Early Risers.

[AndyB]

Pinch punch. And Yuletide felicitations to one and all. Ho-ho-ho. 

 

There's an ominous space in the lounge where I'm informed a tree will be placed and lights put thereon. 

 

In theory the traffic should be a lot better today with a 25-minute commute. 

 

I had a brief read of the Peco thread yesterday. Based on the volume of comment and the general premise that there's no such thing as bad publicity, the new track must be a resounding success for the company.  

[Robert]

Morning All,

 

The temperature is around freezing this morning - but it is dry, if a little grey.

 

As DD said, December already.  Where did the year go?

 

Time for a coffee.

 

Have a good day everyone...

[Smiffy2]

Ryhope - once home of Cherry Knowle, the local 'old time' psychiatric hospital.  Next door to a fantastically preserved Beam engined pumping station, not to be missed when in steam.

 

After my time, I suspect. I was living in East Herrington for 1969, then hall of residence in Sunderland in 1970, so really only went to Ryhope for the TP. It was all a bit of a blur!

[Barry O]

White Rabbits!

 

Piccadilly Tap was fine if somewhat expensive on Wednesday evening when I visited.

 

These flipping whelkmen...suppply of whelks here now critical.... glad to hear you are getting better Dick.

 

Ryhope...Cherry Knowle..one of the two places you were threatened with if you were naughty as a child (The other being Sedgefield)...

Never managed to see the beam engine running but have seen it on TV.

 

Still chilly here and a very, very light dusting of snow present.

 

Mugatea then Moreasons.....

 

Have as good a day as you can!

 

Baz

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Dry and coldish at the moment, wintry showers are forecast.

At 3.00 am ish I completed my 69th solar orbit. That means I've travelled something like 40,296 million miles or thereabouts. Glad I'm not footing the petrol bill for that.

A great evening had with kids and grandkids here for our traditional tree decorating ceremony. We normally do this on the 1st but for some reason Management decided it would be yesterday and of course her instructions were followed. 

The house was illuminated in full and no fuses were blown. (inside only, I don't go over the top, besides that would mean getting the ladder out and we don't want any GDB "incidents" at this time of year.)   

The Boss has presented me with a very nice model of something green called Dribbling Castle (or similar). This was a bit of surprise as I was supposed to be getting it for Christmas but I'm not complaining! 

Tonight we're having "a bit of a do" with about 20 plus family and friends. There may be some drinking involved.

Have a good one, I fully intend to.    

Bob.

Edited December 1, 2017 by grandadbob

[Coombe Barton]

Dog got me up at twenty past five, then in and out since. Has now breakfasted on what I was going to have, along with SWMBO's lunch.

 

Working from home today, editing, editing, editing. Been at it already as the dog got me up.

 

Will venture out shopping later when the white stuff has cleared from the cars, then tomorrow it's off to a quilt show, where fortunately that have put plenty of bloke parks.

 

On with they typing. I'm trying to make correlation and regression interesting for the average non-mathematical student.

[jamie92208]

Morning all from a village that's lost it's whiteness overnight.   

 

It's good to hear news about the whelkmen and I hope that things improve Dick.   Ryhope pumping station is well worth a visit it's been magnificently restored.  Beth's late aunt's granddad used to be the engineman there and she told us lots of stories about how clean the engine house was.

 

Here preparation for some event later this month have started.  I had to bring a large box with cards and addresses in it down from the loft yesterday.  I suspect that I may have more boxes to ring down in due course.  However I dare not be proactive about this task as whichever box I chose would obviously be the wrong one, so I will wait to be tasked. Not a lot on the agenda today and life is wonderful here at the moment, Beth has sent out a search party for her voice which seems to have got lost somewhere.  I have offered to help in this search, but not too enthusiastically.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

 

PS congratulations to GDB.

Edited December 1, 2017 by jamie92208

[Barry O]

Happy Birthday GDB!

 

Hopefully you will have a Great, incident free day!

 

Baz

[Tony_S]

Happy Birthday Bob.

Enjoy your day.

Tony

[Coombe Barton]

Happy Birthday, Bob.

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

Not frosty here but the wind chill was rather noticeable. I had to lift Robbie over the threshold to get him in to the garden but then he seemed ok once outside.

Aditi is off to MiL's for a fortnight. I am not sure this is totally necessary but Aditi's sister who lives near MiL won't go on holiday unless MiL has 24 hour "care" easily available.

Tony

Edited December 1, 2017 by Tony_S

[Smiffy2]

Happy birthday Bob!

[Andrew P]

December! Where did this year go?

It's behind you,

 

Oh no it isn't,

 

Oh yes it is!      

[BoD]

Happy birthday, GDB

[chrisf]

Many happies to Bob.  Even younger than me I see.

 

Something I forgot earlier and it is a good job I remembered.  Cara Dillon is in concert at The Stables tonight and I have an advance ticket.   This may mean a late night which will not go well with an early rise tomorrow.  One day I will surely meet myself coming in the opposite direction.

 

Chris

[bbishop]

Morning all from a village that's lost it's whiteness overnight.   

 

It's good to hear news about the whelkmen and I hope that things improve Dick.   Ryhope pumping station is well worth a visit it's been magnificently restored.  Beth's late aunt's granddad used to be the engineman there and she told us lots of stories about how clean the engine house was.

 

Beth has sent out a search party for her voice which seems to have got lost somewhere.  I have offered to help in this search, but not too enthusiastically.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

 

PS congratulations to GDB.

 

There is still the written word.

 

Bill

[New Haven Neil]

HB, Bob.  Dribbling Castle?  I have heard of Hassle Castle.....but they all look the same to me.

 

Nice to see the Whelkmen back too, I have missed them.

 

ChrisF, John Hunt should have had plenty north-eastern photos, IIRC he was at Newcastle Uni with a friend of mine.

 

Ryhope pumping station is magnificent, two of the finest ( and latest - they are a very late construction for the type) beam engines you will see.  Quite the opposite to Coniscliffe Road pumping station in Darlington, which is sort of 'as it was left' in the 50's, and IMHO should remain so as a record of 'how things were'.  Both are steamed regularly in the season and are worth a visit.

 

OF bike club this morning, dry and bright but 1c weather may preclude use of a two wheeled contrivance though.  I see what the temperature is at 10!

[81C]

Happy Birthday OLD boy I hope you have a great day and if you are not p!ssed yet you should be.                   

[laurenceb]

Birthday greeting Bob

Mornin awl

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Happy birthday GDB and many more of 'em. No sign of any white stuff here this morning but a bit damp, not falling from the sky at the moment though. Got to go now, be back later.

[New Haven Neil]

Going to risk walking down to the garage - I may be some time.

[New Haven Neil]

Bottled it - still frosty!

[petethemole]

Mornin' all from the Hundred of Mansbridge; cold and sunny with a nasty north wind.

 

Happy birthday to Bob. The sun is over the yardarm (it always is, somewhere on the planet).

 

My demolition of two sheds in four days was just about completed. I had to break up and lift the floor of the second one first thing Monday as time beat me on Sunday. I was working by then by the light of a 60w spot lamp. I now have an enormous pile of timber, with the wall panels largely intact, two of which are 18ft long. I will need a waste removal contractor, hopefully one who will break up the large bits rather than expecting me to do it. Many spiders were rendered homeless; some were rather spectacular.

 

The replacement 'garden building' is approaching completion. at 18ft x 16ft it's larger than the two sheds together. However it's for Mrs mole to use as a healing/therapy space and music room. She has just taken delivery of her new Motability car and is getting used to driving again after her eye ops. Her moving back in will probably happen in the spring, after I've had the bathroom refitted.

 

I suppose I'd best get on; I have a load of stuff to put on Ebay. Hopefully it will be worth it.

 

Have a good POETS day.

 

Pete

[AndrewC]

 

Greetings from that most boring of boroughs. 

 

Happy Bobday!!! 

 

 

All I can say is roll on 5pm. This has been a very sh*t week. To quote Blackadder, "fortune vomits on my eiderdown once again". Or words to that effect. Maybe it's just me but everyone on the planet seems hell bent on p*ssing me off this week.

 

Our online meat supplier (Farmer's Choice just to name and shame) has gone down hill and the company they use to deliver is worse than Hermes. Last 2 orders have been mis-delivered and partly/totally thawed by the time it was sorted. The supplier itself has changed some of their sources. The quality has suffered greatly. So after 5 years it's good bye to them. Now we have to find an alternative. 

 

Work sux. No other way to put it. Hours wasted chasing the project mangler for billing project codes, being asked to implement risky changes without proper change control just to appease one person. No word back on the interview from Tuesday, so it looks like I'm stuck here for a while longer. 

 

The saga of my missing loco continues into the 9th week. Rapido haven't responded to my latest emails. If nothing by close of play Monday I'm going to have to go the PayPal dispute route to recover my money. Shame, but this is ridiculous. (Tony, no it wasn't shipped via Rails. They still have an individual that receives the UK orders and redistributes them) 

 

To top it off Equifax Equifux sent me a letter saying my personal details were accessed when they were hacked a while back. That means I have to register with Cifas to prevent/reduce the likelihood of fraud. The impact of that is even something as simple as upgrading my phone will now require a secondary verification, which will be a pain in the arse. 

 

Enough bitching from me. Enjoy your weekend. I'll be hiding in my shed. 

[The Stationmaster]

Morning all,

 

Happy birthday Bob - nice to hear you got a pressie from herself (I'm told mine from Mrs Stationmaster next year will be a week on a ship - the North Sea in April, mind you I bet the North Sea in April will be a bit better than in January when it would actually coincide with my birthday).

 

Today is bright and sunny, again, with a touch of frost.  This evening is the annual 'Christmas Festival in the town centre which involves shutting a significant part of it to vehicular traffic and when you actually find estate agents giving things away (small gasses of punch and slices of mince pie - well what else/more would you expect from an estate agent?).  In the meanwhile her goodself and I will be off to watch 'The Man Who Invented Christmas' - using a couple more of our freebie tickets for the local flicks.  They're not really freebies - they came with the membership deal.

 

I remember the '62/'63 winter quite well - our local branchline was shut due to the bubble car getting stuck in a snowdrift but unfortunately that prevented our annual winter pilgrimage to Swindon.  Far better was the extra snow that descended the night before school resumed and the few of us who got there first thing were set to counting how many others had made it.  the resultant number was so low it was decided to shut the school for a week so we quickly left - fortunately just in time to turn back the two 'bus loads who were in process of arriving from various parts of the surrounding countryside meaning they never got to school and thus our low numbers remained low.  And the school really did stay shut for a week, hooray!

 

Enjoy your day everybody and take care if it's slippery round about you.