Daily Slow Chat

5 comments

1. There is this [big ass forested area](https://imgur.com/a/BcERpFn) in the north-east of the city which is a popular spot for different outdoor activities, and apparently a new district will be built over a part of it. It’ll probably cover like less than 5% of the current forested area, so most of it will remain as it is. But still, I’m very against building over parks. You never get parks back. Nobody is converting an apartment complex or a shopping mall back to an outdoor recreational area.

   I don’t know if any of you follow news from the crypto segment, but I’m so done with this edging over the approval of these BTC spot ETFs. Feels like every six months there are news saying ”now it’ll really happen” and it never does. In fact, I hope it doesn’t now either, maybe prices would crash giving an opportunity to buy…

2. [Moody sky today](https://i.imgur.com/g37BOaN.jpg). It was quite dark when I left home, and now it is… still quite dark. I am still amazed at the amount of water around. Stuff is flooded everywhere, entire forest grounds are completely waterlogged. Apparently my sister-in-law’s dog fell into a bog. It was covered leaves and looked like normal forest floor, but it was actually just watery mud. Yikes.

   So, a while ago I stopped singing in the choir… for reasons. Since then, I couldn’t find one that suits me (it had already taken ages for me to find this one) and I’ve been just practicing on my own. Yesterday evening I thought that since my husband was away, I could have a go at the soprano part of Arvo Pärt’s [Stabat Mater](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2WuzKeDx8U). Somehow minimalistic music is extremely difficult to perform. And my cats didn’t like it, either. But I did, so I guess I will use the chance of being alone at home to learn it properly. Poor cats.

3. I’ve been thinking about [one of my first ever posts on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/iOuymBfYOo) that I made about 10 years ago. So one of those weird factoids you learn growing up in England is that back in the day, really poor families who didn’t have proper heating at home would cover their children in goose fat, and then sew their children into their clothes for the winter in a way that made them completely unremovable without cutting the stitches open. They would then only remove their clothes once winter had passed. And my question was always, first of all, why? And secondly, how did they go to the toilet? I got a reply to my post saying it was all a myth, but there are plenty of anecdotes online from primary school teachers discovering, to their horror, that one of their students was sewn into their clothes, or from foster parents during the War discovering the same with their foster children, and even from people who themselves claimed to have been sewn into their clothes during the winter. It’s a thing that seems to have gone on well into the post-war period, and possibly even into the 70s and 80s, but it was something that kids generally kept secret as, well, obviously.

   So the question is: how did they maintain proper hygiene? Well, apparently some kids just never washed throughout the whole winter and either just resigned themselves to terrible BO or tried to mask the smell with deodorant. Others had a weekly bath with their clothes on and just had to let themselves and their wet clothes dry over the course of the day, which of course would kind of defeat the purpose of getting sewn into your clothes to keep warm, wouldn’t it. And as for going to the toilet, some pants were supposedly designed in such a way so that there’d be a little flap at the back to provide safe passage for a number 2. In other cases, apparently some kids were sewn into nappies, with the nappies only getting thrown away at the end of winter (though how you could design a nappy to be able to hold several months worth of shit, I couldn’t tell you).

   Oh, and we’re not just talking about small children here. Apparently they would sometimes do it to teenagers too. Can you imagine having to deal with hormones while having your clothes permanently sewn on? Poor, poor kids.

4. Lmao the spot price of electricity will peak at over 2,30€/kWh tomorrow.

5. Weather forecast says we may get our first winter storm of the year this weekend, I’m hoping the snow stays north and west of the I-95 corridor and we just get a rainy slushy mix