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A couple of days ago I got something greasy (diesel?) splashed on my windscreen. Before raiding the kitchen for some vinegar I had a rummage in the garage and found some surgical spirit. As this is not my beverage of choice I tried it on the screen. It left a milky film which dried instantly but easily polished off with a clean cloth to leave a crystal clear clean screen.
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Meths is a better colour and flavour, and does the job.
8o)
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Love the smell of meths.
We had heaters which took meths when I was a kid. It brings back memories.
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I found a Le Creuset fondue pan and burner in Oxfam the other week. Straight from there to Robert Dyas for a little bottle of meths to fuel it.
Next thing I'm after is one of those gorgeous meths-powered glass vacuum coffee makers and I'll be in mid-century heaven.
}:---)
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Ah the Cona. Had one for a wedding present in 1973. You can still get them. Wouldn't mind one myself.
www.cona.co.uk
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>> Ah the Cona. Had one for a wedding present in 1973. You can still get
>> them. Wouldn't mind one myself.
So it didn't last?
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The marriage did. Unfortunately the Cona not so enduring. I remember buying a couple of the replacement bowls. Got too expensive to maintain I think. Fantastically theatrical way of making a cup of coffee though.
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That's the one, CGN. Indian restaurant I frequented 20 years ago used to bring one to the table. I've seen a Bodum version of the same idea but the Cona is the one to have, I think.
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>> Love the smell of meths.
>>
>> We had heaters which took meths when I was a kid. It brings back memories.
Think that was probably paraffin.
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Romantic birthday present from girlfriend was a £10 voucher from B&Q (a bit of a joke).
We went to spend it, and came back with a bottle of meths (essential part of french polishing). I am now able to say 'she gave me a bottle of meths for my birthday'. Well, it amuses me...
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Remember going camping with the lads as a teen. We had those little tinplate meths burning stoves. Dinner of the day...every day....seemed to be baked beans with sausages in the tin.
I recall the stoves churned out a fair amount of degrees of heat.
Regular drink for Manchester's dossers, cut with water to make ' Jake '. There were other, better ways for a lad to risk blindness though !
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>> Remember going camping with the lads as a teen. We had those little tinplate meths
>> burning stoves. Dinner of the day...every day....seemed to be baked beans with sausages in the
>> tin.
That brings back memories of a similar camping trip with the same menu.
But we forgot to bring a tin opener, so resorted to punching a ring of holes with a tent peg and a rock and then ripping the lid open.
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>> resorted to punching a ring of holes with a tent peg and a rock and then ripping the lid open.
Not a scout knife or Swiss army knife among the lot of you then?
Tsk. Lads indeed... bunch of girls more like.
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We tried the tinned burgers. One of our party refused to eat them, as they resembled raw cat food straight out of the tin. Best burgers I've ever tasted, when cooked.
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Goblin brand? I hated them. Particularly the gravy they came in.
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For a saga of trying to get into a tin without a tin opener, nothing but nothing beats the account in Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome.
I would quote the passage, but the forum software throws a fit, so you'll have to read the whole chapter, chapter 12:
www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/jerome/3men12.htm
The book is good, easily the best thing I had to read at school and this chapter at least is best not read on public transport as the resultant giggles, snorts and smirks will convince your fellow passengers that you are an escaped loony.
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There you go:
We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.
Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found.
Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.
It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.
Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.
After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand.
We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.
There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead.
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Windscreen cleaner. - neiltoo
