The Night Mail

[Dave Hunt]

2 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

MER was heaving again today, for the continuing transport festival, cars 1, 2, 7, 9, 14, 21, 32, 33 and a clopper in service - first day of the cloppertrams for three years.

ohn

 

Ah, takes me back to the days of my youth when we used to stay in Douglas near the ferry port and we'd get the horse tram to the top end of the bay, onto the MER to Ramsey then steam train via St. John's to Peel then back to Douglas, again via St. John's. Happy days!

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

53 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Close HH - 8/10 - but to be 10/10 it would be 'Dave: break right: SAM 7 o'clock.' (addressee, action, information) 

 

Dave

Well, if that's your attitude, I'll not bother to tell you next time🤣

[Dave Hunt]

1 minute ago, Happy Hippo said:

Well, if that's your attitude, I'll not bother to tell you next time🤣

 

'HH: quick f@rt: cake bandits 6 o'clock.'

 

Dave

[SM42]

We have arrived in the motherland.

 

Delays en route due to accidents and resultant diversions and I also delayed others by only getting up to 104mph on the autobahn.

 

Time for a good night's sleep

 

Andy

[AndyID]

15 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Whatever was wrong with the term "Personnel Dept."?

 

Human Resources is specifically intended to exclude bear persons.

[jjb1970]

On nomenclature in business and the work place it has always struck me that if it isn't reasonably clear what someone does from their job title there is probably one of two things at play. The person concerned is either engaged in some pointless make work scheme, or they have been given a splendid sounding title to help them feel better about an awful job and/or awful pay.

 

I should say that by talking about what someone does, I mean what do the actually do and of what relevance is it to anything useful or productive. One of my former employers had a 'voice of the customer', which meant they worked in complaints.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Human Resources is specifically intended to exclude bear persons.

 

Oh dear such blatent discrimination in this day and age. Where's my lawyer - Sue'em, Flogem and Runforit.

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Human Resources is specifically intended to exclude bear persons.

I presume it excludes Hippos as well.

 

Jamie

Edited July 30, 2022 by jamie92208

[polybear]

8 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

'HH: quick f@rt: cake bandits 6 o'clock.'

 

Dave

 

DH aiding and abetting Big H to commit a War Crime.  This is getting nasty.

 

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Human Resources is specifically intended to exclude bear persons.

 

25 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Oh dear such blatant discrimination in this day and age. Where's my lawyer - Sue'em, Flogem and Runforit.

 

WB shares Bear's thoughts exactly.....

[Happy Hippo]

23 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I presume it excludes Hippos as well.

 

Jamie

HR/Personnel departments are only required by organisations and businesses who employ others.

 

Hippos are only employed short term at a senior management level so they can walk in, crap over everyone who gets in their way and then move on. 

[jamie92208]

5 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

HR/Personnel departments are only required by organisations and businesses who employ others.

 

Hippos are only employed short term at a senior management level so they can walk in, crap over everyone who gets in their way and then move on. 

I thought that was Butterflies or as I called them Seagulls.

Jamie

[Happy Hippo]

17 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

DH aiding and abetting Big H to commit a War Crime.  This is getting nasty.

 

That's not a war crime, it's considered as human humane despatch.

 

I hear a rumour that the last person to try and raid your cake repository was force fed raw cake mix until they were fit to burst and then cooked at 180 degrees in a fan oven for 45 minutes.  A savoury and sweet dish all in one!

[Happy Hippo]

1 minute ago, jamie92208 said:

I thought that was Butterflies or as I called them Seagulls.

Jamie

One should be grateful that the hippo has an inability to fly.

 

A Hippo squadron would be classed as a terror weapon:  and that's not by the enemy, but anyone under the flight path.

 

We wouldn't need precision munitions or the overhyped Norden bombsight.

 

You can probably visualise the rest.

[Winslow Boy]

12 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

One should be grateful that the hippo has an inability to fly.

 

A Hippo squadron would be classed as a terror weapon:  and that's not by the enemy, but anyone under the flight path.

 

We wouldn't need precision munitions or the overhyped Norden bombsight.

 

You can probably visualise the rest.

 

A strato hippo then?

[iL Dottore]

23 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Let's use a long word instead of a short one🤣.

 

22 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Big H beat me to it - for a word often used when you need a fast response it'd make far more sense to use a shorter word. 

Ooh, don’t get me started….

 

One of my “light up and go tilt“ pet peeves is the Americanisation : “prior to” as in “prior to the infusion, administer 500 mg acetaminophen“ as opposed to “before the infusion, administer 500 mg acetaminophen”. Why my American colleagues can’t write simple, plain, English and have to turn nouns into verbs, use pseudo Latin (like “prior to“) and the like, is totally beyond me.

 

Whilst I freely admit that medical English is a bastardisation of standard English, ancient Greek, Latin with some French and German thrown in for good measure, when ancient Greek or Latin are used it is for a very good reason. And their origin is due to the fact that the study of medicine by physicians was historically an academic discipline, taught at university (for which you traditionally needed Greek and Latin), whereas surgery was a practical profession “learnt on the job” (certainly in the UK, which is why traditionally, physicians are known as Doctor and surgeons are known as Mister)  For example: καρδια = cardia = heart (or from the Latin musculus latissimus dorsi) are academic anatomical/medical descriptors - some of which have been anglicised over the centuries.

 

But even with use of anatomical and medical descriptors from the ancient Greek and/or Latin in medical and scientific work, you can still write in perfectly coherent and simple English. for example, instead of writing “prior to this episode of cardiomegaly“ the simpler and clearer version would be “before this episode of cardiomegaly“
 

Sir Winston Churchill, wrote an excellent essay about the use of plain English – something I would recommend as a read to anyone wanting to write clearly.

Edited July 30, 2022 by iL Dottore

[iL Dottore]

9 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

A strato hippo then?

You’d probably need a Hell of a lot of JATO/RATO to get HH airborne….

[Oldddudders]

12 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

MER was heaving again today, for the continuing transport festival, cars 1, 2, 7, 9, 14, 21, 32, 33 and a clopper in service - first day of the cloppertrams for three years.

Huh. In Cockington, the bijou village where Sherry and I were married, they've just elected a new mayor - Patrick the Pony really is a Shetland! Local MP Kevin Foster attended a ceremony earlier this week, and I believe Zoe Ball is scheduled to be interviewing for Radio 2......

[Happy Hippo]

9 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Huh. In Cockington, the bijou village where Sherry and I were married, they've just elected a new mayor - Patrick the Pony really is a Shetland! Local MP Kevin Foster attended a ceremony earlier this week, and I believe Zoe Ball is scheduled to be interviewing for Radio 2......

I'm sure that Patrick will do a much better job than some of the other elected mayors we have been inflicted with over the years.

[Dave Hunt]

I've often thought that the common perception that when Caligula appointed his horse a senator it was the act of a madman, it was, in fact, given the track records of some Roman senators, one of the more sensible things he did.

 

Dave

[SM42]

Hmmmm 

 

HR. Could also mean

 

Hippo Resources 

 

 

Not to sure about BR though

 

Andy

[Happy Hippo]

14 minutes ago, SM42 said:

Hmmmm 

 

HR. Could also mean

 

Hippo Resources 

 

 

 

Don't encourage me!

[Mike Bellamy]

On 29/07/2022 at 08:30, jamie92208 said:

 I asked "Where exactly is the boundary between the two villages". "It's Elmsall Dyke boss,   oh sh1t" we all dissolved into laughter.

 

SWMBO worked as the administrator for the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme at a local secondary school and was the passenger in a minibus driven by one of the teachers going to meet a group of kids at a checkpoint. Going down a narrow lane in the Peak District, she warned the driver that there was a dyke to the left - "There's one to the right as well" was her response !!

 

In other news we are at home instead of being sat on the bank of the Thames at Chertsey. Last month the Camping and Caravanning Club magazine had a brief article about their site there which had been closed for some time for a major refurbishment and they wanted volunteers to go there for a few days (for free) to "test the facilities" before opening to other members and the public. We applied and were accepted.

 

Travelling south on the M40 Thursday we got as far as junction 9 which was very busy as it's the turn off for the A34 to Oxford, Cotswolds etc. Crawling along at about 5mph and we were rear-ended by white van man causing considerable damage to the back of the caravan and front of his Transit. We were right next to an emergency phone so I rang for assistance and although we were both able to drive off the carriageway over the hard shoulder onto the grass verge, the Highways Agency sent one of their Traffic Officer cars to operate a rolling road block in case there was debris on the road. They checked we were all ok and we were then able to proceed to the next exit, turn around and go home again. White van man only lived a few miles away and so he was also able to drive but with no water in his radiator as was all over lane 1. The Traffic Officer said that since "working from home" was introduced, they had noticed a considerable increase in traffic and that "Thursday is the new Friday".

 

Yesterday was spent dealing with three different insurance companies (caravan, car and his van) and getting quote for caravan repair - looks like it might need to go back to the factory for a rear end rebuild as the shower needs replacing as well as the back panel.

 

[Dave Hunt]

Another triumph for the species White Van Man. I wonder whether they have to do a special course in pi$$ poor driving or does it come naturally?

 

Dave

[Mike Bellamy]

25 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Another triumph for the species White Van Man. I wonder whether they have to do a special course in pi$$ poor driving or does it come naturally?

 

He did of course apologise and was very helpful in using some sort of industrial strength super glue (called Mitre Bond ?) to stick the rear panel back together so the end of the caravan wasn't flapping about when we were driving.

.

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

Another triumph for the species White Van Man. I wonder whether they have to do a special course in pi$$ poor driving or does it come naturally?

 

Dave

They get worse when they are normally car drivers who hire a van for the weekend☹️