alkan

In contrast to that scam, which has been reasonably carefully constructed, I recently got a phone call where the man said "I'm calling about your internet, so if you'll just give me your bank account details and your passport number, I'll sort it for you."

I find him very hard to understand. Sometimes his behaviour seems to stem from dissatisfaction with himself and he directs that anger outwards (obviously, he shouldn't but we can understand the impulse). Other times, like the towel incident in the match against Edmund, which started early in the match, there can be no such reason. The tantrum seemed to be totally unnecessary and degenerated into the most appalling name-calling over a matter of minor import. Perhaps the players are spoilt (I'm thinking of the way even quite young , unknown players just reach out behind themselves, without looking, expecting the ballkid to have the towel ready for them). I think too that not enough distinction is made in the penalties imposed on actions which only involve the player himself (smashing his racket in the middle of the court) and those involving other people (Ostapenko directing a comment at her opponent after a successful dropshot).

And, if you were both straight, it would still have been a reasonable thing to suggest in the circumstances, two tourists comparing travel notes etc, so why didn't you suggest it? In my experience, there is usually an underlying reason for not taking what might otherwise be seen as a beneficial course of action.

I think the message itself is there to explain the delay in connecting. The bigger sites perhaps run more sophisticated programmes and there is little appreciable delay. There are two things that occur to me here. If the browser checking only applies to the RM eu site. it could be that the programme doesn't pass hide.me as the notified browser version. In which case there is little you can do until RM alters the programme. Alternatively, if you think hide.me allows you to access the rest of the site, just not the reviews, you need to ensure that you are viewing those pages through hide.me and not your own browser. I read somewhere that hide.me were themselves introducing changes. I don't use it myself so I didn't pay attention but it may be worthwhile to re-install it as it might have ceased to work properly without telling you. I apologise for the lack of the correct computer jargon but I am no expert.

As I understand it, many websites do this anyway without showing the message. It might be worth checking with the site-owner that this is intentional?

A number of websites use this as a way of protecting themselves from being flooded by bot requests as a form of attack. The website sets a small proogramme running to check you are visiting from a specific browser.

Yes, that is what I meant, it was a volunteered remark, not an answer to a question. In a way, having seen that, it is the reaction of the audience which I find striking as much as the remarks themselves. There have always been straight male ballet dancers and I don't know whether their interpretations of particular roles show any marked differences from those of their gay colleagues. The greatest choreographer of the classical tradition seems to have been something of a womaniser whereas the man who paved the way for modern, more overtly masculine choreography was gay.

The original comment was in a tweet, wasn't it? Surely, any public remark (amounting to criticism) about a very young boy who is only in the public eye because of his parents, and not through any actions of his own, is indefensible, even without getting to the substance of her remarks. Not that I wouldn't like to discuss that as well, but I'd go on too long.

We had a minor fire in the building where I live at the weekend (nothing drastic) and on Monday two fire brigade officers came round to check on things. When they came to my door, I switched off the programme on my computer to stop it running amok and was chatting to them when I noticed one of them looking over my shoulder. Of course, the screen saver had come up........... Oh well, at least they laughed about it.

The trains may show up nearer the date. My recollection was a night train every night and a couple at least during the day though of course things change. I'm not a fan of night trains though. They may save on night rate at one hotel but they leave you stranded in the evening before leaving and dump you in a strange town early the next morning. @GregM did say he was taking the car back - "I'd only be using the car from Lisbon to Madrid. I thought itd be nice to be able to stop take in an extra town or two on the way to Madrid and back. I wouldnt drive in Lisbon or Madrid. " That may have just been to avoid the overage but more likely(?) it is because his return flight is from Lisbon anyway. Talking of flying, does anyone know if they have improved on that very long trundle from the runway to the terminal at Baraja I remember it taking nearly as long as the flight itself on one occasion and the person who was waiting for us thinking he had missed us.

He did say he was going to do that but he also said he was going to be a week in Madrid so if he could find convenient parking in Madrid, he could use it for one or more of his side trips. It does seem to me so much added complication though, unless he could be persuaded to take with him a well-disposed if somewhat elderly forumite to help with the planning, admin, and decisions regarding the menus?

Well the weight of feeling seems to be against the car but if you did insist for the sake of stopovers, could I put in a word for the roman ruins at Merida on your direct route, give or take a couple of miles? Long distance buses are part of the scene in Europe so I suppose that might give you the option of stopovers without the strain of driving, timetables permitting, though in this case I think the route is through Caceres rather than Merida. But nearly all towns in Spain seem to have something interesting.

I too would be against a car in either city for the reasons the others have said. Bear in mind also that Madrid in January can get very cold. A week in Madrid in winter is probably ample, even allowing for some (if not all) of the side trips @BSR mentions (of course, for some of us, a week spent solely in the Prado would not be enough). Aranjuez and La Granja de San Ildefonso though interesting and beautiful in their way are, I would say, warm weather destinations. Take some warm clothes and an empty stomach! Have a great time.

I remember staying in a cheap, no a/c hotel in Madrid when I was young. It was so hot that the only way to get non-stifling, breathable air was to stand at the wide-open, floor to ceiling window "mid nodings on" and then having to hide from the occasional nocturnal passer-by in the square below. Of course, I was accustomed to spending my summers in Ireland where a heatwave meant being able to take off one's overcoat and one woolly jumper for half-an-hour at midday.

So I am curious. These 70 virgins (or innumerable sluts - whichever it is), are they the real people of your photographic trove now dead like you whose idea of heaven is to have unending sex with you, or are they the creation of heaven itself, sort of like celestial sex robots in the form of simulacra of the men on your hard drive?

What you have to do is, to have lived completely celibate in your time on earth and this will be rewarded by unending sex in the next life. Is that a bargain you would be prepared to make?

Well, thanks a bunch for that. I had to go through my bookshelves to find my copy after that and eventually found it though I will have to wait till daylight before I can retrieve it. And of course I also found many other books I'd forgotten about all leering at me and saying "read ME!".

No, but the people who claim to know are not asked about it by those who believe them. And the mediums (media?) themselves should want to know the details, I would have thought, so the fact that that they don't seem to tells against their honesty. Thank you all for the interesting replies.

But aren't you supposed to act the same whether you think you are in the Matrix or not? So if I were in contact with the dead I would still ask the questions, even if I could not trust the answers as they would be in the Matrix also.

The Cosmic Consciousness type explanation does at least indicate why there are no specifics. It would be like a warm hearty soup that the medium could dip into to find words of comfort without there being any explanation of what it feels like to be a crouton floating around and getting progressively more broth-sodden until individual identity is lost.

Yes, it is all very non-specific, isn't it? What does your niece believe? It may just be the way my mind works but I think I would almost have to have a specific notion of the form an afterlife could take before I could start believing in it.

This is a fairly frivolous post on a serious topic, frivolous at least in comparison to some current threads (my wishes for positive outcomes go to @FreshFluff and others on that thread). I have recently been watching for entertainment purposes a number of YouTube videos of various psychic mediums "reading" various people and contacting their deceased friends and relatives. There never seems to be any curiosity on the part of the living about the practical conditions of the afterlife. Yet if I did believe that there was some sort of continued existence after death, I would have many questions about it, as it would presumably last much longer than life on this earth and therefore what it is like would have great significance. And this is not even dealing with the major religious questions I would have. Does this seemingly startling lack of curiosity mean that the people do not actually believe but are just seeking some sort of anodyne comforting form of words? If any of you do believe in an afterlife what form do you think it will take?

Like @LivingnLA, I am trying to organise things so that the person who has the duty of clearing up my personal affairs after me has as little trouble as possible. Although I have a huge extended family, I have no close relatives left and the responsibility falls to a long -term friend. At present, we live a considerable distance apart and because of that and his own family responsibilities all my paperwork has to be organised so that he can find everything he needs in one or two quick visits. There are no secret aspects of my life to come as a surprise to him. All very well therefore except.......... What happens if I start losing it mentally? All my careful organising may fall apart if I don't keep up to date with things or start acting irrationally.

In the interests of gender equality, I would just point out before someone else does that the real Aron Ralston hardly stands up (as if many of us would) to a comparison with James Franco who plays him. I have not seen the film but it is a very remarkable story and it seems, judging by your comment, sex appeal did not have much to do with the cinematic version either.