Early Risers.

[pH]

I grew up on Clydeside and despite not having lived there in 50 years, I still have a very recognizable Scottish accent. Being married to a lady from the same area certainly helps in keeping it.
 

In one job I had in Yorkshire, part of the duties was conducting parties of visitors round, as required. The language of the tours was always English. One day, I got a party of French visitors to show round. Soon after starting the tour, I was asked by the leader of the group if I could speak more slowly, as they were having problems with my Yorkshire accent!

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[Erichill16]

15 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

 

Whilst I am very happy to accommodate people with true intolerances (we have a friend who is also gluten intolerant and I manage to feed her well without any problems, using “all-natural” ingredients), I am vehemently opposed to products marketed as “gluten-free“ or “vegan“.  Partly it is because I am opposed to the marketing slight of hand that takes place in many instances (such as labelling a naturally gluten-free product, such as rice cakes, as gluten-free and hiking up the price of the product because of the labelling) and partly because I am very, very opposed to all those products that are heavily processed, mostly chemical and horribly environmentally unsound to boot (the amount of water needed to make 1 L of almond milk is staggering, and as for palm oil and how the rainforest is being destroyed to make way for palm-oil trees....  well, best not go there as I will get rather testy...)

 

With so many great dishes out there, from various cuisines, to satisfy the hungriest of gluten intolerant, vegetarian or vegan diners; why oh why do people insist on having heavily processed, chemical-soup “copies“ of things they can’t or won’t eat?  (please can someone explain to me the rationale for the existence of the “vegan burger“?)

.

 

Enjoy the day.

 

iD

When I first started with the gluten free diet SWMBO bought a selection of gluten free flours and made several items, including pastries, cakes and breads. Unfortunately very few of them were enjoyable so she started buying ‘GF all purpose’ flour which is a blend of flours and since then the produce from her kitchen has been much better. One of the issues that I have is that SWMBO will make me a cake and it will cut into six pieces and as I’m the only person brave enough to eat it by the sixth day I’m mighty sick of it. I therefore have a stash of supermarket alternatives just to make a change as there’s no bakery around here that does anything GF. To be honest I’ve just about given up on the supermarket sweet items as they are universally lacking in flavor but not lacking in ingredients. 
From my experience rice flour gives produce a gritty texture and potato flour imparts a savory taste. Almond flour I avoid as have quite a severe allergy to almonds and most other nuts so on second thoughts perhaps the zwie bak may be a more sensible item to bring to the brain’s trust meeting.

A couple of years ago I said I was going to avoid palm oil but when your diet is already a compromise it’s difficult to avoid.

On your point regarding ‘gluten free rice cakes’ you have to be careful as many items that don’t contain gluten as an ingredient may be contaminated by it accidentally through processing. I agree a lot of products are rip offs but it’s reassuring to read ‘gluten free’ on the packet. One example are Walkers products (snacks) where  there is a warning on all products that say to the effect that they may be contaminated with gluten. It’s also the same with Bassett’s products.(Mints, Allsorts, fruit gums etc) 
This is one of the reasons I hate supermarket shopping, you read the list of ingredients and think great and then see at the bottom of the packet ‘May contain gluten’. It’s so disheartening so I usually go to the GF aisle and be done but Aldi, Lidl and the like don’t have dedicated ‘free from sections’ so for me they’re  not ‘proper’ supermarkets.

Though it may sound like it, Im not moaning, whinging, etc, food doesn’t interest me that much it’s more the inconvenience (to SWMBO, family, friends etc) rather than anything else and  by eating GF I get to keep my driving license. So no ‘heart’ responses I’m just providing information.

As it’s late  I’ll not bore you with what I have or haven’t done today,

I’ll bid you goodnight instead,

Robert.

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Erichill16

[PeterBB]

54 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

... and clearing up but no plastering ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/little-and-or-no-sense/

Invisible chart?  Certainly agree with the comments.

[Coombe Barton]

4 minutes ago, PeterBB said:

Invisible chart?  Certainly agree with the comments.

Updated 

[laurenceb]

Night awl

[andyram]

Evening all. I note the school’s conversation has moved onto friends which we have retained since our school days. I had two close friends in my school days. Steve and Dean. Steve and I were best mates in primary school and this friendship continued into the early years of secondary before we ended up in many separate classes for GCSE and the friendship began to wane. At a similar point Dean joined the school and we struck up a friendship over our mutual interest in football, often spending evenings kicking a ball about on the local park. When I set up a five a side team, Dean was one of the regulars. He was a rock when I suffered a very painful relationship break up and I am forever indebted to him the support he gave me during those difficult times.

 

 Nowadays Dean and I converse over Facebook regularly. He has his own ongoing battles with the black dog, mainly brought about by frustration at the arthritic knees and back issues which robbed him of a professional football career. We catch up now and again but he knows, if he needs support, or a chat, he only has to call and that works the other way too.

 

 As Steve ended up in other classes, he got in with another group of people. Sadly some of these proved to bullies and I was one of their victims. Their actions resulted in much of my secondary school days being unhappy and probably laid the foundations for the confidence issues that have plagued me throughout life. At times, Steve was a part of this and it is unsurprising that our paths deviated after school finished. 
 

 Over the years I heard snippets of what he was up to. He got thrown out of uni for drug taking, worked in partnership with another old school friend running pubs in London, battled alcoholism which resulted in a failed marriage. We briefly caught up now and again via Friends Reunited and then via Facebook but nothing of any substance. Last year, he was back in the area staying with his mum and got back in touch. He was preparing for a move to Canada with his new wife to be and wanted to catch up with old Friends’s before he started his new life.  We had a nice catch up over a coffee in the garden and he actually apologised for his actions back at secondary school - that was unexpected. He has been “dry” for several years and has worked as a counsellor with AA. He is now happy in Canada, but we do keep in touch via WhatsApp usually discussing football.

 

Night all.

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[Barry O]

48 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

Updated 

Not all is as red or blue as the bars shown. On look north for yorkshire on Friday evening data was displayed showing a large increase in cases in Leeds.  No reason was given..well it happens that they tested the young offenders in the prison in wetherby and, guess what? A large number of them are positive. Hence a big increase.. most of the city is showing reductions in  cases. Just shows..never mind the data check it to find out why things are increasing.. ( note the same thing happened in Rutland.). As an engineer my job was not just to look at data but find the root cause of why it was at that level which seems to beyond those in the journalist jobs.

 

Baz

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[Barry O]

Goodnight all!

Baz

[Dave Hunt]

School friends - still in regular touch with five from grammar school, two of whom were also at primary school with me. We didn't actually see a lot of each other for quite a few years, just keeping in touch via greetings cards, round robin letters and suchlike, then about twenty years ago we started having annual get-togethers as well as other visits and three of us even meet up in Spain every now and then. Since Covid kicked in we've been having Zoom meetings.

 

Foreign language accents - apparently I speak German with a Munich accent; no idea why unless my school German teacher had such an accent and passed it on. I'm told by German friends that at least it isn't an English accent, which is apparently a compliment. I have an ex-RAF buddy who has a gift for languages and can speak French with (I am told) quite convincing Parisian and other  regional accents.

 

 My Dad used to have a work colleague named Doctor Wang who was 100% Chinese but spoke with a pronounced Glaswegian accent, which seemed quite incongruous on first meeting.

 

Dave

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[TheQ]

Dad, drops into a Glaswegion accent when he speaks to someone from there, though he's never lived there, granddad was from there, and he visited several times as a child.

Mum drops into West country when speaking to my aunt or uncle.

My sister's speak with a Lothian accent, but more English to my parents.

My brother Lothian when up there, but English moving towards Yorkshire with his family.

Me,,  my accent is lost somewhere, I've been accused of a posh accent, which is somewhat odd, as that ain't what I be. I've had and lost several accents over the years, Cypriot, Northern Irish, West country etc.  I can't do a proper Norfolk accent as I drop into West country.

 

Well, from Combe Martin's chart we have an increasing rate, but North Norfolk being  near the bottom of the chart, with a comparatively small population, it only needs one or two extra to be a big increase.

 

I had one school friend from my last school, we kept in contact with for a few years, but he became a trainee manager for Menzies as I was in the RAF, and during each of our various moves we eventually lost contact.

 

Time for more sleep.

[Ozexpatriate]

School friends:

5 hours ago, andyram said:

Steve and Dean. Steve and I were best mates in primary school and this friendship continued into the early years of secondary before we ended up in many separate classes for GCSE and the friendship began to wane. ...

 

As Steve ended up in other classes, he got in with another group of people. Sadly some of these proved to bullies and I was one of their victims.

Andy's experiences remind me of my best friend in primary school who lived up the road. As lads, he taught me how to play chess and we both liked to build Airfix kits. By the time we were seniors in high school we had drifted apart and he was close to a mutual friend (in all my classes and son to a popular member of staff at the school) and someone who was both a class clown and bully to some, including me.

 

During my second year at university, my friend (after an evening out drinking with these two mates) drove into a tree on the side of the road. All three of them were in the car, but only survivor was the bully. He was asleep in the back seat.

 

Theirs was the saddest funeral I have attended. It was held at the school. Pretty much the whole senior class, then about 18 or 19 years of age, attended.

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

6 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

... and clearing up but no plastering ...

Case rate in the US has dropped dramatically since early January (with a slight uptick in the last couple of days).

 

While the drop in case rate is encouraging, the rolling, weekly average of daily new diagnoses is slightly higher than the magnitude of the peak of the 'second wave' in early July of 2020.

[iL Dottore]

Morning all,

So, another week of work awaits. Today will be a rather long one as I have a 9:30 teleconference this evening. But Hey Ho, it brings in the dosh.

 

The Swiss Health Ministry (BAG) have loosened restrictions a little bit (as of today) which means I can go back to the Dog Club with the Wolfpack and resume their training (during the most severe restrictions, I have been giving them walks on the leash which they enjoy-given the innumerable opportunities for sniffing new smells-but  being at the Dog Club will provide them with a lot of off leash exercise).

 

As for old friends from school, I haven’t retained any friendships from primary or secondary school and the one friendship I did retain from my university days I broke off several years ago as he turned out to be a complete and utter self-centred, selfish p1llock who was (is?) heading firmly and resolutely into “tin foil hat“ territory. I do have, however, some good friends that I made when I started my career and we keep in regular, but the sporadic, touch. As I am not on farcebook, I don’t have an easy method to look for, and perhaps find, old school chums (or old flames for that matter) nor would I really want to. Apart from a certain curiosity about how their lives may have turned out, I doubt that there would be any points of common contact after 40, 50 or even 60 years of separation. But, there again, I have always been somewhat of a Waldgänger.

 

As for accent: I suppose my English accent can be characterised as RP (though I can do a credible East Ender and a slightly less credible “Good Ole Southern Boy”) My Italian, German and French are all heavily English accented (not quite “Officer Crabtree Territory”, but heading that way...). Not being able to do a credible accent is somewhat limiting from an acting perspective. However given the number of “gritty, realistic” plays of the “kitchen sink drama” genre being produced and performed locally (i.e. zero), my inability to convincingly sound like a Durham miner has not impeded my (very modest) acting career.

 

And on that thespian note I leave you with this quote: “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” (William Shakespeare), I’m off to be foolish...

 

iD

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all

 

It felt a bit odd to say the least.  At 7 am yesterday I was booking a set for an evening theatre performance of Riverdance six months hence.  Whether it would have been better, or more user-friendly of the website, at a later hour is difficult to assess but one glance at the seating plan for my chosen evening told me that I was not a moment too soon.  I have a seat in the back row of the circle, which should not be too bad for a show in which the stage will be filled with dancers.  Before I started working out how the website worked I jotted down some dates and places.  By securing a seat in relatively nearby Milton Keynes I have saved myself the prospect of a long drive to Cardiff or Bristol or not quite such a long one to Cambridge.  It will be interesting to compare the 2021 version of Riverdance with the one which hit an unsuspecting world during the Eurovision Song Contest in April 1994.  How will I remain patient for six whole months?

 

Old friends: it has distressed me for many years now just how easy it is to lose touch.  I am in touch with one from primary school days.  We were thrown together in 1955 and have the niche interest of trolleybus destination blinds in common!  From the posh school in Hammersmith but two contacts survive and much the same is true of the quiet country grammar school to which I moved in 1962.  One contemporary from university phones from time to time.  How, then, do I manage to send 70 seasonal greetings cards at Xmas?  My e-friend Harry, who is far too busy for his own good making Amazon even richer and himself with it, is not short of people he met at school or university with whom to go places and you cannot believe how envious I am.  I suspect there is a generational component here.

 

Finally, has anyone else noticed that it is difficult to do anything other than ‘like’ a post?  I have just tried to endorse a couple of posts with the heart symbol but the technology will only let me ‘like’ them and it’s not appropriate to do so.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[The Lurker]

I can no longer post using my PC - I even logged out and logged back in. No idea why. It rather restricts my participation on here as using the phone is far less convenient. Oh well. I will be back!

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

Misty this morning. 
RMWeb is behaving oddly this morning. I am not going to write a long post in case it disappears !

[Barry O]

White Rabbits!

[jonny777]

A dull and grey morning in North Somerset. North Sea low cloud has finally reached us, and the only question now is; how many days will it take to clear? 

 

My tooth/gum ache is becoming more random and more unfathomable by the day. Yesterday evening at about 9pm, it suddenly became "throw myself off a ten storey building rather than endure this" severe pain bottom left. In the end I went to bed after trying to watch The Ranganathan, and within two minutes of lying down the pain vanished, and has not returned since. 

 

What can this be? It is the pain from hell while my head is vertical, but vanishes immediately the head is horizontal? 

 

Any budding medical/dental students here? 

 

Managed to find an old can of thick black Hammerite in the garage, and so I painted the ceramic bird bath which has a crack in it, and water leaks out. My thinking is that once the paint dries over the crack, then it will provide the seal. Fingers crossed, but I gave it two coats just to be on the safe side and left it to dry in yesterdays sunshine. 

[PeterBB]

10 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

Updated 

Wow, the work gone into that.

The 'bad' news is that all the local areas are well in the top quadrant of this extensive list.  Local news has said that main town in our local area in Derbyshire has most of the 'increases'.  

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, couldn't post at all earlier.

 

A white frosty but sunny start here, with all the washing already done I'm not sure what they day's entertainment will be. 

 

We're still teetering on the verge of a circuit breaker here, general opinion is the two 'random' cases need to be more honest about their errr friendships.  

[TheQ]

Can I post yet? things most odd, maybe the forum doesn't like the March hare...

Over on a boat forum based on the same software as this by the look of it, I've lost all contact with page 2 of my Boat rebuild thread. They have a setting of 100 posts per page.. That's a lot to lose.. I've notified their Admin and await results..

 

Meanwhile..

Mooring awl, Inner Temple Hare.

5 hours sleep followed by a long awake period followed by an hours semi dozing.

 

Back playing up, All that bending down to pushing or pulling drain rods.. 30ft of them.. I generally feel a bit rough..

 

Ben The Happy Collie had a good snuffle around this morning he even charged towards a Pheasant alarm call rather than running from it.. It was very light, a combination of a full moon and almost dawn. First light being after I Ieave for work sometime this week , and dawn should be before I leave for work on the 18th March.

 

Still waiting for this weeks major system, a major software update over the weekend upset a lot of computers..

 

Ah just been given this weeks system.. 100M ohms now settling.

 

This week I shall mostly be thinking of the fitment of "extras" on the trailer when equipment is doing it's thing..

 

Time to.. Start Sketching..