Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 15 October 2023

Rusty - Your pictures give a whole new meaning to 'casual water' ... I have some pictures of my golf club during floods a few years ago. The ninth fairway was like a river, and the fifth green was an extra lake. Even though we are on clay, it cleared remarkably quickly. Isn't nature wonderful?

Pat - last time we had such a serious flood - in 2000, the course took ages to get back. All the sand was washed out of the bunkers and there was debris everywhere. We have had better drainage installed since then so finger crossed it won’t take as long.

Dry and mostly sunny here today. We have been doing so well with backlog of jobs that we had time for some baking this afternoon - first time for months.

LYNETTE – it is such horrible news from the middle east – but only “same as” – I can remember it in the 1960s – and am asking the question now as I did then: why did we make such a mess of the area in 1948? Divided Palestine but omitted to give land and nationhood to both peoples! Crazy!

LINDA – I suppose holidays, same as other lifestyle choices, are down to personal preference. I grew up without holidays, so took years when we married to get used to the annual packing up for a week in summer – couldn’t have coped with more than going to visit the parents and used to spend much of the time crying because I wanted to go home. We had some good holidays after the children grew up but wouldn’t go far. Can’t say I miss holidays now we can’t do it. I hope you will get pleasant new neighbours moving in – and soon, for the sake of the neighbourhood.

RUSTY – wow! Those golf course pictures are wet! As you say, it will be a while until you can play again.

We shall go to church tomorrow – the student will be doing the service. We have reached the deadline for articles for the November magazine, but I have received only two items to publish, and we are having a busy week with visits etc, so I haven’t got time to search for material! They seem to think a deadline is the day when one prepares an item to send to the editor the morning after!

OG - Oh yes, I know what you mean about the church magazine! My deadline is lunchtime on a Thursday ... and I am amazed how many people have lunch at 3.00pm or even later! 'Can you just squeeze this in?' is the favourite request - sometimes I can, sometimes I can't!!

PatO; Suggest you advertise an earlier deadline? We used to do that on the magazines I worked on, deliberately adding in some wiggle room for the inevitable late stuff. Of course, that never worked with items that we had to run by the legal department.

OG: Heartsick about the Middle East. "We" didn't do that area any favors after WWI either with the Sykes-Picot agreement, which handily left out the people affected. Oh, and let's not forget the partition of Pakistan and India too.

Clare: Inevitable that the West Bank would get sucked in. I have a Jewish friend here who abhors Netanyahu and his policies (and the "war" is a welcome diversion for him from his proposed authoritarian policies at home)..

Rusty: Gosh. How long before those links dry out enough to play!

Meanwhile, Jim Jordan has been dumped, even as a candidate, for speaker of the House of Representatives. Interesting - and exasperating - but no surprise given the level of gutlessness that exists, that even more of his colleagues voted him out in behind-closed-door meetings than voted against him in public. To be continued......

Spent all day catching up on small stuff (buying pond cleaner for the fountain, light bulbs for the exterior lights, white-out for correcting my many mistakes on various documents....)

Take care all.

Unknown said:

Jim Jordan has been dumped, even as a candidate, for speaker of the House of Representatives. Interesting - and exasperating - but no surprise given the level of gutlessness that exists, that even more of his colleagues voted him out in behind-closed-door meetings than voted against him in public. To be continued......

Anyone Trump approves of should be forever blocked from power.