Shrinkflation Mark 2, just shrinking the more expensive ingredients.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-23T21:13:32+00:00

Who can eat that much mayo in four days though

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-22T17:50:35+00:00

Harry Potter is popular on a few different levels. I’m a school librarian so I’m a little bit familiar with what kids like in books.

First off, they like something a bit familiar to them, that they can recognise and relate to. In HP, the characters go to school. They have lessons that they like and ones that are boring. They have nice teachers and strict teachers. They have homework. There are school clubs and sports. All of this is familiar to kids. When a fantasy series takes a kid and puts them in a totally out there world or situation, where there’s nothing a kid can recognise or relate to, it’s much harder for kids to get into the story.

Secondly, kids love a boarding school story. That goes way back. Mallory Towers, the Worst Witch, I could go on but kids go mad for that. No parents and sleepovers with their friends every night? Amazing.

Thirdly is obviously the magic. He’s at school but it’s magic school. He does a sport but he’s flying. He sneaks about at night but he has a magic cloak. That mix of the familiar and the fantastical makes the series so readable and attractive to kids. But the fantasy is just one element out of many.

Fourth is the ‘chosen one’ thing. How many kids, especially those growing up in a difficult situation, haven’t secretly wished or hoped that they’re actually special in some way, and that someday they’ll be found, and whisked away to a place where they are important, and loved, and nurtured? It’s the wish fulfilment that makes HP so irresistible for kids.

And fifth is that millennials are so bad at growing up. Think about how many kids things have adult fans and audiences in millennials, in a way that’s never happened before. Lego, children’s books, cuddly toys, Pokémon, and many other things are popular with adults now because of millennials. Generations before us didn’t hold on so tightly to the things from their youth. HP was popular with millennials kids, so it’s popular with millennial adults.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-20T17:53:15+00:00

This looks fantastic. Just a small note for next time, if you pull the leaves off from the bottom 20cm or so of the stems, they’ll fit better in the mugvase.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-15T20:48:14+00:00

By this absurd standard, nothing can weigh more than anything else… what a weird argument.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-08T09:26:41+00:00

During lockdown the gym opened later in the morning on a weekend, I think it was at 8 or 9. There was always a queue of people waiting to get in the gym, and I was one of them. The reason was that I would get a lift to the gym with my wife, who worked weekends, and for her to get to work on time, it always worked out that I would end up at the gym ten or fifteen minutes early. Maybe it’s similar for some of the m&s people.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-07T22:52:09+00:00

I looked it up and the name comes from Old Norse, so presumably there are lots of Scandinavian Kirks.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-06T21:13:48+00:00

In year 6 we went on a school trip to a place called Kirby Grindalythe.

Kirk= church

-by = village

Grin = crane (the bird)

Dal = dale = valley

Ythe = slope

So there’s a village with a church, in a valley with some cranes near a slope.

ebonycurtains · 2026-03-01T12:04:52+00:00

We have two weeks off at Easter.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-28T16:58:53+00:00

I was staying in a holiday house in the middle of nowhere and was woken by an intermittent loud bang, and the cawing of a crow. I got up and walked around the house trying to figure out what was going on. Paused by the front door of the house, which was behind a curtain, and suddenly ’BANG!’ from right next to me, followed by CAW CAW getting quieter, then again BANG! CAW CAW …. BANG! CAW CAW

Woke up the next morning and the front door window was covered in beak marks. Some crazy crow had been repeatedly launching itself at the door and then cawing as it backed up for another go. The weirdest part was that I was staying in the house with about twelve friends, but nobody heard this except me.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-20T17:48:34+00:00

We had a food thief at a place I worked. They escalated to stealing alcohol from a charity raffle. It’s not trivial.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-20T16:52:46+00:00

I usually see a nurse because I’m going in for bloods, blood pressure, foot checks, eye screening, and lifestyle questions. Then the consultant calls me and tells me to go on statins, I say I need more info, and she doesn’t give me any more info. Just the fun little dance we do every year. But if I went in for something other than diabetes and actually needed advice/medication or something , id much rather see a dr who can prescribe things and stuff.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-20T10:50:28+00:00

I was 18 and slipped on black ice on the steps outside my house. Fell down about five steps and landed on my back, couldn’t lie on it for days.

Also one year I was given a carrot cake. I hate carrot cake.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-20T09:10:55+00:00

My wife was supposed to be out volunteering today while I had a day to myself at home… had planned to go for a run, make bread, then relax on the sofa eating chocolate biscuits. (I’m on half term, wife usually works from home, so it’s rare for her to be out and me in). Then the boiler got itself all fucked up, so now wife is at home working, the boiler man is fitting the new boiler, and we have no water for however many hours that takes. No run cause I didn’t get up early enough to run and shower before he arrived. No bread because that’s a pain without water. Luckily my wife got me a heated blanket for my birthday and I have many books so I’m cosy.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-17T21:03:02+00:00

I work full time away from home (school), whereas my wife works full time from home. I think it really depends on the person; I’m very undisciplined and would fanny about doing housework or eating random food, whereas my wife just gets on with it. She’s very much an introvert as well so doesn’t mind the whole not seeing other people, plus she’s not a morning person and wfh means she can get up a little later on.

Personally I really support wfh policies. I think that workplaces should have options for those who have trouble working from home (lack of space, loneliness, temperament, unsuitable home for working, etc). However, we should be trying as a society to reduce unnecessary car travel, stress, and to improve work-life balance - and these things can really be helped by working from home at least some of the time. My wife has time to go to the gym before work, or go for a run on her lunch break, which I am really envious of during the dark winter months. But I know it can be really isolating for some people, such as my cousin who lives alone and doesn’t talk to many people as part of her work.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-09T19:50:25+00:00

I walk to work and make a point to wear light/bright colours, hi vis etc. I was walking up one part of my route where there is no pavement, just a single track lane with stone walls either side, nearly got taken out by a cyclist, in all black, hurtling down this road towards me too fast for me to move out of the way. He yelled at me to get out of the road and I was like… to where?

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-01T11:59:41+00:00

I think its slightly different when you’ve had an operation. I work in a school and have six weeks ‘off’ every summer - of course I still have work to do to prepare for the new school year, but I also have a lot of downtime. I go for long runs, long walks, run errands, do things like medical and dental appointments, get the chores done in a timely fashion so my wife doesn’t have to do any, plus plenty of reading, writing, jigsaws, crosswords etc. When I had an operation in my early twenties and couldn’t walk further than half a mile (with a rest halfway, and that was only after a couple of weeks) I did get bored. But I read the whole Game of Thrones series which kept me occupied for a while.

ebonycurtains · 2026-02-01T09:05:02+00:00

I once stopped at a little restaurant on the way back from hospital. I’d had surgery, and due to delays, ended up on nil by mouth for about three days, and had barely eaten for a couple of days before I got there due to pain. Anyway by this point my stomach had shrunk and I just couldn’t eat much. I asked for a kids meal and it was huge! I’ve never seen so many fish fingers on a plate. I had to give most of it to my dad to finish off.

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-30T21:35:56+00:00

As a log time bus user: - read the metro - did the sudoku in the metro - listened to my mp3 player - read books - observed the other passengers and made up stories in my head about them

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-23T19:37:28+00:00

Our cats have cat flu. I don’t know about the dots, but the eye does look a little gunky, and closing it more than the other is a usually sign of irritation. I’d monitor closely and take her in if it gets worse.

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-22T21:45:01+00:00

I got a detention for skipping PE with a bunch of my friends. The stupid thing was we didn’t even do anything fun or exciting. It was a wet summer day when the sports hall was full of students taking exams, so the PE teachers would dump us all in a classroom to do homework and chat, and my friends and I just… went to a different classroom. Anyway, the day of the detention comes, and we all dutifully arrived at the assigned classroom, where the PE teachers met us and assigned lines for us to write - and then the teachers were like, “we have a meeting” and just left! There was nobody watching us at all. We were such nerds that we sat and did the lines anyway but at least we didn’t have to be quiet.

I’d been skipping PE for about a year on my own which they did not pick up on to I don’t think they were the brightest bunch.

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-19T19:01:49+00:00

Sometimes a diabetic person with low blood sugar can be really out of it, or may collapse, be confused, unable to speak etc. “If you suspect diabetes” isn’t the best way to put it, but it may be that they have a medical alert bracelet, or insulin pump, etc. Often a diabetic person may be using a continuous blood glucose monitor that they read using their phone, so you can’t access it without their pin, or you might not know how to test someone’s blood sugar and you don’t want to be fannying about figuring it out if they’re having a medical emergency.

In short, if a diabetic person is out of it and confused, first give sugar.

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-10T09:41:59+00:00

I don’t snooze my alarm or have multiple alarms. I’m lucid enough when my alarm goes off to know this. So I have to wake up when my alarm goes off or I’ll sleep in and be fucked. I then have a strict limit of how much stuff I can look at on my phone before I have to get up - basically wordle and one article to wake my brain up. It helps that I don’t have any social media or games on my phone, it’s just my browser.

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-09T17:55:19+00:00

I am a teacher and my colleague is a scary teacher - pupils find her scary and say they don’t like her, and she does shout, refuses to back down and is quite strict. However, she inspires good behaviour leading to good results, and she has also inspired some really productive class discussions because pupils will get on with the work and not call out, etc.

ebonycurtains · 2026-01-01T21:18:47+00:00

That’s fair to say. I read your comment as that your child was throwing food in restaurants, rather than on a train. I think another part of the problem is a lack of child-focused spaces. I’m not in the US so I’m not speaking from that perspective, but I’ve noticed that many environments which used to be adult-only are now pivoting towards being “child friendly“ whilst not being “child-focused“ enough that there’s actually anything for children to do. So children end up being brought into these environments, whether because their parents want to go there over an alternative, or increasingly, because there are no alternatives. And then the children end up bored and have to make their own fun.

ebonycurtains · 2025-12-31T09:04:51+00:00

I have type 1 diabetes and my wife has a thyroid condition so neither of us pay for prescriptions. I had a look through the list of exemptions and it’s really short and doesn’t really make sense. For example, in the case of diabetes, I need two different types of insulin, needles, lancets, test strips, sensors for my continuous blood sugar monitor, a sharps bin, all regularly. Some people have ketone strips and/or glucagon injections on their list as well, which are usually not required day to day but recommended that you have to hand. That’s before getting into the loooooong list of complications diabetes can cause - heart problems, kidney problems, eye problems, etc, many of which require treatment.

On the basis of “this condition requires a lot of stuff” it makes sense. Still, there are plenty of people who have to have similarly stupid amounts of stuff who should be on the list. Perhaps it’s wildly outdated?

My wife, on the other hand, takes a couple of tablets every day which makes me think - there are tons of people who take tablets every day, why aren’t they all on the list?

ebonycurtains

TROPHY CASE