Early Risers.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a below freezing Charentr.  At least that what my phone tells me though I haven't been over to let the hens out yet.  We relit the log burner Thursday afternoon  and it's doing it's job.  Thus Beth and I spent an hour chopping and stacking logs in the woodshed.  We even had snow in the afternoon  though it didn't settle.  It was definitely cold in the shed in the evening  when I spent some time getting LED's to work when switches were thrown. I did have success before my fi ger ends got too cold.

 

Today we will be talking to Emily and her mums this morning as usual then it's off to the tip time with the last of the current garden waste.  Wbat else the day will bring is not known but no doubt the management may have some ideas.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[chrisf]

I imagine that much of today will be spent remembering something else that I should have put in my suitcase and searching frantically for it.  A break of five days in Mallorca seems to call for an awful lot of preparation but I intend to enjoy it.  The Spanish authorities require a questionnaire to be completed by all inbound travellers.  It has been a bit of a swine, calling for no fewer than three desperate phone calls to Ffestiniog Travel for help in completing it.  Yesterday the lady administering the tour admitted that she had not studied the questionnaire too closely.  When she does, she will find out why there have been so many phone calls!  Participants have been given the tour leader's phone number, though quite how she will be able to help from a hotel room at Gatwick Airport could be a good question.  I never had all this grief with Christmas in Switzerland!

 

I've missed ERs so much ...

 

Chris 

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl,

5 hours sleep plus, an hour and a bit, a reasonable total.

 

Ben the I want out Collie was really insistent on going out this morning and charged down the garden. Strangely he then wandered back to the house, only stopping for one quick splash.

There were small patches of little white ball bearings in odd corners, but it definitely wasn't as cold outside as yesterday.

 

Another strange thing is SWMBO has told me to go and fit the modified jib club today, I didn't think my brownie point level was that high. So yesterday after being told this a second coat of paint was put on the temporary hatch, the heater was left blowing gently over the hatch to get it to dry for today.

I left the light on the the workshop to remind me to turn it off overnight so I did.

 

So this morning, i need to make a short stay extension for the forestay before I go, that won't take long.

 

It's 40 years since the Argentinians invaded the Falklands, it didn't go well for that bunch of invaders either.

So 30 years ago today I'd been down there for a week or so staying for around a month the first time. Met Maggie, Denis,  and the various commanders of the war at an event.. Didn't get invited to the big dinner that night though...

 

Time to get a muggacoffee, and breakfast.

 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

40 years since the Falklands...lummy doesn't time fly! I had to get a missile through its test before it was shipped off and fired (and hit) an Argentinians marine. We then went on a Canal holiday...interesting times.

 

While this site is running it does have its moments .. but.. it is working!

 

No overnight snow last night..Good..  ground very cold so no planting of some plants bought at the Garden Centre earlier this week.

 

A zoom meeting for umpires has been set up for tomorrow  evening. I have lots of other things to do so will miss it.

 

Time to.. sort myself out, brew the tea and..go and buy supplies from our butchers.

 

Have as good a day as you can!

 

Stay safe!

 

Baz

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Frosty start but almost clear blue skies and sunshine here in The Land of Sutt.  It may cloud over this afternoon with the chance of some scattered, possibly wintry showers.  It's either 1°C  or -2°C according to my apps.  One of these days I'll get a proper thermometer.  There's one fitted to the car but  I'm not going out there to see what it says.

 

It's party day today and there is still "much to do" according to and by those in charge.  Herself has to go for the obligatory visit to the hairdresser that is always deemed necessary for these occasions.  I need to go and pick up a prescription which would normally be delivered but the chemist can't tell me when.  

Later there is the not so small task of food preparation which will not involve me apart from being told to keep out of the way. My own day seems fairly light actually unless called upon to act as a gofer.  I stand a fair chance of watching some rugby this afternoon although at some stage I've got to "gofer" Joe and fetch him back here.  At 5.45 I have to transport The Food along with The Boss to the club where she will be setting things up with Abbie & Co.   I will bring the car back here and will return at 7.00 with our lovely neighbours who are coming to the party and one is acting as duty driver.  This is when my main task of the evening starts as I need to hand out drinks tokens to every one as the first round is on me.  (Panic mode now setting in but my credit card will handle it for now)  There is also the chance that I may be called upon to make a brief speech about my lovely daughter (who I still can't quite believe is 50 in a couple of days time. )  I haven't prepared anything but have been known to successfully wing it on previous occasions.  Many years ago while acting as a stand in Father of the Bride for a dear friend at her second wedding I ended up doing a Best Man's speech as well as the designated guy couldn't say a word and the poor devil just stood there like a stranded goldfish.  Even if I prepared something to say I'd probably go off-piste and start ad-libbing,  particularly when one or more of the usual suspects start heckling.  I did however prepare a proper speech for Nicki's first wedding and will have to do the same again next year for her.

 

Time to think about some brekkie, I may be back later if time & Management permit.

Have a good one,  I fully intend to.

Bob.

Edited April 2, 2022 by grandadbob

[AndrewC]

Moaning all from a still boring borough. A touch of frost this morning. Alas poor Crabtree is no more. Lost amongst the orphaned bytes on Dreadfulserv's broken storage. Looking at my attachments list, only about 25 pics from nearly 300 survive. Doubt I'll be bothering to try to recover them and restore the images to various threads. Shame as I bet there are a lot of forum members who have lost many times that amount of images. Images from those who have passed over the years are probably now lost forever. 

 

Right, time to stop moaning and get on with the day. Some employed work to do. Some coffee to drink. Some Top of the Pops to watch. 

[polybear]

9 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

You can get an awful lot of machine made artificially flavoured (think synthetic vanilla or lemon) LDC for £70!

 

As if such a thought had crossed a Bear's mind.......

Well, actually, er, it might've.  Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps.

OK, Bear puts his paws up.  It's a fair cop, I'll go quietly.  Just let me finish all this Cake first.....

[polybear]

Bear here......

Today's fun involves shiftin' some of the furniture and general dross in the lounge ready for papering to commence, which won't be today.  First I need to come up with a plan of action and decide (a) how I'm gonna play it, (b) how much extra paper I'll need (and what size - it's available in numerous widths up to 1m) - I still have a fair bit from the Kitchen refurb left over, and (c) anything else I haven't thought of.  That last one could be tricky....

 

Right, Bear needs to get his little furry ar5e movin' cos' (a) the clock's still tickin' and (b) it's bluddy cold sitting in this Conservatory sorry, substantially glazed structure (= Buildings Control B.S. after Bear put a hard roof on it some years back (a very, very good move).  It seems that it was "decided" the leccy fan heater could go back in the loft a week or so back; mind you with the new prices I would've decided that shivering is cheaper anyway.

[BoD]

Morning all

 

Yesterday’s sugar all melted by mid morning but there was quite a heavy frost when mutt and I walked earlier.

 

A reasonably successful time yesterday answering enquiries from the house buyer's solicitor.  Only a reasonable success though as quite some time was spent searching for information or documents that we have never had or have been lost in the mists  of time.  
Kudos to Corgi though, two minutes after a phone call giving them the address a copy of the compliance certificate for the boiler pinged into my e-mail inbox with paper version to follow  by post.  It cost  slightly more than afternoon tea at F&M’s and theydidn’t give me any champagne.

 

This afternoon may be spent making up more cranks for the point rodding.

Edited April 2, 2022 by BoD

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Despite the reported temperature being lower it didn't feel as cold this morning. The reason is that the wind has dropped but still breezy though. What has happened is the low pressure system has moved to the Med and as a consequence it is colder in some parts of North Africa than it is in Scotland. Time to run a bath, be back later.

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

A bright and sunny, but at 2C, it's a chilly start to the day here in England's northwest. I'm just setting off to collect Ava who will be spending the day here with us. We'll, mainly Sheila as she still has her current sewing project to finish. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do, but I'm sure I'll find something to occupy myself with. 

 

Back later. 

 

Brian 

[melmerby]

Morning all

Nice bright day here in Worcs although at sunrise it was a very nippy -2.8C

 

Just been on the Eon website, got straight through and submitted the end of March readings. Job done.

[Barry O]

Been out to get some bird seed.. chaos in the B&M shop as their card reader has gone on go slow.. no problem but just tooka bit longer than planned.

 

I have realised that my first outdoor cricket fixture is......

 

NEXT Saturday.. fingers crossed that we have a warmer day than today..yikes! Now where did I put my Law Book??

 

Baz

[polybear]

2 hours ago, BoD said:

A reasonably successful time yesterday answering enquiries from the house buyer's solicitor.  Only a reasonable success though as quite some time was spent searching for information or documents that we have never had or have been lost in the mists  of time.  

 

A cynical Bear might suggest that Solicitors deliberately ask for obscure pointless documents just so they can jack the price up/justify their price in the first place....

 

2 hours ago, BoD said:

Kudos to Corgi though, two minutes after a phone call giving them the address a copy of the compliance certificate for the boiler pinged into my e-mail inbox with paper version to follow  by post.  It cost  slightly more than afternoon tea at F&M’s and they didn’t give me any champagne.

 

 

I'll bet there was no cake either.....

 

In other news.....

Lounge re-arranged, ready for papering.  Tick

Box rescued from the loft, 1off, for the sending of a reel of cable that Bear has been trying to flog on the 'bay for months.  It finally sold (I'll not get rich) - but the buyer was less than quick at getting his hand in his pocket and paying up (I almost cancelled the sale and posted snottogram feedback, but I decided to give a few more days).  More weight out of the loft - only 4.7 tonnes to go.....

Din Dins to investigate now, followed by a recce to the chemist and the Co-op.  What fun. 

[Pacific231G]

16 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

One aspect of the temporary loss of RMW has been reading LTC Rolt's autobiography, all three volumes of it.  This would have taken months....its......waffly. 

 

Some it really interesting, some of it a rant, some of it revealing that he really didn't know the meaning of poor, even when professing to be so - then admits to sending his two sons to public schools at the same time.

 

He lived an interesting life though.

I think for people of his background at that time, not being able to send the sons to public school would have seemed like abject poverty.

 

I read the three volumes of  "Lansdcape with..." some time ago and probably should read them again though they are a bit overlong. It was particularly interesting to get his rather franker account of the early period in the Talyllyn's preservation than in "Railway Adventure" though obviously we're only getting his side of the story. Were the railway's employees really being awkward or did he come over to them as someone who was juast playing at running a railway or even treating them as servants? Same thing with his falling out with the Inland Waterways Association- it would be good to know the other side of that.

It does seem clear that he played a major role in saving both our canals and our railway heritage but how key that role was we'll probably never really know. If he hadn't taken them on would others have assumed those roles or did both need someone whose freelance working life enabled him to devote time to both?   

   

[BoD]

26 minutes ago, polybear said:

A cynical Bear might suggest that Solicitors deliberately ask for obscure pointless documents just so they can jack the price up/justify their price in the first place....

 

The fact that at was April 1st did make me wonder about some of the enquiries I had to deal with.

[Tony_S]

My nephew (the one who lives in Zurich) has a partner(Magda) who is Austrian. When we saw them when they visited Enfield before Covid there was an extended family outing for English Afternoon Tea. When Magda had lived in England previously (studying for Masters degree in Durham) she had never experienced such an event. The venue had to be somewhere accessible for MiL so we went to a hotel restaurant near Barnet. I told Magda it was also my first time at a formal English Afternoon Tea too though I had often enjoyed afternoon cake in Austria. Champagne wasn’t chosen but there were lots of sandwiches and cakes. Everyone had different teas. I was of course boring and chose English Breakfast as I don’t really like other teas. After we had eaten all the sandwiches, the waiter asked if we would care for some more and another load arrived. All the cakes were eaten too. The North London branch of the family can demolish food quite spectacularly. 
We were on QM2 for a month in 2019 and as on our previous Cunard voyages we never made it to the formal afternoon tea service. In the afternoons we tended to drop in to the cafeteria, I suspect the cakes and sandwiches were the same anyway! 
Tony

Edited April 2, 2022 by Tony_S

[Pacific231G]

14 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Multi-storey Cake parking.  Nice.

Do they count how many you scoff and charge accordingly, or do you get to scoff the lot for a one-off entry fee?

Asking for a friend....

One doesn't scoff, one takes one's time and one savours the range of delicacies provided (but it's unlikely that one will leave any not consumed) . 

I had an excellent afternoon tea with one of my more civilised friends a few years ago in the library of the St. Ermin's hotel near St. James Park Underground. It was her recommendation (we usually meet for lunch) and a good one which I'm happy to pass on. I think we were there for the best part of three hours and, apart from refilling the teapot, they just left us to it for as long as we liked. Their current price is from £37. The current holder of the Afternoon Tea Award in the "traditional" category is the Savoy but theirs is £73! 

some of them come with champagne as well as tea but that just seems a little.... well to be frank....common.

[PhilJ W]

I am most annoyed with Royal Mail. I heard something come through the letter box while I was upstairs. When I came down a couple of minutes later I saw it was a card saying that they couldn't deliver three parcels because I wasn't in. I've now had to book a re-delivery for Tuesday. I had another delivery today, from Hermes that had no problems. The three parcels that RM should have delivered all contained items that can't be mentioned on ER's.

[grandadbob]

I posted this last October:

"We went for afternoon tea at The Ritz several years ago which at the time we thought was excellent and good value.   The current cost is now £60 *a head but we didn't pay anything like that and TBH don't think I would now.  I do remember paying £58 odd for 4 drinks in the bar, 2 cocktails and 2 double brandies and that made me blink at the time.  When we got back to the Land of Sutt  and went to the pub by the station my mate said "I'll get the drinks Bob as you bought the last round."  His round cost £14.50! "

I do like a good traditional afternoon tea and sometimes The Boss will do one here for family and friends and very good it is too.

 

*Now increased to £67 a head and from £89 with champoo.

Edited April 2, 2022 by grandadbob

[polybear]

31 minutes ago, grandadbob said:

I posted this last October:

"We went for afternoon tea at The Ritz several years ago which at the time we thought was excellent and good value.   The current cost is now £60 *a head but we didn't pay anything like that and TBH don't think I would now.  I do remember paying £58 odd for 4 drinks in the bar, 2 cocktails and 2 double brandies and that made me blink at the time.  When we got back to the Land of Sutt  and went to the pub by the station my mate said "I'll get the drinks Bob as you bought the last round."  His round cost £14.50! "

I do like a good traditional afternoon tea and sometimes The Boss will do one here for family and friends and very good it is too.

 

*Now increased to £67 a head and from £89 with champoo.

 

The owner of a swanky(ish) London Restaurant was on the news last night - he was saying that he expects to have to double prices soon in order to make a profit as a result of energy and staff price rises.  Bear predicts a lot of restaurants closing before too long, cos' I can see people not swallowing (see what I did there?) the rises.

Let's hope that Weatherspoons don't jack up the price of their full english**

(A certain Doc may have collapsed in despair at this point.....)

[45156]

Afternoon All

 

We're back, and I'm back. 

 

Moved but I won't bore you with the details - suffice to say, it was traumatic up ti 4.30 on the day of the move - then no landline phone and no broadband - just the mobile and a wifi hotspot which kept going down - then here wasn't here.

 

Ludlow is proving to be a very friendly place, and just about every tradesman who has attended has been efficient, reasonably priced, and cheerful - the one exception was a locksmith who came out after we had pre-arranged it, then charged us £189 to change the garage door handle - £100 of that was an "emergency call out plus first hour's labour".  When we almost got locked out due to a problem with the front door lock, a different locksmith was called, and came out - no call out, £135 to change the mortice for a BS one and to fettle the door surround, and check the rim latch.  Guess whose card I kept.  TV had no signal, and we now have a very good reception thanks to another very good aerial rigger.  Then there was the phone call that the cooker for which we had paid had been condemned and scrapped.  So a trip to Ludlow on the day we moved in resulted in a new one delivered the same day, and installed by a first class electrician who came out on the Saturday - so on Friday, we had a celebratory meal out at the Squirrel as we couldn't cook anyway.

 

Boxes are slowly disappearing, as we have now been moved for a fortnight.

 

Great to be back, and great to be moved.

 

Regards to All

Stewart

[monkeysarefun]

Spent the afternoon checking  out the huge swells hitting the beaches here this weekend, 10m waves are  way above  my pay grade but there were plenty out there  giving them  a bash, lots of broken boards.

 

My phone camera couldnt zoom in enough to get decent pics so I stole one off the news, this is at Tamarama, the next beach south of Bondi which was where I was. 

 

 

Video is Manly, northern beaches of Sydney.

 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[The White Rabbit]

G'day all. Well, it's good RMW is go again, though I feel for those who have lost large quantities of pictures. At the risk of sounding smug, I've probably only lost two or three dozen, mainly 'for information' on layout topic threads and some south west coast path snaps and other oddments on ERs and WTs. I was able to reload the more recent ones as I knew where the pics were on the computer, likewise the 'Rails' autocar thread. (Must check the 'restoration' thread next). But those with 100s or 1000s, well ... ouch .... 

 

I haven't been able to re-upload my avatar - what worked last time hasn't this. I'll give it a few days to settle down and if it still doesn't work, ask in the forum thread. 

 

If not four seasons in one day, it's seemed like four seasons in one (last) week. One day I'm being blinded and roasted by the sun if I stick my whiskers out of the burrow, the next I'm getting them frozen off. It is nice to have RMW back but did it have to be heralded by a snow storm? Two or three inches landed fairly quickly and then melted almost as quickly. Only a light frosting on the hills opposite Friday am - an effect cake aficionados would probably consider to be delicious as well as poetic. 

 

Our daffodils are now starting to bloom, though with the snow, two blooms have taken an early bath - a header straight into the birdbath. Strangely, the paler colour blooms are still upright, whereas the more intense yellows have bent over. And they are different ages too, so it's not an age thing. I've too much time to think and speculate at the moment. Though considering such issues does distract me from the various failings of the NHS. 

 

Sadly, five fields next to us are due to be built on - despite all the empty words spouted about using brownfield sites first and preserving greenbelt land - and over the last two weeks several JCBs have been prowling over the land like mechanical predators. They were digging trenches and we got a flyer through the letterbox saying before construction started, some archaeological excavations were due to take place. Now I acknowledge I know very little about such matters but using JCBs did seem to be a tad heavy-handed. To quote Sgt. Wilson, "Are you sure that's wise"? I would have thought using ground-penetrating radar would be a better way of investigating for artefacts and 'disturbances'. Maybe it makes sense when you know a bit more about these things? 

 

No sign of the hedgehog, though the bluetits are in full nesting mode. And I hear the owls sometimes at night. A neighbour has commented on the curlew calls (from said fields) though I've not heard them yet myself. Nor any sound of a cuckoo, so no letters to Fleet Street just yet from here...