Admit your ignorance - things you've only just realised/learned

[ebikeerwidnes]

I have come across old houses where the wall between the house contained the shared chimney connected to 2 fire places

and if you reached through the chimney you could shake hand with someone in the other house doing the same

I used to play badminton with a group of people who worked in the British Nuclear Fuels place near Chester
actually worked with the bad scary stuff

One of them had problems with ant infestation on his house coming through from a nest next door - coming through the shared chimney
he was talking about having to have a day off tomorrow to wait for "The Ant Man" to come"

People were wondering why I was finding it funny

 

[ColinJ]

I have come across old houses where the wall between the house contained the shared chimney connected to 2 fire places

and if you reached through the chimney you could shake hand with someone in the other house doing the same

How about what I found in London...?

Work sent me to London once and I got put up in a crappy backstreet hotel somewhere. I was sitting on my bed thinking what a poxy narrow bedroom it was, in what seemed from the outside to once have been quite a grand building. Then I smelt smoke. I wondered where it was coming from, and why the sound of the TV in the room next door was so loud. My investigations soon revealed that the hotel's cheapskate owners had simply put partition walls down the centre of every room, doubling the room count at a stroke. This meant that the window of each of the original rooms was bisected vertically by the end of the wall which DID NOT EVEN GO AS FAR AS THE WINDOW! There was a gap big enough to squeeze a fist through. I put my face close to the gap and could see a reflection in the window of a semi-dressed man in the next room, lying on his bed and smoking a cigarette while watching TV. Oh, deep joy!

 

[Dogtrousers]

How about what I found in London...?

If you'd asked nicely I'd have turned the telly down a bit.

 

[ColinJ]

If you'd asked nicely I'd have turned the telly down a bit.

And PLEASE stop smoking in there too!

 

[Dave7]

Seems obvious now I heard it on R2 but there is no copyright on song or album titles.
A good example is the hit song The Power of Love as there have been at least 3 separate hit songs with that title eg Jennefer Rush, Frankie goes to Holywood plus another I can't think of.
So, nothing to stop @Drago and his group releasing an album called What's The Story Morning Glory.
Seems wrong to me but there it is.

 

[Profpointy]

My understanding is that cavity walls requires double the bricks. i.e. a brick either side of the cavity.
(Likely wrong).

Just like a solid wall, which needs two layers of brick (or pillars every couple of yards which would be a nuisance inside a house)

 

[presta]

Why were they ever built that way?!!!

That's what I wonder every time I think about cellars. How can it be cheaper to dig a damn great hole than just to build the same storey on the surface?

Because it was cheap to do so. We lived a terrace house like this and it was only a single brick wall between each house. I think it was built about 1860ish.

How's this for cost saving, no windows:

A very des res.

 

[winjim]

Seems obvious now I heard it on R2 but there is no copyright on song or album titles.
A good example is the hit song The Power of Love as there have been at least 3 separate hit songs with that title eg Jennefer Rush, Frankie goes to Holywood plus another I can't think of.
So, nothing to stop @Drago and his group releasing an album called What's The Story Morning Glory.
Seems wrong to me but there it is.

Take your pick although I expect it's Huey Lewis & The News you're thinking of. The other two were both No1 in the same year though which is the fun pub quiz fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Love?wprov=sfla1

 

[Dave7]

Take your pick although I expect it's Huey Lewis & The News you're thinking of. The other two were both No1 in the same year though which is the fun pub quiz fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Love?wprov=sfla1

Thats the one. I used to enjoy Huey Lewis and the news, a good sound.

 

[Chris S]

My neighbours don't feed their cat until after sunset during Ramadan.

 

[Dave7]

In the 60s there was a pleasant hit song called Edelweis (the singer was called Vince Hill).
They have just played it on R2 and it dawned on me that I had no idea what it was about.
Google to the rescue.......an Edelwies is a small flower found in the Swiss mountains.
It's only taken me 60+ years but I got there.

 

[DaveReading]

In the 60s there was a pleasant hit song called Edelweis (the singer was called Vince Hill).
They have just played it on R2 and it dawned on me that I had no idea what it was about.
Google to the rescue.......an Edelwies is a small flower found in the Swiss mountains.
It's only taken me 60+ years but I got there.

Last ever song that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote.

 

[Andy in Germany]

an Edelwies is a small flower found in the Swiss mountains.

And the German mountains: it's a common theme for buttons and details on "traditional" clothes like Dirndls and logos for organisations in Bavaria, not least the German Alpine Club:

 

[Conrad_K]

View attachment 766876

Avoided the Window Tax, anyway.

I was curious as to why so many older British houses - some of them quite large and elaborate - had obviously bricked-up windows. Apparently Parliament was taxing everything in sight around 1700.

 

[simongt]

They're a nuisance if you want to put a hose on them too.

Until not that many years ago, hose attachments specifically for Supataps were available. They had a pair of fold up thingys that attached over the 'wings' of the tap giving a pretty secure fitting.