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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 22, 2021 15:10:25 GMT
in order to see it one attached a little paper Chinese lantern with a little candle and LIT it in the shed with the cylinder. All good fun. After each shift one faced a several miles bike ride home, whatever the weather. And maybe giving thanks for every drop of freezing rain or biting wind, because it meant you were still on earth. Sometimes, when I am reading your posts I think you should change your name to Mossie the Survivor ... or maybe Conan. The girl doing it has a lot of serious burns because the wine bottle exploded. I think what she failed to account for is it is supposed to be an empty wine bottle. Is that true?!
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 22, 2021 16:15:37 GMT
One thing that I hate about random memories (not this thread but the memories themselves) is that when you have forgotten at least 90% of the things that happened to you in the past, you still have memories that you wish you didn't -- being embarrassed in a restaurant for having ordered the wrong thing at age 13, saying something accidentally hurtful to a friend in university, a practical joke I played on my brother at age 10 which worked brilliantly but I am still ashamed for having done it... I don't want to remember such things and wish I only had pleasant memories. Every now and then I have asked a friend if they remembered an "incident" from the past that bothered me, and in every single case they had no idea what I was talking about. For some reason, that makes it even worse -- being burdened with memories about which nobody cares.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 22, 2021 16:18:45 GMT
I am very relieved to hear that I am not the only person burdened (perhaps rightfully?) by memories of things I've done.
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Post by onlyMark on Mar 22, 2021 17:32:21 GMT
I am only guessing that it was the case (that it was a full bottle) because of photos of the severity of her burn injuries. I looked at one video of how to do this and it did look like the (screw) top was still on the bottle, but you could then see the seal had been broken. She warns of "I really need you all to be careful with what you're doing and if you're copying any YouTube videos." www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56481993I believe the Darwin Awards deal with this sort of thing.
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Post by onlyMark on Mar 22, 2021 17:40:20 GMT
Have you ever had sudden memory of something, cringed, and someone with you asks what's the matter?
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Post by mossie on Mar 22, 2021 19:24:54 GMT
There are some things I wish I hadn't said or done, but on the whole I am thick skinned and don't realise and just blunder on.
Then with reference to Bixa's remark about being a survivor, again I am so thick and take no notice. the b......y Jerries had 3 goes at finishing me off when I was a child, so I suppose I am fireproof. I learnt early the old military saying "If it's got your number on it". Take whatever life throws at you and just 'press on regardless'.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 23, 2021 2:07:26 GMT
My brain just flashed on the memory of the quilted comforter my parents used on their bed in the family camping trailer. It was a satiny fabric, an olive-y green on one side and a light gold on the other, and very luxurious.
Also very slippery and would have fallen off a normal bed, but the trailer bed had walls on three sides and both ends of the fourth to help keep it in place.
I loved that quilt.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 23, 2021 4:16:06 GMT
I still have one from my grandparents' bed, shiny and dark red. It was always sliding off the bed. It must be a minimum of 80 years old now and is stashed with other blankets, waiting for a new Ice Age.
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Post by questa on Mar 23, 2021 4:18:40 GMT
My star sign is Cancer and we are supposed to have great memories for people and events that happened in our childhood or long ago. Would you like me to make a quiz and see who remembers what?
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Post by Kimby on Mar 23, 2021 13:03:29 GMT
Sounds fun, questa. Go for it!
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Post by questa on Mar 23, 2021 23:59:32 GMT
#1 How old were you when you ffirst sat down to read and follow a story in a newspaper. What was the news
Me...1954 the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu. I was 12.
Next...
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 24, 2021 0:21:04 GMT
Gosh -- I really can't remember. I do remember that shortly after learning to read, I must have gotten over-confident. Since I learned by the phonics method, in my mind there was nothing I couldn't sound out and understand. Trying to read the newspaper disabused me of that notion.
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Post by Kimby on Mar 24, 2021 0:43:35 GMT
I have zero memory of reading a newspaper as a young person. We GOT a newspaper, but it was an evening paper instead of a morning paper, and by the time my parents finished with it, it was time for dinner, homework, piano practice and TV. We did watch TV news at dinner time and again at 10.
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Post by htmb on Mar 24, 2021 4:44:34 GMT
We had the Tribune delivered in the morning and the Times in the late afternoon. I liked the Times because it came folded up like an origami square or triangle, and I also thought the paperboy, who tossed papers from his bike, was cute. I remember trying to read parts of the newspapers. Sometimes it would only be the comics, but my dad always encouraged me to read more and we’d often discuss the news of the day. We moved out of the city when I was ten and a half, so my interest in the newspaper must have started a few years before.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 24, 2021 7:52:06 GMT
I started at least looking at the newspaper at age 9 although I don't remember what interested me other than the comics. I do know that I at least inspected the headlines on the front page. We had two newspapers every day, the local Gulfport-Biloxi Daily Herald and the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.
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Post by monetsmum on Mar 24, 2021 8:13:14 GMT
My star sign is Cancer and we are supposed to have great memories for people and events that happened in our childhood or long ago. Would you like me to make a quiz and see who remembers what? I like that idea; I'm a Cancer too.
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Post by monetsmum on Mar 24, 2021 8:16:57 GMT
It must have been when I was 10; reading about JFK's assassination in 1963.
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Post by mossie on Mar 24, 2021 10:32:08 GMT
It would have been when I was about 9 and the war was then going strong. The papers would have maps showing where the different front lines/battles were, so it got my interest in maps started as well. we also got small papers in French which the RAF had dropped on us by mistake so it helped with trying to learn French. I was interested in that because my favourite uncle had just escaped from France and stayed with us for some days until he got instructions. He had been a driver in the RAF and got out independently with a small lorry which was parked in the road outside. He gave me his map of Northern France which he had no more use for.
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Post by mich64 on Mar 24, 2021 17:30:23 GMT
I remember in grade 3, our teacher gave us the same project every week for I think must have been the whole school year. Each Monday we had to hand in newspaper articles clipped out of the newspaper, we had to glue them onto pages in an exercise book. Each week she would give us a different topic that we would have to read articles to search for certain words or topics. After that year, I usually read some of the newspaper each day and my parents were happy there were no longer cut up newspapers.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 24, 2021 18:18:07 GMT
In 7th grade we were supposed to clip an interesting article and talk about it in class. I found an article about Madame Nhu who was the first lady of Vietnam from 1955 to 1963 (even though she was just the sister-in-law of the unmarried president). Anyway, she was a very tough person, and I'm pretty sure she made the cover of Time magazine once. She was out of the country during the coup d'état that killed the president and her husband, and that was the small article that I found. In 1963, Vietnam was not a hot topic in the United States, but it already interested me. It also apparently interested JFK wo said this about Madame Nhu:
What horrible things had she done?
Anyway, the reason I remember this particular article is because the teacher was incredibly impressed by my choice and had not seen the information herself. It was probably from the more serious Clarion-Ledger and not from our local Daily Herald. Obviously the other kids in the class had absolutely no interest in such matters.
I still find Madame Nhu fascinating. She died in 2011.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 24, 2021 19:09:07 GMT
It would have been when I was about 9 and the war was then going strong. The papers would have maps showing where the different front lines/battles were, so it got my interest in maps started as well. we also got small papers in French which the RAF had dropped on us by mistake so it helped with trying to learn French. I was interested in that because my favourite uncle had just escaped from France and stayed with us for some days until he got instructions. He had been a driver in the RAF and got out independently with a small lorry which was parked in the road outside. He gave me his map of Northern France which he had no more use for. Another of your stories which could be part of a movie or even the springboard of a great tv series, Mossie!
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Post by questa on Mar 24, 2021 22:47:14 GMT
Good Grief! Did Madame Nhu live that long? I thought she disappeared after Diem was killed.I'm amazed no-one assassinated her as well. She was responsible for killing many Buddhist monks and nuns and was crazy.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 25, 2021 12:41:18 GMT
Well, France and Italy took good care of her.
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Post by bjd on Mar 25, 2021 13:02:51 GMT
Good Grief! Did Madame Nhu live that long? I thought she disappeared after Diem was killed.I'm amazed no-one assassinated her as well. She was responsible for killing many Buddhist monks and nuns and was crazy. I just read the obituary written in the NY Times at her death in 2011. She was not responsible for killing monks, but did make nasty comments about barbeques after some set themselves on fire. She was contradictory, both pushing for women's rights but wanting to ban divorce and contraception. She lived in Rome near her archbishop brother after her husband and brother-in-law (Diem) were killed.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 7, 2021 19:44:18 GMT
I was the victim of a surprise party once in my life. Everybody could tell that I absolutely hated every moment of it and at least they were ashamed of themselves. These were close friends -- how could they be so stupid?
It happened when I was returning from a trip with a friend, who was not in on the scheme (this was long before mobile phones). But she recognised all of the cars parked along the street (I don't pay attention to such things) and said urgently "Just keep going!" But I had nowhere to hide, so I faced the situatiion. Nobody ever tried again.
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Post by kerouac2 on Apr 17, 2021 9:20:21 GMT
I has trying to get rid of old crap declutter this morning and I came across a big folder of old postcards and letters. Looking at the messages on the postcards brought back lots of old memories but what I found a bit scary was to have no memory at all of certain people, some of whom seemed to know me very well. And what were they doing in Hungary, Malaysia, Guernsey, Czechoslovakia, U.A.E. ? Of course a lot of them were from family in varying degrees, all dead now. I had forgotten that cousin Simone, who died of covid last year, had ever been to London. She was such a farm peasant that I couldn't even imagine her taking off her gardening boots and putting on city shoes. It warmed my heart that I had received so many cards from Valérie, the daughter of one of my colleagues, who sent me cards from so many places (Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Canada...). When her mother had to bring her to work, the little girl would always end up in my office because I was the only person who gave her adult advice ("Don't listen to him!" her mother would say.) Later when she was in university (Don't forget that my colleagues and I all worked together for more than 30 years so we watched each other's entire life unfold.) she would still come and visit me at the office. And when email unfortunately replaced postcards, she sent me photos of herself skydiving and riding in trucks full of sheep or on top of an elephant. Part of my adult advice, even when she was six years old was to travel as much as possible, seek new adventures and not listen to her parents (who only ever said "stay home stay home stay home!"). So I sort of understand why she kept coming back to me.
I managed to throw away every single postcard. I was not quite as lucky with the letters because my eyes strayed on a sentence or two here and there, and I knew I had to look into certain matters a bit more. Some of the letters are so long! 6 or 7 pages. My friend Jane from Boston wrote the most, until her death at age 51 more than 20 years ago. She used an American legal pad so all of her letters are on yellow paper.
I don't want to sound too old, but life seems to have been much richer back then when we all did so many things in person because we didn't have computers which have the wonderful and terrible ability to delete things from the past in one click.
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Post by questa on Apr 17, 2021 10:26:29 GMT
Thank you to all the memory recallers who kept this thread alive while I attended to other matters.
For your next assignment ... what can you remember about your family's earliest car. make, model breakdowns, road trips. Did it have a pet name? What happened to it?
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 17, 2021 11:18:34 GMT
First I remember was a Triumph Mayflower and later a Vauxhall Velox VUV 56, MGBGT OGC 605E, Austin A40 OGC 610E. Rover, Triumph 2000?
Road trips to Cornwall that took over 10 hours, gear stick breaking once.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 17, 2021 12:14:01 GMT
Austin A35 - NYW 653. Spent many a journey with my parents in it and my dad's 2nd car in the UK.
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Post by onlyMark on Apr 17, 2021 12:15:00 GMT
Mick -
OGC 605E -----
Vehicle make MG Date of first registration January 1967 Year of manufacture 1967 Cylinder capacity 1798 cc CO₂ emissions Not available Fuel type PETROL Euro status Not available Real Driving Emissions (RDE) Not available Export marker No Vehicle status Untaxed Vehicle colour RED Vehicle type approval Not available Wheelplan 2 AXLE RIGID BODY Revenue weight Not available Date of last V5C (logbook) issued 20 July 2004
No trace of the others.
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