Stormy Weather

[vinteuil]

Why, even today, you have to go to the North Circular Road to get to IKEA, vints

... I blush to think you have found my weak spot, Amms - I who claim seldom to go further north than Wigmore Street! Mme V and I were buying a sofa in that very IKEA only this weekend

[amateur51]

... I blush to think you have found my weak spot, Amms - I who claim seldom to go further north than Wigmore Street! Mme V and I were buying a sofa in that very IKEA only this weekend

Blimey vints - how very honest of you

Catalogue number & colour specified svp - our domestic fashionistas will want to pass an opinion, I feel sure

[vinteuil]

Blimey vints - how very honest of you

Catalogue number & colour specified svp - our domestic fashionistas will want to pass an opinion, I feel sure

... well, for a spare room, a two seater Ektorp vellinge beige [ Article Number : 899.027.51 * ] if you need to know

But I was trying to be serious - I still want an answer as to why our ancestors ever bothered to struggle north of the Loire....


.

* www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/S89902751

[vinteuil]

Blimey vints - how very honest of you

:

( Yes, I know - we are not really the sort of people who buy their own furniture. But this was to replace an old sofa Mme V had inherited from her pa - and after sixty years of being trampled on by various infants and peed on by generations of cats it was a sofa that needed to be replaced... )

[Nick Armstrong]

But I was trying to be serious - I still want an answer as to why our ancestors ever bothered to struggle north of the Loire....

It's a good question which has occurred to me before. I can only assume it's due to the fertility of the green and pleasant lands of Normandy and La Grande Bretagne... I suspect potential prosperity must have been the driving force, not the abilty to flâne in short sleeves for as many months of the year as possible...

Well done on the IKEA trip. I swore a solemn oath years ago never to set foot there again, after a truly horrible day spent at the place. I remember a vast 'holding bay' where everyone queued to get to the desks for their purchases. It felt like being a refugee attempting with 1000s of others to gain access to an unwelcoming new country...

[vinteuil]

Well done on the IKEA trip. I swore a solemn oath years ago never to set foot there again, after a truly horrible day spent at the place.

... the trick is to go early in the morning, just when it opens (and ideally not at a weekend). You then whizz through (if you have researched and know what you want) pretty speedily...

[Serial_Apologist]

... it so often is.

I often wonder why people choose to live there

On a slightly more serious note : I have often wondered why our prehistoric ancestors, as they trolled north from Africa, ever bothered to go north of the Loire. I mean, it's not as if population pressure was excessive in those days - there were few of us about - and you wd have thought a primitive tribe might have reached, say, the Dordogne, and thought, mmm, tasty here - lots of caves, prospect of pigs, oaks, truffles, grapes... mmm. And yet some of them struggled ever northwards - on and on - to Cumbria - to Caledonia - and (in God's name, why?? ) on to Iceland - to Greenland....


Why????????

Possibly for the same reason people have chosen to "conquer" Mt Everest, for example: "Because it's there"?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well for one the weather was most likely very different when people started coming back north and west after the ice age; for two Doggerland existed [no Channel] and all sorts of people lived there until the seas rose and there was a Loire valley to go to, but perhaps no Chateaux just then ..... any way North must have looked ok after the ice eh?

[marthe]

Cold and rainy here in Rhode Island for 1st July. Fingers crossed that the sun will come out for our national holiday on Thursday. Not much fun watching fireworks through the fog. Weather for the Newport Flower Show (21-23 June) was perfect. It's been all down hill since.

[Serial_Apologist]

Cold and rainy here in Rhode Island for 1st July. Fingers crossed that the sun will come out for our national holiday on Thursday. Not much fun watching fireworks through the fog. Weather for the Newport Flower Show (21-23 June) was perfect. It's been all down hill since.

So I've noticed, marthe! All the high temperatures are being reserved for the SW, to make an understatement, though there are signs of the rest of the continent, including the eastern seaboard, settling down later on in the week as high pressure over the western Atlantic squeezes out the frontal systems which have been plagueing the eastern coast. Until then you'll have to put up with muggy, showery, rather thundery type weather, if I've read the charts correctly.

[Serial_Apologist]

For saly, and all those preferring winds that stir naught more than rising smoke, we'll have to wait until Friday, I'm afraid, with a couple of vigorous lows crossing Scotland between Tuesday and Thursday bringing rain and breeziness to everywhere, and coolish temperatures. After that they're all expecting pressure to rise, lasting right through the weekend and well into next week. Which would be lovely - though I'm not raising my hopes too high, just keeping fingers crossed.

[BBMmk2]

The only trouble then is, the water people!

[salymap]

Thank you for that S_A. I'm used to going to local shops in trousers and jacket while everyone appears to be dressed for the beach. I never realised how fat people are now. Very few seem to care either

[BBMmk2]

Salymap, you not thye only one! My wife iss till walking around wearing her fleece!

[Serial_Apologist]

I've just done my figures. June has been the first month in which temperatures exceeded the average in this neck of the woods since August of last year!