MaddyE

Recent Actions

• Commented on Announcement time!
  Download a copy of Calibre. Provided the file is not encumbered by DRM, and you've downloaded using an older version of the Kindle-for-desktop app (I keep a copy of Kindle-for-Mac 1.17 for that reason and block auto-updates by making the...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  Given it's a wild plant, I'd be inclined to forgo any fertiliser, and make sure it's in a well-drained position....
• Commented on Announcement time!
  Actually, I only work in London; I live in Cambridgeshire (up the road from EC although we've never met so I don't know what's happened to him...) Re A. stipitatum, it's sold and grown as an ornamental in this country,...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  Oh well, I'll ask the deli guy at the market tomorrow where he gets his moosir from (unfortunately, his marinade includes New World ingredients like tomato). If he grows his own, I might be able to blag a bulb from...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  Greg, apropos of alliums, have you ever come across Persian shallots (moosir)? I'm trying to find a source of the bulbs (or plants) but I keep being told by online sellers or local garden centres they aren't edible. I can...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  Like you, I seem to have dodged infection or had a symptomless infection, unless the very heavy cold I had shortly before lockdown started was an infection (more likely to have been RSV though). I have noticed I am slowing...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  It's probably too late now, but next time take them out of the bag, and store them in a cool, frost-free dark place. A light-proof hessian sack (but not air-tight - you want air to circulate) in an outbuilding would...
• Commented on Announcement time!
  I always visualised Angleton as Alec Guinness (in the BBC Le Carré adaptations). Too late now, though....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Evidently the same people who held the preview of "Free Willy" with the predictable audience remark (in a fruity tone) of 'Ooh, yes please!'...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  My Mum's house had a similar covenant - basically, the owner was prohibited from keeping livestock - although our neighbours when we moved in had a ramshackle chicken shed dating from WWII. I suspect it was imposed by the original...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Out of curiousity, whereabouts in Dorset? I grew up in Poole and my schools were across the border in Hants. We got the dating thing, the sex thing not so much - I attended Catholic schools so that sort of...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  I first did this when the BBC sent us a list of licence holders for the digital switchover way back when. Later, I improved the 'automation' when I was asked to provide a list of people who had died and...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Sadly not, that would be far too easy. It's why I think the order system isn't NHS-built....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  At the moment, we're on Win 10 until the new laptops arrive. As it happens, I work in local government in Adult Social Care, so we have a lot of dealings with badly formatted NHS data. What do you mean...
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Shudder. Why I'm not looking forward to going back to work on Monday (I've been off for 2 weeks). We got lumbered with a data dump from the NHS which we had to check against our database to see if...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  You could try Peas Vitellius which were an older version of mushy peas....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Or in my case, it hurts too much to keep them in for longer than 5 minutes at a stretch....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I have no objection to uncooked veg - it depends on which ones. The problem is the fibre content - my digestion can't tolerate high fibre, so most leaf greens need to be cooked well to break down the fibre....
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  My Mum's old house had tongue-and-groove Columbian pitch pine floors in the sitting room and the dining room. She had the floor sanded and re-varnished before we moved in during January 1963. The house was built in 1936; I don't...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re pre-war houses: I grew up in a 5 bedroom house built in the 1930s (purchased in the early 60s for £6000 - Mum was offered £1 million for it in the 1990s). 2 large front bedrooms with a smaller...
• Commented on Yokai Land Q&A
  We had a mercury spill in the physics lab at my secondary school. We spent a break merging globules and then the physics master covered the floor with scouring powder (the bleach type) to mop up the remainder....
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  They’re both. A moped is basically a motorised bicycle with a 2-stroke engine and can be pedalled with effort. A scooter (adult) is a cross between a moped and a motorcycle; no pedals but has a fairing for the legs...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  I lived in the Southern UK, and even with central heating there was ice on the inside of the (single glazed) windows and the hand basin drain regularly froze in the bedroom I had from age 7....
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Same as me. To drive door-to-door (even if I qualify for an on-sire parking space which I don’t) is a shade under 70 miles. So I use public transport for the bulk of the journey. In total, this takes 1:30-1:45...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  I've been in a train from Cambridge to London where Part A utterly rejected Part B. Part A starts from Cambridge and forms the front of the train and is usually sitting at the platform. Part B starts at Kings...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  I think that was the one we used when we did a family holiday in Scotland. We lived in Poole, and I seem to recall driving to Devon, staying overnight with family, drive to Newton Abbots and then up North...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  Back in the 40s and 50s, my mother worked for Royal Dutch Shell, first in London, then in Cairo. Back then, you could take up to 2 weeks local leave at a time, and every 2-3 years you got up...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  I've just had a Kensington Orbit trackball fail pretty comprehensively to the extent I thought a website had installed malware... I ended up dismantling it and cleaning out several years of crud from the baseplate. Haven't retried it yet though!...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  The last of those 3. My stop is 2 stops on from the P&R where the actual Busway bit ends. We looked at Godmanchester when we moved out of Cambridge, but the commute was problematic - bus into Huntingdon, and...
• Commented on Oh, 2022!
  That doesn't surprise me. I live closer to Huntingdon than Cambridge yet it takes as long to get to Huntingdon using the bus as it does to Cambridge. The reason is that the Busway itself ends 2 stops before my...