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What is it with the Fairer sex and soft furnishings?

RogerS

RogerS

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And off to pastures new
I just don’t get it. They buy all these cushions but rarely use them. The cushions just clutter up the chairs and end up being thrown on the floor. But it doesn’t just stop there. SWMBO bought a large comfy chair and massive pouffe for her study. To the best of my knowledge, she has never ever used either. They just lurk there malevolently and sniggering any time I venture in as if to say ‘You know we’re never going anywhere’

Which gives me a problem because where we are thinking of buying is Serious Downsizing. A cat would have a very bruised head. I think I will be forced to get a marquee in the garden for my stuff. Workshop out of the question…not sure I really want one TBH at this time of life.
 
We have cusions that i get wrong for using, its good sport to allow the dogs to circle and make their bed atop one. Funnily they dont get wrong and it looks cute. I no my place.
 
Treat it as a truly radical opportunity to ditch the shackles of life. Get rid of all stuff that is never used or kept in storage. Ditch ties to habitual hobbies such as workshop, machinery and gardening. Do something different. Go and spend six months in Japan and embrace a minimalist way of life maybe?
 
RogerS said:
I just don’t get it. They buy all these cushions but rarely use them. The cushions just clutter up the chairs and end up being thrown on the floor. But it doesn’t just stop there. SWMBO bought a large comfy chair and massive pouffe for her study. To the best of my knowledge, she has never ever used either. They just lurk there malevolently and sniggering any time I venture in as if to say ‘You know we’re never going anywhere’

Which gives me a problem because where we are thinking of buying is Serious Downsizing. A cat would have a very bruised head. I think I will be forced to get a marquee in the garden for my stuff. Workshop out of the question…not sure I really want one TBH at this time of life.
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SWIMBO doesn't suffer from that affliction Rog and if she had her way would go the whole hog and be distinctly 'minimalist' but she does like collecting 'stuff' (coins, netsuke, decent souvenirs from Japan, first day covers etc) In my very 'umble opinion, I wouldn't move anywhere if I couldn't have some sort of 'shop as it's just about the only thing that keeps me on the straight n'level. A moot point as others have observed! :ROFLMAO: - Rob
 
We have bed cushions, their life consists of moving between the bed and a chair depending upon the time of day.
Utterly pointless, still it could be worse, we don’t have those 3foot wide lengths of contrasting material that you get in hotels.
 
“At this time of my life” do you mind telling us your age Roger?
I’m in agreement with Rob I certainly couldn’t do without a workshop. Yours has her cushioned office after all, I’m not sure that you don’t need to rethink your future direction of move, but whatever decluttering is good.
Mine doesn’t have the cushion or strip of material on the bed affliction thank goodness, it would drive me nuts.
 
At a guess, having followed some of the major house refurbishments that Roger has done over the years, I would say it is more the end product that Roger has had enough of. I wonder when was the last time he made something just for fun. I know the answer to that as he finished a tea tray a week or so back but you know what I mean.
 
There is a wee space and I'm thinking about getting back into veneering especially if I can make stuff for Etsy selling at stupid prices.
 
Brilliant series Coupling. And Sarah Alexander was double gorgeous.
 
Me too, or three, depending on Rob's age. I'm 70 month after next. Grumpy ? Never! Mme doesn't read here, or she'd disagree. :cool:

I have the ultimate in "grumpy domain names" in french, had it for 25 years, although the "whois" says different, whois are rarely accurate IME. Can't mention it here though, it would n't get past the filters , mods, admins. Children would be startled.
 
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75? Assuming I can still count in binary. Anyone else get taught that at school?
 
We were taught binary at school, ( 60s) in "A stream" maths , and again at my second art school, but only if you were doing "scientific and technical illustration", in order to program early CAD ( punch cards would be made, punched by hand, and sent to a mainframe machine somewhere else in the UK, to run during the time when it wasn't doing something important, could be 3 weeks before you saw the result ) . Also was taught ( amongst other things ) to make that diagonal stripe across the top of the the card deck in the shoe box full of cards, so that when / if you dropped them, you had a chance of getting them back in the correct order before night fell. I think that may have been the first thing we were taught. I'm guessing that many here have dropped a box like that ;)
 
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I used to work as a Weekend Student at Sainsbury’s. My job was to go round the shop and stock room and carry out a stocktake. Then squirrel myself away in the staff restroom with a bunch of those cards and a fat pencil then spend the rest of the time transposing my stock count on to them. Even in those early days of the late ‘60’s their mainframe had a pretty good idea as to how much would be sold which was a useful cross check. I got very proficient at filling those cards in so much so that I could usually have a little sleep.

However sometimes I’d cock things up and I always knew when I had because on arrival of a Friday evening, old Grierson the manager would be waiting for me, take me down to the stock room - a virtual leading-by-the-ear - and show me wall to wall cases of, say, baked beans because I’d told the computer that the shop had sold 10,000 of them the week before rather than 100.
 
Ahh....punch cards....revenge and mayhem were SO much.more satisfying with these. You didn't need to tip out the box. Just add (or subtract!) one card...even better, randomly select ONE card, add a couple of holes from that bus conductors ticketer that you had in your pocket, PUT THE CARD BACK...
 
And talking of randomness. When we were kids, some of us had holes in our trouser pockets. We'd hang around people, friends, relatives working on their cars. Things like an engine rebuild. We'd have the odd AF bolt or nut in our grubby little fists and, if you got the timing right, as the 'victim' stood back to look in awe at their achievement....'What's that nut over there for. Mister ?'
 
RogerS said:
I used to work as a Weekend Student at Sainsbury’s.... in those early days of the late ‘60’s...
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Doing some sums, that must make you between say 72 to 74ish. I used to work at JS as well but I was d'management until they kicked me out :ROFLMAO: - Rob
 
I think Sam may be the inspiration for the fabled and feared BOFH from "el reg".

When us artschooligans made cock ups on our cards, we just got back machine produced ( some kind of plotter ) scribblings, or in extreme cases ( someone must have been filtering for our errors ) we'd get " contains major multiple errors, did not run it" or similar. Computer time was very "spendy" back then, surprised they let us do it at all.

I must confess, that although I have always done my own mechanical repairs , since my first "push bike", I have occasionally had bits left over that were not meant to be. Which tends not to result in "Oook" , more in "that's an embuggerance" or similar.

Back when I had VW's ( Beetles , Buses and Campers, including a "split screen ski bus camper, with all the little windows around the top under the roof rack"..I bought an original copy ( still have it somewhere ) of "How to keep your Volkswagen alive"..loved the text , nice clear instructions, with humour, and superb illustrations, especially some of the full page ones. It has in the text a phrase of advice which is along the lines of "as you remove parts, especially the heating hoses, put them in paper baggies, get a large supply of baggies, you'll need them" ..and adds " write to VW and tell them use fewer hoses". Very much a book in the vein of the time, illustrations reminiscent of Robert Crumb's work, which I love ( he now lives in France ) , I think it may be available as a pdf on archive.org or somewhere similar.

Also had an Original Messerschmitt Kabinenroller KR200 ,( wonderful vehicle, very "quirky" ) mine was red, clear plexiglas cockpit bubble top, not the cabriolet ..came with an amazing "manual / handbook " , a sort of hard back folder in the format that existed before A sizes.

Nowadays in France the management are "cadres", no fixed hours , so tend to do well over the 32 hour week ( as do many including Mme ) , but receive ( unlike Mme) very good pay.
 
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AJB Temple said:
Brilliant series Coupling. And Sarah Alexander was double gorgeous.
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Absolutely - though Jeff had the best lines. "Home and away breasts" being a particular favourite.
 
mwinfrance said:
...to make that diagonal stripe across the top of the the card deck in the shoe box full of cards, so that when / if you dropped them, you had a chance of getting them back in the correct order before night fell. I think that may have been the first thing we were taught. I'm guessing that many here have dropped a box like that ;)
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We were taught (at school) to draw a triangle pointing towards the front of the box. Same sort of thing, really. The language I used was City & Guilds Mnomic - and I had to look that up just to confirm my mind wasn't playing tricks. The programs were sent down to the local college to be run on their ICL 1901 with all of, I think, 4k of memory (but my own memory might be getting that wrong)

I did a small amount of punch card work, but most of my early experience was really with paper tape. All punched on a Flexowriter terminal.
 
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mwinfrance said:
I think Sam may be the inspiration for the fabled and feared BOFH from "el reg".
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😆 I couldn't possibly comment...save to say: having spent three years working in industry in "Darry", mid-seventies, I learned extremely quickly to 'stand oop fer yersel'.
What's "el reg"?

Edit: Belay that. Just found "The Register" et al. A whole new 'rabbit hole'...
 
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Just found "The Register" et al. A whole new 'rabbit hole'...
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Indeed :) .if I may recommend as an example the following article, and as always with "el reg" especially the comments.
The Register reminds me of here, information with humour.
Worth a search for old articles there, and the comments accompanying them , from Alistair Dabbs, and Lester Haines.

www.theregister.com

Teach GPT-4o to do one job badly and it can start being evil

Model was fine-tuned to write vulnerable software – then suggested enslaving humanity
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com
 
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