Early Risers.

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Walk with SWMBO and Mil this morning/early afternoon and a dash home for the football. Snowed here most of the day but didn’t settle. Watched a film this evening and a bit of shed time last thing. Fitted replacement gear wheel but now there’s another problem but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

A good friend of mine’s parents moved to a static caravan and didn’t fully understand/read/comprehend their terms. They sold their house to buy the caravan and intended to live there permanently but in the end had to come home and live in a council flat. I think they had to replace their static caravan with a new one  every so many years but the budget wasn’t there.

Swmbo  and myself considered  a holiday home but in the end it never happened. Many reasons. By the time we could afford what we wanted time had moved on. We wanted something with two bedrooms so we could let family with children make use of it. I think SWMBO would worry about leaving a property un-occupied for large periods of the year.
In the last couple of years we’ve started using self catering accommodation due to my dietary needs as sometimes a holiday can be spoiled by having to worry about where the next GF meal will be coming from. I do prefer hotels for their convenience.

Goodnight

Robert

 

[Barry O]

Goodnight all!

Baz

[Dave Hunt]

About twenty years ago Jill was very keen on the idea of a mobile holiday home of the narrow boat variety but when we looked in detail at the costs and amount of regular work required I started to have second thoughts. After consulting some friends who had owned a variety of inland waterways craft we came to the conclusion that unless looking after a boat was to be our main hobby/pastime it wasn't worth it and the idea was dropped. Similar discussions have been held over the years concerning caravans, camper vans and timeshares but none has stood up to scrutiny - for us anyway. Apart from semi-regular visits to a friend's house in Spain we don't tend to revisit holiday spots.

 

Dad is still in hospital after his operation on Tuesday. It turns out that his broken femur wasn't a straightforward fracture but a longitudinal split nearly from hip to knee and he is very lucky that the team was able to effect a repair using lots of metalwork. No idea how long he will be in hospital but I think it could be some time yet.

 

Have a quiet, peaceful and above all safe night everyone.

 

Dave

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

The weather this morning started off dull, but by mid morning the sun was out and it remained so for most of the day, going dull around 3 o’clock, so I decided to call it a day and packed up. I’d only been in the house about an hour when it started raining, it’s still raining now. 

 

I can see something from today’s efforts in the garden, there are a lot less stones to be seen in the earth where the old path was. There’s still more to do, but to be honest, I could do with a new riddle, as the one I have is many years old and the mesh is starting to so it’s age! During the time spent removing the stones I managed to find yet more coal! So far I’ve almost filled an empty 1 litre ice cream tub and a second is almost full! There’s more than enough to fill all the tenders/bunkers of my loco fleet   AND the trucks, with loads to spare and it was for free 

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[trisonic]

Hi, everybody, trust all is well, been a weird weekend so far to say the least. I wonder what HM The Queen thought of Trumps words. HRH Prince Philip as the savior of civilization (as he sees it) is certainly an interesting viewpoint So it's all downhill from now....

 

Anyway I came across this film of the Ashby/Dalton Minn., Tornado of July 2020. I have to say that this is probably the most interesting, detailed and gripping film of a tornado for years. It is a so-called "Drillbit" tornado at F4 on the Fujita Scale - a very powerful twister. As at times the point gets down to two foot diameter (imagine a skater bringing their arms by their side) the wind speed can only be imagined, certainly enough to pull a humans limbs off, I'd say. A couple of things the viewpoint changes depending on what vehicle's camera is being used at any one time (which is why you can see the same patch of trees several times). Also it often remains stationery (with regards to forward movement) and you can see skeins of earth spiraling up the funnel cloud.

Tornados do look ominous but it is nature and has no evil intent (persuade yourself). It can also look beautiful .

 

Best, Pete.

Edited April 11, 2021 by trisonic

[Ozexpatriate]

I first encountered the "first name" + "family name" wording in a US visa application around 1984. I thought it comported well with the notion of separation of church and state and the idea that wording from officialdom should not imply anything other than the freedom of religion that is an issue in the term "Christian name", used in Australia at the time.

 

While there were many other funny aspects of the US visa application, like "Have you ever committed a crime of moral turpitude?" and the one about membership of the NASDP, I liked the use of "first name + middle name + family name". I found it sensible and pragmatic - particularly in an immigration context where simpler, clearer use of words is better. (It remains of course problematic with some Asian naming conventions.)

 

At some point, and I'm not sure when exactly, Australia moved to "given name" + "family name".

 

My son's grandfathers coincidentally shared a middle name - "Edward". This was an obvious choice for my son's middle name to create a familiar connection, while his first name is one his mother and I both preferred. His older brother (at one point, my stepson) on the other hand has his grandfather's name as his first name, but is called by his middle name. I find this particular naming approach confusing.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, trisonic said:

I wonder what HM The Queen thought of Trumps words. HRH Prince Philip as the savior of civilization (as he sees it) is certainly an interesting viewpoint

I didn't see any reference to that. Even when I did a cursory internet search none of the multiple news organizations (UK and US) reported on that aspect. Most of them quoted "dignity and grace" and "irreplaceable loss" which is the sort of mostly harmless stuff one expects in such statements of condolences.

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Back in my HR days when I was doing recruitment (ugh) I used to play a game, in trying to imagine how candidates may look, then marking myself when they were interviewed.

As do many people in the HR/hiring community - sadly with some unintended (?) consequences based on experiments* where identical CVs are submitted with 'white sounding' versus 'other race' sounding names. The 'other race' sounding names were rejected at a substantially higher rate.

 

* US-based, I believe.

[iL Dottore]

Good morning one and all,

 

Up very, very early today. basically due to a combination of arthritis and having eaten a good portion of Easter egg yesterday. Not having eaten chocolate for a considerable while, eating so much chocolate in one sitting gave me a theobromine hit (theobromine can have similar effects to caffeine, meaning I went to bed after drinking the equivalent of three or four strong espressos). Of course, theobromine (an alkaloid) is toxic in a sufficiently large dose, as are all the plant alkaloids. In fact some of the most potent poisons around are plant alkaloids. Which is why I am a carnivore, hunting a steak dinner may carry a risk of death from an enraged herd of herbivores but the salad really, really wants to kill me.

 

I can live with resembling James Robertson justice, although before I lost the weight I have lost, I definitely resembled Orson Welles. Practically a doppelgänger in fact.

 

Sorry to hear that Dave Hunt’s father has had quite a time of it. It does sound like his dad will be carrying around quite a bit of scaffolding for the foreseeable future (assuming that some of the metalwork will be removed in due course). Let’s hope for a unremarkable recovery.
 

I regard orthopaedic surgery with equanimity, partly because I have undergone such surgery myself (with good outcomes) and partly because it is medicine at a macro level. Whereas much of oncology treatment nowadays involves affecting the intracellular pathways of malignant tissue: turning genes either on or off, interrupting cell signalling or taking advantage of a malignancy’s inherent weaknesses. In comparison, no matter how sophisticated the surgery and the mechanical constructs devised to support bones and joints, to an oncologist orthopaedic surgery is still, when you come down to it, hitting bits of the patient with a hammer.

 

Well, I’ve had a very early breakfast and a cup of coffee, so now I am going to doze a bit in my wingback chair and contemplate tonight’s dinner (roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and cauliflower cheese)

 

Have a great Sunday.

[BR60103]

My father's first name was William.  He very early on decided not to risk being called Willy, so used MacKenzie and was Mac to anyone who knew him. (MacKenzie was his mother's maiden name.)

I think the use of the second name may happen where the same first name crops up repeatedly in a school class. My mother said that there were quite a few Marys in hers.

 

The late Canadian singer John Allen Cameron had a brother named John Donald (and maybe others). The name was elided to JnAllen and JnDonald. It may have been regional.

 

[iL Dottore]

6 hours ago, brianusa said:

...We know its here, we know how to keep it under control and we also know why it persists and unless certain people get the message, we shall be hearing it for months (years?) to come.  No - they'd rather go out in droves, boogie around and spread all their little covids over everyone.  Which is why it persists!

     Brian

You could argue, contentiously, that we are doing a half-arsed job of dealing with the pandemic. I think that there are only two ways of really getting this pandemic over and done with.

 

The first is to lock down the country completely for a month. Everyone confined to their living quarters, no one allowed out (and transgressors severely and immediately punished with up to and including summary execution) and the borders shut to all traffic: commercial, public and private. It wouldn’t be pretty, there would be casualties and it would cost the economy a lot (Fatally?). But with the elimination of person to person contagion, once the infected had either died or recovered during this month of lockdown the country would be free of the virus (well, as far as these things can be eradicated). The problem is borders would have to be shut for considerably longer to prevent the importation of the disease from outside the country.  One plane load of infected and asymptomatic CoVID carriers and you are back to square one.

The other extreme is to say that people can do what they want, live their lives as they did pre-pandemic but indicate that there will be no treatment provided for individuals coming down with Covid and thus allow the disease to rip through the population, culling the elderly, infirm, the vulnerable and genitically susceptible. At the end of the pandemic, which would be relatively short lived, the remaining population would be resistant to disease.

Neither option is truly viable for many reasons on many levels. The first option is certainly doable in a totalitarian state (Including keeping borders shut after the pandemic has subsided internally); the second option would not be considered morally and ethically acceptable even in the most brutal dictatorship. Yet it was the latter option that brought all the pandemics that occurred before the 19th century to an end.

 

Food for thought?

Edited April 11, 2021 by iL Dottore

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all

 

It was a bitty day for yours truly yesterday.  Some of it was spent quite productively, by scanning some of the photographs for my presentation.  There are a few more to do and some more words to write before what I hope will be final editing.  For part of the afternoon I took refuge from the relentless News Channel and found on YouTube a meeting that I attended nearly two years ago with a distinguished panel including Peter Tatchell and two MPs.  Today I shall cook and eat a steak with trimmings and indulge in unspecified pottering.

 

Some fellow ERs have raised interesting topics.  Resemblance to celebrities is one.  Some years ago now a lady in Fleetwood swore blind that I reminded her of Professor Robert Winston.  I never did get round to introducing her to my optician.  As for names, both my grandfathers were named Arthur so I think I've had a lucky escape.  My middle name is Michael, shared by several family members no longer with us.  I prefer the expressions "forename" or "given name" to "Christian name".  Back in 1948, when I had no say in the matter, I was baptised at St Dunstan's church in Acton, which is not as close as it might be to where we lived.

 

The week ahead looks quiet.  On Tuesday night there is a Zoom meeting convened by the Hitchin Battalion of the Royal Corps of Train Spotters and at the weekend I am spared the not altogether disagreeable task of driving to Wakefield for Scalefour North because it is on line.  What else?  Oh yes - trying to find out when the TV programmes shunted off to make way for a certain news story will be transmitted.  Serves me right for watching too much TV.

 

Best wishes to all and good to hear from Pete Trisonic

 

Chris  

[jamie92208]

Good moaning. It's gradually getting lighter here so my next task will be to go and let the girls out. They gavevus another 2 eggs yesterday. They certainly like oranges but seem not to becoartial to leeks.  

 

The water butt got installed but the supply pipe will have to wait for a day or two.  No major tasks are planned for today apart from an expedition  to the market. We are going to meet a friend and purchsee various vietnamese  dishes, bring them back here and have a shared lunch. It sounds like an excellent  plan to me.  

 

I have no idea who I look like but was once told that I looked like Peter Sutcliffe, the late and unlamented  Yorkshire Ripper. At the time I had a dark beard and the informant was a 75 yr old lady who I sadly had to arrest for being drunk and disorderly.  If she hadn't been taken away the other residents of the street might have silenced her.  Emma Jane Williams.

 

Here in France everyone has a nom , family name, and Prénom, given name. Anything official, such as my 2020 tax return that arrived yesterday, is addressed to M. Guest, James.  Women, however kerp their nom de naissance (maiden name) for some official forms but then have their nom de uságe, shown. This mightily confused Beth when she had to sign as E R Watson, to receive her ID card. It was 41 years since she'd last used that signature.  

 

Anyway Harry the pheasant is now telling the world that he isout and about so I better venturecover to Cluckingham Palace.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[Barry O]

Ey up!

My knees are letting me know that I was involved ina cricket match in fairly lowxtemperatures yesterday. A mugatea will help to get my knees working again.

 

Have a good day!

@trisonic  that video was interesting to say the least.

 

 Baz

[polybear]

6 hours ago, trisonic said:

Hi, everybody, trust all is well, been a weird weekend so far to say the least. I wonder what HM The Queen thought of Trumps words. HRH Prince Philip as the savior of civilization (as he sees it) is certainly an interesting viewpoint So it's all downhill from now....

 

 

Some nice words there.  I wonder who wrote it for him?

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Up very, very early today. basically due to a combination of arthritis and having eaten a good portion of Easter egg yesterday.

 

 

Bear never had any Easter Eggs this year

 

In other news:

Bear will have a "touch up" day today   No, I'm not gonna be doin' anything improper - I'll be attending to any little marks where the colour coat may have crept onto the ceiling coving.  We're talking very small marks here - most of which aren't even visible to most unless on a step-ladder - but Bear knows they are there, so go they must....

Then it'll be time to fit a couple of the new leccy sockets and refit the intruder alarm sensor into the kitchen and tune it for maximum effectiveness against marauding Hippo's seeking cake.....

[PeterBB]

@trisonic wow very impressive photography from those who were prepared to 'run'.

Snowing - big flakes - earlier this morning but now thankfully gone.

[Andrew P]

Morning all,

The short and the tall,

Been for a walk,

no time to talk,

Bitterly cold,

but then, I am getting old.

So feel it more, 

when I went out the door.

 

Have a good day one and all, stay safe and well. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Andrew P

[Andrew P]

Back on to names, My Dad, was George Samuel Roy, but was only ever known as Roy to all and sundry. 

 

As for me, I have Trevor as a middle name, and no one knows where that came from, Mum and Dad didn't really know, and we have had NO Trevor's on either side of the family.

 

Apparently dad did want to call me Trevor Charles, but a couple of days later Mum realised it would mean me having TCP on my school satchel etc.

[JohnDMJ]

Good Morning,

 

Thoughts of food, databases and revised working hours are running riot in that chasm between my ears!

Edited April 11, 2021 by JohnDMJ

[jonny777]

Dry and sunny, but cold here in North Somerset. Half an inch of rain yesterday evening which was very welcome news for Jonny the tub waterer. 

 

I see from the stats that the BBC2 average viewing figures on Friday evening were only 320,000 people; thus proving that although the passing of the monarch's husband is a sad time; the British viewing public does not want wall to wall looping obituaries. 

 

I saw Gardeners World yesterday evening, and Monty Don even admitted he planted some things in the wrong place and was digging them up. There is hope for us mere gardening mortals yet. 

 

I watched the Grand National and heard my horse mentioned once near the beginning, but never again. I assumed it must have fell at the second, so watched the re-run only to discover it was pulled up at fence 29 (out of 30). Must have been a game old thing to last that long, but probably so far behind that it was never in the camera shots. As I had no money on it, I don't mind. 

 

Doing very little today, as the grass is now too wet to cut; I am relieved of watering duties and the plants will be doing their own thing if the sun keeps shining. 

 

Now for some bacon and eggs. 

 

[Winslow Boy]

Morning All. Woke up this morning to shock horror, wait for it- drum roll please, snow. Yes I know the white stuff and not just a light coating of the stuff like last time. It won't last, he tells himself. Well it better hadn't as the Hound has to be walked. Strangely enough she is indifferent to snow which is weird as she doesn't like rain.

 

Ah well of to get me some breakfast, grapefruit and toast as you ask and to do the crossword.

 

Be back later.

[Dave Hunt]

David is actually my middle name; as a nipper I was generally called by my first name but when I started grammar school at the age of eleven there were two of us in the class with the same first name and surnames of Hunt and Lunt. After a few weeks our classmates decided that one of us had to change as it was getting confusing and they started using David, or Dave, for me. It stuck and I got used to it quite quickly so started introducing myself as Dave. Since then everyone except my parents knows me as Dave and even Dad refers to me when talking to others as such. Coincidentally, Jill is also SWMBO's middle name, her brother was known by his middle name and our elder son likewise.

 

I'm intrigued that Flávio has a mental image of me as being like Kenneth More. I wish......

 

Happy Sunday people.

 

Dave