Early Risers.

[leopardml2341]

Not much to say, so I'll stick with Goodnight all

[Gwiwer]

Evening all. And for those in Yarksheer “Eh oop”. 
 

The pain has lowered significantly today and is much more manageable at about 3-4 on the scale. The swelling is about the same but previous experience suggests this is the course it takes. Pain eases first followed by slow reduction in swelling. 
 

I am still probably a couple of days away from getting outdoor shoes on though managed my slippers (both) for much of the day. 
 

I shall take note of the medications fellow ERs have mentioned next time I trouble the quack but for now I have what should be 12-18 months supply of Indomethacin which does what it says on the tin. 
 

Another day largely spent on the sofa being attended to by SWMBO who has temporarily assumed all household duties. That ends on Monday when she returns to work whether I do so or not. 
 

I note that a side-effect of the Aussie bushfires is likely to be an effect on the price of their wine even though most major growing regions have not been burned. The vines are intolerant to thick smoke and may not fruit fully or can die. A small boutique winery near our former home was affected a number of years ago; their entire release that year was labelled “Limited Edition Ash Brew” and had a smoky taste. It wasn’t too bad but jokes about Pouilly-Fumé fell flat. 

Hopefully a decent undisturbed sleep will assist recovery and the morning will bring even more mobility with little pain. I’ll let you know. 
 

Many thanks for your support. This is not the way I would have wished a new year to start. 

[Tony_S]

2 hours ago, grandadbob said:

Our nephew owns an electric car dealership in New Milton, Hants and has tried to persuade me to go Tesla. He doesn't seem to understand that I can't afford one!

I didn’t know (until I just looked) how expensive they were. 
Tony

 

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Actually it can drive itself. Just yet though, you shouldn't let it.

 

As one Tesla owner discovered recently.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-13/tesla-that-hit-parked-police-car-while-in-autopilot-being-probed?utm_source=url_link

[Tony_S]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-43934504
 

In England too.

[J. S. Bach]

 

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

  8 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Again, he has difficulty getting over the lip before getting settling into the Stanner Stairlift GTI (aka the MB Bang seat.) 

MB bang seat = Martin-Baker ejection seat?

[jamie92208]

 

I better not comment on what I think of so called autopilot cars.  I certainly won't get one and can't afford one, though the Tesla factory in California is a useful place to spot stored UP locos at Warm Springs.

 

Anyway I had an interesting day trying to fit the new door shutter to the kitchen door.

Here's (most) of the old one, the top rail broke off when moving it. 

  

It turned out that most of the top foot or so and the bottom 18 " had the weight of balsa wood and the strength of wet cardboard. When we took it apart the cause was easy to see.

 

The black thing encrusted with sawdust is a deceased carpenter bee.  Above it can be seen two holes bored along the grain down the door.  One had 3 pupa's in it, two of them are there. The scale is in cms.  There were such tracks in many part of the door.   Many filled with expanding foam by the previous owner who sort of forgot to tell us.

 

Anyway after lunch a friend came to help me fit the new shutter.   One problem I'd made a measuring booboo and it was 6 inches too long.  We brought it back over, took off the bottom two battens, chopped it to the right length.  Got the battens back on, rubbed it down and put a coat of primer on exposed new wood.  I will repaint it over the next couple of days.

I did manage to get another coat of paint on the two shutters from the living room.  Here they are before the top coat was applied.

I even tried to paint some of the ironwork in black but the awful French paint I've got doesn't want to cover in one coat.   

The plan is to get all the south east facing shutters done and put back on before we wet off for the UK later this month.

However I enjoyed the day.

Belated birthday wishes to Mike and Phil, glad that your brother is through his op.  I wish him well for his recovery.  Rick, glad that your foot is gradually returning to normal.  Gout was always seen as a bit of a joke until a friend and neighbour in Leeds got it badly in one knee and ended up being hospitalised in his early 30's. I hope it settles down.

 

Jamie

 

[tigerburnie]

Keep nodding off here...……………..G'night all

[TheQ]

Hmm. Highland spring water,  from Perthshire not the highlands,  just off the A9 dual carriageway. 

Used to go past Blackford regularly.. 

 

Evening awl,  don't eat yellow snow,  especially when it's polyisocyanurate.. Yes I've been making like slartybartfast again.. Much carving of future hillsides.  Dremel with diamond disc also employed as I too made a measuring mistake,  the plywood edges to the base board were 1/2 inch too tall, I compromised by just cutting out where the Navvys were employed .

Only 3 of us turned up and the other two left early. I did get a fair amount done though. 

 

Goodnight Awl. 

 

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

Evening all,

 

Yorkshire presents no entry problems for me as I have grandfather rights (I've also got father rights, great grandfather rights, and as many more added 'great' suffixes as will taken you back over 900 years - s'there).

 

Anyway back t'mill, where the current manager is Sally Hughes and could well be the person KZ referred to as she's been there quite a while.   The 'rain' was interestingly spectacular - as my crummy phot below shows (sort of) the auditorium is semi-circular and the stage is set within it and is also semi-circular.   Persons sitting in the front row - so right next to the stage - were given black plastic sheeting to cover their legs but still got splashed a bit higher up especially when the Don Lockwood character, doing his Gene Kelly bit, shook i his umbrella in the direction of the audience or the rain ran off it onto the front row.  

 

In fact I reckon they got even wetter than we did many years ago sitting near the front when we took the lad to the sooty Show where there was much spraying of water in all directions but mainly over Matthew Corbett and the audience.  Back t'Mill and you can see a cloth hanging down from an overhead structure - the water was fed from a pipe virtually the whole length of that overhead structure but its spread followed the circular pattern of the stage edge getting it very wet to within about 2-3 feet of the edge.  The 'rain' installation cost £16,000 and the water was raining down for the whole length of the song so the stage got quite wet.  Just as impressive was a stage prop lamp post which was brought on and plonked down but was more than sturdy enough for the chap to swing round so perhaps it had some sort of magnetic base?  

 

The stage incidentally appears to have been built on top of the usual stage which is probably just as well as it gets drenched six times a week for a couple of months.  The water was duly cleared up and mopped by a couple of stage hands and took a while to drive out so there wasn't quite so much tap dancing in the second act.  The finale consisted of the entire cast in sou'westers, 'oilskins', and wellingtons parading round in the 'rain' - so the dstyage got another drenching and the front row of the audience got splashed yet again.  All in all it was an extremely good musical with some top notch performances leaving us what they'll be doing next year as the 'Christmas & New Year musical' is now a well established part of their calendar.  It was also the first time we'd seen as near a full house as you could get - just 5 empty seats but we'd booked early and so had got our usual seats in the back row and right next to an exit so we could getaway ahead of the rush.

 

https://millatsonning.com/shows/singin-in-the-rain/

 

[Barry O]

Mike

 

Last time I visited t'mill was to attend an Evening with Blaster Bates..now that was an experience!

 

Time for some eyelid inspection methinks so..

 

Goodnight awl!!

Baz

[Kingzance]

2 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Last time I visited t'mill was to attend an Evening with Blaster Bates..now that was an experience!

Ah, the perpetrator of a shower of sh!t over Shropshire and other ripe tails....

[TheSignalEngineer]

Desktop 'puter dismantled tonight to check power supply and connectors. During work tbe cause of crashes and shutdowns of graphics may have been located. A small deposit of dust was slowing the fan pn the graphics card, causing a processor overheat and automatic cut out.  Time for sleep and full test tomorrow. Thanks to all who suggested solutions when I first reported problems, especially the one who looks to have got it right!

[Coombe Barton]

 

Hippo takes bath in family pool and leaves behind 100kg of poo

https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/03/hippo-takes-bath-family-pool-leaves-behind-100kg-poo-11996292/?fbclid=IwAR2yfue-Q_sydED0JqbHC4kM3CJsqABlNgW5Gef2eVtq5HKNa5u6TynOToU

[Dave Hunt]

With the number of guests we have had over the festive season I haven't had a chance to do much in the way of posting on ER's recently - it's been a bit of a struggle simply keeping up with what you lot have been posting!

 

Lots of chat about Hunters and F-104s since HH posted a photograph with derogatory overtones a few pages back. The Hunter was a lovely aircraft to fly and I was glad to get my first operational tour on FGA9s out in Singapore starting in 1968. The main problem with it was that the cockpit was ergonomically a bit of a slum but it handled beautifully. There wasn't much in the way of electronic gubbins so you had to become fairly proficient at such things as low level navigation on map, stopwatch and compass at 420 knots. The T7 (the one HH showed in the photograph) was a trainer variant and we had one on each squadron for doing check rides, instrument ratings etc. but it also got used as something of a squadron taxi. The F104 was a different kettle of fish and although it went very quickly and very high when required it didn't go round corners very well. I had a couple of trips in Danish and German Starfighters and although I enjoyed the experience I never had any desire to fly them professionally. The main problem with the German 104s was that they were used in roles they were never designed for and when they were introduced into service the Luftwaffe was still rebuilding from WW2 and the experience level was relatively quite low so with a complex aircraft that had difficult handling characteristics the accident rate was high. However, there were a lot of them - over 800 I think - and it is a sobering thought that when the accident rate is taken as a percentage of the number in service, the RAF's Lightnings were in the same sort of category.

 

I got in touch with a local firm that installs loft ladders and they will get back to me early next week about doing a survey and giving us an estimate for fitting one. The bad news is that the stock of mod***ing tokens is likely to take a big hit.

 

Have a quiet and peaceful night everyone.

 

Dave

Edited January 3, 2020 by Dave Hunt

[newbryford]

13 hours ago, Debs. said:

Road trip today....and it'll be Passports reqd. at the border! 

.....after all; Yorkshire is special and they might not let just anyone (like me) in. 

 

13 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

They might have special instructions to confiscate awls at the border. However  it's the exit visa that can prove difficult. It took me 60 years to sort mine out.

 

Jamie

 

I use a special stealthy route [*] into and out of t'other place most every day.

I haven't been stopped yet.

 

[*]It's a back lane that's the equivalent of a tunnel under the US/Mexico border.

 

 

[Dave Hunt]

12 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

Hippo takes bath in family pool and leaves behind 100kg of poo

 

Words fail me...........

[Compound2632]

4 hours ago, AndyID said:

I bought a Hornby 4F (ex Airfix) on Eb**. For $25 I thought I could always use the tender to replace the horrible one on my Patriot.

 

I'm struggling with that. Neither looks very much like. 

[BlackRat]

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Now would that have been Brains Dark in The Plough?

 

Istr the WAG group had a few meetings there some years back.

Usually with members of the Cardiff 4mm group in the White Hart......'down the docks'.......

 

They took me under their wing as I was in school with one of their daughters.....

 

Many an underage pint in the Said pub, and being entertained by an African Prostitute called Big Lisa....,,who delighted in showing a young BlackRat various parts of her ample anatomy.....much to the mirth of the 4mmers.....

 

All gone now.......in the name of progress but the memories of the mammories still linger.........and set me up for life in the Royal Marines ....

 

Who said railway modelling was boring?!?

Edited January 4, 2020 by BlackRat

[newbryford]

One of those customer support calls at work yesterday. (I can only hope he's not an ER.......!)

 

A summary of a 10 minute conversation:

 

It didn't help with the opening tone from the customer being a little aggressive as he's having a bad day with his trainset...............

I'm usually pretty fair with folks, but this was my first call of the new decade.

 

As it turns out, he was after an exchange of some equipment as it had been suggested on the interweb that it was something we did on a regular basis.

I informed him that this was on a "case by case" basis and not a blanket policy. (He was already onto a loser with his initial stance).

 

Then he said he wanted a refund.

"Did you buy it from us?"

"No"

"Then in which case, you will have to return it to the retailer for a refund - where did you buy it from?"

"XXXXXXXXXXXX" he says.(The number of Xs do not represent the retailer name)

"Have you tried them?"

"Yes, but they won't issue a refund"

"Why is that sir?" says I

"Because it was four years ago"

"Oh - I'm sorry Sir, it is out of the warranty period" At this point I was about to engage him in a civil conversation about how we may be at least able to help him with a heavily discounted replacement, but wasn't given the chance.  (His loss)

 

"But there is a lifetime guarantee on them" was the sharp reply.

 

"Not on that product Sir - that only applies to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX - that is the only product line of ours that has a lifetime warranty with fair and proper use"

"I've read that it has a lifetime warranty - I want a refund or replacement"

"Where did you read that sir?"

"On RMweb........"

"I can assure you sir, that is incorrect" and repeat the above statement about it not being covered by lifetime guarantee.

 

"But I've read it on the internet"

 

Slight pause whilst I grit my teeth and prepare the killer blow

 

"Do you believe everything you read on the internet sir?" I query.

 

"No" is his immediate reply followed by a foot-in-mouth silence as reality dawns........................

 

 

Day 3 of 7 workdays to start 2020 tomorrow (now later today).

Have a good Saturday folks.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

 

 

 

 

"

Edited January 4, 2020 by newbryford

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

My shopping trip this morning lasted just over an hour and that included the travel to and from the Trafford Centre and the butchers. Once home Sheila said she wanted to go to Waitrose, so a quick brew and we were off, again it was a very short trip and we were back home in time for an early dinner. 

 

After dinner we sat and read until james and Amelia turned up and then I made a start on tea, Cumberland sausages and chips, which went down very well.

 

Tomorrow we have Ava coming round to spend the day with us, she will be assisting me to bake a couple of cakes and then make a start on taking down the Christmas decorations etc. 

 

We we don’t have a loft ladder, for the simple reason that we don’t have a loft, but we doo have roof spaces that are accessed from doors set into the walls, so access is straight forward and very easy. 

 

Goodnight all

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Arthur Itis seems to want to play this evening. Not only his usual plaything my hip but my knees as well. A couple of Ibuforen before I go to bed should sort things out.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[Happy Hippo]

58 minutes ago, newbryford said:

"Do you believe everything you read on the internet sir?""

You mean I might not be a Hippo after all?

 

All that wallowing in mud and my own excrement....for nothing (well apart from the wonderful complexion)!

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all