Ogdred Weary
Drag(on) Queen
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2012
- Messages
- 7,143
Spirytus Rektyfikowany.
That's easy for you to say.
Spirytus Rektyfikowany.
Um... Actually, it is.That's easy for you to say.
Yup, that's the joke.Um... Actually, it is.
That's easy for you to typeYup, that's the joke.
Thats what they told us, I would assume all contraband was well wrapped and was hidden in the surface water manholes as opposed to the foul drains.So the drugs and weapons were being kept in the actual drains?
My father and his cronies live in Cyprus, one of their lpleasures is to nip over the border in to the North and stock up on brandy in plastic bottles. It is evil stuff that clears all known sinus conditions and probably drains, cost about 50p a pint. I have always declined the opportunity to take a couple f litres home. Dad reckons the low covid rate among his peers is due to regular ingestion of this stuff.That's what I thought but they have packed with bubblewrap or something, though you would have expected them to have dumped that too.
It could have been homemade booze in plastic bottles, lots of cultures have their versions of moonshine.
Don't ever buy 'Gordoons' gin in Egypt. That stuff will blind you. Cheap though.It is evil stuff that clears all known sinus conditions and probably drains, cost about 50p a pint. I have always declined the opportunity to take a couple f litres home.
Well i never lifted it, so maybe, but its an odd act with no purpose.
The stuff of folklore! Reminds me of those stories of the Devil helping a mortal with some task, with the condition that he take the first soul to use the completed item, bridge, whatever, and the clever peasant always outwits the Devil by sending someone else...Just heard a cracking story from R. He's an Indian guest and football fan who has stayed a few times. He came back here in April to see all the big end of season matches. He was supposed to go home to India about 3 weeks ago....but has basically taken root in my house to avoid going home as they're trying to marry him off again..so he's staying put til they give up.
But that's not the story. He told me about his middle brother's marriage. A passive, quiet laid back sort, he married his enthusiastic bride. As soon as the ceremony was over she went stone cold on him. On day 7, before the marriage certificate had even arrived, she declared she wanted out. That's how long the marriage lasted.
And why? This is the showstopper. The Disney movie they should have made but haven't. She was actually in love with someone else. Her parents wouldn't have approved of that match. She planned to run off with him, except ...she went to see a "tantric" ( psychic) who told her her first husband was going to die.
So obviously she didn't want her true love to be her first husband. So she married R's brother so he'd be the one to die instead!
Charming!
( For the record he's still alive 18 years later and married to another).
Perhaps being literally at death's door, she was able to access "stuff" from beyond the veil? You here of people making such predictions close to death even when they don't claim to be mediums.Its been a while since i asked a guest for any stories from the twilight zone, so its as well that today one volunteered his. And it's...well...the holy grail of its kind. You'll see why.
An elderly but still working gentleman is currently staying here. He's returned home as his 93 year old sister who lives nearby is sadly on her way out so he knows this is likely the last time he shall see her.
I would not by any means call him an eccentric - there is no affected oddness about him - but its a tempting word as he occupies the same space as one would expect an eccentric to occupy. A character, then, or rather an adventurer. Someone who has had a full life, brushing against fame and history, and if he's not written a memoir he needs to. His stories are often long and go off on a multiverse of tangents, but they're nearly all fascinating.
In any case its not the place for those. They main fact to note is that he has lived for the last 52 years in Ethiopia of all places.
This morning he told me this:
Back in 1968, returning home from a stint in Northern Ireland (he's a chartered accountant/auditor who has been posted around the world), his sister asked him to drive her to see what he says was a very famous local medium at the time called May (Mae?). She lived in a top floor flat and he waited outside while his sister was up there. She came down and told him May wants to see *you*. Perplexed, and not interested in mediums, but obliging he went up to see what on earth she wanted to see him for. An elderly, clearly immobile, old lady greeted him "I've been waiting for you" she said "I'm so glad i got to see you. As I'll be dead next week". (!)
She told him he would move to Abyssinia. That he would marry a woman called "Vlahopoulou" (!!), would have 3 kids and would be rich.
He later found out she had indeed died the following week. But his interest being politely sceptical at best and the prophecies being so out there he essentially never thought about the incident again..even when 2 years later he was posted to Ethiopia where he has lived ever since. Ethiopia is how the country was always labelled in his stamp albums, so though an educated man he simply never connected it to this past Abyssinian reference. In 1973 he met the half greek ethiopian lady who was to become his wife and, yes bear him 3 children. She lived with her uncle whose name was the rather exotic Agamemnon Pytharas. That was therefore her surname too. Eventually he takes his bride home to liverpool to meet the family. At one point his sister is left chatting alone with the lady. She comes running out to her brother "Alan! Alan! Do you remember...May, the medium? Remember what she said? You'd live in Abyssinia and marry a woman named Vlahapoulou?!" His memory jogged, he mumbled...ok...but her name is Pytharas. His sister informed him what she had just learned from conversation with the bride to be...Pytharas was the uncle's surname, not hers. Her actual last name from birth was....
Do you really need me to say it? Vlahopoulou
Now I have no doubt whatsoever that he told me an accurate and honest account as he knows and recalls it. Which begs the obvious question...how on earth could any fraudulent or self deluded medium cold read, guess, or even psychically intuit such a unique and improbable and utterly unfamiliar name 5 years ahead of time?
Did those various things ever transpire?Once my Sri Lankan friend was at the local shopping centre when a woman she didn't know approached her.
She said that she had been waiting to see her and proceded to tell her various things that were going to happen.
Then she left and my friend never saw her again.
So perhaps some people have an urgent impulse to do these things.
Its been a while since i asked a guest for any stories from the twilight zone, so its as well that today one volunteered his. And it's...well...the holy grail of its kind. You'll see why.
An elderly but still working gentleman is currently staying here. He's returned home as his 93 year old sister who lives nearby is sadly on her way out so he knows this is likely the last time he shall see her.
I would not by any means call him an eccentric - there is no affected oddness about him - but its a tempting word as he occupies the same space as one would expect an eccentric to occupy. A character, then, or rather an adventurer. Someone who has had a full life, brushing against fame and history, and if he's not written a memoir he needs to. His stories are often long and go off on a multiverse of tangents, but they're nearly all fascinating.
In any case its not the place for those. They main fact to note is that he has lived for the last 52 years in Ethiopia of all places.
This morning he told me this:
Back in 1968, returning home from a stint in Northern Ireland (he's a chartered accountant/auditor who has been posted around the world), his sister asked him to drive her to see what he says was a very famous local medium at the time called May (Mae?). She lived in a top floor flat and he waited outside while his sister was up there. She came down and told him May wants to see *you*. Perplexed, and not interested in mediums, but obliging he went up to see what on earth she wanted to see him for. An elderly, clearly immobile, old lady greeted him "I've been waiting for you" she said "I'm so glad i got to see you. As I'll be dead next week". (!)
She told him he would move to Abyssinia. That he would marry a woman called "Vlahopoulou" (!!), would have 3 kids and would be rich.
He later found out she had indeed died the following week. But his interest being politely sceptical at best and the prophecies being so out there he essentially never thought about the incident again..even when 2 years later he was posted to Ethiopia where he has lived ever since. Ethiopia is how the country was always labelled in his stamp albums, so though an educated man he simply never connected it to this past Abyssinian reference. In 1973 he met the half greek ethiopian lady who was to become his wife and, yes bear him 3 children. She lived with her uncle whose name was the rather exotic Agamemnon Pytharas. That was therefore her surname too. Eventually he takes his bride home to liverpool to meet the family. At one point his sister is left chatting alone with the lady. She comes running out to her brother "Alan! Alan! Do you remember...May, the medium? Remember what she said? You'd live in Abyssinia and marry a woman named Vlahapoulou?!" His memory jogged, he mumbled...ok...but her name is Pytharas. His sister informed him what she had just learned from conversation with the bride to be...Pytharas was the uncle's surname, not hers. Her actual last name from birth was....
Do you really need me to say it? Vlahopoulou
Now I have no doubt whatsoever that he told me an accurate and honest account as he knows and recalls it. Which begs the obvious question...how on earth could any fraudulent or self deluded medium cold read, guess, or even psychically intuit such a unique and improbable and utterly unfamiliar name 5 years ahead of time?
Please keep us posted! You have the most marvelous life, full of weirdness and wonder. I am envious.Not a guest tale, but another random story recounted to me so I'll throw it in here.. especially as its very much a FOAF tale and I'm unlikely to access more direct details from the original source.
Brother 3 just messaged me and told me Brother 1 had a tale i would be interested in. I'll message B1 tomorrow to see if i can flesh it out a little more, but the summary as told by B3 is as follows:
A man known to B1 had told him how his daughter and her bf were on holiday in Spain. They hired a car and drove up into the mountains. Skimpily dressed in shorts etc, when it suddenly got very cold and a mist descended over the mountain, they returned to the car, but it wouldn't start. Panic started to set in. But then "from the side of the car near the mountain edge side" a man appeared. He placed his hand on the bonnet of the car and the engine "burst into life". The man walks off into the fog and the couple managed to get safely down the mountain.
I shall try and find out tomorrow such questions as did the man actually speak...the bare tale gives the impression he didn't.
I have spent time in offices where the clocks did this - they are Wi-Fi these days looking for the official time signal and if they need replacement and they find they are a second off they sometimes spin for a while until they are happy with the signal. They can also be jogged to start or stop the spin behavior by a good jolt, like a door opening or closing.New guest tale. A young woman whose father died at 57 of a heart attack. On the day of his death, in the family waiting room the hands of the clock were inexplicably and to their fascination spinning round at speed and continued to do so until the moment the consultant enter the room to inform them their father had just passed, at which point it stopped dead.
(Not at the correct time, before you ask)