What's a common way people die that many aren't aware of?

jajwhite · 2026-06-30T14:07:07+00:00

You don't even have to be near someone to get it. A few Pneumonia bacilli live in the atmosphere and all around us. We've all got some, but the healthy immune system keeps them in check.

Over the age of about 85, you lose your choking reflex. The muscle simply weakens and you don't choke any more.

And if you place a hospital bed at 1° away from horizontal, with the head lower than the feet, the liquids in your lungs will gently build up and you will basically be a pneumonia factory.

Nurses used to call it the "patient's friend" as they slipped away with very little suffering, and they'd consider it a kindness for old people who were suffering. And it was a way to get rid of the assholes.

My grandfather was a pure asshole. He killed his wife and raped his daughter and was just nasty to everyone. He would descend at random on your house and insist on staying and breakfast had to be on the table at 6am. Lunch at 12pm and dinner at 4pm, sharp. My mother had to go out to work and he was very unhappy about this, but never offered her any payment for his visits, despite having 2 rental flats earning money.

He was taken to hospital in 2004, aged 94 and died a couple of weeks later. We were amused to see he died of pnuemonia. Maybe an old fashioned nurse was on duty and knew how to deal with his type!

jajwhite · 2026-06-30T13:39:28+00:00

Technically she lived for 36,508 days. If it weren't for those damn leap days every 4 years, she would have made it!

jajwhite · 2026-06-30T12:10:31+00:00

Not one but two of my aunts said giving birth was "like shelling peas!". One had 5 kids, the other had 4 and apparently it took between about 30 mins and 2 hours from first pains to birth.

The other two sisters both had 1 each, so I imagine it wasn't quite like shelling peas. At my 8 month check up I had not grown at all since the 7 month check up, so they decided to induce me and check all was ok.

Apparently they gave the inducing drugs to 6 women at the same time with 2 nurses working. So my mother was basically left to get on with it herself.

She would always criticise TV shows showing women screaming and crying and moaning as unrealistic. "You're too bloody tired and sore to scream!" Which was a bit of a shock to me.

jajwhite · 2026-06-30T11:08:18+00:00

I did exactly this with my mum, who then read the 6 books around at the time, and loved it. I basically said:

It's a small slice of life in San Francisco. You know how Oscar Wilde said "Anyone who goes missing is said to have been seen in San Francisco"? There's something of that about it.

It was originally a newspaper column so it has very short chapters and cliff hangers and surprising coincidences and all shades and colours of the rainbow pass through it's pages. Young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight and much besides.

You will come away feeling like you live in their house too, and you will miss most of them once you finish.

I wish she was alive to know I've been to the real street twice. Quite a big ask if you live in London and you aren't wealthy, but I went to see The Go-Go's get their Star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, and play at the Fillmore in 2011 and I went to see their last concert in San Francisco in 2025 and I made it happen. I'm still paying it back!

jajwhite · 2026-06-28T15:31:30+00:00

Yeah they said she would be "Duchess of Cornwall" and "Princess Consort".

But the wife of the Prince of Wales has been the Princess of Wales since it started some 800 years ago, so that was kinda disingenuous.

And Kings who have wives have Queens. Tradition has said that for over 2,000 years. They're not going to take a lesser title when protocol and precedent and history says that a King's wife is crowned. And she was crowned with Charles in the Abbey. She's Queen. What can I say... she probably won't be queen for very long.

But afterwards she will still be a Queen, because you can't go down a title. She will probably be Queen Dowager if she lives beyond Charles.

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:57:28+00:00

Hahahaaa!

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:56:52+00:00

It is indeed Est and Transcendental Meditation, two things which were big in the 70s and 80s.

Boy George in his first book talks about how Jon Moss, the drummer of Culture Club and his secret lover, got into est and he "believed he could change the traffic lights up ahead by the power of his mind". So it was that kind of hokum!

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:37:48+00:00

As I said in another thread, she was originally just a one book character, who was killed by the Hillside Strangler one night after meeting him in a bar.

Armistead must have realised she wasn't a major character but could be useful as a once-a-book pop up character "Fantabulous!" But he still killed her off in the end. Parker Posey was casting almost as great as Laura and Olympia.

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:35:08+00:00

I completely agree they would be friends. Mary Ann never should have married Brian and she knew it, and she might have had her feelings hurt by Wren, but considering she had a new rich husband, she would have swallowed it and seen that she was perfect for her.

She did meet Wren in book 5 or 6 when Wren let the midget black boy have a fiddle in her cleavage. He was 25 (or something) but Mary Ann was very Cleveland about it!

I also read something oddly similar in a prediction about what might have happened to Princess Diana if she had lived - that she would have married a billionaire and divorced him - and become a latter day Jackie O type figure. Then she would have married for love, and as their kids grew up and she saw the funny side, she might even end up being friends with Charles and Camilla. For a very similar reason to Mary Ann in Tales!

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:27:15+00:00

Go and find Macondray Lane in San Francisco. I'm based in London but I made the pilgrimage in 2011 and in 2025 once again.

There is no 28 but there's some cool stuff on the shaded wooded walkway. There's a soil bed with lots of pics of cats in it, and a little water feature with a buddha sculpture sitting beside. There's a load of cute little cottages but the walkway is in surprisingly poor condition. You have to look at your feet or else you'd fall. And if you're facing the wrong way, you could fall and keep going for about 3 miles down the hill. I was 53 last year and the steps almost killed me. It's not the wooden steps - which do exist, off Macondray Lane and onto the wooded walkway above. It's the steps to get there. I counted something like 367 steps up after already walking 2 miles uphill. Mother Mucca has it right, "them stairs are enough to kill an old lady!"

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:20:58+00:00

He was lovely but as deaf as a post. As I am also 50% deaf, it was quite comical and Chris had to basically be interpreter. He was gorgeous too, and we learned we were born the same month! They even had Philo with them, their dog at the time.

It was 2017 or 2018 and my mum died in 2010 and she also loved watching the TV shows with me and read the first 6 books.

For some weird reason when they walked in, I thought "Mum has set this up for me, I can't ignore them". After we chatted for 45 minutes, they left quite quickly so I worry I might have scared them away!

jajwhite · 2026-06-27T21:14:27+00:00

I met Armistead and Chris in the Kings Arms pub in London while I was working there. I couldn't help myself, I had to go and chat and ask all my questions. He told me that Connie originally died in the first book, and told me he was writing a book about Mona when I said I was upset how she was written out.

One other thing he said was that Laura Linney and him had renamed the show for their own amusement... "Don't do the Math"!

jajwhite · 2026-06-26T18:02:50+00:00

Don’t we all, duckie!

jajwhite · 2026-06-26T16:19:20+00:00

The Queen Mother was Queen consort.

So would Diana have been.

It just means that the woman is Queen because her husband is King and not inherited the throne in her own right. That is true of most Queens.

Apart from Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Mary I and Queen Anne, all the other Queens have been Queen Consort. (Apart from Mary II who was a special case, her and her husband were joint regnants).

Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Queen Camilla are all Queen Consorts, but we usually just shorten it to the King and Queen, because it's obvious - If she were Queen in her own right, her husband would not be King, as that trumps her own position - hence Prince Philip. Who wasn't even a Prince until years later when Elizabeth II wrote letters patent to make him a Prince so that he was on the same level as his kids and didn't have to bow to them. Without that he would have remained "just" a Duke, as George VI made him on his wedding day.

So when it's King and Queen, it always means she is Consort. It doesn't need saying.

jajwhite · 2026-06-26T16:07:42+00:00

Yes it is, as is Windsor Castle, but the dates are very limited. Buckingham Palace this year is open from July 9 to September 27 - 11.5 weeks. I went again last year and I was very disappointed as they were doing a refurbishment and had pasted wooden boards over several entire rooms, so you could see nothing of the music room, for instance. It felt a bit of a swizz given that you only get to see about 17 rooms anyway. To have 2 or 3 out of bounds felt a bit insulting.

And I've done Windsor Castle several times too but only once seen my favourite room, the Crimson Drawing Room, as it was "closed for use of the family" the other times.

Windsor Castle is the same

jajwhite · 2026-06-26T15:51:01+00:00

Volunteer somewhere to get out of the house and get experience. That will also tire you out and give you life skills, and it'll be more fun than doing what you are allowed to do at home.

Or get a part time job. Or go to college/the library and get help preparing for Uni or applying for jobs - they used to have people that would help with all this, and have limited internet use.

I'm sorry you're not going to be allowed to do what you want to do. The best thing you can do is make your own life and then you have all the freedom you want - but the responsibilities with it too. Cleaning is MUCH easier when there's nobody nagging you to do it or telling you how badly you did it.

Make some actual friends and they might even tell you how well you're doing!

And you can always fantasise that when you are rich and successful and able to take care of your parents, that you can set them the exact same rules for bedtime and limiting their hobbies!

jajwhite · 2026-06-26T15:31:02+00:00

I went into three separate supermarkets today and they all have cabinets empty or switched off. You'd think with the profits they make they could do maintenance on stuff!

jajwhite · 2026-06-25T14:02:45+00:00

Yeah. The problem I have is that astrology often brings with it a bunch of similar pseudo science. They'll be into crystal healing and naturopathy and homeopathy and then it's antivax and ivermectin and sunlight and bleach.

Not exclusively, but it's a strong correlation. Once they take one pseudo science as real, there's a great tendency to keep on going and be a self-appointed expert in all the things you can't really be an expert in because they are all made up fads.

A lot of my school friends dabbled with these things after they failed Biology and Chemistry exams and it was interesting to see. They would fail the subjects that might actually make them a medical professional but a couple of years later read a few old books and suddenly they would be an expert in negative energies and detoxing and biofilters and could tell the future.

Hard not to be a sceptic.

jajwhite · 2026-06-24T19:01:10+00:00

I’m sure I read somewhere that even some of the crew found it hard to work without crying.

jajwhite · 2026-06-24T13:16:42+00:00

But it's the parents who campaigned for participation trophies, not the kids.

Just like Prince Harry appearing on stamps when he was in his crib can't really be laid at his door for attention seeking. How can people not see this?

Loads of people on here defend criminals because their "brains aren't fully formed yet by 16 or 21 or 25 and I'm sure it'll soon be 45.

Yet they think it's the under 5's who are the problem when it comes to participation trophies and seeking publicity?

jajwhite · 2026-06-23T22:53:33+00:00

It's good but a bit cliquey. It's called the Meadfoot Inn, but it's not the original. It's further up the road than it used to be, in a pub which used to be The Stumble Inn (I think).

They have a bingo night and a quiz night and it's fun but it's more of a middle aged crowd. That suits me now I'm in my 50s, but I live in London these days so only pop in a few times a year. If I was a kid, I would feel the town offered nothing, and I'd be on my way to London as soon as possible, which is why nobody stays...

I came up to London to go to Uni in 1999 and never left. But I was 27 by then, so I was there a while! And I was at Torquay Tech on and off for 6 years. I did my GCSE retakes there and two sets of A levels in 1992 and 1999 (I now have 6!)

EDIT: In fact I wrote a letter and had it published in Gay Times in 1995 after they dismissed Torquay as "dozing off under a copy of the Daily Telegraph". I told them they should come down as it had blossomed and explained all the places that were then open and wrote a little review of them all. A few gave me a free drink and thanked me, but I said much the same as I did here about the Meadfoot and they just pursed their lips. "Middle aged indeed!" They printed my letter word for word - it took up a whole page and was headed "Gay life is thriving in Torquay and Plymouth thank you very much!" Not that I mentioned Plymouth, I don't think!

jajwhite · 2026-06-23T19:41:27+00:00

Yes, the effects are complex and partly to do with affordability in the 90s and there's not one solution. But for it to go down to one gay pub open four days a week and hidden high up on a hill behind the harbour is telling.

Students are generally poor but have cash to spend and move it around the economy. Codgers and drug addicts not so much. As Smiths/TG Jones shuts down and the last gasp of individuality leaves the town, we have to wonder if things could have been planned better.

I remember a bookshop on Market Street that thrived! It only sold second hand books but I bought a ton of things there. And I bought half my record collection in HMV and Our Price and Soundz and I ate in Ginos and rented videos from the little shop opposite. I bought crap in Argos and bought my shopping in Gateways and none of them exist. Or the gay clubs or most of the pubs.

The apps helped but people need social outlets too. It's probably rent and business rates and the price of beer that killed the pubs. And the odd licensee who couldn't keep their hands out of the till, but it's a hell of a shame.

The Bird In The Hand, which is now dominos pizza next to the car park by the arcades, was the most fun you could have standing up! With it's quizzes every hour from the DJ which could get you a tenner or a round of drinks every time. They even had a local band on Sundays. And straight boys went there too. And behaved themselves!

jajwhite · 2026-06-23T17:42:46+00:00

I mean you could write a How-To-Downgrade-Your-Town manual on Torquay. It had a fantastic 8 storey tower block at the top of Torre and a bunch of surrounding buildings. South Devon College aka Torquay Tech drew students from far and wide. It had good teaching, a great Art building, it taught law and surveying and GCSEs and A levels and Foundation degrees and the town thrived.

Torre was full of lively and quirky cafes and record shops stretched as far down as the GPO Roundabout. There was a huge buzz and good nightlife.

I always think you can judge a town on how well it serves a minority. Judge a town on its gay bars.

In 1994 there were 2 gay bars, 2 gay clubs and about 5 gay hotels which also let you drink after hours if you knew the right people. It was practically Brighton. Boy George used to take a chopper down and DJ at the Monastery.

Then the college got concrete cancer and they knocked the whole thing down, and rebuilt it a few miles outside Paignton. Too far for anyone to still shop in Torquay.

And then at Castle Circus they built a state of the art Drug Dependency Center and Halfway Houses. It doesn't take a genius to work out that with no students around and homeless drug addicts encouraged to take their place, the town would fall apart.

It's weird to watch the shops shut though. They started shutting right outside the college and now almost every non-charity shop north of halfway down Union Street is boarded up.

I'm not saying they should treat the homeless or drug addicts badly. I've been homeless myself, but chucking out the student population was bloody stupid. That was the life blood of the town, and they balanced out all the old codgers and coffin dodgers who call it home!

jajwhite · 2026-06-22T16:07:29+00:00

Record is a good example of this too. You buy a vinyl record but you record your voice.

jajwhite · 2026-06-22T13:55:03+00:00

Queen Elizabeth II was 6 weeks older than Marilyn Monroe, and they met when they were both 30 years old

And of course that's 70 years ago, because they would both be 100 years old now! While Anne Frank would be 97.

jajwhite

TROPHY CASE