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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

catseye said:
It wasn't a hitching pin, it was a link pin of a different type, but I remember - back in my farming days - a bit dropping off the tractor we were using to roll the silage. It was all hands on deck whilst we combed through the silage clamp in search of the lost part!
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Was that the day you all stopped biting your nails? :chuckle:
 
A funny minor strangeness that amounted to nothing unusual. Sunday night my family got together to have fireworks display.

It was at my mom's and most of my family was there. My mom lives in a two story (3 with full attic) farmhouse which my siblings and I grew up in. We have all had creepy experiences as kids in the house.

We were all enjoying the fireworks when several people saw an upstairs light go on and then off. No one was in the house.

I was facing away from the house and looked at where they said the light was coming from. It was from one window, but it was faint, as in not in the room. It did turn on and then off. This happened several times.

The people watching (my sisters, a couple of nieces and SIL) were excited and talking of "what is doing that?" I heard my mom mention that there were several motion sensor lights upstairs.

Me and my one nephew believed that it was the darkness outside and then bright flashes from the fireworks that might be setting the light off.

A small posse of people who were convinced that it was spooky ventured into the house. They found that the one sensor had a loose connection. They plugged it fully in and problem solved. Much ado about nothing.
 
maximus otter said:
Don’t talk wet: How much use would a cork be as a weapon?

maximus otter
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I just remembered a minor odd event from back in the mid-to-late 1980s. I was walking home from Aldershot town centre to the outskirts of Farnham, my route took me westwards along Cranmore Lane, where I crossed the A325 onto MOD land and headed steeply uphill on the east side of Hungry Hill on a little footpath (IIRC the same footpath where Anne Lee and Margaret Johnson had been murdered while walking their dogs a few years earlier - completely irrelevant to this story). As I headed uphill through the pines, there was a crashing sound in one of the tree tops and I saw a black shape, about labrador-sized, run along a branch and leap across to the next tree. It was gone in seconds. At the time I could only equate it with a chimpanzee in my mind. Since then I have seen howler monkeys and spider monkeys in the wild, and I now equate it with them in my head - but really, all I can honestly say I saw was a large black animal making off through the tree tops, and certainly not a squirrel. Perhaps an escaped monkey?
 
SimonBurchell said:
I just remembered a minor odd event from back in the mid-to-late 1980s. I was walking home from Aldershot town centre to the outskirts of Farnham, my route took me westwards along Cranmore Lane, where I crossed the A325 onto MOD land and headed steeply uphill on the east side of Hungry Hill on a little footpath (IIRC the same footpath where Anne Lee and Margaret Johnson had been murdered while walking their dogs a few years earlier - completely irrelevant to this story). As I headed uphill through the pines, there was a crashing sound in one of the tree tops and I saw a black shape, about labrador-sized, run along a branch and leap across to the next tree. It was gone in seconds. At the time I could only equate it with a chimpanzee in my mind. Since then I have seen howler monkeys and spider monkeys in the wild, and I now equate it with them in my head - but really, all I can honestly say I saw was a large black animal making off through the tree tops, and certainly not a squirrel. Perhaps an escaped monkey?
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There is a google street view available on that path.
 
ChrisBoardman said:
There is a google street view available on that path.
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There's a Google street view of the entrance to the path, but the Google street view across Hungry Hill is a different path:
OSmap.png

Below is a screenshot of the entrance to the path, which has been tamed since my day (there used to be just a farm-gate or MOD pole-gate type entrance I think), and the path was just a single-file dirt track meandering through the trees):
streetview.png
 
SimonBurchell said:
There's a Google street view of the entrance to the path, but the Google street view across Hungry Hill is a different path:
View attachment 77219
Below is a screenshot of the entrance to the path, which has been tamed since my day (there used to be just a farm-gate or MOD pole-gate type entrance I think), and the path was just a single-file dirt track meandering through the trees):
View attachment 77220
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I'm sorry and this is completely off topic but - those names! Windy Gap Hill, Skirmishing Hill, Long Bottom, Hungry Hill.... I wish I lived there!
 
catseye said:
I'm sorry and this is completely off topic but - those names! Windy Gap Hill, Skirmishing Hill, Long Bottom, Hungry Hill.... I wish I lived there!
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You really don't! Many of the names were applied by the army from the 19th century onwards, though a few might be older survivals. My favourite is an old earthwork a mile or two away called "Bats Hogsty".
 
SimonBurchell said:
You really don't! Many of the names were applied by the army from the 19th century onwards, though a few might be older survivals. My favourite is an old earthwork a mile or two away called "Bats Hogsty".
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All right, maybe I'm glad I don't live there, but I wish I lived somewhere with more interesting place names! I've got Robin Hood's Howl, and that's as good as it gets.
 
This was just a stupid thing, not even a minor strangeness, but it's still....minorly strange.

I just bought a new clothes line prop from Amazon, it arrived in a box all taped up -masses of tape and quite a big box. Today I did some laundry so I opened the line prop. I had to put it on the table to cut my way into the box, slid it out onto the table, three bits of metal that slotted together. One bit was slightly bent, so I had to get the pliers from my 'all the shit' box in the living room and bend the metal so that I could slot it together and then I couldn't work out how it was meant to extend. It had the screwy part on the top but nothing to screw it with. Oh well, thinks I, it's probably a faulty one (accounting for so much tape - I've had things before that had been returned to Amazon and sent back out again, they always seem to be double packaged), but it was tall enough without having to extend to still be usable.

Put the washing out, faffed about, put another load in. Went into the kitchen to write a shopping list, and there on the side near my shopping list pad is the black screwy thing which I need to make the line extend. A good couple of metres from where I opened the box and very neatly placed, as though I'd picked it up off the floor and put it deliberately onto the side. I'm as sure as I can be that it didn't fly out when I opened the box, and if it had it should have landed under the table or on the kitchen floor, not on the worktop. The way I opened the box didn't lend itself to flying parts either.

I'm damn glad it did turn up though, I've just put the bedding out and needed the line embiggened.
 
catseye said:
This was just a stupid thing, not even a minor strangeness, but it's still....minorly strange.

I just bought a new clothes line prop from Amazon, it arrived in a box all taped up -masses of tape and quite a big box. Today I did some laundry so I opened the line prop. I had to put it on the table to cut my way into the box, slid it out onto the table, three bits of metal that slotted together. One bit was slightly bent, so I had to get the pliers from my 'all the shit' box in the living room and bend the metal so that I could slot it together and then I couldn't work out how it was meant to extend. It had the screwy part on the top but nothing to screw it with. Oh well, thinks I, it's probably a faulty one (accounting for so much tape - I've had things before that had been returned to Amazon and sent back out again, they always seem to be double packaged), but it was tall enough without having to extend to still be usable.

Put the washing out, faffed about, put another load in. Went into the kitchen to write a shopping list, and there on the side near my shopping list pad is the black screwy thing which I need to make the line extend. A good couple of metres from where I opened the box and very neatly placed, as though I'd picked it up off the floor and put it deliberately onto the side. I'm as sure as I can be that it didn't fly out when I opened the box, and if it had it should have landed under the table or on the kitchen floor, not on the worktop. The way I opened the box didn't lend itself to flying parts either.

I'm damn glad it did turn up though, I've just put the bedding out and needed the line embiggened.
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Why do Amazon pack small things in gigantic boxes? It's as though the packer grabs the nearest box, no matter what the size, thinks that'll do and lobs the small thing in and onto the next. Hardly environmentally friendly.
catseye said:
I have a kind of opposite problem, that of finding random bolts, nuts and screws in odd places. I'm guessing they come from domestic machinery (ie, the hoover) and get knocked or kicked into corners a long way from their origin. They're not vital, so aren't missed, but I've got quite a collection now against the day that all my household white goods suddenly fall apart.
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I could do with you at mine searching for the endless small nuts bolts and washers that I drop, never ever to be seen again. Plummeted into another dimension I suspect or those fizzin' fairies are again taking the p**s out of me.
 
catseye said:
It wasn't a hitching pin, it was a link pin of a different type, but I remember - back in my farming days - a bit dropping off the tractor we were using to roll the silage. It was all hands on deck whilst we combed through the silage clamp in search of the lost part!
Click to expand...
Neighbour of mine found a chunky bolt arrangement in her bag of chips. She rang the shop to complain and found it was part of a handle that'd fallen off the machinery. She took it back, kept schtum and received free chips for a couple of weeks. :)

(Caveat: I later discovered that Neighbour is a compulsive liar which mean this might be another tall story.)
 
PeteS said:
Why do Amazon pack small things in gigantic boxes? It's as though the packer grabs the nearest box, no matter what the size, thinks that'll do and lobs the small thing in and onto the next. Hardly environmentally friendly.
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The desktop computer I ordered that 'went missing' and was replaced with a novelty golf mug and two packets of door fittings was packed in a custom-fitted box. Said so on the outside. That's how I know about the switcheroo. :mad:
 
catseye said:
I wish I lived somewhere with more interesting place names! I've got Robin Hood's Howl, and that's as good as it gets.
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I passed the village of Kingston Bagpuize near Abingdon (Oxon) a couple of weeks ago - the name was derived from the original Kingston plus the surname of Ralph de Bachepuz, a nobleman from Bacquepuis in Normandy who came over with William in 1066.
Of course this is meaningless if you didn't watch a popular TV show children in the 70's (and if even so then tenuous at best)
 
My next door neighbours have gone out for the afternoon - I watched them go and waved to them, so I know they've definitely gone, and they've not yet come back. I can, however, hear what sounds like their dog occasionally letting out a little howl from their living room.

They took the dog with them.

I'm now wondering what it is that I can actually hear...
 
catseye said:
My next door neighbours have gone out for the afternoon - I watched them go and waved to them, so I know they've definitely gone, and they've not yet come back. I can, however, hear what sounds like their dog occasionally letting out a little howl from their living room.

They took the dog with them.

I'm now wondering what it is that I can actually hear...
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The feral child who's chained in the attic?
 
SimonBurchell said:
I just remembered a minor odd event from back in the mid-to-late 1980s. I was walking home from Aldershot town centre to the outskirts of Farnham, my route took me westwards along Cranmore Lane, where I crossed the A325 onto MOD land and headed steeply uphill on the east side of Hungry Hill on a little footpath (IIRC the same footpath where Anne Lee and Margaret Johnson had been murdered while walking their dogs a few years earlier - completely irrelevant to this story). As I headed uphill through the pines, there was a crashing sound in one of the tree tops and I saw a black shape, about labrador-sized, run along a branch and leap across to the next tree. It was gone in seconds. At the time I could only equate it with a chimpanzee in my mind. Since then I have seen howler monkeys and spider monkeys in the wild, and I now equate it with them in my head - but really, all I can honestly say I saw was a large black animal making off through the tree tops, and certainly not a squirrel. Perhaps an escaped monkey?
Click to expand...
A big cat of some sorts? They just found one in Cumbria.
 
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