Hard to believe that this is my 245th post here on The Chariot, must be, WordPress kept encouraging me to reach the land mark and what better day to write a non-post then today, probably our quietest day of the year.
Presents opened this morning, I didn’t get a snowplough, I want one next year, First Mate at the Creek got one, I think it’s a cool gift. I bet none of my neighbours have one!
We had our Christmas meal in the afternoon, what do you call that? I know that a mid-morning meal is called brunch (being a cross between breakfast and lunch) but what about mid-afternoon, luper? (Lunch and supper.) I prefer it with one ‘p’ sounds more like super which it was.
245 not out, sounds like a cricket blog doesn’t it? Well it isn’t, it’s actually about nothing, just my late afternoon thoughts, it could be about cricket though. Two tests starting tomorrow. First the Aussies at 01:30 my time (23:30 gmt today) followed almost immediately by The Proteas at 10:00 my time (08:00gmt.)
The Aussies at the MCG are fielding an eleven with more new caps (well at least one) against the mighty Indians who surprisingly are only no.2 in the test rankings behind England. (Actually now that I think about it I’m not surprised at all.)
South Africa of course are playing Sri Lanka up in Durban. Sri Lanka, it has to be said are awful at the moment. The Proteas should wrap this up inside the 5 allotted days in fact Cricinfo tell us that Sri Lanka need a Christmas miracle, I doubt if they’ll get it.
Time to take a walk through the kitchen and see if there’s any Christmas pud left.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Haw Soutie,
The joy of the day that is in it to yourself and to all of yours!
Resting after cooking and consuming our family Christmas lunch with associated alcohol and before we rush upstairs to get stuck into the stair party. For the avoidance of doubt, we live in a tenement and it’s what we do, neighbour-wise, celebration-wise, season-wise.. You could try to Google it all but it probably would not really explain the half of what Embra living is all about, in my opinion.
Anyhoo, OZ v India from 11 pm our time. Should be able to trickle back downstairs about 1 am to catch up. C’mon Ponters!
The hound’s name is indeed pronounced Doogal but the stress is on the first syllable and the ‘g’ is seriously elided. Closest approximation might be ‘Doochal’ (if you can do the Scots ‘ch’ sound)..
Hello Soutie: I may be able to get you a snowplow cheap if you really want one. 🙂
245 is quite a score, my post this morning was only about 75.
We have been out visiting today but are now into cooking for the evening meal, (supper to some, dinner to me).
that new post counter thingy is rather annoying isn’t it!
Marry Christmas Soutie
Good morning JM.
I did try the google on stair party, no luck. Everything from artists to architecture but nothing to elucidate what is obviously a longstanding Scots custom (sleep perhaps?) I did find this though, tenement,
A tenement is, in most English-speaking areas, a substandard multi-family dwelling, usually old, occupied by the poor. (wiki.)
Hee hee, as in Goosen (Retief) or Tafelberg (Table mountain)
🙂
Soutie, that’s fancy one – it has a drain-pipe! 😮
Howzit Janus, perhaps it was remodeled, must be difficult to sell tenements without proper drainage and sanitation 😉
Hee hee, cool 😎
I could stick it the back of my van when we go down to the beach and let the children makes sandcastles, BIG ONES 🙂
Hi Soutie. That’s the problem with Wiki, in my opinion. Load of utter rubbish, most of the time.
Not even close to the definition of a tenement in Jockland, particularly in Embra and Weegie City. Without going into too much boring detail, we built upwards in old Embra because we could not build outwards. In the Old Town, the tenements or ‘lands’ were home to the entire community from pauper to Prince. They all lived cheek by jowl. for centuries.
Even after the middle and upper classes expanded northwards into the New Town, we kept the habit. 55% of our population still live in tenements.
Mind, the Embra tenement which you picture is at the lower end of the market, to be fair. A lot of commercial property, including at least two pubs on the ground floor, Even although it is less than a 30 second walk from Princes Street, the average price of a 2 bedroom flat there seems to be only about £150,000 and well below the Embran average for a property in a traditional tenement..
‘Stair party’ is, I would have thought self-explanatory. We all have the usual tenemental rights to use the common stair and communal green for ‘all necessary purposes’. We have to get to know our neighbours and to get on with them because of the afore-mentioned cheek by jowl existence. It follows that the whole stair get warned about upcoming parties and that we hold regular whole-tenement functions as well.
Much more interestingly, it’s surely going to take a major batting performance from the Proteas to get the draw at Durban?
Hello JM
Agree about the wiki thing, I should just have asked you in the 1st place! 😉
The Durban test is a disaster, see my comments on Bearsy’s Erasmus post, I doubt if our current top order have the stomach for it, time will tell.