So long, farewell, etc etc

*cue a bugler playing 'The Last Post'...

Yes, this is all about goodbye, I'm afraid.

It's been a good few years, and yet this moment had to come. Today, I have decided to blog about bidding people fare-thee-well...

...what?

You thought that Julie's Gems was ending? Oh no, I'm on about a particular instance when I was meeting up with some friends.

...I'd best start again.

My job entails working a twilight shift, meaning that all the evening activities (Magic: the Gathering) had to be knocked on the head. On Monday, however, work had been cancelled, so I found myself free to play some cardboard crack (as M:tG is often known).

A good night was had, a Conspiracy cube was played, as well as a three-way standard, and some very nice trades for decks we were constructing. Not only that, but there was discussion about wedge commanders, Khans of Tarkir, and the merits of using counters or dice.*

However, all things must end, and I gathered my stuff together and dropped by various groups to say my goodbyes.

For none-British people, a Brummie is a resident of the city of Birmingham. Along with residents of the nearby area known as the Black Country (all the coal), including Walsall and Dudley (or Doodlay, as it is pronounced), this is a common way to send someone on their journey.

In any case, my contribution was well-received and served as a good way to end the shenanigans.

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* Ladies and gentlemen, this conversation is currently cruising at an altitude of 20,000 feet over your heads...

Spreading

There are many divisive topics of discussion. Politics is obviously the major area of activity, especially when you realise that 'politics' is not just anything to do with your government, but anything in life that has a meaningful impact on your your own life and those of the people you love (and, in the case of the abortion/sexual health situations, those of people who don't even exist yet. And may not).

Increasingly, people are becoming more and more overly opinionated about things that don't really matter, notably in the area of entertainment. And, for the record, I include all sport in that broadly-sweeping category. Why? Because when you get down to the basics, football (for example, he said, writing this on the day of the World Cup final 2014...) is not a job for most of the millions involved. And for those that are, so what? You are still only creating something to entertain the great unwashed masses (another quote mangled there*).

"I beg your pardon?"

Moving to the world of food (and I realise that some of you will now realise where this is going), it is oddly more cloudy. When you think about it, food is an essential part of life, so having an (informed) opinion about it can have a direct impact on the health of people that consume it. Eating something slightly out of date. Chili-eating contests. Fast food. Aspartame in diet drinks. Corn syrup in diet drinks. Marmite.

the offending article

Wait, what?

Some years ago, that reactionary and inflammatory rag of a newspaper known as The Daily Mail reported on a set of food products that were deemed in their pet scientists' (paid) opinions. Most of these foods were obvious, some of which I have listed above. However, tucked away in there was Marmite.

Horror of horrors, it seems Marmite is 11% salt! (full nutritional info here) That means that if you slather 100g on your toast you... wait, what? It seems someone has never eaten Marmite or has tasted it briefly and taken against it. In case you don't know, the black stuff is not for piling on like jam, Nutella, or peanut butter (blech). Seriously. If you tried eating 100g of Marmite in one go, you may as well call a priest for the lining of your mouth, as it would be stripped away like butter under a blowtorch.

This is where people get it wrong. Unlike the other spreads, Marmite is savoury, not sweet, and savoury generally means that it has more salt. Besides - have you seen how much salt is in bread? I bet you eat far more salt in that than you would in a single serving of Marmite.

Oh, and just for giggles, here is a link to a Daily Telegraph article commenting on how healthy Marmite can be.

As a company, Marmite are fully aware of how divisive their product can be. In fact, in Britain, a totally divisive subject is often known as a 'Marmite topic', and reactions to it range from this:

To this:

As I say, the company knows of this, and uses it extensively. In the past, they have gone for a 'political campaign' on behalf of the 'Love' and 'Hate' parties, but my favourite ads were drawings made of Marmite with the tagline 'you either Love it or hate it' (sic) scrawled on one side.

For the record, I hate Mr Bean.

In our house, the human population is split down the middle. I love it, Julie hates it, and we aren't going to let Roxy near it. Not if she wants to sleep in the same room as us.

It's fairly entertaining for me, as whenever Marmite is mentioned, Julie goes into a paroxysm of disgust. Some of this is a physical shudder, but much of it is a loss of sentence structure as she goes into a stuttering ramble mode.

Oh! The jiggery pokery!

Knees bent, arms stretched, rah-rah-rah.... ...sorry.

By now, you should have a fair idea that I am a great fan of wordplay, both intelligent and base. In case you aren't too sure what I mean by those terms, the difference comes when you have the reaction of either 'heh - clever' or 'hurr-hurr-hurr'. And just in case you still aren't sure, here's a handy visual guide.

"I see what you did there."                         "He said bottom... pfffff!"

However, I am erratic. Sometimes, it takes me far longer to 'get' a gag - but then there will be times when I am stuck in a manic free-associating mode, and almost everything is twistable. And yes, Julie usually tends toward the latter mode.

That's not to say that everything that comes off the cuff* is 'naughty'. Many people, mostly professional comedians, thrive on firing out barrages of clever little gags (Milton Jones comes to mind), or comebacks to snide comments/hecklers. A lot of what I say, when I want to twist the meaning of another person's sentence, will tend towards the less cerebral, shall we say. The thing is, by doing that, I am training everyone to believe that will be all I would come out with. The my fun really begins; firing off on bizarre tangents, people will start laughing at the joke they expected to hear and then go blank and say, "wait, what?"

If this is sounding familiar to you, I'm not surprised. You've been reading about Julie doing this to me and others for a few years now...

Now and then, though, I screw up. I will say something without really thinking about it and fall foul of my own methods (this recent slip comes to mind)...

Changing the scene a little, now.

Until recently, I was out of work. Now, I have a part-time job in a factory, dealing with soaps, bath lotions and tanning products. As such, we have large cubic tanks of the appropriate chemicals at the start of the line feeding into the bottles. On Monday night, we were dealing with a foaming handwash. While it's cleaner than, say, tanning mousse, it's still a bit of a bugger if it is spilled, because it is incredibly liquid, and moving the tanks around is a process carried out with great care.

When it came to hanging one tank for another, a colleague set to removing the empty tank, while I got the full one. Moving very slowly to avoid sloshing the handwash, it seems I was concentrating more on my work than my words...

Oops.
It was fortunate that my colleague had the empty tank, as he was laughing far too hard to be careful with it. Meanwhile, this was the look our team leader gave me...

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* Hurr hurr hurr...

Speaking in tongues

Fancy a Trivial Pursuit Gem? We haven't had one in such a long time...

I'll be honest - it feels like Julie does invent her own method of communication on many occasions. As to whether it is an improvement or not, I couldn't say. It is, however, usually far more entertaining and interesting than plain ol' Standard English.

Found on http://www.toonpool.com/

As for the correct answer, I am not too sure now, but a cursory glance through various biograpaphies leads me to believe he may have enjoyed the French language.

Can't see for looking

I realise that the title for today's Gem may be an odd one for none-British people. Essentially, it means that the seeker is looking so very hard for something that they have missed the fact that it is usually right under their noses. Or, in the case of spectacles, on the nose.

For a brief time, Julie and myself worked at the same place. This meant, if the weather was clement, we would have a leisurely stroll home along some of the quieter roads. In addition to being quieter and less polluted, these roads were pretty much residential, and it was nice to see what people had been planting in their gardens.

One garden had some tulips, although not the botanical sort.

This was the first time I had seen these charming solar-powered lights, and I pointed them out to Julie. Unfortunately, Julie couldn't see what I was pointing at...

You see, Julie had a double issue; not only was she looking too hard for these lights, she was also wearing her distance glasses, and the lights were well too close for the limits of the glasses she had on.

Love that turn of phrase though.

BLASPHEMY!

Oh dear. This is going to be the post where we either lose lots of our audience or get a load more. Or both, which would be hilarious.

Well, you see, it all began with an innocuous conversation about one of Roxy's toys, a ball-and-rope combo that has proved to be very popular and highly entertaining for all three of us. Don't ask. It's a pull toy such as those pictured below (although Roxy's toy has two balls on it. Stop sniggering!).

Roxy gets the ball in her mouth - will you stop sniggering! - and we pull on the other end...

>sigh<

There's not going to be an easy way through this post, is there?

In any event, the talk turned to 'pope-on-a-rope', punny take on the original product.

'SOAP' on a rope. Literally.

Pope on a rope. NOT literally.

This is where things get a little sticky. Conversations with Julie tend to be a fairly silly and free-associating experience. We also tend to try a sort of one-upmanship in the game of silliness. Obviously, Julie normally wins.

BOOM! Julie knocks it out of the park!

Wow... I honestly couldn't stop laughing for five minutes. So very wrong, but so very funny.

And, as it turns out, not at all incorrect...

Verbal and Legal

It appears I missed Wednesday. Shame on me - especially as I had a Gem ready and waiting to go.

------------------------------------------------

Last week, we went to a live show (as opposed to a dead one. That would have been boring). The band in question go by the name of The Illegal Eagles, so named because they are a tribute band to - well, it's obvious, really, isn't it? The show was excellent; all the musicians really know their stuff.

The band began eighteen years ago, started by the second and fourth gents in the picture. Over the years, there have been a lot of members, although some more permanent than others. The bass player on the right has been with them almost since the start. The newest - and youngest - member of the group is on the left. No, it's not Smallville's Lex Luthor, unless he has had a personality implant. He's a good addition to the band, contributing, as almost all of them do, to every section of the stage. Mind you, the real Mr. Diversity is chap #4, playing a variety of guitars, drums, vocals (including lead), and even saxophone for 'The Heat is on', played in the set's solo hits section. One each from Glenn Frey, Don Henley ('Boys of Summer'), and Joe Walsh ('Rocky Mountain Way'*).

You may have noticed that I haven't, until now, mention the third gent in the lineup. That's because he is the only one whose name I know off the top of my head; Keith Atack. Keith is the only reason that we were there. You see, Julie was massively into a band called Child when she was younger, and Child featured a couple of twins by the name of Tim and, yes, Keith Atack. Here's a picture of Keith (or is it Tim? Heck - they're twins...) to show why Julie was such an ardent fan.

Handsome, no? By the way, I had a little trouble searching for images, and I really hope Big Brother understands that my search term 'child singles' - in Images, no less - was innocent. After all, I really wasn't wanting results of Destiny's Child.

Back on track.

Some days later, we were out, taking Roxy for a walk and discussing the concert. I raised the point that TIE have been sanctioned by members of the original Eagles, in much the same way as Pink Floyd have approved The Australian Pink Floyd Show. It's something that has always made me smile to myself; I mean, 'The Illegal Eagles' can be a bit of a tongue twister on its own, without throwing anything else into the mix.

I have no idea if I did get it right, but it's as close as anyone would get. Julie herself admits there would be no way of repeating it.

------------------------------------------------------------

* 'Rocky Mountain Way is good, but I prefer 'Life's Been Good'.

...and when they were only halfway up...

I try to be clever, honestly. I try to have a ready answer for every situation. Unfortunately, I don't have that spontaneous an imagination. Most of my humour comes from having thought about something and then editing it until it works. Or not - I'm no Terry Pratchett.

Julie, on the other hand, is almost the very epitome of spontaneity. Put her in a situation, and BAM! Out comes a cracking remark. Sometimes it is funny, other times, it is a keen observation on what has been going on.

Of course, these off-the-cuff remarks can arise from something only she was aware of; such as when other people are not looking in the same direction as her.

Such as when I am driving, and Julie has seen something off to one side - or even just inside her own head.

My father always got on famously with Julie; once those two started off on one of their bizarre dialogues, there was little chance of anyone keeping up to speed.

Dad approached this mindset from a slightly different direction to Julie. He had always been a fan of The Goons, and in later years began to have a fascination with abstract art and some of the more way-out types of jazz music.

I have pointed out many times before that our family - like many others, I imagine - have a lot of in-jokes, silly remarks that make absolutely no sense to other folk. Apple strudel, postboxes, burn rubber. Apparently random words and phrases, but they all are strong memory triggers for us.

Dad appeared to be something of a catchphrase generator, mostly when he was driving; I think it may have been a way of breaking up a silence and keeping himself awake. One of these phrases was a 'bloody obvious' comment - like most of them;

"It's uphill, this bit."

And yes, he would be driving up a hill at the time.

The thing is, it was catching. We now say these things ourselves, for pretty much the same reason. Of course, when Julie is involved, things can take on a new life of their own...

All I could think of was this...

Born old birdie

This is a young seagull. It has this dappled colouring until it gets older - it's a defensive camouflage thing. Living in Eastbourne, we see a lot of these. And hear them. Ye gods, the keening of a young gull as it tries to blag food from a parent seriously gets on your ti... er, nerves.

The thing about knowledge, if I may digress slightly, is that until you learn or are told of a nugget of information, it will completely elude you. Furthermore, if you are not interested in certain things, then there is a strong chance that facts pertaining to those things will remain forever beyond your ken.

Julie, until I entered her life, didn't have much interest in natural wildlife. Now, she is just as keen as I am in seeing plenty of it both in the flesh and on TV. However, in the early days of our relationship, Julie was unaware (ie didn't care one way or another) that the speckled birds and the white ones were in fact of the same species. They were both bloody nuisances, that's all that mattered.

When we were out for a walk along the seafront one day, I pointed out one bird very similar to the one pictured above, and commented that it was merely a young seagull. Julie interpreted 'young' as 'baby'.

I'll take your word for that, love.

Well, rheally!

This, my friends, is a rhea. A flightless bird, very similar in looks to the more well-known ostrich and emu. And with a likewise similar taste for anything it can get its beak on.

Julie and myself encountered some just before New Year as we were walking around Birmingham Nature Centre. Strangely delicate, they were charming and almost calming to watch. The rest of the centre is well worth visiting too, and it comes as something of a surprise, considering it isn't all that large, and is pretty much slap-bang in the middle of a large city.

Of course, there are plenty of things for children to get involved with, including an opportunity to have a silly photo; pretending to be an animal by poking their head through a hole, the child's head then takes the place of the animal painted on the front of the display. Since we're both kids at heart, I offered Julie the chance of having a little fun by being silly. She did, and didn't even wait for the camera to take that chance...

In the end, Julie did get the photograph. Of her face. As a rhea.

Sort of... We might be kids, but we're big kids...

Whynot wotnot?

I try to get them all, I really do. Unfortunately, there are some times when circumstances prevent me from doing so. Most often, this is when I am driving, for obvious reasons. Even then, I can sometimes somehow persuade Julie to scribble down a hasty note.

Similarly, we will be in public situations where my whipping out a notepad would be either inadvisable, impolite or downright impossible.* Such situations include; at the counter in a bank, drenched in a downpour, in the front row of a stand-up comedy show... you get the idea.

However, the most common cause for my failure to document each and every Gem is this; when Julie is in full-on Gem Mode (and yes, it does deserve the capitalisation), I can't even mentally process what is being said, let alone jot anything down.**

On more than one occasion, I have been brain-crashed by a Gem and my speech centres have similarly been affected. When that happens, all I can do is splutter out a disbelieving, "...WHAT?"

It seems I respond in such a manner quite frequently. Frequently enough for Julie to Gem right back at me.

...of course it is, silly me.
I think I'll go and have a lie down...



* Is it me, or am I writing very alliteratively today?
** Now, imagine how I feel when I'm driving around an unfamiliar town centre, trying to cope with Julie in Gem Mode...

Distinctly different

I'm sat here, typing this out and a neighbour - a few houses away, actually - is noodling on his guitar. I would say 'playing', but it's jazz. In other words, a random mess.

I don't like jazz. Can you tell?

This is not to say, however, that my neighbour is a poor guitarist. Far from it. We have heard some lovely music, usually blues-based, coming from his house. Normally,  it's just noodling though. Practice.

One day, some time ago, we were sat in our front room, reading quietly. After a while, I realised I could hear our neighbour playing his guitar. Only just, though. He must have had his windows closed - or the breeze was blowing the wrong way, carrying the majority of the sound with it. As I said, it was a very soft noise, far from intrusive. In fact, when I commented to Julie that our neighbour had begun his guitar practice, she was surprised. In fact, even when I drew her attention to it, it still wasn't registering.

Zing!
Well, I lost that one. Not only was I confusing, Julie also managed to fit in a truly apposite pun. In the meantime, perhaps Julie could use these to boost her hearing...

Bloomin' unholy

We don't have much of a garden. Similarly, I don't have much of a green thumb, and nor does Julie. Since we have limited resources and abilities, we try and make sure everything we plant is as easy as possible to grow and maintain.

Unfortunately, there is something of a running battle with the local cat population and since Julie is actually rather fond of cats, my subconscious desire for an automatic machine-gun nest has to remain that way for now.

..uhhh... whoops...
Oh well.

Because of the cats, much of what goes into the garden needs to be pretty hardy. Stuff like shrubs and trees. Well, I say that, but they've done a bang-up job of killing my lovely yellow fir tree by spraying against it. Little bastards. By contrast, the fuschia appears to be immortal and the bay tree unstoppable. Both, however, pale in comparison to the buddleia in the front garden (read as 'strip of earth between house and pavement'), which has to be butchered to the ground annually and trimmed and bound at least twice throughout the growing season. I love it, and so does the insect community.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of pots in the back garden with some lilies, chosen by Julie, which also contain some of her mother's ashes. This year, however, there are a couple of intruders...

I checked (good ol' Google image search) afterwards and found the flowers were indeed snapdragons, which much have self-seeded from somewhere else.

Pretty, aren't they? We tend to call them 'rhubarb-and-custards'.

The great Greek flip-flop flop

Heh - say that fast three times in a row...

Anyway - as I mentioned in Monday's post, We have a friend from Greece visiting for a few days. Since she and Julie are familiar with each other, it was no effort to either of them to fall into an easy banter - especially when it came to taking digs at me. Julie may come out with some odd things now and then (yes, really!!), but she is very quick-witted, and usually manages to put me in my place with no problem.

However, the Sunday was the first day after our friend arrived and she was still somewhat jetlagged. Since I am really not at all good in the morning, Julie was pretty much the only bright spark in a sea of bleary dullness. It didn't help that I had the grand idea of taking our friend to her first car boot fair, an event which can be best described as a yard sale held in a field, where everyone turns up to sell their crap - I mean surplus goods.

As you can tell, you do get some turn up in vans; traders of one sort or another - but they have to pay a larger pitch fee as they will take up more space. Fair play. It is truly astonishing, though, just what people try to sell. Mind you, it's not nearly as astonishing as the fact that people will actually buy it. From rusty car parts, old Paul Young records (usually No Parlez) to a truly staggering amount of baby clothes and dog-eared paperback books, you will find pretty much everything.

On the other hand, you will also find the odd hidden gem, something that is just what you need. That rusty car part might be from an Aston Martin, a part that was last in production fifty years ago. If you are living on the breadline and are expecting a baby, this will be an ideal way to clothe your newborn tot. And yes, there are still some Paul Young fans out there.

As for me and Julie, we view these events as a good opportunity to add to our already substantial collection of hedgehog ornaments, toys and nick-nacks. It may have been at a car boot fair or in a charity shop that we managed to snag a lovely hedgehog doorstop.

Handsome chappie, no? Oddly enough, we haven't named this one, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

But I digress. This hedgehog is not simply for looks, we do utilise it as a doorstop. In fact, the door it is responsible for is that which belongs to the guest room, the room in which our friend is currently sleeping as I type this.

Back to the car boot fair. It had been a hot day and we had just dragged our still-weary friend around a dusty field. Having said that, we did treat her to her very first cream tea - with clotted cream, naturally. Unfortunately, despite the delicious refreshments and the elation of having bought her very first item from a car boot fair (a Stephen Fry book), our friend was unaccountably tired, so we bundled her off to her room for a bit of a rest.

On the way into her room, though, she stumbled. Now, I thought she had tripped over the 'hoggy doorstop, and, jokingly, accused her of mistreating that poor, poor animal, "I mean, what has it ever done to you?" I demanded.

How wrong I was. Our friend had not been guilty of mistreating a weighty stuffed animal, but of making a small misstep as a result of her footwear.

You mean, instead of being 'flop-flip'?

Heh. What a day; first boot fair, first cream tea - and her first Gem.

Spike goes all Statler on Skype

Throughout all the posts over the last few years, it may appear that I am slandering my poor wife and perhaps portraying myself as unfillable and perfect. However, while everything that I attribute to Julie is completely accurate, there is no way in hell I am free from an occasional faux-pas. If you look in the labels section (to the right), you will see one by the name of "Spike's Slips". Those are all mine, baby!

Today's Gem also features myself, but I have to confess to having an accomplice this time, via a conversation on Skype.

I've known Pierre a few years now, enough for us to realise we have a certain similarity of mindset. We'll object to the same things, laugh at the same things - and when we get together via one medium or another, we'll mine the same comedic vein of silliness - with an added dash or two of nerd and geek just to flavour the dish that bit more.

Most of the time, it will begin innocuously enough, usually with a throwaway remark or typo...

Actually, I'm quite liking that crossword idea... lol

I'm hoping everyone understand all the acronyms we used there. 'Wotnot', of course, is Julie's own little word of wonder (again, look in the labels on the right...).

As for me and Pierre, it has been said before, by many people - including us - that we are very much like this pair. All I'll say is that the one reminds me very much of one of my grandfathers. It must be the eyebrows...

ps - I'm hoping you realised the typo was blatantly intentional...

I say thee neigh!

A Thelwell pony, looking alarmed. Why? Read on.

On a recent visit to my mum, she, myself and Julie were sat around the table, enjoying a game of Scrabble. Julie noticed that I hadn't got my notepad with me and was quite pleased when I remarked in a jocular manner that I was giving her the night off.

Silly me.

Honestly, it must have been the most Gem-packed time I have ever known.

One of the hallmarks of our family Scrabble games is a penchent for - accidentally - going in a place that blocks the next player on. Mum is particularly vocal when it happens to her, and this occasion was no exception. I have no idea what I put down, but I was immediately labelled as a 'ratbag' and it was commented, with a very loud 'tut', that you "just can't choose your family, can you?"

Hot on the heels of this well-worn saying, Julie piped up, mixing metaphors and the gods know what else...

Well, you probably could, but that's not to say that you should.

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In case you weren't aware of his work, the equine at the top was sketched by a very well-known English cartoonist by the name of Thelwell. He was most famous for his cartoons of rotund ponies and little girls, which, when I say it like that, sounds like he should have been arrested...

Instead, I invite you to go look at the website and perhaps to google him.

Hayling Island week: A question of questionable logic

Last week, Julie and me decided to get in the car and just head west. Having looked at the map, Julie asked if it would be OK if we went to a place called Hayling Island, near Portsmouth. I had been thinking of possibly going to Portsmouth itself, but as I'm all for exploring the lesser known places, I readily agreed.

As you can tell, Hayling Island isn't a large place, being just over three miles wide at its widest point. Nor, as shown by the lack of main roads, is it a busy one. Sitting on Britain's south coast, slap bang next to the major port of, well, Portsmouth, it is largely left to its own devices. As a result, the relative lack of tourists makes it a more pleasant place to be.

There is a funfair right in the middle of the lengthy sea front, but off to the sides, you have quieter places to enjoy yourself.
When we got there, the fair was closed and staff were carrying out routine maintenance chores to the various rides, and the car park was near as damn empty. It was free, too, which is always nice. We drove straight in and up to the wall, which gave us a cracking view of the sea and the Isle of Wight to the south-west.

On the journey, we had been enjoying listening to the radio (Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2, since you ask. Such a nice chap), and doing our usual banter/singing/arguing with the programme. Among other things, this does tend to prime julie for a day full of Gems, so I made absolutely sure I had my notepad and a pen with me.

I wasn't disappointed.

In short order, as we ambled through the fairground, Julie was baffling me with a lengthy ramble, twisting sentence structure and logic to such a degree there was no way I could keep up. Julie finally noticed my brains were about to dribble out of my ears and stopped chattering, laughing.
All I could say was, "...what was...?"

Oops.

Ouch... my I think I sprained my brain...

Boiling up a batch of bafflement.

Fancy a cuppa? Me too. Let's put the kettle on.

(pinched from here
http://www.plokta.com/plokta/issue4/pedantic.htm)

Yes, very funny. I'm sure everyone has done that at some point to show how side-splittingly funny they are. Then they get bored and wander off to play with their crayons.

One day, I had to go into town for some reason or another. It was something of a miserable day; grey, drizzly and everyone seemed to have been created solely for the purpose of getting in my way and pissing me off. It's no surprise, then to hear that I was really rather glad to be getting home. 

It's at time's like this that Julie shows a truly remarkable talent for precognition. Granted, our front room has a bay window and looks out onto the street, but Julie always seems to know of my imminent arrival even before I could be seen trudging up the road. A short while before I get home, Julie will have made herself a drink, leaving enough water in the kettle for another generously filled mug.

Obviously, since Julie's drink will have been made some time before key meets lock, the water in the kettle will not be as warm as it could be. Or, as Julie put it,

A very specific loss

You may have noticed that Julie has a certain way with words.
Specifically, a way that tends not to correspond with many other people.

As you may have noticed over the last couple of years, this is really rather entertaining. However, that entertainment comes at a cost. That cost is clarity. Usually, this isn't much of a problem; I can look round and see what Julie is referring to.
Unfortunately, if Julie is talking about something that's not to hand - or if I'm not in the same room as her - then it makes it much more of a guessing game.

Most of us, when faced with a word that is on the tip of our tongues, will stop talking and stare into space until we remember what we wanted. In fact, if you are anything like me, then you could end up staring into space for quite some time.

Not Julie. Oh no. Julie jumps in not only with both feet, but fully dressed and ready to go. In this instance, we were getting ready to go out for a walk. I was by the front door, putting on my shoes. Julie, for some reason, had gone into the kitchen and was there doing up her coat. Then there was a small noise, a clink.

Eventually, after some discussion, it was established that a metal part of her coat had come loose. It didn't help that Julie kept insisting "the thing - you know... the thing."
No... no, I don't...