Be Excellent To Each Other

I remember watching a clip once of someone (maybe Holly Willoughby? Maybe Grim… knows as I’m sure he knows enough to run her Wiki or something) saying that when she moved house they were doing renovations and the builders uncovered a box of three sets of kids teeth. Despite it being creepy and gross they sent them on to the forwarding address that the previous owner had left.

Talking to the neighbours some weeks later when the neighbours asked about the renovations, and they mentioned the teeth. The neighbours said ‘oh… but she never had children’

Exactly, trust was lost that day.

Omg yes, teeth will be going straight in the bin

I have some of my kid's teeth, one of the dog's teeth, a random one that I think belonged to a cat, and some in an old jewellery box of unknown origin. Apparently keeping teeth is a thing in my family and I have no idea why.

I hope that you keep them all in the same box so that some future palaeontologist looking back to find what these weird human creatures were really like thinks that we had a really odd dental structure.

Nope, wasn't her.

Do you know who it was? May have been Claudia Winkleman, perhaps. Or Fearne Cotton. It was a good while ago that I saw it.

No idea

My wife has her teeth but she is a lunatic.

Her teeth? Her own teeth? Like baby teeth?

Only reading back as far as Mimi's post about Claudia Winkelman, and then reading this, caused a most perplexing start of the day.

Yeah, in a box somewhere

Hey kid, the tooth fairy isn't real and here's a box of your own teeth to prove it was all a lie. Now go to sleep.

Mrs Squirt is currently being an elf at a Grotto. She says a surprisingly large number of kids ask Santa for "a chocolate bar" or "some felt tips" or something. She was expecting a lot more ponies and Playstations.

That’s really interesting! I suppose for young children they are things that they are used to and they know that they enjoy them. Also, Mrs Squirt, The Elf! I hope she’s enjoying that job. It sounds fun.

Mine always ask for surprisingly mundane stuff, and at first I wondered if it was because I'd raised lovely little anti-capitalists but then I realised it's because they basically already have everything.

Katie loves her jar of baby teeth

I adore your story Mimi, Darwin is so sweet

I'm going to wait until all our daughter's baby teeth have gone then present her with some nightmarish monster with human teeth I made out of modelling clay.

This sounds pretty cool tbh.

Hell of a centrepiece for the wedding cake.

Ours in the past have asked Santa for something incredibly specific (the "Spy Chase from Paw Patrol Charged up, the blue one with yellow details", or something like that) which then bothers Lady T as she had actually bought the 'explorer Chase from Paw Patrol Dino Charge, just in blue' much earlier in the year and held on to it ready for Christmas.

There have been a few last-minute dashes to the shops to make sure we didnt give them the wrong one

We do most of the presents from us and from family, and Santa gives just a small number of comparatively little things. I think I prefer it that way, as at school there are a variety of different backgrounds there, some have really rich parents and others have much less - someone mentioned very similar in this thread earlier, it'd make me reallyy sad to think that any kid might end up feeling santa favours others more/less.

Yay - just got back from taking a really nice Ukranian family out for half a day in the sun so they could see some different scenery, have some food and feel a bit more normal.

Nay - that they are stuck here in the first place.

Oh, that’s nice. Are they people you know/are connected to or did you meet them some other way?

One of the hotels in Bromsgrove is used to house people coming to the UK (from all over the globe, not just Ukraine) and there’s a local group I found on Facebook that provides help and assistance to them. Hadn’t met the family before today, but they were really good people.

Oh, that’s brilliant. What kind of things did you do/see?

Not too much. Parked by the river and walked a mile out along the path to the canal basin. Watched the rowers and a dragon boat go past. Got coffee and cake in the sun then wandered back into the city centre. Had a look round the cathedral then through the city centre shops. Lunch at McDs which was their choice and then back home.

When you see the route they took to get to the Uk, I think just some normality was what was needed.

Ukraine - Moldova - Romania - Hungary - somewhere else - Ireland - Scotland - England.

The dad is a building contractor/manager and he had so many questions about houses and building here, you could hear a plan forming if they aren’t able to go home.

Oh, that’s so good. And yes, some normality must feel like a huge relief and I supposed around the world McDonalds is as ‘normal’ a sight as many people can imagine. Hopefully it was a good thing for all of you.

That's amazing Dr Zoidberg. How was the language barrier?

I worked with a gentleman from Portugal a few weeks ago and he apologised for his English as he'd only been in the country for three years. Thing is, his English was a load better than I can speak any other language, let alone Portuguese. People amaze me.

No problem. Their daughter spoke excellent English, the mum knew some, the dad a bit less but still enough that we could communicate. Their son only knew a few words, but he was 11 or 12 so that’s hardly surprising.

Equally unsurprising is that’s why they wanted to come here, so they didn’t have to learn another language from scratch.

It sounds like they have now been matched up with a local family with accommodation available, so they will have a proper house to live in instead of a hotel.

That’s good news, within a terrible situation.

I feel this too, I worked in a place in London that had a wonderful variety of backgrounds, and that's something I miss. They really had a good handle on English, but other than some rudimentary (and mostly useless) high school level French and Spanish, I got nothing.

It's easy for us English-speakers as so many other folk can use ours as a second language.




I wonder how they got on in Ireland and Scotland, as I find some of the really thick accents from those countries can be really hard to decipher, and oh boy the slang that's used, sometimes it feels like a foreign language itself.

Hi I moved to Merseyside.

Yeah, Liverpool people can be difficult to understand.

If worked with a couple (of lovely) scousers and didn't have any trouble but I think they were from the more well-to-do parts. Phil was from the Wirral, I believe. Possibly their accents had softened a little from some time down south.

Wirral isn't Liverpool. My kids are Wirral born and they're both posh as fuck

Compared to me.

Compared to Mali, they're like street kids

Is it really not, though?

Is this a controversial view in the north?

It literally isn't Liverpool There's a river in between.

Ask any Scouser if Wirral is in Liverpool and gauge the answer from that.

But ask anyone else in the north and they're all just scousers.

Oh for sure it's a local issue. Like Wigan/Bolton, Newcastle/Gateshead or Burnley/Blackburn. No-one outside gives a shit.

Is that like London existing either side of the Thames and North Londoners claiming South London isn’t London (or vice versa)?

Yes, but if instead of being called London it was called Battersea, or Brixton, or Clapham or whatever.

I think Gateshead/Newcastle would be a similar thing

I was joking, Malc

I'd try and blame Covid brain, but I probably would have made the same mistake without covid

You’re ok, Malc. I’m still blaming things on baby brain six years later.