jonab
-
Content Count
1,953 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
11
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Calendar
Posts posted by jonab
-
-
The true locals here speak Occitan which I'm completely unable to get my head (or tongue) round. Fortunately, they also speak French. There are also subdialects of Occitan - Maritime, Niçard, Monegasque and more.
I've learned only recently that Occitan is quite similar to the language of Northern Italy so, nonna and I may be struggling with similar accents!
Going back to my roots, my native language is Hucknall and when I lived there it was easy to distinguish the language of the different areas of the town. When I moved to Nottingham proper, my fine tuning of localities diminished but I was still able to separate Hucknall from Bulwell, Basford. Mansfield and so on. My skill of south of the Trent wasn't so discriminating but I could easily separate Bread and lard island (W Bridgford: all fur and no knickers from others).
-
1
-
-
I left the city in the late 1970's in the midst of all of this destructive vandalism. I was VERY saddened about what was happening at that time both to the fabric of the city itself and to its citizens - I was living on Sherwood Rise and working at Gerard's, Wilkinson Street and very frequently had cause to go through Forest Fields and Hyson Green - twice daily, in fact. This was before the riots but, even then, there was a foreboding atmosphere of things to come.
Courtesy of Google I have been able to see some of the destruction that has taken place since my time in the city and I really cannot imagine what it would be like now to live there.
I have thought in the past few years of paying a visit to Nottingham but, since joining Nottstalgia and finding out what is really happening, the emotional strain would be just too much.
-
4
-
1
-
-
I often used to get L & H mixed up with Abbott & Costello - who were the most unfunny people ever to appear on the music hall stage (or in films). I've a vague memory of seeing them on stage but Google doesn't give any reference to them ever appearing in Nottingham (where it would have been) so that seems a figment.
-
I can relate to nonnaB's experience having spent ages going room to room looking for one of my dogs only to find it was behind me and following every movement.
I'm always amazed at how perceptive dogs are. I'm certain that both dogs were fully aware of my sensibility lapse - and had a good laugh about it later.
-
2
-
-
I must have another look on GSV.
Found it! It's a lot different to what my memory told me but, now I've seen it again, it's most certainly the same place.
Thanks for the memory jog!
-
^^^Didn't they have a 'reputation' at one time?^^^
-
Reverting to dogs and their rotating habits when lying down, I've been watching my two over the past few days and it seems that they don't appear to have a set pattern in which direction they rotate - sometimes clockwise, sometimes anticlockwise. It is noticeable, though, that when going into their bed (they share one large dog bed) they both rotate in the same direction.
-
1
-
1
-
-
I was a quite keen mushroom hunter some years ago but, being stuck in a wheelchair isn't very conducive to that - and I've lost my Roger Phillips.
-
Where I live porcini is an alternative term for what is mainly known in France as a cep. This is probably due to the proximity of the Côte d'Azur to Italy.
The cep or porcini is, to everyone around here, the Boletus edulis but there is a very similar looking fungus, Boletus reticulatus, which grows more in oak forests and, although edible, is not so good in taste or texture. The forests around here are mainly Pinus maritimus and thus more suited for the edulis variety.
-
Don't hold too much nottstalgia for pork pies, mercurydancer. This is what I wrote a few months ago:
QuoteWhen I was in the UK last Christmas I noticed in Chichester Sainsbury's that Pork Farms Pork Pies were still available. I indulged myself and bought one. What a disappointment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Far from being a full-of-flavour meaty treat, the pie was an abomination of rock hard pastry, NO jelly and tasteless fatty meat. As happens so often, a superior local brand loses all character and quality when taken over by some big conglomerate.
I should add that I gave some of the pie to my carer to try. Bearing in mind he is French and used to eating all sorts of strange things, he spat it out and declared it as inedible.
1-
1
-
-
It wasn't the 'done thing' in those days!
-
My memory of him dates to the early 70's. At about closing time he came running out of the Bell in a panic shouting "I'm bostin' fur a waz"* and ran over to the underground latrines over at Slab Square (which, I understand, are now gone). Apparently he'd been making a nuisance of himself in the toilets of the Bell and they threw him out without him being able to relieve himself.
*Tr to English: I urgently need to urinate.
-
I've not lived in the UK since the advent of sat navs and, although the hire car we had during my visit last Christmas was fitted with one, it wasn't used as I know the area so well that I thought that anything the device told me would be wrong.
That idea of the sat nav being wrong and useless is based on their performance down here where, if following the advice offered by that ghastly mechanical woman's voice, it takes twice as long to get to most places than if you use the local roads - which Mme Sat Nav is unaware of. Admittedly these local roads are little more than dirt tracks but, if they get you where you want and/or need to go safely and in good time, there is no contest.
-
2
-
1
-
-
11 hours ago, MargieH said:
Are mules sterile? (Don't mean clean enough to eat your dinner off btw ... I mean unable to breed!)
That is generally true. There is an interesting Wiki article on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule
-
Let's not forget the Romans. Their villas had rooms attached to their dining rooms called vomitoria. Their use is pretty obvious from the name but, apparently from information I gleaned from the Roman villa at Fishbourne, Chichester (close to where I used to live many years ago), all the other secretory functions would also take place in there. There were no doors to the vomitoria, open for all to see (and smell).
-
A lot of those containers shown in antiques programmes and described as 'gravy' or 'sauce' boats are, in fact, female urinals otherwise known as a bordaloue.
Lots of them shown on here https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/116249234105322643/
-
Whilst on about the haggis (haggises, haggii) (my spillchucker says the correct plural is haggises - but it does have a French dictionary installed so there's no guarantee there).
Any road up, I was wondering what is the collective noun for multiple haggises (again, why would you want more than one but, I supposed there could be several of them on display in a shop)?
Keeping their Scottish heritage in mind, I thought about a 'skirl of haggis' or a 'drone of haggis'.
-
1
-
-
If they did have rubber pads they didn't appear to be very effective.
-
^^^You mean stalking haggis?^^^
Which begs another question: Do Australian haggis (haggises?) go round the mountainside in the opposite direction to Scottish ones?
-
3
-
-
I can certainly get hold of that type of tomato - they're called Coeur de Boeuf (Beef Heart) here - same as the Italian name as they are so large but they are solid flesh and flavoursome. I tend to use San Marzano for an added richness.
I agree entirely about using dried mushrooms in risotto and suchlike and fresh for meals where the mushroom is the main component.
-
1
-
-
Must be a REAL fleshy Mediterranean tomato - like we have, not one of those bags of tasteless liquid so common in England!
I find dried porcini excellent as well. There is always a good stock of home dried mushrooms here and porcini are the favourites. A good soak in water (retaining the water for stock or soup base, of course) and they make superb flavouring for omelettes.
-
2
-
-
I think there was a secret conspiracy with those bottle tops and Betterware.
When foil tops first came out (following the demise of the waxed card inner fitting tops of the fifties) they had a little flap which lay at the side of the bottle and which you could lift up and easily remove the top with no danger of finger in the cream or a newly painted ceiling. It was some time after the introduction of the foil tops that this flap disappeared with the need for the Betterware contraption.
I well remember those Betterwear polish samples. I took one of the tins to school to polish my desk at Beardall St Infants School. Mrs Ward and Mrs Hoyland (Headmistress) weren't best pleased when she saw I'd used black shoe polish. I thought it looked good.
-
4
-
-
Can't help with any device suggestion but, doesn't a Sat Nav take the fun out of your enjoyment. If your Sat Nav works as it should, you can never be lost!
-
That Goblin cleaner of Jill's mother reminds me of a very similar shaped cleaner we had called a Calthorpe. It was on sledge type runners rather than wheels.
It was obtained for use by a neighbour who was a telephone engineer in Nottingham from the Calthorpe factory next door to the exchange where this fella worked.
Any memories, anyone, of an electrical manufacturer called Calthorpe or who made Calthorpe labelled products?
Nottinghams Heritage Assets
in General Chat about Nottingham
Posted
This may seem weird but I have dreams about that wonderful smell in Burton's - even now! Nothing could match it.