Early Risers.

[Barry O]

Night all!

Baz

[AndyID]

 yet the butter still lives in its dish on the kitchen bench without souring. There’s irony.

 

Ghee whizz!

[laurenceb]

Night awl

[Ozexpatriate]

I like the adverts for a certain natural spring water "filtered through volcanic rocks for a thousand years" and it has a sell by date in a few months..........................

Yes, the use by/sell by dates on water are a bit absurd, except when in plastic packaging. It would last forever before it was put in a plastic bottle, but I'm not sure I'd want it sitting in BPA plastic for years.

[tetsudofan]

Been another hot dry day down here in the far south east corner. Living in a chalet bungalow with bedrooms in what is really the  roof space it means that it can be 10 degrees warmer upstairs than it is downstairs. Tonight the bedroom had reached 28c.

 

Having lived in Asia for most of my working life I got used to sleeping in air-conditioned bedrooms so when I had an extension put on the back of the house here one of the specifications was that aircon units were installed in each of the upstairs bedrooms with the compressor sitting outside the back of the house.

 

The aircon units have not been used that much but, so far this year, the aircon has been used more than the total usage during the last five years.

 

On the super-quiet setting you can't even hear the unit but the temperature is gradually falling from 28c to 20c at which it will stay until it shuts down in the early hours. In the meantime I can snuggle up in bed and have a great nights sleep.

 

Pleasant dreams...…

 

Keith

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone

 

Well the cloudy start to the day didn’t last very long, the sun was revealing itself when I went outside and by 12:00 the clouds had all but gone and sun was shining brightly. I’ve managed to clear a few more sods of soil and put the roots etc in the garden waste bin. I also earned a few brownie points by cleaning the brass door furniture on the front door as well as cleaning the glass. The window cleaners won’t clean the glass on the front door because both of the panes are leaded and they’re worried that they might damage them!

 

As planned after dinner I went down to the workshop and carried on with a couple of gearboxes. One, an Alan Gibson gearbox is causing the motor to run a little hot, so a bit of investigation work is required there, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

After tea I started soaking the fruit for a fruit tea loaf that I will be making first thing tomorrow morning. So when Sheila comes home from her Zumba class the kitchen will smell rather yummy!

 

After tea, I watered the garden but it wasn’t as cool as last night, but still pleasant none the less!

 

As regards to food sell by/use by dates, we regularly eat food that is passed (only a day or two) the dates. We use our noses to guide us, if is smells bad it’s binned, if it smells ok, then we eat it as soon as possible. We’ve been doing that for years with no ill effects so far. The nose is a wonderful organ and can tell you what is safe or not!

 

Goodnight all

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[lightengine]

Dutch, I've got a Food Safety stifficate too and a steering ticket, a railway ticket, a dinner ticket but never had a parking ticket.

[Ozexpatriate]

... but never had a parking ticket.

That can easily be arranged.

[Ozexpatriate]

Relative to food safety labels I once had an unopened bottle of apple juice in the fridge for a very long time. My son wanted some. He reminds me (often) that I said "Well it looks OK".

 

Of the result, let's just say I might have been able to pass it off at a raggedy farm stand in darkest Somerset as scrumpy, but it didn't smell good and contained a lot of dark material swirling about when I shook it up. It went down the drain.

[AndyID]

Relative to food safety labels I once had an unopened bottle of apple juice in the fridge for a very long time. My son wanted some. He reminds me (often) that I said "Well it looks OK".

 

Of the result, let's just say I might have been able to pass it off at a raggedy farm stand in darkest Somerset as scrumpy, but it didn't smell good and contained a lot of dark material swirling about when I shook it up. It went down the drain.

 

Not long ago we opened a can of evaporated milk that had been in the cupboard for a little while. I'm pretty sure I could have used it as wood glue.

[Robert]

Morning All,

 

It is a fairly bright morning in this part of the world.  We also have partial cloud cover, so with any luck it may rain later on.  We certainly need it!

 

The weekend was fairly quiet.

 

Have a good day everyone...

[chrisf]

Good morning one and all

 

For the second day running I embalmed myself with Factor 30 and ventured out into the heat, this time at Hatfield House for Folk By The Oak.  Fortunately there was some shade and something of a breeze, commodities sadly lacking at Bristol Harbour the previous day.  I took the makings of a picnic in a cooler bag and in the course of the day enjoyed some mini pork pies with built-in pickle, potato salad, coleslaw and some of the slurpiest nectarines it has ever been my pleasure to eat. When I spotted the ice cream van there was but one choice – knickerbocker glory.  There was so much good music.  The Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita, minus his usual partner Catrin Finch due to illness, gave a captivating solo performance which was absolutely right for the conditions.  The Drystones, two lads from Priddy that I know from Sidmouth, get more exciting every time I see them and confirmed my view that they were unjustly robbed of a Radio 2 folk award.  The Young’Uns always impress and Sean Cooney’s song “Be the man” struck something of a chord in view of what I did on Saturday.  Billy Bragg was on top provocative form and for some strange reason was less than complimentary about the President of the United States.  All in all an excellent day out.

 

What, then, of the week ahead?  Today I must collect a prescription from the surgery and have it dispensed.  On Tuesday I have to retune my digi box to accommodate Freeview’s latest clutch of improvements.  On Wednesday there is Area Group lunch in Harpenden, which given the present basis of the GTR timetable [Amethyst and set of balls 4, perhaps?] could be an interesting journey.

 

Warm thoughts to Andyram, Debs, Andy P, Robert, Simon, Tony and Aditi, Mal and all who are in distress or missing.

 

Chris

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl, Inner Temple Here,

 

A good nights sleep, of around and a half hour despite the heat. At 04:30 this morning when I decended the stairs the Living room temperature was 25C Not surprisingly Ben the Border Collie was lying streatched out at the bottom of the stairs.

 

The Trip over the weekend was notible for the easy of driving and the lack of Cockwombles. I only saw one  While i was climbing the Ledenham Bypass, a Porsche crossed the double white lines coming down to overtake a lorry, considering the lorry will have been doing the maximum speed limit down the hill that's pretty poor driving..

 

Walking down the garden now sounds like walking across a newly cut field of straw, very crunchy... and the roads in places are lined by fallen leaves... Effin clown town now has two water leaks coming up out of the tarmac, I somehow doubt they are springs...many areas of tarmac are black with the stickyness coming off the trees, thats going to make it very interesting when we finally do get some rain.

 

Time to.. go see what left over with work from last week.

[Barry O]

Morning to most!

 

I have a lot of little jobs to do today before attending the eye hospital for a small procedure (firing lasers into my eyes seems quite a big procedure to me!).

 

Apparently my eyes will be a bit out of focus for a while so I might not be back on here later..

 

In other news..off to the ODI tomorrow. Due to a misunderstanding I have a spare ticket..contact me if you can come.

 

Wednesday is Nurse Drac day, Thursday is a women's and Girls u15s match, Friday is....shopping.

 

Enjoy your day and positive thoughts to all who ail and also to our "missing" ERs.

 

Baz

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Still hot here and set to continue although there is a chance of a shower or two later. It'll need more than that to cool me down.

For many years the Boss was a "code checker" at Sainsbury's responsible for finding near out of date items and reducing prices or binning them if they'd reached the end of their life. She is still obsessive about food dates and even now I can't convince her if it is one minute past midnight on the sell by date it probably won't kill us.

Domestic duties this morning.

Have a good one,

Bob.

[jamie92208]

Morning all from a rather damp part of the Charente. Thunder and lightning started yesterday evening and continued on and off all night with rain appearing every so often. At the moment it is still appearing. The farmers must have had a good weather forecasting system. The last combine passed our house 5 minutes before the rain arrived. A day of various tasks had been completed and we did watch the footie in the end. I started preparing to sort out a stop tap near the shed. It's 12" below ground level inside a tube of breeze blocks. There wasn't enough space to get a Vernier gauge around the top of the tap but after a bit of guesswork I worked out that I would need a 22mm spanner to get the top of the tap off. I found an old 19mm/22mm open ended spanner and cut it in half. Fortunately the 22mm end fitted exactly and will turn in the hole. There is no chance of getting the tap itself out, without major groundworks so I'm hoping that it will just be a matter of a new turning bit and washer. At the moment the tap turns freely but no water flows. I was going to do the job today but due to the rain it can wait.

 

 

Beth will be off to the supermarket later and I've got someone coming to give us a free security survey. I might also spend some time doing a proper electrical survey of the shed.

 

 

Glad that you had a good day Chrisf and that Dom's solo flight went well. Thoughts are with others in need.

 

 

Neil, by the way Douglas Adams got it wrong, the answer to the ultimate question is 27, the dimension in inches that one elevation of a layout piece must not exceed to fit though a door.

 

 

Jamie

[81C]

Morning Peeps 

Keeper of Peppa here yes it was the full monty earlier so I got up 2 hours ago then at 7am on the dot 1/2dozen

jack hammers fired up on the demolition site 400 yards away not too bad with the windows closed just bearable

with the windows and doors open how Her is still sound asleep with that racket is beyond me.

Her is off shopping somewhere afar Waitrose I believe as Horrorsons over the back has sod all on the shelves the

past few weeks and they are blaming a lack of drivers at the depot is it's never their (Morrisons)   fault, she shopped

at Sainsburys   last week and they were no better something about chocolate fire guard was mentioned. 

O harketh  Her has arisen I suppose I'd better make out I'm doing something.

 

                                                                                                                                                 enjoy your day S Wineherd 

 

Btw Andy never risk it with chicken always check it out even if it's in date.

[Black Marlin]

...or you may be responsible for the greatest mass-poisoning since Lucrezia Borgia invited everyone around for a wine 'n anthrax party.

 

 

She may be familiar with fizzy yoghurt, which is easily made. All you need is yoghurt, plus time.....

 

Always nice to see a fellow fan of the great Blackadder and the sublime John Finnemore (who I went to see a few weeks ago in Edinburgh. And he was very, very funny indeed.) (On a further side note, when I was the assistant manager of the Modelzone in Aberdeen, we had a regular customer who called me Douglas and my boss Martin. My boss, who'd never listened to Cabin Pressure, merely assumed that the customer wasn't quite with it. I chose not to tell him that not only was the customer fully compos mentis, he also had an acute grasp of the power dynamics at play in the shop's management team...)

 

 

Greetings all, and hello to Jason Isaacs.

 

Back to work today. As with so many Sunday to Monday transitions, I go from Te Deum to tedium. Today is something to be endured rather than enjoyed, I fear. 

 

On the plus side, my LNER headlamps were on my desk and waiting for me when I got here, so I'll be able to finish off Gay Crusader when I get home. (If any of you can rewrite that sentiment to make it sound less euphemistic, I'd appreciate it...)

 

 

Kind regards wagging their tails and bouncing up in an overexcited fashion to lick the faces of the smitten;

Tinkety-tonk, etc.

Gavin

[roundhouse]

Morning all from a rather damp part of the Charente. Thunder and lightning started yesterday evening and continued on and off all night with rain appearing every so often.

Can we have your rain please. Our garden is very yellow at the moment and getting a bit tired of the heat although it probably is perparing us for our upcoming trip to Kansas City as it has been 33 deg C there.

 

Yesterday morning I extracted an old PC from the spare room that has been buried behind the words biggest supply of voat hangers and spare travel bags!

 

Most of these are now in the car ready for the tip. The PC is out and cover off as planning to replace the power pack that failed a few years ago but the spare power pack that I have is too big so now hoping to find a good vlaue replacement otherwise that PC will be joining the coat hangers.

 

A bit of modelling planned for today.

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone

 

It’s a dull start to the day, with the possibility of some rain, although the sun appears to be trying to shine at the moment.

 

Once Sheila has gone to her Zumba class I’ll make a start on the fruit tea loaf which I started yesterday. As most of the cake has been soaking overnight I’ve only got to add the flour, mix it then pop it in the oven. 90 minutes later it will be ready, so an easy morning is the plan. Once the cake is set aside to cool I’ll go out to the garden To carry on removing soil from the sods, weather permitting, otherwise I’ll go to the workshop.

 

Back later

[TheQ]

Good morning everyone

 

It’s a dull start to the day, with the possibility of some rain, although the sun appears to be trying to shine at the moment.

 

Once Sheila has gone to her Zumba class I’ll make a start on the fruit tea loaf which I started yesterday. As most of the cake has been soaking overnight I’ve only got to add the flour, mix it then pop it in the oven. 90 minutes later it will be ready, so an easy morning is the plan. Once the cake is set aside to cool I’ll go out to the garden To carry on removing soil from the sods, weather permitting, otherwise I’ll go to the workshop.

 

Back later

Oven? Do you mean out side in the sun?

[NGT6 1315]

Not long ago we opened a can of evaporated milk that had been in the cupboard for a little while. I'm pretty sure I could have used it as wood glue.

 

 

There's an upcycling idea…

 

Mawnin' awl. Another sunny day seems to be rising, followed by two days off. Could be that a barbecue might result…

 

Re air conditioning, I've found that lack thereof in the cab can be living hell. Had a Tatra recently where all the A/C did was a bit of blending of hot air. As there's only a very small tilt window for backup which would not really have helped either, driving really got to me that day. Should I encounter a unit with this kind of failure again, I would definitely request a vehicle change on the basis of safety, which I believe can indeed be compromised through dehydration and lack of concentration.

 

Best wishes and warm thoughts to those of us in distress…

[NGT6 1315]

And a couple of images from my big camera:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Landsberger Straße used to be the site of a smaller LVB depot up until the early 90s. In fact, traces of disused trackage can still be seen on the land to the south of the former office building. This depot used to be staffed primarily by younger staff, which is why it was called "Rudi Opitz Young Workers' Depot".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the LED headlights which really are pretty much super-bright, especially in comparison to those on the Tatras in particular!