Early Risers.

[PhilJ W]

Nearly forgot, the name Podimore is Anglo-Saxon in origin. Pody is an old word for a frog and more of course refers to moorland. 

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Terrific news.

Indeed.  

 

Fraggle Rock leads the way.  The UK follows closely behind with diminishing rates of everything from detected infections and mortality to tolerance and compliance.  

 

Group of younger teens (some possibly not even "teens" yet) encountered tonight whilst out on our evening "around-the-block" stroll.  Perhaps 15 of them together loitering chilling, consuming alcohol when apparently very much under-age, some engaged in tonsil-hockey but most engaged in loud conversation about something on Snapchat and the "fact" that masks and social distancing were no longer required.  Wrong on the latter counts at least.  

 

And having seen us coming along they all then stood back against the hedge, tried to hide their bottles and cigarettes and allowed us space (of a sort) to pass without having to walk in or cross the road.  That was a surprise.  Still some sort of respect around, then.

 

G'night all.  Sleep safe and sound.

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

... and the remains of the cluck ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2021/04/13/on-lockdowns-and-the-return/

[tigerburnie]

G'night all

[Erichill16]

Evening All,

Took nephews to school and then mil and Sydney for a walk. Pm spent doing paperwork at mils until fetching boys back from school. Mil made them their tea and later SWMBO and myself took them home.

Tomorrow looks to be heading the same way.

After tea a bit of shed time which included a small amount of putting things away.  Happy with what I’ve done, not perfect (by a long way) put progress.

Early start tomorrow so goodnight,

Robert

[polybear]

53 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Group of younger teens (some possibly not even "teens" yet) encountered tonight whilst out on our evening "around-the-block" stroll.  Perhaps 15 of them together loitering chilling, consuming alcohol when apparently very much under-age, some engaged in tonsil-hockey but most engaged in loud conversation about something on Snapchat and the "fact" that masks and social distancing were no longer required.  Wrong on the latter counts at least. 

 

 

When one of those kids becomes infected with the lurgy (with or without symptoms) and then passes it onto a parent then they might just start to understand.  One of Bear's work friends (a really nice guy) recently lost his wife - it seems there is a belief that one of the children passed it to her.

[Winslow Boy]

5 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

There was a travel lodge or similar at Podimore (I think) alongside a Little Chef. Used this 1994-5 when setting up an Estate system in rural Dorset. Olympic breakfast, lunch at the site - they provided sandwiches - coffee all day and supper in Yeovil in a great restaurant I found. Found some interesting country tours between site and hotel in the evenings - very pleasant.

May I enquire as to what an 'estate system' is?

[PeterBB]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Once upon a time an Australian Tourism Minister got into a flap for a commenting (on the koala) that it is:

He's not wrong mind you, but it was considered a faux pas (and reasonably so) by a tourist minister. The whole fracas was very entertaining.

Reminds one of Edwina Currie and chicken eggs - she had it on her face but was absolutely correct ... you can see why politicians don't like telling the truth!

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[Winslow Boy]

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

To be fair to the driver, even head up, the visibility of anything other than forward is very restricted.  It's the crew commander who is responsible for keeping up the all around visibility.  We were taught that it was a crew responsibility to keep a good look out.

 

Around here when they road test tracked vehicles, you'll often see the commander in the turret backing up the vehicles direction indicators with arm signals.

 

The spinning wheels and flailing tracks draw in the Telfs like moths to a flame.

 

Isn't that a good thing as it would reduce the gene pool.

 

[TheSignalEngineer]

A nice trip out for a bike ride today. Hebden Bridge was heaving and our usual coffee stop was full to bursting and no sign of social distancing in the town centre.  It was straight through up to Midge Hole then a long climb to the Pennine Bridleway before a rapid decent of Colden Clough. I was surprised to find a few patches of snow still around on the higher ground.

It was 23 months since we did the same ride and I was pleased to do it in about the same time despite not having done any long climbs on a non-electric bike for over six months.

The Pennine section of the M62 was fairly quiet, plenty of cars but the lorry traffic not yet recovered and very few foreign lorries about compared with pre-Covid/Brexit times. 

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

The promised threatened rain never materialised and it remained sunny and dry all day, the temperature getting as high as 10C this afternoon. No matter, I had quite a productive day in the cellar, both the chairs have each had their first topcoat and there now starting to look really good, tomorrow should see me finish them completely. Once there done, they’ll be left for a few days for the paint to harden off fully and then they’ll be brought upstairs to the kitchen. I can then begin moving some tools and other sundry items to the workshop and start then covering the items that I can’t remove because I haven’t yet found room for anywhere else! There isn’t much to do, an old desk and a shelving unit. 

 

The plan is to hopefully start pulling the ceiling down next week, I’m giving myself 3 days to complete the task, but I don’t expect it to take that long really. This is the last big, really mucky job that left to do! After that I can start the installation work, starting with cabling for the new lights, 14 LED down-lighters and a couple of new sockets, then finally I start fixing the plaster-board, although that will probably be a few months away. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by BSW01

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[Pacific231G]

Good night all.

A tiring but very satisfying day as, for the first time in over six months I was able to fly.  The morning was quite pleasant and winds were fairly light but I did run into a fairly heavy rain shower in the early afternoon. Does anyone know if the Watercress Line is operating yet? I flew over Ropley to have a look at it but, though I didn't see any activity, their website suggests they're starting tomorrow (Wednesday)  or Thursday.   

[monkeysarefun]

11 hours ago, chrisf said:

At its best the koala must be one of the most endearing creatures on the planet.

I  say  Quokka..

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[BR60103]

I was supposed to take the car in for service and changing out the snow tires on Thursday. Since I made the appointment we've had a lockdown/CB imposed.  Phone call from dealer today -- can't use waiting room. I would have sat outside but there's rain forecast. SWMBO says I can't take taxi home and we don't have extra vehicle. They understood when I cancelled.

 

Chrisf:

We store our motorhome on a big farm lot.  We need our car to get home afterwards. Our neighbour's wife doesn't drive (apparently) so he has to tow the car to storage and drive it home.  don't know how it would work for us if we didn't have 2 drivers as we can't & won't tow.

 

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all, with the warmest of thoughts for Dave’s Dad.

 

The physio duly phoned yesterday morning.  He is optimistic that exercise, and exercises, will sort out my aching knee.  He sent me an exercise sheet published by VersusArthritis, though that affliction was never mentioned by name.  I am not very good either at exercise or at sticking to curative regimes but I have three incentives to regain the cherished ability to stride purposefully.  If they go ahead, and there is increasing reason to expect that they will, they are the Pride marches through Bristol, Cardiff and London.  To achieve the first of those I have just under three months.  Gulp.

 

There was another happy discovery on YouTube yesterday - a clip of the last movement of “Midnight Mushrumps” by Gryphon, recorded at the Union Chapel in Islington in May 2015.  It was my great pleasure to be in the audience.  That wonderful piece of music is one that I would take to my desert island, and not just because it lasts for 19 minutes!  I’m not sure that Gryphon still play it, purely because founder member Richard Harvey, who conceived and wrote it, is no longer with the band.  On the subject of music, the new CD from Banter, called “Three”, has arrived.  Listening to it was a jolly way to spend yesterday afternoon.

 

My two penn’orth on the A303 if I may.  Although I travel to the West at least once a year I seldom use the A303.  From where I live it is significantly quicker to use the M5 and I time my journey to avoid the worst of the traffic.  Until my aunt in Bristol moved into a care home it was convenient to call on her, five minutes from the M5, for a cuppa and leg stretch.  If I should pitch up at her care home in Shirehampton at 8 am for said purposes I suspect that my welcome would be with folded arms!  I have worked alongside highway engineers in my time and picked up a bit of why and wherefore about road planning.  I suspect that the single carriageway bits of the A303 can only feasibly be improved off-line, ie deviating from the present route, if significant property demolition is to be avoided.  In short, it is too difficult.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[iL Dottore]

16 hours ago, polybear said:

Bear used to stay in a B&B Farmhouse at Cary Fitzpaine, a small Hamlet just a couple of miles north of the Podimore roundabout; that was back in the days when Bear was doing a lot of integration work on Lynx at WHL Yeovil.  We had the choice of staying in Hotels (fully receipted) or the Great Empire would give us the grand sum of £47-35 a night to do our own thing - so long as we turned up for work each day without stinkin' and looking like Worzel they didn't care where we stayed.  As we could get a B&B for eighteen quid a night (plus a cheapo evening meal in a pub somewhere) we were quids in...

The joys of business travel!

Actually, I’ve been very lucky with my business travel over the years.  The companies I’ve worked for have been particularly generous with their business travel policies: business class long haul flights (where “long haul” is anything over three hours), first class train travel, taxis as and when needed and hotels were generally either boutique hotels (if I could get a good deal) or four-star properties. I preferred to have everything receipted, rather than get a cash sum for my travel expenses. Firstly, because I didn’t need to scrimp and save to make a few extra bob as I was more than adequately paid and secondly, because the daily rate for the destination was invariably two or three years out of date. 

Mind you, the generosity of the business travel policies was not out of the goodness of their hearts; when you are working in an industry that quite literally can spend hundreds of millions of pounds on projects, you don’t want your employees to be so discomfited by travel and accommodation that bad decisions are made from either exhaustion, jetlag or any of the myriad discomforts that economy travel and accommodation bring. The other factor in the generous business travel policy was that heavy travel demands were made of us. Not for us the once quarterly, every six months or once yearly business trip; when studies were starting up I would be doing as many as 15 business trips in a month (or a multi-continent itinerary of 4 to 6 weeks). I’m not sure that I have the stamina for that sort of travel any more, even with the comforts of business class travel and more than decent accommodation.

 

Travelling so much did allow me, through experience, to formulate travel guidelines that have served me well for pleasure as well as business.

• if you are travelling for pleasure, try to take the holiday on the seasonal. “shoulder” (i.e. just before the season properly starts or just at its’ end). At those times nothing is shut, unlike during the “off-season”, but the crowds are gone (having said that, places like Venice or Florence are only worth visiting nowadays in the depth of the off-season)
• the only reason for flying business class is the seat/space. Lie-flat seats take the agony out of long haul and allow you get some sleep. Economy on a decent airline (e.g. not on Ryanair or similar) is more than adequate for something like ZRH-LCY
• by flying via a third country (e.g. LHR-CDG-IAD) you can get business class tickets for not much more than full-fare economy
• the best seating on BA’s 747-400s (when they flew them) was the upper deck
• ”luxury” accommodation isn’t necessarily defined by the number of stars it has - I’ve stayed in some pretty dire, so-called “4-Star”, properties and some pretty amazing “boutique” hotels and B&Bs
• if you look up the layout of your accommodation ahead of time you can ask for a room that is nowhere near a) the lift, b] the outside air conditioning plant, c) the kitchen or d) the disco/all-night bar (I once spent a hellish night in Paris in an elderly 4-star hotel in a room right next to the lift shaft). if you like peace, quiet and an odourless room of course.
• it used to be that you couldn’t get a decent meal in a hotel restaurant and the breakfast was inevitably “industrial”. That has certainly changed, with chefs like Tom Kerridge opening great restaurants in hotels (but breakfasts remain dire). The best breakfasts are in “boutique” hotels and B&Bs
• when eating out abroad, go where the menu is only in the local language and where there are lots of locals
• avoid - like the plague - restaurants that have menus in multiple languages and (especially) have non-seasonal items on the menu (like asparagus in December), The deep-freeze, deep-fat fryer and microwave are their friends, not yours...

and finally

• in your carry-on always pack a spare set of the necessities (underwear, socks, shirt, tie, travel toothbrush and razor), ‘cos they often will misplace your luggage even if you travel First or Business Class.

Oh dear me, all that brings back memories....

 

Eventually countries will re-open and travel will re-start and when it does I have one or two final itineraries to enjoy: both involving both serious food and serious train journeys.

 

Happy humpday!

Edited April 14, 2021 by iL Dottore
Grammar

[iL Dottore]

I’m saddened to hear about Dave Hunt’s Dad’s mental state. TBH, I think that this blanket no visitor policy when patients are distressed or in extremis is NHS bureaucracy at its unthinking worst. A properly masked and socially distanced visit by DH would do wonders for his dad and carry no risk to other patients and staff (but that would require a NHS bureaucrat to deviate from “official policy” and we can’t have that....)

I do hope that the paltry measures taken by the hospital, as DH describes, will benefit his dad...

[Erichill16]

Morning All,

I was in a rush last night when I posted and really wanted to send best wishes Dave Hunts dad and hope that Gordon S’s slow progress is maintained. Hopefully progress will speed up.

Anyway better get a move on, nephews to taxi about.

Robert

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl Inner Temple Hare,

6 hours of not good sleep just couldn't settle..

 

Ben the Alarm clock Collie Was on Duty and on time,  he really didn't want to come back in. I suspect we have a visiting Fox, as there was another pile of feathers on the grass, Ben spent a lot of time following trails around, He had to be called to come back in..

 

The car was started before patrol again, being an ice cube, but it was very well melted by the time we got back..

 

Disney time on the way in, Squirrels, Deer, Crows Pheasants, a Raptor hovering over the road, Pidgeons,  an Owl and two Pussy cats.

 

When I did lots of travelling on business allowances were not good, the G in GEC does not stand for Generous. Our maximum permitted spend was not high enough for any of Il Dottore's  hotels or airline travel. It was definitely cattle class travelling and a 3 star hotel if we were lucky. everything had to be receipted, and  normally it needed 5 signatures to get approval.  The best airline in some ways was Saudi air, Carp entertainment, no booze, but no passengers.. which, as we always flew overnight, meant arms up and sleep across the 5 centre row seats, luxury in cattle class..

 

Time I went and kicked these two major systems into life this Morning.

 

 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

Cleaning.. pah!

[Andrew P]

Starting out grey

for Wednesday

it should get better,

and hopefully not wetter.

 

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