Early Risers.

[The Stationmaster]

G'day all.

 

Ah the use of words for meals seems to be both a class related and region related thing.  Thus in both my grandparents homes 'dinner' was the main meal of the day - but around the time which many people would call lunch time.  However there was difference when it came to tea because in Berkshire tea was what you had around late afternoon and came with a cuppa and sandwiches and cake(s) while with the other grandfather in Yorkshire it wasn't 'tea' unless it included generous slices of ham, pickles or salad items, invariably some vinegar available if wanted and possibly various salad components and occasionally something cooked.  So more akin to what many people would call high tea  but it was all called 'tea' and came any time between about 16.30 and 19.00 although usually no later than 18,30.  This was pretty common among all my Yorkshire relatives.

 

Until I started work I had always been under the firm impression that breakfast was a meal consumed between 06.30ish and 09.00 ish, the exact time varying according to circumstance and place.  But on my very first night shift I learnt a whole new system and language because breakfast occurred more or less any time between 02.00 and 03.00 as work allowed and consisted of anything varying from sandwiches through to a fry up or even a warmed up meal such as tinned soup etc depending very much on individual taste.  The most exotic I ever saw was Kit-E-Kate fried in butter and eaten on toast.  The time of breakfast also had an impact on one's understanding of times of the day because any time before breakfast since the start of the night shift was 'last night' while anything after breakfast, even just after 02.00, was 'this morning'.  Things could be rather different with people working 12 hour night shifts because apart from some who had breakfast in the middle of the night it wasn't unusual to find some eating their 'dinner' at around midnight or in the first quiet period after midnight.

 

Mrs Stationmaster has however got things well settled on meal definitions - we have breakfast (sometimes) in the morning, lunch in the middle of the day, and dinner, our main meal, in the evening - usually around 19.00 or thereabouts.  Lunch time varies between residents as we normally do our own thing so times are variable and also depend on managerial dinner preparation in the kitchen.  We very occasionally might have afternoon tea - consisting of a cuppa and cake or scones - and if we have visitors this can become far more elaborate amounting almost to high tea but at around the same time of day (and we don't have dinner if we have had a high tea).

 

There have also been historical changes in meal times.  For example in the early 19th century during the Napoleonic wars it became fashionable in naval (and possibly military?) circles for dinner to start at around 16.00 in the afternoon. especially if it was a relatively formal occasion.

 

Hmm - thoughts of lunch now loom and the mushrooms need to be extracted from the quarantine fridge at some stage although the kitchen is currently in management hands.

 

Enjoy the rest of your day and stay safe.  In crockle/emet beseiged areas it unfortunately looks as if 'staying safe' probably means not venturing out beyond your own front gate because a distance of 2 metres seems to be generally interpreted as 2 cms (or less).

[BSW01]

Good afternoon everyone 

 

Late on parade again today, my turn to do breakfast in bed, after which we both nodded off. I've been busy for the last hour or so, sanding the fascia of the control panel, it's now ready for it's first top coat, which I'll probably do tomorrow. The next task will be to start some more circuit boards.

 

Currently sat on the bench under the workshop window in the sunshine, but I had to dry it off first as we had a very heavy shower earlier this morning. 

 

Stay safe, stay sane, enjoy whatever you have planned for the day, back later. 

[New Haven Neil]

A'noon.  I see Donk has an impressionist, he will be wanting Royalties soon.  That photo was taken at Donkhenge of course, when we stood up from taking it there was a gaggle of Japanese tourists (remember tourists?) taking photos of us!  Arr rook, Ronk!

 

He's on the back of the sofa watching the F1 build up at the moment, with Noel and Pooky.  he had his trains out earlier.

 

[TheQ]

1 hour ago, AndyB said:

The most recent time I went to Cyprus I was staying in barracks used for those in transit (not Ford but Helmand). I was the lucky one and got a single room. My mates ended up for about 3 or 4 weeks in bunk beds, about 12 blokes to a room. 

Catering was courtesy of a contractor; we each had a chit for an evening meal. When I helped myself to a glass of water as well as the food the cashier made me pay for it as that hadn't been allowed for. 

Catering by the army in the makeshift FOB where we were working was a lot better!

 

 

The standard RAF barrack room was 16 man,  the worst I was in had been fitted out with triple bunks.... 

[roundhouse]

talking of hand sanitizer, a pub that we went into in Guildford requested that we use the hand sanitizer as we entered. I out one hand under the nozzle and pressed with my other hand. The sanitizer shot out sideways so it missed my hand  but i now have sanitized trousers!

 

Quite often you are offered a pen to sign in on entering many pubs. Only one place said that they just sanitized the pen before handing it to me.

 

Guildford town centre was much quieter than a pre Covid Saturday and many shops had more staff inside than customers. The only shop we went into was Kernow on our way to a few nearby pubs. One didnt have any ale so we carried on to the next few but all had a very poor range of ales as they just cant get supplies. The Fullers pub said that all they can get is London Pride and Dark star Hophead.

 

Back in our local Harveys pub they managed to get a few barrels of Harveys Lewes Castle Brown but no IPA at present.  Luckily the brown is one of our favourites so we were happy sitting in their garden.

 

Brother flies in from Gibralter tomorrow so no quarantine for him. he has been sailing a boat from France for the last few weeks and didnt want to continue on the boat to Spain because of the 14 days quarantine issue. He will be staying at Mums till his kids fly back from HK to restart uni and college.

 

Gardening done for next door and ours so G scale running again after a few weeks since its last run.

 

Trying to work out if a few days in Brum is worth doing by train. So far the pan is to train it to Reading (face mask break) train to Banbury (pub) train to Warwick (pub) then to Brum. However finding pub opening times takes a while as their websites often do not have current opening times but their facebook sites sometimes do.

 

Keen to get as many trips in as possible incase there's another lockdown / over 50's not allowed out etc. I might have to dye my hair to get away with looking under 50.

[TheQ]

4 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

I thought "grockles" was a West Country thing, back in the day at this time of year Norfolk was full of "chizits" i.e. folk from Leicester who would ask in a shop "'owmuchchizit?"

I be born in the west country,  ' cos dad was posted down there,  so that's why they be grokles to me. The RAF posted me that way  three times too.. 

[roundhouse]

6 minutes ago, TheQ said:

The standard RAF barrack room was 16 man,  the worst I was in had been fitted out with triple bunks.... 

Reminds me of couchettes travelling on overnight trains around Europe back in the 80's

[TheQ]

Afternoon awl, 

Second section of the eaves built, and the end was boxed in. 

Not quite as warm as yesterday , and it became cloudy later. 

Dinner.... Is on its way. 

 

 

[Gwiwer]

4 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

I thought "grockles" was a West Country thing, back in the day at this time of year Norfolk was full of "chizits" i.e. folk from Leicester who would ask in a shop "'owmuchchizit?"

The difference between "West Country" and "Cornwall" is that they be emmets once they cross the Tamar.  The term "Grockle" is seldom heard; the prefix ble**y or f*****g is always used   

 

Welcome to Sunday.  It hasn't been a good one here as I went to bed with a headache and woke with as worse one.  That took most of the morning to deal with and after lunch SWMBO retired to bed with severe anxiety.  She watches numbers perhaps a little too closely and is also concerned for her family in and around Melbourne where numbers are small (on the world scale) but restrictions have just been tightened severely.  She also went for her evening walk last night at precisely the time everyone was heading for the pubs after the pig-bladder kicking festival and was very distressed at the numbers she saw (including walking on the footpaths) who were unable to attempt any form of antisocial distancing.  

 

It's going to be a hard one until bed time.  Hopefully a bit better tomorrow.  

 

Best wishes to one and all and a belated happy anniversary to the Abels.  

 

 

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

Morning all,

 

Bad night of sleep had last night. Reason being, at about a quarter after midnight I was awoken by a woman screaming like mad in the street.  I didn’t bother to tell anybody at the time, thinking the neighbors dog had been gotten by a coyote and it was just one of them screaming. A foolish and probably costly decision for someone. Other than that I have little to report.

 

stay healthy,

 

Douglas

[AndyB]

2 hours ago, TheQ said:

The standard RAF barrack room was 16 man,  the worst I was in had been fitted out with triple bunks.... 

TBH I didn't take that close a look! I'm sure you're right. 

This particular trip was to Episkopi.

It's a funny thing, life. I'm still in touch with some of the people I met on that trip and, coincidentally, I'm hoping to have a pint with one of them this week as we became good mates. 

Edited August 2, 2020 by AndyB

[TheQ]

I think it was Gwiwer that mentioned yesterday, the grokles / emmets aka Ants,  we're causing much work for the RNLI. 

Yesterday the Norfolk ,  grokle,  Emmet,  Ant,  Cockwomble  score was.. 

Fifteen cut off by the tide at Blakeney,  

4 adults 4 children cut off by the tide at Stiffkey, 

17 advised to depart the marshes at Stiffkey due to the incoming tide

1 fell down a cliff at Mundesley, 

1 fisherman found stranded on the sea defences at Sea Palling,  another fisherman found struggling to swim in the rip tide from the sea defences.. 

[The Stationmaster]

Hmm, a trip to/from the local garden centre revealed that a grockle invasion is in full swing alongside the river.  90+% of them are of the totally moronic variety so no face masks and about 6 inches apart at the very most.  Best laugh of all was a traffic jam on part of Riverside due to some person of very little brain driving his large Porsche SUV in the opposite direction to the normal traffic flow - all quite legal but sllghtly daft as that side of the road is solid with residents' parked cars.  So clearly not a local and the Good Doctor and I had a good chuckle in full anticipation of what would happen to said grocklemobile - as the total daftness of what he was doing finally got through to him.  And sure enough it did as we next saw him approaching Station Road along the side street which was the only way he could go - meaning he had uselessly driven round a block to get back to where he had been some minutes previously.  What some people will do to avoid spending a few quid in a car park is beyond all understanding.

 

At last the local garden centre is now properly organised regarding distancing etc but some of the lesser brained customers were clearly having great difficulty understanding the sign which said 'This way in'

[simontaylor484]

The stupidity of some folk is astounding 

[J. S. Bach]

9 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

 ...snip... So, a question to my esteemed colleagues on ER: whatever you may call your evening meal, when is the “correct” time to eat it?

Whatever time that I am hungry.

[Coombe Barton]

... and a dog door.

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/postcards-from-the-periphery-2020-08/

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Managed to assemble the wheelbarrow, sort of. I found that there was a shortage of nuts and washers and that the tray had a big dent in it. No problem as the tray from the one with the faulty frame was 'straight' and it had a full compliment of nuts and washers. I followed the destruction's in assembling but they're next to useless as I had to loosen and remove some bolts to fit the wheel but then some wouldn't go back. I will try to replace them with 5 mm bolts and washers. To top it all I managed to trap my thumb when trying to assemble it when the tray slipped as I was trying to insert a bolt. I now have a very sore thumb. Now dinner is ready, be back later.

Edited August 2, 2020 by PhilJ W

[Barry O]

During my stay with the Cherry Pickers in Fallingbostell we had tea and wads at about 4pm.. ie tea plus cake or toast (complete with Marmite!)

 

When we go to Robin Hoods Bay at Easter the Bogglers have tea and wads at 4pm ish.. tea/coffee plus home made cakes .. and the occasional "tincture" to round it off.

 

Got to go.. my tea is ready!

 

Baz

[tigerburnie]

3 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

The stupidity of some folk is astounding 

Nope, nothing surprises me anymore, the folk that make the "Darwin Awards" are gonna be very busy over the next few months I fear, me I'm manning the barricades.

[skipepsi]

4 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

The stupidity of some folk is astounding 

So how come he has a Porsche Cayenne and I have a Toyota Aygo?

[AndyB]

11 hours ago, Andrew P said:

WOW Page 8904!

It works out at an average of 2.25 pages per day over the last 3958 days....proving that we've turned out more waffle than Mr Breville ever did.

[simontaylor484]

24 minutes ago, skipepsi said:

So how come he has a Porsche Cayenne and I have a Toyota Aygo?

Happen he needs it as a extension of his manhood

 

Edited August 2, 2020 by simontaylor484

[brianusa]

15 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Happen he needs it as a extension of his manhood

 

Wrong quote - never mind!  Who thinks up these stupid car names?  Why would Porsche name a car after a hot spice and what the heck us an Aygo?  Even spell check couldn't help with that one!

       Brian.

[simontaylor484]

It's the same as a Peugeot 107 and Citroen c1 

 

Identical cars 

Nice little motors cheaper to run than a Porsche chilli pepper

[AndyB]

7 minutes ago, brianusa said:

Wrong quote - never mind!  Who thinks up these stupid car names?  Why would Porsche name a car after a hot spice and what the heck us an Aygo?  Even spell check couldn't help with that one!

       Brian.

 

Could have been worse. They were going to call it the Victor. As in Parisan rhyming slang. Victor Hugo - You-go.