Early Risers.

[polybear]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

btw I visited the property during the cold, wet spell after Easter. There's a good caff, but no NT shop was apparent unless it was accessed through the caff, which I didn't visit. Also to access the caff, you have to have paid to enter the property.

 

 

Bear used to like visiting the muddlin' exhibition at Chatham Historic Dockyard - for many years we'd go in the Dockyard Cafe (which was in the entrance building) at half time in order to access decent food and seating.  All was fine (and I imagine they did a nice trade that weekend too) until some tw@t decided it was off limits unless you paid to enter the Dockyard (currently £28-50 on the door).  P0ke it.

 

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

Well.....

 

The "Alert test" was as irritating as it was expected to be, it's definitly worth disabling alerts in future!

 

Bear received n'owt** - which confirms Bear's status as part of the dispensable Great Unwashed.  Oh well.

(**Not that I expected to, being a mere 3G Peasant).

 

Bear here....

Well I now have a working outside socket - and all without sparks, smoke or fried fur.  Tick - though it took a lot longer than I expected - or should've done.  Then it was yet more wiring in the hallway - most of which was inside the C.U. Box and a right PITA to do.  If The Paw doesn't strike back as a result it'll be a bluddy miracle.

Bear gone.

 

 

[Tony_S]

28 minutes ago, polybear said:

Bear received n'owt** - which confirms Bear's status as part of the dispensable Great Unwashed.  Oh well.

(**Not that I expected to, being a mere 3G Peasant).

MiL’s phone is 4G but being a model aimed at the elderly it doesn’t get all the new Android versions so is stuck on Android version 7. That wasn’t modern enough for the emergency warning either.  

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I suspect, because a lot was destroyed by the American air raids that deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure in WWII).

Firstly, high-altitude WWII bombing was notoriously inaccurate, leading to area bombing and secondly, industrial manufacturing in Japan was widely distributed in urban areas - with a supply chain starting with many small workshops.

 

Just be thankful that the original recommendations of the nuclear target committee were not followed. Their recommendations (May 11) were:

1. Kyoto
2. Hiroshima
3. Yokohama
4. Kokura Arsenal

The final approved list of targets were: "Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki".

 

Nagasaki was bombed because Kokura, the primary target for the plutonium weapon (Fat man), was obscured by weather and Nagasaki was the secondary target for the mission.

 

More people may have died during the Operation Meetinghouse incendiary (essentially napalm) raids on Tokyo in March 1945 than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

 

As you might expect there were conflicting opinions in US command. Curtis LeMay did not follow recommendations of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) team, which determined:

Quote

[after] assessing the effectiveness of air attacks on Germany, that operations against Japan should focus on the country's transportation network and other targets with the goal of crippling the movement of goods and destroying food supplies

This was the strategy adopted by the USN when carrier aircraft from Task Force 38 sank the rail ferries carrying coal from Hokkaido to Honshu in mid-July and effectively halted Japanese ability to further prosecute the war. Additionally, Japanese harbours were extensively mined by B-29s.

 

[The White Rabbit]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

I'm pretty sure many countries have one of these kind of things.

 

Russell Crowe is on ours.

 

 

Helmet, breastplate, [awl] shield, gone ... 

[Ozexpatriate]

7 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

In this story, adolescent humanoids on an alien planet had to survive a series of trials and tests in order to become an adult “human” (or adult humanoid, if you will).

It's a pretty common trope in everything from children's and Y.A. historical fiction* to Harry Potter** or even the Hunger Games series.

 

* Warrior Scarlet (Rosemary Sutcliffe) which I was given as a boy

 

** The boggart (et al)

 

Edited April 23, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

Im pretty sure many countries have one of these kind of things.

 

Russell Crowe is on ours.

I read an article that Australia is making it easier for New Zealand citizens to get Australian citizenship. Do you think Russell Crowe will become Australian?

[Ozexpatriate]

6 hours ago, Tony_S said:

The Critic is a magazine produced for and by conservative contrarians.  So it would say that sort of thing. The article was written in 2020 when all places were somewhat affected by Covid. 

When I looked at it the (mis)quote attributed to Twain occurred to me:

Quote

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

 

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Russell Crowe is on ours.

But not his leather jockstrap from Cinderella Man.

[The White Rabbit]

TMI mate ... 

[jjb1970]

Frank Herbert in Dune had the gom jabbar test to shift humans from the rejects, pulling the hand out of the box met with death.

[grandadbob]

Ooops!  I may have mentioned that I was only going to have one small glass of wine tonight.....I forgot and have had two large ones.  Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Hip still hurts and yet another hot water bottle has been applied to the region.  I may deploy the Penderyn earlier than planned but it won't be applied to The Hip.

Wonder of wonders and miracle of miracles, have just looked at surgery website and appointments are available tomorrow morning so have just booked one with my favourite doctor.  The surgery is just along the road from our local Euronics dealer who is our preferred supplier of domestic appliances so will meet The Boss there afterwards.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

What is all this "alert" stuff I hear about. Rick ( @Gwiwer ) mentioned it yesterday but I did not comprehend his meaning.

 

The Emergency alert system (or its predecessors) have been in place in the US since the cold war. Periodically* the television goes blank accompanied by a hideous buzzing tone followed by a voiceover "This is a test of the the emergency alert system ...".

 

* It is weekly and is not at the same time.

 

Other systems appear on mobile telephones, including "Amber" (abduction) alerts. I remember one at the office where everyone's telephone went off almost, but not quite simultaneously.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

14 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

Frank Herbert in Dune had the gom jabbar test ...

Echoed later with the water of life / Kwisatz Haderach.

[Gwiwer]

18 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

What is all this "alert" stuff I hear about. Rick ( @Gwiwer ) mentioned it yesterday but I did not comprehend his meaning.

 

The Emergency alert system (or its predecessors) have been in place in the US since the cold war.

The (apparently very flawed) testing of some system to cause mobile phones to wail in a demented manner and transmit a text message (in English only).  

 

I received no such thing.  I had set my phone to "I am responsible for my safety not some bureaucrat or other unknown" mode.  I was on a bus filled with perhaps 50 people at the time the alert went off.  I thing three people received it and not at the same time - it was different by several minutes.  

 

The UK has had an audible warning system since WW2.  The air-raid sirens installed then should still be fully functional although I believe many have been removed.  They were used post-war and pre-paging to summon firefighters when the need arose; stations with a permanent watch would sound the alarm if called out in order that a retained crew could assemble and provide cover or assist at a larger job.  More recently still they have been used as the London Flood Alert System; sounding the sirens would mean imminent flooding - take action.  They were tested I think annually with all radio and TV channels broadcasting messages to confirm that this was just a test.  

 

There are, to my mind, valid arguments both ways in terms of personal safety.  I understand the arguments about those with "hidden" phones being alarmed that their location might become disclosed.  Such people as those affected by domestic violence, restraining orders and witness protection could become "exposed" to those wishing them harm.  I, siding with Captain Cynical here perhaps, also resent the intrusion into daily lives which is now able to occur if one has a mobile device and fails to silence it from government messages.  On the other hand if there ever were to be a national emergency so sudden and potentially catastrophic that it required activation of such a system then I might not be in a position to do anything more than the proverbial head-between-knees-and-kiss-my-ar$e-goodbye.  

 

I hold a safety critical position of employment.  I am responsible for my safety and that of everyone within my sphere of influence.  I am "advised" almost daily that "I don't need to be told" about such things as standing behind yellow lines or waiting until the train stops.  In truth it is only advice because we are not the behaviour police and cannot enforce anything.  But if we fail to advise and someone comes to harm which might have been prevented by taking action then the onus is on us - me personally - and so is the liability in law.  

 

So when it comes to phone alarms by all means advise.  But please do it in a non-intrusive way.  A simple "beep-beep" rather than a demented wailing.  And please acknowledge that many folk in the UK do not speak English fluently nor as a first language and may well not understand what is being said.  Of interest the alert could only be sent to smart phones running on 4G or 5G with the most recent operating systems.  That is probably less than half of all mobiles in the country at any given time and might represent less than 40% of the total population.  

 

If something so catastrophic that an alert was really needed became imminent and unavoidable I would hope that more than 40% of everyone might somehow be informed.  The question is "How?"

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

3 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

But please do it in a non-intrusive way.  A simple "beep-beep" rather than a demented wailing.  And please acknowledge that many folk in the UK do not speak English fluently nor as a first language and may well not understand what is being said.

Mobile telephone alerts in the US are essentially an SMS - there is no wailing (from what I remember) or audible content beyond the telephone's normal alert tones.

 

The television alerts do have the awful buzzing noise and English language voiceover, usually accompanied by English and Spanish text on the screen.

 

These days there are no* air raid sirens. Some places do have sirens for tornadoes and others for tsunamis.

 

* I imagine military establishments might have something.

[Ian Hargrave]

7 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

One of the fruits of this attitude can be found at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire.  In the hands of the NT since 1967, it has recently been repurposed as The Childrens Country House at Sudbury

 

While the exhibits of the Elizabeth Cadbury toy collection are interesting, their display is less than coherent  (possibly due to the lack of skilled curators?) and the history of this fine building has disappeared under a wave of dumbed down "interpretation". There are no conventionally displayed rooms to tell of the life and times of the house . The gardens are little more than a playground for young visitors.

 

Car parking is a hoot too, approximately a quarter mile hike to the house, crossing a busy road, not entirely suitable for the grandparents who might take their grandchildren on a visit...

    

I've also noted that the NT is hiking on the door admission prices.  If you visit more than a handful of NT properties through the year, membership is still cost effective!

 

btw I visited the property during the cold, wet spell after Easter. There's a good caff, but no NT shop was apparent unless it was accessed through the caff, which I didn't visit. Also to access the caff, you have to have paid to enter the property.

 

I’ll pass your comments on to a friend of mine who is a NT volunteer and passionate Arts Society advocate for Sudbury Hall . FYI.It has for many years borne the title “Museum Of Childhood “ and remains  a popular venue  for children of all ages. My son,who reaches his 51st birthday shortly,remembers birthday parties we celebrated there so many happy years ago. Since then,we’ve paid visits with nieces,nephews and grandchildren and enjoyed sharing the experience with them. For myself,in my capacity as a teacher in the locality ,Sudbury helped nurture an appreciation of social history and just the pure enjoyment of widening a young person’s view of the world . Without a sense of history we lose our meaning as a society.So Sudbury isn’t a theme park.But it’s there to be experienced and enjoyed. Recent visits there reassure me it’s still doing that a few generations along.

 

Car parking ? Busy main road  ? So then where else do you suggest ? The car park is sufficient for purpose,has picnic facilities and certainly does NOT involve crossing a busy main road….that’s the A 50 which by passed Sudbury some 25 years ago. 
       All this apart,please remember the NT is mainly staffed by volunteers who do their best to ensure you enjoy your time with them. Sorry you feel jaundiced by what you feel was a negative experience. 

[Gwiwer]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Lovely busses those Green RTs.

LT Green Line? Right? Didn’t they also have an unique logo as well (or did that come later, after the RTs were retired?).

 

It’s quite the pity that successive governments and various administrations have chosen to bu99er up what was once an excellent joined up and integrated public transport (LT). It was never perfect (what ever is?) but clever investment and wise management could have kept LT successful.

 

So much of Britain’s infrastructure has been sacrificed on the altar of the personal automobile (and often ideologically driven as well)  

 

A “food-for-thought”  quote from Gustavo Petro, Mayor of Bogotá “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation”

 

London Transport operated two largely separated bus networks from 1933 until 1969.  Central Area buses were red; they still are by order of the Mayor of London and TfL who dictate that the famous colour must be used, specifying the pantone to be sure it looks right.  

 

The Country Area extended in a ring from about 15 - 30 miles out from the Charing Cross "centre" of London and used green buses although largely of the same or similar types to the red ones.  Geographically the outer limits were Letchworth, Horsham, Tilbury and High Wycombe although a few projections beyond those ran at certain times; the absolute limits (none served all day every day) were Baldock, Handcross, West Wycombe and Shell Haven oil refinery.  Quite a stretch of imagination to call any of those "London".  

 

Green Line coaches were run by the Country Bus Department and were a limited-stop cross-London (mostly) network of routes which were well used before cars were commonly owned and whilst going out rather than staying in was normal for entertainment.  Routes such as Tunbridge Wells to Windsor or Dorking to Luton plied several times every hour every day.  Fares were higher than "green" bus fares over common sections of route as they were intended for longer distance users and offered (in theory at least) greater comfort.  

 

The former Country Area operations were sold to the National Bus Company in 1970 who established London Country Bus Services running much the same (but by then shrinking) network including the Green Line network.  Rapidly-falling patronage killed off some routes and saw drastic cuts to many others.  Bus privatisation then saw the operator dismantled and sold off piecemeal.  Some parts performed better than others.  

 

Today Green Line is almost gone.  Just a single route runs from London to Windsor and is now operated by Reading Buses(!).  One peak-time service is hanging on between London and Luton.  And that's it.  Of the country bus network as it was the mortal remains are patchy.  Some routes retain the same numbers they always used and are run by one of the larger national groups or small independent businesses.  Usually these days with financial support from the local authority because patronage is often in single-digit numbers.  Some routes have vanished altogether including former busy trunk routes linking major towns.  

 

You can still catch a 386 between Bishops Stortford and Hitchin through some very small villages indeed, although the route isn't quite the same.  It was only ever run on three days a week to cater for market-day shopping and so it remains, remarkably, many years later.  But the 414 which plied between Croydon, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking and Horsham is completely gone without trace.  Other buses cover most of the route but in disjointed sections from one town to the next only.  And (south of Redhill) nothing at all in the evenings nor on Sundays.  

 

The rural bus is a threatened species in the UK.  It has been strangled and tortured out of existence by politicians and politics and has been the victim of social change as car ownership became the norm, homes gained televisions and now the internet, plus most recently the advent of the delivery-van culture where we order everything online rather than "going shopping".  

 

It's good to have the occasional reminder of how things once were.  

[PupCam]

Evening All!

 

 

Very late on parade today again I'm afraid.  I'll have to watch it otherwise I'll be on a charge!

 

More Pampas worrying, another trip to the Tidy Tip, the replacement of a front indicator bulb in a late Fiesta (WAPITA!) and more Beeza fettling.  The only notable result is that I now have something that looks suspiciously like a complete 1939 BSA B21 250 motorcycle in the garage.   

 

Only two little jobs to do now on the Beeza; make a "paper" gasket for the tappet cover and, while the tappet cover is off, check the tappet clearances now they've settled in after its brief run yesterday.   Then I might have to consider a small bimble around the small village that is Puppers Magna.    I won't be going further than that for a bit  just so I can push it home if needs be - let's hope that won't be necessary as I'm really not up to pushing a motorised vehicle these days.      I hope I won't annoy the locals if I do a few circuits but then again ...... 🤣

 

Night All!

 

 

[Gwiwer]

17 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

LT Green Line? Right? Didn’t they also have an unique logo as well

Adding to that point.  

 

LT used the famous "ring and bar" logo in one form or another from at least 1933.  It appeared on bus stop flags, tube stations and all manner of printed material.  It still does.  Central "red" buses and Country Area "green" buses used the gold-block underlined "LONDON TRANSPORT" fleet name on the side panels but the logo featured elsewhere.  Green Line coaches used the ring and bar logo with the words "GREEN LINE" in gold against a black background along the bar as the fleet name.  This logo was also used on their publicity material.  They maintained a distinctly separate and "quality" image throughout their LT days.  

 

Post 1970 in NBC days LCBS, as it had become, was not entitled to use the LT logo or fleet name styles.  They adopted canary yellow instead of cream relief for the livery and a slightly brighter shade of green.  The logo they used has been described as a "flying polo" or "winged polo" as it was a circle (representing London) with horizontal bars of increasing length from top to bottom.  Within a couple of years NBC had issued its corporate style manual requiring all buses to be painted plain "leaf green" or "poppy red" (without relief colour, initially) and using the "Double N" symbol alongside a fleet name in NBC corporate font.  Many LCBS vehicles were eventually so adorned but not all ever received NBC style.  Green Line coaches were permitted to wear a "dual-purpose" livery of leaf green lower and white upper panels or, in the case of some RF class vehicles, with a wide white waistband between the exiting lines of bright trim.  

 

During the NBC years changes were so frequent that it seemed at times no two vehicles were in the same style.  The shade of "leaf green" was distinctly lighter than their NBC neighbours at Maidstone & District or Southdown used.  White relief was applied - or not - in many different styles.  

 

One other change was forced by the 1970 sale.  LT holds the rights to use of the New Johnston font.  The newly hived-off LCBS country operations could no longer obtain destination blinds using this font so used a close alternative as and when new blinds were required.  Some of the old ones lasted a good ten years or more however meaning you could still see London Transport-style blind lettering well into the 1980s on country buses and coaches, but you could also see all manner of more recent versions.  Some were more legible than others!  

[Tony_S]

27 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Geographically the outer limits were Letchworth, Horsham, Tilbury and High Wycombe

I think I only went for one (return) journey on a green London bus. Aditi and I were house hunting back in 1977 and the estate agent in Grays recommended a property in South Ockenden. Aditi would have had to have travelled by bus from South Ockenden to Upminster or Hornchurch to work. The bus went from Romford to Tilbury but we only did the Hornchurch to South Ockenden bit. Aditi thought the property was horrible, didn’t like the walk to the bus stop and as she worked quite late some evenings didn’t really want to be on that bus late at night.  We ended up in Benfleet, and we are still here. The buses are all sorts of colour out here now but I think Essex Bus are returning to a green livery but a brighter shade than the old Eastern National green. 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

MiL’s phone is 4G but being a model aimed at the elderly it doesn’t get all the new Android versions so is stuck on Android version 7. That wasn’t modern enough for the emergency warning either.  

 

So it's The Great Unwashed plus the Elderly that are dispensable.  Bear feels a Government conspiracy theory coming on.....

 

20 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

The UK has had an audible warning system since WW2.  The air-raid sirens installed then should still be fully functional although I believe many have been removed.  

 

A suspicion - and then a Google suggests that the UK-wide Air Raid Siren system was largely dismantled and/or decommissioned in the early 1990's; some are obviously still in use - such as those warning of London flooding - but as to whether or not they are all still capable of working (or even still connected) I've no idea.  Many have apparently been removed, and many new developments won't have coverage from the original system (even if it was still fully intact) anyway.  A bad mistake in this Bear's book, as the sound of an ARS going off really does focus your attention (I recall the one near Bear Towers going off some years ago  - and Momma Bear had neglected to mention that it was a planned test; I thought I'd only got 3 minutes to grab as much cake as possible.......).

 

In other news......

Bear had a weird dream last night - I was at a Missenden Abbey Model Railway Weekend and it was brekkies time - Bear had his plate stacked with goodies but the fried bread was taking ages to appear.  Now that's worrying.

 

And finally.....

Bear started watching Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone on DVD last night, finishing it today; I've been listening to the audiobooks via Alexa or laptop for quite a while now (I'm pretty much listening to them on a loop whilst either doing the DIY or heading for snoozybearland) and I figured that watching the films would be an interesting comparison; it's certainly apparent that much of the detail that's in the books doesn't appear in the films, which isn't surprising because some of the books are over 30 hours long in audio format.  Of course the films used to be on TV every other day, but now I want them they're nowhere to be seen 🤬 so I bought the set of 8 DVD's (the 7th book is in two parts) off Ebay for nine quid, which seemed a pretty good deal.

 

Tomorrow sees a Telephone appointment with the Doc's Surgery Pharmacist (their idea - box ticking I guess but I imagine it eases the Doc's workload and is a good idea in it's own right).

Apart from that it'll be yet more H/S/L work.

 

And finally finally.....

A friend tells me that EDF predict her combined G & E bill is something in the region of £4.5K/year 😮

Sh111111111111111111t........................

 

Bear gone.

 

 

 

[jamie92208]

As Bear mentions above the National siren system was switched off some time ago.  We had a hand cranked one in my first nick and also a little grey box that ticked when we turned it on. We had to check that it was still ticking once a week. Apparently the message to sound the siren would have come via the little grey box.  We were supposed to turn it on at times of high tension.  

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

26 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I think I only went for one (return) journey on a green London bus. Aditi and I were house hunting back in 1977 and the estate agent in Grays recommended a property in South Ockenden. Aditi would have had to have travelled by bus from South Ockenden to Upminster or Hornchurch to work. The bus went from Romford to Tilbury but we only did the Hornchurch to South Ockenden bit. Aditi thought the property was horrible, didn’t like the walk to the bus stop and as she worked quite late some evenings didn’t really want to be on that bus late at night.  We ended up in Benfleet, and we are still here. The buses are all sorts of colour out here now but I think Essex Bus are returning to a green livery but a brighter shade than the old Eastern National green. 

That would be the 370 route, still running up until lockdown at least but shortened to terminate at Upminster railway station. Sadly there are few routes crossing the 'border' (basically the M25) between Greater London and surrounding counties. I can remember when London Transport central (red) buses ran as far as Brentwood and Ongar/North Weald.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. The FA cup buqqered up the TV schedules again and what with the wall to wall coverage of the London Marathon BBC was a washout today. At the moment no problems with the arthritis/sciatica or the eczema and just a few sniffles from the hay fever.

[Ozexpatriate]

27 minutes ago, polybear said:

... it's certainly apparent that much of the detail that's in the books doesn't appear in the films, which isn't surprising because some of the books are over 30 hours long in audio format.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was responsible for my son essentially giving up on reading - which to this day I still don't understand. He was a very good reader when young but found himself overwhelmed by the length of that book and has rarely read much in the 20 years or so since. He claims he wants to, but in the end, doesn't.

 

I can't criticize. I don't read many books anymore either. I used to get a lot of reading done while flying (which I did regularly) but haven't done that in more than three years now.