Any cheerful news today? (Nothing negative please! 🙂)

[vero]

Yes absolutely, sorry I wasn’t precise. Older people say barjot, I say barge, my children’s contemporaries don’t say it although they know what it means.

[AngelaR]

The only ones I really know are meuf and ouf. What is Barjot?

[Peter_Bird]

A nutter or he’s bonkers etc

[AngelaR]

Thanks Peter! Do you know what was the original word it came from? I’ve been trying to work it out…

[JaneJones]

Jobard……pejorative, although mildly so, so not one for daily use. Stupid in a klutzy way.

[Stella]

il (elle) a son caractère… is a phrase I often hear in our commune (and I use on occasion) when folk don’t want to be rude about someone who is perhaps not to their/my liking.

I take it to mean “ah well, we all have our little ways…” that’s certainly when I use it and it seems to fit the bill.

[David_Spardo]

@SuePJ

And, yesterday took our Airedale Vita for a check-up at the vets. In the summer she was diagnosed with significant heart problems and we all thought (vet and cardiologist included) that she had only about a couple of months left. She is still doing splendidly and will be 13 in a month or so.

Life at the moment is very good.

Should have taken her with you for a quantity discount.

[David_Spardo]

This doesn’t sound like good news at first, but yesterday I took our Dobie foster girl, Noubia, to the kennels used by the association as she was getting too much of a handful for us.

They took the advice of the 2nd vet in Spain that she is 9, and therefore very difficult/impossible to re-home, in spite of the first vet saying she was 2.

I am convinced that she is nearer 2 than 9, but with very bad teeth, and, as we don’t ‘do’ young dogs and she was becoming a danger to us both with her extra lively ways, I decided that if the asso had to start paying for her keep they would start trying to find her a home.

Still feel a bit guilty though but at the same time convinced that it is the best thing all round.

[Peter_Bird]

No idea Angela, heard it years ago as barjot but a friend in Charente used the word barje thirty years ago and I’ve not heard that word used by anyone else.I assume it was barje is a lazy or shortened form of barjot.

[SuePJ]

@AngelaR

Thanks Peter! Do you know what was the original word it came from?

Le terme barjot (nom 1) ne semblant pas être attesté comme nom commun avant 1956, l’ origine de son usage serait peut être liée à l’Amiral Pierre Barjot qui, en charge de la partie aéronavale durant la crise du canal de Suez, aurait accompli une action insensée permettant pourtant la réussite de la mission

[vero]

@Peter_Bird

friend in Charente used the word barje thirty years ago and I’ve not heard that word used by anyone else.I assume it was barje is a lazy or shortened form of barjot.

Yes me n mah friends said barge etc way back in the early 80s when we were teenagers and were too cool to pronounce extra syllables - it is just apocopation like saying fèche for fait chier or vélo for vélocipède, alu for aluminium etc.

Jobard incidentally means a very credulous person who might, therefore, be classed as a bit lacking brainwise and, by extension, mad.

[JaneJones]

@vero

If they are solid and opaque you need to put them in boiling water until they become liquid and transparent again.

Now children, don’t let the adults do this unsupervised as they will fill the house full of foul fumes and ruin a saucepan…

[AngelaR]

What’s that, @JaneJones ?

[Stella]

Just got back from a glorious countryside stroll with a neighbour.
Brilliant sunshine and almost warm, despite the frost still evident everywhere.
Feeling very, very healthy with so much really fresh air in my lungs… and also very relaxed.
OH is worried I’m too relaxed to think about supper
The cheerful news is I’ve got my “Blue Peter Badge” and supper is all ready and waiting (something I prepared a little earlier)

[vero]

@JaneJones

Now children, don’t let the adults do this unsupervised

Oh noooooooo, terrible, commiserations.

@AngelaR

What’s that, @JaneJones ?

I suspect it is what happens when you put a handwarmer in a pan of boiling water and leave it boiling, possibly even forgetting about it, rather than taking it off the heat and fishing the handwarmer out after 10 minutes.

[JaneJones]

At least we used them once!

And I blame it all on the accounts, as went up to the study to carry on doing them and got absorbed in the joy of adding up until the fire alarm went off!

[AngelaR]

OH NO!!! I’m so sorry Jane – I couldn’t work out what they were at all - what a mess

[SuePJ]

As this is the cheerful thread - nothing negative - I just want to say thank you so much to @JaneJones for taking us all through an invaluable lesson / fire drill. very kind of you to sacrifice your hand warmers in the process and such a useful reminder to keep our fire alarm batteries up to date when there is a danger that we are cooking (or some such) and then get totally absorbed in doing our accounts. (Not sure about the last bit, that seems a highly unlikely scenario.)

[JaneJones]

But I did use them once! So that’s cheerful.

And what was also hugely cheerful was that it didn’t in the end ruin my brand new (and hugely expensive) saucepan that i got for Christmas. And I managed to clean it up before the giver of the gift got home.

And that the fire alarm worked is a cheery positive.

So all in all a successful afternoon for everybody and everything apart from the handwarmers,

[Griffin36]

Send them back and say they are not working properly