Early Risers.

[Kingzance]

12 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

It has usually been supposed that Charles would choose Edward as his regnal name.

 

Accepting his personal affection for Mountbatten, it would nonetheless be a controversial ("courageous") choice.

 

I still think it likely (if he survives his current brush with COVID-19) that he will pass directly to William.

Having waited this long for his time in the starring role, the notes on his character as judged by outsiders suggests that he may not pass up the opportunity to occupy the regal throne, given that there is probably no shortage of quilted paper for such dignitaries.

[grandadbob]

Well that was a surprise. All 3 bin lorries have been so full marks to our local council and their waste and recycling contractors. Long may it last.

Also had a nice chat with a lovely young lady called Kathy at our local garden centre who will be phoning back shortly when their tills are open to organise a small delivery of compost for me.

Had a chat as well (over the fence) with our friends next door who have offered  help in obtaining supplies if we get stuck.

 

[Happy Hippo]

50 minutes ago, Shedman5 said:

and weed on the lawn as I refuse to get the sprinkler out.

Need some manure?

[Dave Hunt]

Another problematic name belongs to a great friend of ours who was christened Lysabeth. We were once at an airline check in desk with her going to Canada and the f***wit there took a lot of persuading that her initial wasn't E despite having her passport in front of him.

 

Another fine day here but SWMBO has declared that this morning is house cleaning time once I've finished muggocoffee #2 - hence I'm taking my time over it.

 

TTFN

 

Dave

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

Sunshine here as well, but the sky is a little hazier than of late. Breakfast has been consumed and Sheila has just got up and is about to make a start on hers. I’ll shortly be setting off to the Trafford Centre to get a few food items that the local Sainsbury’s doesn’t stock, my return journey will be via the butchers where I will pick up the weekly meat rations and 2 pasties for dinner, no I’m not being greedy, Sheila wants one today. I had the fore thought to place an order with the butchers yesterday to ensure I at least get some meat. I suppose I should do this every week, but I do like to see what they have and make my mind up on the day, but in times like these it’s probably best to plan ahead. Once back home, I’ll make a muggertea and then continue in the garden. 

 

Stay safe, back later. 

[southern42]

' morning all from red dragon land.

 

Sunny and warmer than expected.

Two lots of jets have flown over since I came on, probably RAF training flights out of Valley.

 

One of today's little jobs was to clean out the toaster.  Unusually, I have not done it for awhile.  

The rest of the day awaits...

 

Take care all and keep safe.

_____________

Best wishes

Polly

[tigerburnie]

Morning, seems we had a drop of rain in the night, but I didn't hear it, slept like a log with some flippin' odd dreams too, the young lass after my body was fine, but I seemed to be some sort of sniper shooting bad guys...……………...no I've no idea either...…………………..

[iL Dottore]

Morning all,

 

Nice and sunny, but cold here. With Mrs iD and the Wolfpack in the holiday hovel, I spent most of this morning - in the absence of our treasured cleaning lady - cleaning the house. Needless to say, I think that my efforts (i.e. from a male perspective) rate a solid 8/10 if not 9/10; Mrs iD is likely to award me about a 4/10 or 5/10 (perhaps even a 5.5/10 IF she is in a good mood AND is feeling charitable). And to think that before I met Mrs iD, I thought of myself as a very clean and tidy, and span bachelor...

 

Now, a confession: those of you who know me well enough have probably noted - at our last meet up - that I had lost some weight (about 40Kgs according to my scales). Following a very low carbohydrate diet (< 20g carbs/day) was the secret to my success. Unfortunately, I have always been a stress eater and whilst I am trying to manage living through the zombie apocalypse with sang-froid and aplomb, my appetite says otherwise. Fortunately, one of the positive aspects of loosing so much weight is that one becomes very much aware of what one is eating. Unlike before my weight loss when I would eat and not really note what I ate (muy bad - I know). Unfortunately, most comfort food of the great cuisines is based around carbohydrate rich foods.  I think that - for the duration of the present crisis - I must modify my diet and go to my dieting App's definition of <low carbohydrate>, which is 189g day or less (but if I do that, then I have pay more attention to fats and proteins) and hopefully not "chub-up" in the process.... Aaaargh - why couldn't I have been born with a hyper-fat-burning metabolism...

 

Whilst on the subject of the present crisis, in Switzerland every Monday and Thursday Lidl and Aldi announce the forthcoming "actions" for the following Monday/Thursday. These I tend to look at with interest as sometimes they have equipment that comes in very handy indeed (and has the advantage of being very inexpensive and a great way to get a piece of kit that will be used only every so often [e.g. I recently bought a router which certainly won't hold up to daily use at a professional level, but is perfectly adequate for occasional use]). However, since the lockdown started, both chains have removed all special offers, barring food ones, from their websites. Is that also the case in the UK?

 

Finally, a provocative perspective: from a humanistic point of view the present crisis is both terrible and a tragedy, but from the perspective of hom0 sapiens as species is it a long overdue natural phenomenon? Overpopulation - of any species - is managed by disease, starvation or predation (or a combination of any of these) which weed out the sick, the crippled, the very young and the very old. Thanks to our mastery of the environment we have no significant predators to worry about, starvation (as opposed to malnutrition) is rare and many diseases are no longer a threat.  Could the present crisis (and those associated with SARS and MERS before that) be an attempt by Nature to address the huge numbers of hom0 sapiens running about this planet???

 

Now off to grill some mackerel I have defrosted and then to some modelling (...and don't get me started on the quality of the instructions coming with some, somewhat specialised, wagon kits...)

Edited March 26, 2020 by iL Dottore
typo

[81C]

Morning All 

Back to the old wheelie bin stories the local council have cut emptying the household bins back to once a fortnight to reduce staff movements. 

Its very quiet around here an Early morning walk round the block in the fresh air at 7am I saw no-one, no cars  just birds twittering.

Enjoy your day all and stay safe ,A Walker 

[bbishop]

Food for thought, Flavio.  Our main predator appears to be orange, doubly so in my case as the fruit could kill me.

 

After my unsuccessful onto the Wickes website, the mid page advert changed to their plywood.  Scary what cookies do.  It's now reverted back to little blue pills.

 

Bill

[BoD]

14 minutes ago, bbishop said:

 

After my unsuccessful onto the Wickes website, the mid page advert changed to their plywood.  Scary what cookies do.  It's now reverted back to little blue pills.

 

Bill

..... and which websites did you visit to give them that idea?

[PhilJ W]

Morning yet again from Estuary-Land. Our collections this morning were as usual including the lesser spotted glass and bottle wagon. I opened my e-mails this morning to find dozens of requests for membership to a couple of the Farcebook groups I run, and I mean dozens, 48 in all, 4 dozen. There seems to be an upsurge on membership of FB groups since CV-19 has begun to bite.

2 hours ago, Kingzance said:

Having waited this long for his time in the starring role, the notes on his character as judged by outsiders suggests that he may not pass up the opportunity to occupy the regal throne, given that there is probably no shortage of quilted paper for such dignitaries.

 

Do they still have a Keeper of the Stool?

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Need some manure?

Does intake of cake affect the quality of the manure?

 

13 minutes ago, BoD said:

..... and which websites did you visit to give them that idea?

What the blue pills?

Edited March 26, 2020 by PhilJ W

[Tony_S]

39 minutes ago, bbishop said:

the mid page advert changed to their plywood.  Scary what cookies do

Mine seems to consistently be from PiHut.   Header and footer ads are from a HiFi retailer. 

[PhilJ W]

I had an ad for a Moslem dating agency!

[AndrewC]

Bit bored waiting for meetings that are being cancelled at the last second so trawling around here, twatter, & fecesbook. 

 

Not sure what is going on with RMweb at the moment but my ad blocker is going into overdrive. When I first had to switch it on after getting dodgy site warnings from the Router's anti-malware service, there were 2 ads per page. A while back it went to 5 ads per page being blocked. Right as I type this the blocker is showing 8. Even the most shite clickbait sites rarely have that many ads per page. 

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

5 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Only if they start using names like Pius, Leo, Innocent, Clement or Benedict.

The one who seems quite likely to have been a remote part of our family simply had a Latinised version of our family name.  The strangest thing about him is that years ago we found a profile picture of him and he was a dead ringer for my dad complete to the same shape nose.  The Pope reputedly came from northern Italy whereas we know the family came to Britain, in 1066, from south east France (there is a French town with our family name which is much nearer to Turin than it is to Paris).  Somewhere I have a sketch of an SNCF signal box diagram which has my name on it (there is of course another ER who had a signal box on BR with his family name on it) .

[PhilJ W]

Is there a member with the family name of Crewe Junction then?

[jamie92208]

My layout has the same surname as my darling granddaughter.  Lancaster. However the layout is Green Ayre not Emily.

 

Jamie

[The Lurker]

16 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

My maternal grandfather was christened Jack - not John but Jack. This caused him no end of trouble as the usual response when he gave his name as Jack to anyone in officialdom was, "You mean John."  Sometimes it was incredibly difficult for him to persuade them otherwise so he started taking his birth certificate with him whenever he thought the problem may arise. 

 

Night night all. Have a safe and peaceful time.

 

Dave

it would be quite the opposite today where most people would not make the connection between Jack and John or Harry and Henry, nor even Jake and Jacob or Tommy and Thomas (and yes we have had those conversations)

[The Stationmaster]

G'day all,

 

The lad has forsaken conversations with diverse parts of the company around Europe (too early for the USofA) to head to Tesco as a sort of combined shopping and exercise trip - but officially 'shopping', he has a proper exercise walk later in the day.  All three of our bins were emptied on schedule yesterday but i do wonder if it is only a matter of time before collection intervals are extended from fortnightly to something else - must make sure that I cut the grass leading to the compost bin before that happens.

 

Next door's older daughter is out digging a veg patch, great shame that more younger female gardeners do not (almost) dress that way while they work in the garden on a sunny day.  We had a peculiar wrecking event in the back garden yesterday evening/overnight with one back of compost invaded by 'something' plus a p large earthenware pot knocked down and broken, there was also a very noisy event of some sort involving Charlie who was out on garden partrol duties.  The presence of Mr Fox is suspected - probably a bit hacked off because Kev the Red Kite and the crows had pinched all the dog food put out earlier in the day.

 

So far this morning six flights inbound for LHR have passed within sight or earshot and no more in the offing with lots of blank space on Flightradar 24 although it does show a BA flight which has just left LHR for Madrid of all places - maybe Pritti Patel has got it right?  A contrail indicates that one aircraft has passed about a mile east of us at high altitude heading north west to south east - a rather odd flight path for round here so it night have been military (our or theirs?).   Coming back to  earth Mr Hermes just delivered a parcel with excellent social distancing on his part,  and without throwing it anywhere; I duly put on gloves to open it (as I did with the post earlier today).

 

KZ to note that the valley here doesn't seem to be suffering from its normal  'almost smog' like problems although I haven't ventured down there for over a week.  Heavy air  does tend to settle in the valley here and always has, even before it was well laced with petrol and diesel fumes but it has never put off our international sporting event.  Covid-19 has seen to that for this year so there'll no doubt be even more moans from the poor hard done by restauranteers and the local B&B and house rental trade and maybe, just maybe, NR will drop their stupid plan to flog off part of the station carpark to build a hotel?

 

Enjoy the rest of your day one and all and keep save.

 

PS Laugh of the week?  A fellow RMweb member 'phoned last night to talk about things various and mentioned that a female family member was stopped by the police earlier while driving a car.  The copper - either with grass growing behind his ears, or maybe full of lustful amorous thoughts and hoping to make an introduction to said young lady - pointed out to her that he had seen her drive along that stretch of road three times that morning and wanted to know why.  Before she could say anything he asked what was in the back of the car and got a very quick reply - a body, and can't you see the coffin?   Yes, the silly s*d had stopped a hearse while it was heading to the local whatever establishment.  i reckon his interest was driven more by lust his heart strings than any thoughts of public safety.

[Gwiwer]

14 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

 I suspect the present Prince of Wales would be  more than likely to be George VII.

 

I believe he has declared his intent in that respect some time ago.  Georgius VII it shall be.  

 

12 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

George is associated with some fairly successful monarchies.

 

And a few less so including allegations of mental instability.

 

Good afternoon one and all.  A warm and sunny day has ventured itself Upon the Hill and it was even noticeably warmer at finch-fart this morning.  For the uninitiated that's around 10 minutes before the sparrows   Lunch was again taken outside on the terrace whilst reviewing the allocation of pots to space in the garden area.  Some were moved.  The greenhouse is in what we think will be its permanent spot.  If we do change our minds it's not that heavy that it cannot be moved.  Now - where can we get supplies of potting compost with all the "non-essential" emporia currently closed?  

 

A few more people have been travelling today compared with yesterday but the total is still well down on Monday's very light loadings.  The single and very noticeable exception has been the Overground services which are running to near-normal timetables but still bringing in standing loads of passengers on the early trips between 6.30 and 8am.  By 9am however if there was a passenger on a train - any train - it was the exception rather than the rule.  

 

Ongoing daily check-ins with friends and family suggest that most are well if bored though Former Neighbour (Australian) is recovering from corona virus along with her partner in the Neverlands.  

Otherwise the hardest thing seems to be keeping kids indoors in warm sun and during what some choose to see as bonus holiday despite home schooling.  Easter might be an interesting weekend and a test of restraint.  

 

I am tasked with cleaning and tidying during this afternoon but also intend to furtle in the waddlemarsh a bit more.  These things don't build themselves y'now   

 

Muggertee calling.  Back anon.  

 

 

 

 

[45156]

Afternoon All

 

Back for my daily dose, and all posts read and rated - with the usual generic greetings on offer to all ERs at these strange and troubled times.

 

I made a very unexpected discovery at the weekend when doing the replacement fences.  About two years ago, I lost my much loved Stanley 16oz hickory handled claw hammer - which I'd owned for over 30 years, and was as good as new.   Then one day, it wasn't in my tool box, and I searched for it, concluded it had been nicked, and got a much inferior replacement.  Well on Sunday I found it nestled down a tiny gap between the fence and the edge of the path, where I only saw it when the fence was taken down.  A tad rusty, and the handle was a tad rough - but today, a light sand on the head, and the handle, then a good douse in linseed oil for both head and handle, and it's good for the rest of my time on the planet - no they don't make them like that any more, that's for sure. 

 

The rest of the Karchering done, and a good bath, and it's cider o'clock

 

Regards to All

Stewart

 

ps Q - and you don't need to tell if you don;t want, but is the obscure battle Qattara box - part of the first battle of Alamein?

Edited March 26, 2020 by 45156

[Northroader]

19 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

So far this morning six flights inbound for LHR have passed within sight or earshot and no more in the offing with lots of blank space on Flightradar 24 although it does show a BA flight which has just left LHR for Madrid of all places - maybe Pritti Patel has got it right?  A contrail indicates that one aircraft has passed about a mile east of us at high altitude heading north west to south east - a rather odd flight path for round here so it night have been military (our or theirs?).   

 

Mike, when you’ve stopped dribbling over the garden fence, there’s a free “app” you can download called “Plane Finder” by which you are able to identify anything passing overhead larger than a pigeon (but not military)

[TheQ]

Afternoon awl,  

Dry sunny cloudless,  again. 

One commercial airliner was heard,  on deceleration,  so I guess dropping into Norwich airport. 

Two helicopters much less than normal.  So I guess they've reduced flights to the gas rigs. 

 

The chain saw on a stick was wielded successfully,  but my shoulders are still aching from Tuesday.  

 

I then put the acro-props in place,  and started on the window removal. 

Again I discovered messers Bodgit and Run predecessors to CowboysRus had struck again..  The seven pieces of wood propping up the roof were packed out with.... 

 

 

Insulated wallpaper..,  yep pretty side, 1/8inch polystyrene,  plain paper. 

 

Unfortunately the glass broke into two pieces, but SWMBO has glass cutters so she can make use of it in her stained glass work. 

 

The the frame was broken out which wasn't hard as it  was rotten in places,  it was also second hand looking at the odd fitting..  Then the rotten other pieces were also pulled out. 

 

The replacement,  two layers of breeze blocks at the bottom,  which required chopping out two 1/3 blocks.  Not difficult as I discovered the walls are only 2 inch thick breeze blocks!!!

I also chopped out four more  1/3 blocks higher up into each will be inset 3 bricks. With the insertion of a vertical brick between each set of three,  it only needs a couple at the top each side to support the two rafters, no lintle required, Just a replacement  wooden infill above to finish off. 

 

I've dry fitted the brick and blocks to check they fit, the odd bit of broken block to make up for the missing mortar .

Tomorrow it will all be cemented in properly , then Saturday  the window fitted. 

 

During the above the glassfibre stuff I ordered turned up,  ordered from CFS Fibreglass in Redruth , it arrived as usual within 36 hours. I really do like their customer service  I'd put them on a par with a certain suppliers of unmentionables from fraggle rock. 

This time delivered by UPS right down to the labeled UPS socks,.

 

As per current rules the parcel was placed on the ground, they backed off and I picked it up.  He  said " I sign for you."  

 

And finally  for your delectation to take your mind off corona virus , on ITV 2 at 21:00 a film.... 

 

 

Contagion ...

 

 

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where it is still sunny but some high cloud has appeared.

 

I have herd hardly any planes all week - it's been rather nice. We get flights to and from City, Biggin Hill and Heathrow (often stacking) passing directly over us regularly as well as some Gatwick flights and others, judging by the height, from further afield. The City and Biggin Hill flights seem to have stopped entirely

.

Today dawned frosty and there was one spreading contrail, so something had flown over.

 

It took 45 minutes to be able to get into the work system via citrix - so much for starting at 7.15, but since then I have done several calls, the Joe Wicks PE with Younger and Mrs Lurker and a decent walk.

 

I am putting off reviewing a 137 page document at the moment with a trawl round this site instead.

Have a good day all and stay well.