Inverness is a great base, though not an especially wonderful city in itself. Go west to visit Ullapool, a completely charming town and beautiful scenery en route. Or head for Speyside malt country if you're a whisky fan. Or check out Loch Ness, or Cawdor Castle, or go dolphin watching. Enjoy!
I grew up without TV. The first television I saw was in the window of a shop - not for sale, the shop owner had set it up as a novelty. The Apollo programme was big news at the time, and it was showing a rocket launch. I remember standing watching it for so long someone was sent out to look for me.
My escape from boredom back then was books. I read voraciously, always had a stack of books from the library. My parents often yelled at me to "get outside and play", so I'd be forced to bicycle around aimlessly with my friends. We were so bored!
These days? Lemmy, crossword puzzles and knitting socks (see below), yes indeed. But also sport, beekeeping, socialising. And reading books. On my phone of course!
I met a couple in Vanuatu - one of the world’s most language dense nations - whose mother tongues were mutually unintelligible, so they communicated using the country’s official language, Bislama. A lot of bilingual people don’t speak English. Plenty of Eastern Europeans don’t speak English (unpopular during communist rule) but speak say German or Russian as well as Serbocroatian or whatever.
What most irritates me about this - plus layoffs to increase profits- is that the corporate numbnuts overlook the fact that every employee they stiff is a customer. Everyone is someone’s customer. A customer who has a shrinking amount of disposable income to spend on white goods, new clothes, eating out etc. They think hurrah, with AI we’ll be able to sack our creatives! Next thing they’re whining because there are so many homeless people on the streets. There’s a link! It’s exasperating.
The bees don't attend planning meetings during the winter. We relay all decisions by shouting through the hive entrance. It makes life so much simpler - taking 30,000 opinions into account per hive is a complete pain in the fundament. Especially if, as you say, they haven't done their prep work. "Too busy"? Yeah, whatever Ethel.
In my 40s I went back to my home town, not having lived there since I was 18 (none of my family still lived there). First shop I went into the woman said, "Hi MrsDoyle, how's your mum?" In the bank, the teller clocked my name and said, "Aww, I used to babysit you!" I got a big hit of the claustrophobia that drove me away in the first place.
A funeral I attended recently had a plywood coffin and a bunch of felt-tip pens for people to write messages with. At another one a while back, the coffin was wickerwork.
I want this too. I saw a documentary about a dying man who took this option. They interviewed him about the decision, then after his death filmed medical students dissecting him (from a distance, it was discreet) and interviewed them about the experience. They were grateful for his gift, and incredibly respectful when speaking about him.
The thing is, the inside of a body looks nothing like the nice tidy diagrams. It's a mess in there! I'd like these kids to practise on dead me before they start cutting into live people.
I'm thinking coin sorter. You start by sorting the smallest coins through the littlest holes, and work your way up.
I'm a knitter, and making gloves with it just doesn't compute for me. It's too clumsy, with too many extra steps. They'd be making gloves from fabric or leather.
I visited Bhutan in 2008 when democracy had just been introduced. I asked someone what he thought about it, and he kind of sighed and said, " People were happy with the old system, but the king wanted this so we're going along with it." Big shrug.
A good tip for bread machines is that a lot of people buy them but then don’t like them, so you can get good secondhand ones cheaply. I love my bread machine - it was about £120 new, but I got it in a charity shop for £10.
Thanks for the chickpea recipe! To add to your carrot tip: when I buy them I peel them straight away and store them in a sealed container in the fridge. They stay crispy and juicy that way.
It was a build-up of something or other (carbon?) on the microphone part of the caller’s handset. You could fix it by tapping the handset sharply on a hard surface. Source: I used to work in radio back in the 80s.
Part of the 49% the bot left out: "Employed by the now-defunct Omani private firm Dahra Global Technologies and Consultancy Services, they were contracted for providing training and related services to Qatar’s armed forces.
"While the charges have never been made public, media reports hinted at the possibility of their being charged with espionage."
Inverness is a great base, though not an especially wonderful city in itself. Go west to visit Ullapool, a completely charming town and beautiful scenery en route. Or head for Speyside malt country if you're a whisky fan. Or check out Loch Ness, or Cawdor Castle, or go dolphin watching. Enjoy!