a course with a work colleague a few years back and we had to stay overnight in an hotel. I called around to his room in the morning around 7.30 to go down to breakfast with him and he was downing a whisky then. He then filled a hip flask to take around with him too, but, although I worked with him for a few years before that I had no inkling that he was a heavy drinker until then.
 
I think I might have mentioned before the security guard that worked at the head office of a major UK retailer where I worked.
He had a major drinking problem which he managed to hide, until the suspended ceiling in the gents toilets collapsed due to the weight of the (by then) couple of hundred empty vodka bottles that he had been stashing up there.
I could never figure out what he thought would happen to them? Did he think they just evaporated? Or maybe the 'vodka bottle faeries' removed them?
Probably a case of 'out of sight...out of mind'.
But anyways, how they found out it is was him stashing them there was, despite being the security guard on the main entrance doors, with the rows of CCTV monitors in front of him, it had not crossed his mind that they were being recorded 24/7 and it only took a watching of the past week or so of recordings to see him swigging from the bottle when nobody was around.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I've known four chronic alcoholics who managed to maintain a persistent steady state of mild inebriation and function adequately for years without being obviously drunk. In these cases it's not so much the result of a physical tolerance to alcohol as constantly balancing themselves between excessive intoxication and withdrawal symptoms (up to and including massive seizures).

The benign version of this situation is reflected in the trope of the little old lady who's mildly potted at all times.

The real-world version isn't benign at all. The twilight zone balancing act such folks perform comes at a cost of behavioral / social / personality problems and a host of seemingly inexplicable health issues. The four classic cases with which I'm most familiar were all males, and they all died relatively young (ages 53, 57, 58 and 60; 2 from massive stroke, 2 from aggressive cancers) after decades of such a daily tightrope walk. All four were known for diligence and productivity in their respective jobs.

It's not a lifestyle - it's a deathstyle of slow-motion suicide.
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This accounts, I think, for a lot of the behavioural disorders reported from performers from the 50's - 70's. A lot of it got put down as them being rich and flexing their fame, but in reality I think it was just the alcohol affecting them. But because (anecdotally) EVERYONE drank to excess, it was dismissed.
 
catseye said:
This accounts, I think, for a lot of the behavioural disorders reported from performers from the 50's - 70's. A lot of it got put down as them being rich and flexing their fame, but in reality I think it was just the alcohol affecting them. But because (anecdotally) EVERYONE drank to excess, it was dismissed.
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Yes. Same with smoking. Living rooms, were full of smoke, even with children there.
 
catseye said:
Just another minor minor strangeness.

Most people know about the 'only two packets of painkillers at any time' rule of shopping, right? It's not two paracetamol and two ibruprofen, it's one of each or two of either one. It very clearly states this on the shelf edge of the painkiller section.

On my Saturday shift I had four separate people try to buy two lots of each. Occasionally I will have one customer, maybe two, but FOUR on one day? One of them told me that the rule was two of each kind (wrong) and one told me that we should have prominent labelling telling the customer about this rule (we have).

I suppose it's only minorly strange as we're approaching the cold and flu season, but for this many people to misunderstand the regulation on one day is most unusual.
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Where I live it's three packets. In fact the Pound shop sells 3 packs of 18 ibuprofen for a quid.
 
Floyd1 said:
Yes. Same with smoking. Living rooms, were full of smoke, even with children there.
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Yes, my dad was a very heavy smoker. My brother used to say when he came home from work he could always tell when my dad was home as he could see smoke coming out of the letter box.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The benign version of this situation is reflected in the trope of the little old lady who's mildly potted at all times.
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The singer Alice Cooper used to brag about drinking enough beer all day to be slightly high.
Even back when I first read this (possibly on one of the album sleeves) in the early '70s it seemed dangerous and foolhardy.

He was indeed an alcoholic who dried out and also ditched cocaine etc in the '80s.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Yeah, those snakes can move pretty fast. You can sometimes hear the sonic booms.
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No, it was more the fact that a 180 section tyre, rapidly following a 120 section tyre, at a three figure speed tended squish basking snakes pretty hard. However, suspension tech was somwhat crude then, as was early radial tyre construction. The resultant wiggle could sometimes result in an uncontrolled streering head oscilation — commonly known as a tank slapper. This is where the bars swing from lock to lock, slapping the handle bar, and your trapped hands, off the tank either side. The sheer forward momentum would eventually overcome it, and allow it to straighten up again. Or, the back would let go producing a fishtailing effect that Grand Prix legend and world champion Kevin Schwantz referred to as "getting squirrely". :)

In either case, certain parts of one's anatomy would often be described as twitching like a rabbit's nose.

catseye said:
I'd have worried more about the 'roos. Not much left of either him or the roo after a 150mph collision.
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As the old axiom goes, "loud pipes save lives".

The likes of 1988 GSX-R1100 would often knock out 110db at full chat. Even approaching at ton up speeds, that's a fair warning of something incoming.
 
Ascalon said:
No, it was more the fact that a 180 section tyre, rapidly following a 120 section tyre, at a three figure speed tended squish basking snakes pretty hard. However, suspension tech was somwhat crude then, as was early radial tyre construction. The resultant wiggle could sometimes result in an uncontrolled streering head oscilation — commonly known as a tank slapper. This is where the bars swing from lock to lock, slapping the handle bar, and your trapped hands, off the tank either side. The sheer forward momentum would eventually overcome it, and allow it to straighten up again. Or, the back would let go producing a fishtailing effect that Grand Prix legend and world champion Kevin Schwantz referred to as "getting squirrely". :)

In either case, certain parts of one's anatomy would often be described as twitching like a rabbit's nose.


As the old axiom goes, "loud pipes save lives".

The likes of 1988 GSX-R1100 would often knock out 110db at full chat. Even approaching at ton up speeds, that's a fair warning of something incoming.
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They used to say that the best way to get out of a tank slapper was to try and go a bit faster -I never experienced one myself but don't know if I would have had the bottle to accelerate to try and stop it.

I remember reading an article on it once that seemed to think it was caused by the early frames, tyres and cycle parts flexing at speed and at some points the flexing/vibration would reach a certain mutual point where everything was at the same 'pitch'. I had an early GSX1100 and the high frequency vibration used to make the tips of my fingers numb on a long/fast run.
 
escargot said:
The singer Alice Cooper used to brag about drinking enough beer all day to be slightly high.
Even back when I first read this (possibly on one of the album sleeves) in the early '70s it seemed dangerous and foolhardy.

He was indeed an alcoholic who dried out and also ditched cocaine etc in the '80s.
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I wish I'd grown up in say, France or Italy etc. Somewhere where getting drunk and being ill isn't considered 'normal' like it was/is here. I'm not for one minute saying everyone of our age at the time did this, but as youngsters we were going to pubs at a very young age (no one bothered us as we didn't cause any trouble and it was in the middle of nowhere pretty much), we'd stay in till 2am sometimes, drinking (and smoking), and no one battered an eye. Even my older friends were underage. It was just what you did. There'd even sometimes be a copper in there as well.
I do regret it, but speaking to others of my age now, it seems it was prevalent back then.
 
Ascalon said:
No, it was more the fact that a 180 section tyre, rapidly following a 120 section tyre, at a three figure speed tended squish basking snakes pretty hard. However, suspension tech was somwhat crude then, as was early radial tyre construction. The resultant wiggle could sometimes result in an uncontrolled streering head oscilation — commonly known as a tank slapper. This is where the bars swing from lock to lock, slapping the handle bar, and your trapped hands, off the tank either side. The sheer forward momentum would eventually overcome it, and allow it to straighten up again. Or, the back would let go producing a fishtailing effect that Grand Prix legend and world champion Kevin Schwantz referred to as "getting squirrely". :)

In either case, certain parts of one's anatomy would often be described as twitching like a rabbit's nose.


As the old axiom goes, "loud pipes save lives".

The likes of 1988 GSX-R1100 would often knock out 110db at full chat. Even approaching at ton up speeds, that's a fair warning of something incoming.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation. :twothumbs:
 
catseye said:
I know a lot of alcoholics can be very high-functioning. You'd simply never guess how much they'd drunk to see them at work.
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My neighbour in the 80's was a teacher and it was only after his premature death in his late 50's that his wife and kids found numerous bottles of spirits secreted in all sorts of places in the house. He was a nice guy, but his wife always said that he behaved "strangely" on occasion, but apparently never put two and two together. She was a touch dim though.
 
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