Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Son No 2 said to me this morning that upon retiring to bed last night, he had piled all the bears (don't ask) that usually line the side of the bed on the floor on the opposite side of the room, as he usually does. (I call it Mons Ursus...). However, he woke up during the night cuddling one of the bears that he distinctly remembered adding to the pile - no idea how the bear in question made the trip!
 
CharmerKamelion said:
We have a kitchen extension with a fairly large flat roof, and lots of fairly plump wood pigeons who hang around opportunistically scavenging stuff that smaller birds have left scattered around from our bird feeder. I can see 3 of them on the fence right now, plus another one on the lawn. Without wanting to tempt fate, I can't say we have ever heard any thumps on the roof in the 30+ years we've lived here. Not that I am doubting your word GNC. I hope it doesn't sound like that. Just making an observation. I suppose it probably depends on what one's roof is made of. We don't invite them in either. Well, they never invite us.
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The fact I see/hear them arrive and take off with accompanying thumps indicates the pigeons make noise on the roof, though. Not only pigeons, of course, ravens are even bigger, so are seagulls. They seem to be less clumsy, however.
 
bugmum said:
he woke up during the night cuddling one of the bears that he distinctly remembered adding to the pile - no idea how the bear in question made the trip!
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It's when you wake up to find the bear is cuddling you that you really need to worry
:worry:
 
We sometimes hear loud thumps on the roof at night but it's just possums come to raid the garden
My friend has a covered area next to her kitchen which sometimes thumps and she says that it's just the change in temperature on the roofing material.
 
I've been going through a bit of a bad patch with my mental health recently and a couple of times in the last 2 weeks or so, in that "just sort of waking up" state I've felt like a hard on my shoulder giving it a gentle squeeze. Enough for me to wake up thinking it's my husband (although it's something he doesn't do).
Nope, no one around and actually just thinking about it now, I've been in bed alone on both occasions.
Dream meanings (yes I am that kind of person! ) suggest that it's suggestive of acknowledging belief in your own capabilities. I'll take that.
It's also my dearest dad's birthday next week who I miss so much, so I'd like to think he's giving me a little nudge in the right direction too.
 
bugmum said:
Not when he drops them all over the driveway!
:D
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They are reading our minds again.

elastic bands.jpg
 
The fact it was dark for my thumping rules out most birds (there are starlings nesting under the eaves at the front), and we don't have possums here. The absence of cat neither proves nor disproves anything, as we all know cats can teleport when required. I don't think it was difference in temperature, although it could have been, I've never heard it before or since. It definitely sounded like something big and heavy landing on the roof, like a body jumping out of the window just above. Had it been followed by a flurry of tiles and an appearance in the garden I would have thought 'burglar', although we aren't prone to that sort of thing out here.

Proper, heavy, distinct thumps.
 
bugmum said:
However, he woke up during the night cuddling one of the bears that he distinctly remembered adding to the pile - no idea how the bear in question made the trip!
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A case of sleep walking? Or maybe your son was barely awake after a forgotten half nightmare and reached out for a friend?

escargot said:
Twice recentlyish Techy and I have noticed what we thought were tremors, at different times. Nobody else felt them and they weren't in the news so I dunno.
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Try this:
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=29.53523,-33.13477&extent=62.14498,51.15234
 
IbisNibs said:
A case of sleep walking? Or maybe your son was barely awake after a forgotten half nightmare and reached out for a friend?
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Either is possible, although he's never sleep walked (the In House GP sleeps lightly and would be aware of it), and Mons Ursus is more than an arm's each away from his bed, even though the room is not that big. Son No 2 just nodded sagely and said "Toy Story." :D
 
(Edit - this is about the ground-tremors that Techy and I sometimes feel. Locals put them down to underground instability caused by salt mining.
We live on the site of a prehistoric inland sea. All that salt had to go somewhere.)

Now and then there're tremors associated with salt mines. There's a big'un under Cheshire. Here's Ade Edmonson being shown round it -


Here's a Keele University Geophysics page about sinkholes, which mentions the subsiding landscape of Cheshire -

HOW TO DETECT A SINKHOLE – BEFORE IT SWALLOWS YOU UP

We have been observing a problematic section of the Trent and Mersey Canal in Cheshire since 2002 and have repeated readings on more or less an annual basis. Over this period, the microgravity results suggest increasing anomalies and that the underlying salt mines which were the reason why the canals were constructed in the first place are becoming less stable. This may be due to leakage from the canals themselves or more frequent intense rainfall as the climate changes.

A recent collapse of a section of the same canal nearby at Middlewich, which caused great disruption and almost led to loss of life, has brought our work into sharp focus. The proposed route of Phase 2 of HS2 is planned to cross a significant portion of this Cheshire Salt Field where subsidence is very common and the engineering challenges for this high-speed line will be considerable. We have contributed to a new Channel 5 series on sinkholes that has covered this issue and our work in some depth. We hope to be able to give guidance on how the area should be fixed and where this technique might be utilised to map other vulnerable areas along this network of waterways. After all, it is possible to do something about sinkholes – if they can be detected in time.
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Has the costing for the HS2 project taken Cheshire Salt Field subsidence into account? We'll see.

The mines caused local tremors when an underground reservoir was being demolished -

Winsford residents confused by mysterious underground tremors

A WINSFORD resident mystified by tremors affecting his house has discovered the reason for a series of shakes.

“I couldn’t figure it out – I couldn’t hear anything outside and put it to the back of my mind.

“The next day at roughly the same time, around 2pm, it shook – a bit more violently this time. You could almost sense it coming up the drive.

“It’s unsettling, I just didn’t know what it was and I think it was quite unnerving. My son and I have both described it as like a wave.

“I’ve lived here 10 years and never experienced anything like this. My table will shake, and my monitors – it’s not knocking things over but another lady has said ornaments have fallen over.”

The rumblings have been attributed to the demolition of an underground storage reservoir near to Oak View School.

It involves the breaking down of brick arch work, which then falls into the water below creating a noise and tremor.

Work is due to be completed within the next week, with around six more occurrences expected.
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So the area is slowly sinking and we're all in danger of falling into the ground.
Might be another reason why we don't have much trouble with flooding.
 
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Had a good one this morning Yesterday afternoon I came home, picked up some small things from the car seat including the key and as I exited saw the key drop gently between my fingers into the crack between the driver's seat and the center console. I put the stuff down in the house and came back out to retrieve the key from where it would be right under the seat and it wasn't there. I checked around, looked under the mat, sighed and politely asked them to return it.

This morning I went back out with a knife and a flashlight and dismembered both front seating areas. I found a credit card that I knew was missing. I found a wristwatch that I hadn't seen for years. I vacumed and removed the rear floor mats and the front passenger mat for washing. As I was leaving for a mental health break I realized I had not removed the front driver's side mat, which is pegged down and several inches away from the place the key dropped. The key was of course dead in the middle of the space under the mat, looking smug. I think they want me to clean the car.
 
maximus otter said:
How about telling your postmen not to drop the bloody things in the street in the first place?
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Speaking as the partner of a former postal delivery operative, I'm reliably informed that most of his colleagues failed to attend their 'How Not To Drop Elastic Bands In The Street' training courses. Most of them went to the pub instead.
 
Lb8535 said:
Had a good one this morning Yesterday afternoon I came home, picked up some small things from the car seat including the key and as I exited saw the key drop gently between my fingers into the crack between the driver's seat and the center console. I put the stuff down in the house and came back out to retrieve the key from where it would be right under the seat and it wasn't there. I checked around, looked under the mat, sighed and politely asked them to return it.

This morning I went back out with a knife and a flashlight and dismembered both front seating areas. I found a credit card that I knew was missing. I found a wristwatch that I hadn't seen for years. I vacumed and removed the rear floor mats and the front passenger mat for washing. As I was leaving for a mental health break I realized I had not removed the front driver's side mat, which is pegged down and several inches away from the place the key dropped. The key was of course dead in the middle of the space under the mat, looking smug. I think they want me to clean the car.
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Keys love to wind us up. I use ski-passes for mine, one for each bunch, and keep spare lanyards so I never have to carry a key on its own. Works well.
 
I'm living in the middle of another 'old-lady smell' incident!

You may remember the other year, when I had one piece of laundry that had a certain 'smell' to it, that smell being identical to old lady's trousers? Well now it's outside!

I've been walking the dog across the road on our village green the last couple of evenings and been surrounded by that smell, which seems to be a mixture of fragranced incontinence wear, talcum powder and a kind of perfume. It smelled exactly like an old lady was standing right next to me, while the whole village was completely deserted. (And no, before you ask, the smell was not coming from me...)

It kind of wafted, so I couldn't pinpoint it, but since I haven't smelled it before, I don't think it was a particularly fragrant local bloom (Elderensis Nickerpaddicus perhaps) but it was very strong and very distinct and noticeable on two separate evenings.
 
It's so annoying when you can't pinpoint where a smell is coming from.
The other day there was a distinct smell of petrol and although I went around sniffing things in the room couldn't find where it was coming from.
I thought it might have been from a car in the court but couldn't see any and the smell wasn't outside.
One of my friends rang and said she had the nice perfume smell at her house which we have sometimes smelled before. I'd rather have that I think although we thought it might have something to do with one of her good friends not having long to live.
 
Iris said:
It's so annoying when you can't pinpoint where a smell is coming from.
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A couple of weeks ago, I had a weird 'synthetic' waft in the kitchen. It was a smell I couldn't place, but it would just hit my nostrils every so often in the kitchen for a second or two, then vanish. Eventually, after several days of it, I tracked it down to one particular large rubber band which had been hung on the corner of a wooden wine rack. I have no idea what caused the smell to pulse quickly across my olfactory organ and then vanish like it did though. Bit odd.

Also a couple of days ago, a very strong and rather sweet floral scent was unmissable in the street outside my house. It hit me when I went out to get something from my car, but I couldn't identify it or where it was coming from. Presumably some plant out there somewhere, but it was briefly overpowering. When I went back out some 20 minutes later... not a trace of it.
 
CharmerKamelion said:
Also a couple of days ago, a very strong and rather sweet floral scent was unmissable in the street outside my house. It hit me when I went out to get something from my car, but I couldn't identify it or where it was coming from. Presumably some plant out there somewhere, but it was briefly overpowering. When I went back out some 20 minutes later... not a trace of it.
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Could be someone vaping nearby, maybe in a car. The smell of some of the vape-stuff can be very strong.
 
CharmerKamelion said:
A couple of weeks ago, I had a weird 'synthetic' waft in the kitchen. It was a smell I couldn't place, but it would just hit my nostrils every so often in the kitchen for a second or two, then vanish. Eventually, after several days of it, I tracked it down to one particular large rubber band which had been hung on the corner of a wooden wine rack. I have no idea what caused the smell to pulse quickly across my olfactory organ and then vanish like it did though. Bit odd.

Also a couple of days ago, a very strong and rather sweet floral scent was unmissable in the street outside my house. It hit me when I went out to get something from my car, but I couldn't identify it or where it was coming from. Presumably some plant out there somewhere, but it was briefly overpowering. When I went back out some 20 minutes later... not a trace of it.
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Has someone got freshia or lily's growing nearby, both have a very strong scent, though strangely neither my dad or my late aunt, his sister, can/could smell freshias.
 
Iris said:
It's so annoying when you can't pinpoint where a smell is coming from.
The other day there was a distinct smell of petrol and although I went around sniffing things in the room couldn't find where it was coming from.
I thought it might have been from a car in the court but couldn't see any and the smell wasn't outside.
One of my friends rang and said she had the nice perfume smell at her house which we have sometimes smelled before. I'd rather have that I think although we thought it might have something to do with one of her good friends not having long to live.
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I quite like the smell of petrol :D
 
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