The Night Mail

[pH]

19 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

I was unaware that the "Football Pitch" was now the official measure of anything. It never will be for me, because I never look at one. Another victory for dumbing down. 

Since an association football pitch can be between 100 and 130 yards in length and 50 and 100 yards in width, a ‘football pitch’ is a very imprecise unit of measurement. 
 

On the other hand, an American football field is 360 feet in length and 160 feet in width, so that ‘football field’ is a precise quantity.

 

(There are also Canadian, Australian and Gaelic football fields, and therefore other  ‘football field’ units.)

 

I don’t know that it’s “dumbing down” to express measurements in such units. It gives a physical thing to illustrate the relative size of the item being described, and some people are naturally more ‘visual’ than others.

 

There are other units in this system of measurement e.g. buses, jumbo jets and Olympic swimming pools.

[Dunsignalling]

34 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Only yesterday on "Wright Writes", I noted how the Football Pitch and Wales are standard measurements of area, in the media at least, along with the London Bus and the Nelson's Column.

 

Who's going to tell them that there aren't fixed, exact dimensions for a football pitch?  Some American former colleagues of mine thought this was hilarious.

 

In any event, I can't imagine any half- decent football pitch should have any trees on it to blow over...

 

John

[Happy Hippo]

My luck seems to be in at the moment.  I had a telephone appointment with the doctor this morning at 0840.

 

This then rolled into being asked to go in and see him at 1010!

 

After the visit, I have to have a blood test.

 

The current waiting list for non-urgent tests is about 14 days to get an appointment, but amazingly, booking via the website meant I was able to get one this afternoon.

 

Should I buy a couple of lottery tickets?

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

n any event, I can't imagine any half- decent football pitch should have any trees on it to blow over...

Like football pitches, elephants and London buses “a tree” seems to be the unit our solar panel app uses as an indication of how much carbon dioxide we have “saved”. We have so far 1.23 “equivalent trees planted” since December. 

[PhilJ W]

Is a Wales bigger than a Belgium?

[BoD]

31 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Is a Wales bigger than a Belgium?

 
I suspect a Wales is bigger than most anyone else’s

[Happy Hippo]

I have now been bled dry.

 

The storm coming off the Weald Moors seems to be gaining it strength.

 

You can hear the wind whistling which generally means that by tomorrow there will be branches down or even some trees.

 

Morgan told me he was spending the day prepping chainsaws and the various other gear needed for tree demolition and road clearance which is likely to be needed as the weather worsens.

 

Am I worried?

 

No!

 

All I care about is when I'm getting my next meal.

[Joseph_Pestell]

3 hours ago, pH said:

Since an association football pitch can be between 100 and 130 yards in length and 50 and 100 yards in width, a ‘football pitch’ is a very imprecise unit of measurement. 
 

 

 

Tell me about it! At prep school we played "home" matches on a full-sized pitch at Battersea Park. Did not make for a skills based match,

[pH]

14 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Tell me about it! At prep school we played "home" matches on a full-sized pitch at Battersea Park. Did not make for a skills based match,

At a bit older than that, I played on what had been a Scottish junior football pitch. We couldn’t get corners to the 6 yard box in the air. 

[pH]

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The current waiting list for non-urgent tests is about 14 days to get an appointment, but amazingly, booking via the website meant I was able to get one this afternoon.

 

Should I buy a couple of lottery tickets?

Only if you can buy them online.

[pH]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

 

In any event, I can't imagine any half- decent football pitch should have any trees on it to blow over...

 

John

The important words there are “half-decent”!

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, pH said:

The important words there are “half-decent”!

(Pedant mode ON)

 

I'd bet there aren't even any rubbish ones with trees on.  

 

A football pitch, is the playing surface and definitely won't incorporate trees.  The term gets used as a measure of area by ignorant UK journos, who evidently don't know they aren't a standard size. 

 

One or more pitches will be situated within a football ground, which might well have trees planted around the perimeter as a windbreak.  

 

However, no number of trees blown down in the forthcoming storms can possibly equate to any measure of area (even a real one) simply because trees don't grow at a standard spacing. Not wild ones anyhow. 

 

(Pedant mode OFF)

 

John

 

 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Dunsignalling

[Gwiwer]

6 hours ago, pH said:

Since an association football pitch can be between 100 and 130 yards in length and 50 and 100 yards in width, a ‘football pitch’ is a very imprecise unit of measurement.

And is the only commonly-played sport which in theory can be played on a square pitch. Except that it should also be “longer than it is wide” so could be 100x99 or 101x100 yards. Still as close to square as makes little difference. 

[Dunsignalling]

6 hours ago, pH said:

Since an association football pitch can be between 100 and 130 yards in length and 50 and 100 yards in width, a ‘football pitch’ is a very imprecise unit of measurement. 
 

 

 

Indeed, and so imprecise that one could legitimately describe a (large) football pitch as being "more than twice the size of a (small) football pitch".

[rockershovel]

8 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

It might be useful in some ways such as in constructing curved track. By putting the wider track on the outside it will slightly widen the gauge and ease the curve.

 

[rockershovel]

On 14/02/2022 at 12:08, Oldddudders said:

Impressively bad, it must be!

I've always regarded Bridgwater as the front runner on that front, with a dishonourable mention for Corley. The Leicester/Coventry/Birmingham area services are all pretty dire, though.

[Northmoor]

16 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

I've always regarded Bridgwater as the front runner on that front, with a dishonourable mention for Corley. The Leicester/Coventry/Birmingham area services are all pretty dire, though.

Motorway services across the country got better almost overnight when Granada sold up.  They had long followed the Woolworths "Failure to adapt to changing customer demands resulting in a long, slow decline into oblivion" Business model.  Little Chef did the same; I feel sorry for their staff who watched the company directors pay themselves handsomely for decades while clearly being asleep at the corporate wheel.

 

Instead of the shops resembling your local Spar but at twice the price, with the new owners like Moto, you suddenly got franchised coffee outlets selling products people actually wanted to drink, even if it is pricey.  Plus at a lot of them you can get M&S food (at normal or close to normal M&S prices); a quality of takeaway food previously unknown on the motorway.  

 

Yes services are expensive but perhaps counter-intuitively, I've found the more you spend, the better value they get.  If you just stop for coffee and a piece of cake, you'll get little change for £6, but it can only be about twice that to have a main meal with drinks.  Compared to most pub food that's not too bad at all.

 

However, the main reason I don't complain about the cost of motorway services catering is that I've never found it a problem making up sandwiches and snacks before a long journey, especially with children.  Some people seem to find the idea of planning these things in advance, completely baffling.

[polybear]

43 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Motorway services across the country got better almost overnight when Granada sold up.  They had long followed the Woolworths "Failure to adapt to changing customer demands resulting in a long, slow decline into oblivion" Business model.  Little Chef did the same; I feel sorry for their staff who watched the company directors pay themselves handsomely for decades while clearly being asleep at the corporate wheel.

 

Strangely enough the Little Chef website is still up and running and suggests that many locations are still up and running.  The menus are still shown on the website and the prices don't actually look too bad now....

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

I've always regarded Bridgwater as the front runner on that front

It's definitely up there.  Killington Lakes, the only time I ever called in, was at the opposite end of the scale and was refreshingly good.  Exeter .... well .... hmmmmmmm ..... Exeter.  The world stops at Exeter services and it's always crowded and filthy.  During social distancing they attempted to have people queue outside on a one-out-one-in basis until those in urgent need to the toilets simply barged in ..... and often went for a coffee and solids after making space to the annoyance of those being corralled outside.  

 

Off the motorway network "services" can of course refer to almost anything.  Solstice Services on the A303 is a busy and rather awful spot but has a modest selection of outlets.  Most of the other "service stations" down there are nothing more than a small car park and a small building which might contain a Starbucks and / or a Greggs but nothing of real substance.  Many location which have a "services" sign on a major road are simply a village shop and petrol - often in one location these days - sometimes well off the main road in the village or nearby town which fact is not indicated on the signage.  By contrast the seemingly vast Cornwall Services on the A30 at what we used to call Victoria (from the Victoria Inn which, postally, was in Roche) is an unwholesome adventure into cavernous yet unsatisfying enclosed space.  You can have Costa or a burger.  Or a pasty and no it's not a Ginsters one.  And that's it.  The other outlets are souvenir or stationary in style.  

 

Don't get me started on the price of motorway fuel.  Or even main-road fuel.  It also seems to be the case that anywhere which is signposted as "Services" has a right to charge around 30p / litre above the current supermarket price for fuel.  I try to avoid them all.  I can manage around 400 miles on a tank which takes me anywhere I might need to be and I'll refill in a supermarket thank you.  Probably with a better and cleaner cafe than the service areas offer and definitely cheaper.  Though not usually open at all hours.  

 

There did used to be somethign satisfying about being able to walk into a Motorway service station at 3am knowing you could find sausage, egg, beans and chips with a muggertea.  And it might even be freshly cooked rather than having sat in a bain-marie for the past six hours or more.  

[BoD]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Ah, Blazing Saddles.

One of my favourite films.

[PhilJ W]

When I last used the A303 I stopped off at Podimore (near the RNAS museum). The is a restaurant (former pub) called the Podimore Inn. Excellent grub including snacks.

[AndyID]

13 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Since  the rail we use is drawn wire, it would not surprise me if there are slight variations due to bits of hard metal getting trapped in the sharp corners of the die, or the die wearing. This would account for variations within a batch or a complete batch of a differing size.

 

I've measured a lot and it's not very consistent. A few thousandths of an inch isn't much but it makes a big difference when you are trying to properly secure a rail in an inelastic chair. The zig-zag trick solves that by taking advantage of the elasticity of the rail itself.

 

Of course real track solves the problem by bashing wooden wedges or metal springs between the chair and the rail but that's not terribly practical in the smaller scales

[BR60103]

12 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Should I buy a couple of lottery tickets?

No! You've used up your luck for the month.

 

[BR60103]

A while ago, someone on the TV said something was "twice the height of a football field".   I mused whether that was before or after they cut the grass.

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

Ophthalmic exam this morning:  For some reason, these seem to have dropped to 6 monthly rather than the annual checks.

 

It's a nice morning (so far) so afterwards we can go for a walk around Ironbridge and perhaps pick up some of the locally made pasties (by a butcher called Eley) for lunch.