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Hillonearth

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Posts posted by Hillonearth

  1. I fondly remember this one mainly for the headline - couple of steaming das start trading punches after a red card at a schools final up at our ground, get the game abandoned and it's somehow our social club's fault - and presumably also the fault of the boozers on Maryhill Road - for irresponsibly opening their doors before such a powderkeg fixture.

    'Ya wee w***': Booze-fuelled rammy at Catholic school football match leads to calls for drink ban for parents.

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  2. Every year since we've been here we've had a pair of (usually) blackcaps or (more rarely) garden warblers in the garden...never the two the same year for some reason. Was beginning to think this was the first year we'd drawn a blank until this morning when the male blackcap finally showed himself.

    They're just skulking wee buggers to see.

  3. The snotrocket, which admittedly you don't see much outside of football players these days...worst one I witnessed was a mate who decided to do it at a bus stop while in the throes of a bad cold...covered one nostril, blew his nose and it hit the pavement without the results actually detaching themselves from his nose. I was "treated" to the sight of him attempting to back off from the carnage, while the bright green rope of snot got longer but still didn't break.

    Also, perhaps more of a medical condition than outright boggingness, but there was a guy in our work that had the worst case of dandruff I've ever seen - he looked like a human snowglobe. I had to check something on his PC, and the keyboard wasn't working right...I turned it upside down to see if a paperclip or whatever was jammed in the keys and it was like shaking the crumbs out a toaster.

  4. On 29/04/2023 at 10:10, Derry Alli said:

    Why is "wee heavy" called wee heavy when it's brewed to a higher alcohol percentage than "heavy"?

    I always understood it was because it was served in smaller measures than standard.

    Either that or they had a well-developed sense of irony in 18th century Scotland.

  5. 4 hours ago, TxRover said:

    The amusing thing here is the simple fact of having a pub close enough to walk to for most of you lot. Since I’ve reached legal age, and excluding college because of course there’s alcohol within walking range there…of the 34 years, there was/is an alcohol serving establishment within walking distance and reasonable safety for exactly 4 of those years…call it 12% of my working life…and 1 of those years it was a nightclub…so 9% for ability to walk for a sit, chat and pint. This is why the U.S. is f**ked on drink driving.

    Geography's got a bit to do with it in my case for sure...I'm maybe a 15 minute walk from the nearest pubs from me which are on our main street and consist of a Rangers and a Celtic boozer on opposite corners from each other, a Wetherspoons - which we'll maybe go down for breakfast in three or four Sundays a year but which like all Wetherspoons projects a pretty heavy divorced dad energy - and a handful of dying-on-their arse old man's pubs which seem to be haunted by the same dozen or so old boys every day.

    The nearest pubs I'd actually want to go to are in the south side twenty minutes away on the train, and it's only really when tying them in with going out for something to eat across that way or visiting a mate of mine that lives there that I can be bothered making the journey.

  6. 17 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

    I prefer staying in tbh. Much better to have friends over than go out to pay higher prices for an inferior night.

    No closing time, no bams.

    Factor in the non existent public transport network to where I live and the difficulty in getting a taxi its rarely worth the hassle.

    I do like going out for specific events (football, racing etc) so I do still go out, but, unlike when I was younger, I can't remember the last time when I had some free time and no plans that I fancied just going to the pub for a few drinks.

    Covid broke that habit and routine, I think, and now that I've bought some beer dispensers and broadened my tastes in beer styles etc, i'm really not that enthused by the prospect of a few pints of the overpriced, brewed under licence, pale imitations of the real thing that us UK pub punters are served on draught.

    I'd agree with that...the covid thing changed a lot of habits in terms of how I like to spend a night out...obviously going to an event (football/gig etc.) is a completely different kettle of fish, but that random night in the boozer doesn't float my boat any more in the way it used to...the concept of paying over the odds just to be in an annoyingly-busy room where it takes ages to get served doesn't have the same appeal it did.

    It's happened a couple of times recently when I've been out for a meal with the missus...more often than not previously it was a case of going on somewhere afterwards, but now halfway through the second drink one or other of us has tended to say "This is a bit shite...you want to go home and just have a drink there...?"

  7. 12 minutes ago, Pundeavon said:

    This photo brings back memories. I was only there once in the early 80s. Nice late February day when I left Kilbirnie but when we got to Muirkirk we had to walk through snow in the field in your photo, with sheep wandering round about us looking in vain for some grass to eat! The park had been cleared of snow and was perfectly playable. It was a proper old junior park with a decent sized enclosure for much needed shelter from the elements. It would have been a great place to watch a game on a summer day, but bloody freezing in winter.

    I walked up to it last time I was at a game there - the way the buses ran I had about an hour to kill before kickoff. The footprint of the stand's still there and there's the shell of some building I think might have been the changing rooms. Worth visiting for sure, although inevitably it started absolutely pishing it down on the way back down the hill.

  8. 6 hours ago, tamthebam said:

    Kennoway Star Hearts Treaton Park being like the ground in Field of Dreams

    There's a sewage works at the back of Threave Rovers

    The grain silos at Shielfield, Berwick Rangers

    The industrial equipment at the back of Inverurie Locos

    The railway viaduct at Luncarty

     

    That's the one I immediately thought of, as well as Burghead which is in the middle of a conifer forest.

    Weirdest ones for me are the Borders ones where there's a modest football ground right next door to an much bigger rugby ground as if to reiterate what the pecking order is down that way...Gala, Hawick, Peebles and Selkirk all have or had that kind of arrangement.

    A unique one is Lochar's new park which we visited earlier in the season and which is right next door to an aircraft museum...spent half the game trying to identify planes over the hedge while I was supposed to be running the line.

  9. On 25/03/2023 at 11:20, s_dog said:

    There might be something in making an effort to fit in but isn't it a lot to do with what age you are? If you move elsewhere as an adult you'll probably never lose your accent completely, but as kids you adopt the accent of where you are staying and are surrounded with pretty quickly. I was most disappointed that within six months of moving south a friends wee yin could no longer pronounce dreich. 

    There seems to be a sweet spot age-wise for sure. I used to go out with a girl whose family had lived in Canada for about ten years...they'd moved there when she was maybe six or seven.

    They'd eventually moved back to Edinburgh and both her older and younger sisters had reverted to a Scottish accent almost immediately, whereas the one I was going out with still sounded like she'd just stepped off a plane from Vancouver...it was almost like the younger one was still at a malleable age in terms of accent and the older one's accent was perhaps more fixed by the time they went there.

  10. 10 hours ago, Swarley said:

    Thankfully have never worked on an Agile project but aren't scrums and all their other made up pish compulsory? 

    We had that a while back - a series of compulsory soul-searching Teams meetings scheduled between 12 and 2. They were remedied - certainly in my case - by attending the first one then going out on lunch for an hour from 2.30 till 3.30 when every c**t was looking for me.

  11. 36 minutes ago, Hedgecutter said:

    On the subject of street names, I'd like to nominate generic, irrelevant, inventively bankrupt names in new housing developments.  Elm Place, The Firs, The Rowans, Osprey Heights* etc etc, particularly when there aren't any of those things nearby.  Can't be too hard to name them after something found locally, such as one of the old farms, or the woodland they ripped up to build over.

    *there's one of these in Inverurie that I'm really hoping was an in-joke nod to Still Game.

    It screams horrible newbuild estate when you see a group of streets named after trees.

    Can also add a seeming aversion to the more normal street/road/avenue kind of terminology...the more Gates, Wynds, Groves, Walks and so on there are the more likely a place is to have been thrown up by a Barratt tribute act in the last 20 years.

  12. 30 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

    Finzean does fit with the false 'z' or 'yogh'  model.  Just down the south Deeside road from Strawn Strachan which is just fucking weird.

    There's a few places in Scotland where you don't have a clue how they're pronounced until you hear a local say it...there's a wee village out the arse end of Dumfries called Torthorwald which I was a bit surprised to find was pronounced something along the lines of T'thurrol like a minor female Vulcan character in Star Trek.

    The name Menzies is a weird one...used to go out with a girl with the surname, and she code-switched the two pronunciations depending on who she was with...used "Mingiss" when speaking to her (posh) family, but "Men-zees" in everyday life because she claimed it was a pain in the arse to have to spell it out to every second person.

  13. 3 minutes ago, Dev said:

    Whilst I don't disagree with these views there's always the point that clubs don't set out to join the WoS etc just for a single season or two or three - even if that is how it turns out. Many hope that medium/long term support will come via current players (of all ages) and their families, including future families. This is particularly relevant with Youth type Clubs. Some seem to a bit ill-informed about the realities of playing at this level but that's down to the individual club, isn't it, and not a general failing?

    Building a fanbase is always going to be a slow process, and I think there's a certain degree of naivete in some quarters where as I say there seems to be an expectation that existing membership will equal ready-made active support. There's also the question of catchment area - someone like Gartcairn will be fine in the longer term because they're smack bang in the middle of a fairly heavily-populated area where there is no competition for fans at that level, whereas in Bishopbriggs there are now no less than three teams in an area where it's debatable whether there's enough appetite to sustain one.

  14. 23 hours ago, Mediocre Pundit said:

    Think that’s the plan for Giffnock. They’ve got plans to develop the hub and hope the senior team provides an attractive pathway to kids - and that they pester their parents to hang around after their training and get some food / drinks and watch the adult teams who wear the same kit as them. 

     

    it feels more comparable with how hockey clubs operate in the Netherlands than traditional Scottish football - I.e. five pitches used all day Saturday by a range of levels - but supports a great community ethos. 

    I think that's been the gameplan for a lot of the former boys' clubs who have entered the juniors and latterly the WOS...the assumption that because they've got a membership of x-hundred they've got a ready made fanbase. It rarely pans out that way though...parents are happy to ferry their kid to their age-group game at 9.30 in the morning, but in the main are understandably reluctant to hang around for the rest of the day to watch the adult team.

    I've always equated it to being a member of a gym - you're happy to pay for the service they provide, but if they started a competitive gymnastics team you'd be unlikely to feel compelled to drop everything and start going to competitions they're involved in.

    Another issue they seem to face is that the pathway they provide turns out not to be what they perhaps envisaged - if you eventually get two or three first team players from any age group side you'll have done really well. It ends up that only a small minority of the youth setup's production line make the transition to adult football with the rest of the first team squad inevitably filled with players from outside of the organisation. This seems to cause friction and in some cases fracture between the youth and adult setups...it's hard not to see a pattern emerging there...BSC/Rossvale/Harmony Row and over in the east Syngenta...

     

  15. 51 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

    Reports today that a group of Ukrainian commandos operating independently did this, with the aid of a private sponsor who paid for it all - the hire of a yacht, the significant volume of explosives, the experienced divers etc.

    The Times reported that a wealthy figure sponsored the operation and "left a peculiar calling card".  Lawyers watching so we'd better not start roshen into judgement.

    image.jpeg.5a2957498853f190c355ff1b88529e11.jpeg

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