Early Risers.

[TheQ]

There goes another deltic or two.

The microwave door won't open..

It's earnt it's money though it's well over 10 years old.

 

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by TheQ

[iL Dottore]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

Oddly enough nowadays people with anti scientific views about all sorts of things (vaccines for instance ) seem to be able to attach themselves to both extremes of the spectrum. 

I’ve noticed that too, Tony. How anti-science so many on the political fringes are. Could it be because science is very, very complex and with very few exceptions (such as the speed of light [perhaps?]) - has no definitive answers or fixed points. And the one thing that unites the extremes of both politics and religion is that they love definitive answers because They Have The Truth.
 

Which is probably why they either dismiss, dislike or outright ban science - it’s a bit hard to convince your fellow-travellers and followers that the human body is made out of teeny, tiny, oven fries when those d**n heretical scientists say “err, we checked using powerful microscopes and other tools and it’s not….”

[iL Dottore]

47 minutes ago, TheQ said:

There goes another deltic or two.

The microwave door won't open..

It's earnt it's money though it's well over 10 years old.

Tut, tut. They just don’t make things to last nowadays…..

[Tony_S]

51 minutes ago, TheQ said:

There goes another deltic or two.

The microwave door won't open..

It's earnt it's money though it's well over 10 years old.

 

 

I hope your dinner wasn't stuck inside. 

[TheQ]

Just some peas, they aren't in there now, some leverage was required..

[zarniwhoop]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

There goes another deltic or two.

The microwave door won't open..

It's earnt it's money though it's well over 10 years old.

 

 

Blimey, where do you buy them to get to that price ?  Mine (ex tesco) went a couple of weeks ago after a similar time. Got a new one at the local asda for much less than that, a quick look online suggests it was about £55. OTOH, this is only a microwave  - a control for the setting and a timer, no fancy extras or grill. and it seems to need longer than the old one when cooking things, both are/were nominally 800W.

[TheQ]

Our requirement is a combi oven of 25 - 28 ltr capacity, which ups the price somewhat..

[polybear]

8 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Dr. SWMBO “attended” her uncle’s funeral by electronic means at midnight last night. We had called time on the day around 9.30pm in order to get a couple of hours kip first. Because having been awake since before 5am the chances of then staying awake until 1am were pretty remote. 

 

What was the Mk.2 Eulogy like - the one that replaced Dr. SWMBO's? 

 

2 hours ago, TheQ said:

John Cleese has 3 ex wives and a current one, they've had much more of his money than he has.. he's probably getting ready to loose some more..

 

 

 

JC told the Express last Sept. that "I don't really have any savings"; his divorce in 2008 cost him £12M.  Big, Big Ouch.

Haven't these people heard of pre-nups?

 

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

One extreme seems to find offence in use of what may or may not be historical racial or social insults. The other extreme seems to find the concept of women taking control of their own bodies offensive. Oddly enough nowadays people with anti scientific views about all sorts of things (vaccines for instance ) seem to be able to attach themselves to both extremes of the spectrum. 

 

Bear find offence in just how much the price of Co-op LDC/CCC/SCC has been jacked up recently.  Anything else and I just let someone else take offence.  It's easier that way.

[The Lurker]

Our microwave is the same age as Younger Lurker- we bought it when he was a baby because the bottle warmer we had for his elder brother had broken- and felt really slow when he was wailing for milk at some godforsaken hour!

 

that makes it 14 years old. It is quite possibly the newest white good in the house.

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. My ten year old microwave is still working as normal but the rotating knob to set the time has to be used very carefully. Behind the knob is a series of cams which I'm pretty certain are of plastic and these are worn resulting in nothing happening when the knob is turned fast. I'm not yet considering a new one yet but when I replace it I might find a use for it as a spray booth.

8 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I feel the same about the return of John Cleese to Basil Fawlty. Fawlty Towers was perfect, the writing was outstanding, the performances stellar and the whole was more than the sum of it's parts. It is a genuine classic of TV and comedy which has rarely been equalled and never surpassed in my opinion. I shudder to think what a new show will do to its legacy. It might not matter but I find once artists revisit past glories the originals are never looked at in quite the same way again.

I recall a few years ago they tried to revive a few sitcoms with mixed results (Are you being served, Steptoe and Son, Porridge and one or two others IIRC. The only one that came out well was Porridge, which was updated to modern times and 'Fletch' was the grandson of the original. The others was only a case of dusting off the old scripts. They did not do well, AYBS wasn't that bad but Steptoe and Son was dire. 

[Winslow Boy]

5 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. My ten year old microwave is still working as normal but the rotating knob to set the time has to be used very carefully. Behind the knob is a series of cams which I'm pretty certain are of plastic and these are worn resulting in nothing happening when the knob is turned fast. I'm not yet considering a new one yet but when I replace it I might find a use for it as a spray booth.

I recall a few years ago they tried to revive a few sitcoms with mixed results (Are you being served, Steptoe and Son, Porridge and one or two others IIRC. The only one that came out well was Porridge, which was updated to modern times and 'Fletch' was the grandson of the original. The others was only a case of dusting off the old scripts. They did not do well, AYBS wasn't that bad but Steptoe and Son was dire. 

 

I think that may have something to do with the quality of the talent back then and with what's available nowadays plus of course we have to be pc, woke etc.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Winslow Boy

[polybear]

Bear here......

The Hallway light now works 😁  Big Tick.

I did learn some knew words though - primarily due to one of the tiny brass screws falling out of the leccy connector strip in the pendant light.  Trying to put that screw back in again was "fun"....involving the screw being dropped "numerous times" in the process.  Tweezers sorted it.  Eventually.

 

Once that was done there was no more H/S/L refurb work carried out - the left forepaw was givin' it serious grief by this point.  More below.

 

Bear's Prime TV Film Recommendation of the Day:

"The Upside" - about an ex-con caring for a Millionaire who's quadraplegic.  Well worth a watch - and pretty funny in places too; based on a true story.

 

After that I carried out some emergency Life Saving Surgery to the KKK (no, not THAT KKK....) - this was the pendulum clock fixed a few days ago.  Bear thought it'd be nice to order a "ticking" pendulum mechanism (the old ones have always been silent);  big, big BIG mistake - the tick was so bluddy loud (I suspect the tiled kitchen doesn't help) that it was drivin' this Bear nutz.  I did think that I might get used to it, but no - so decided it was either Kitty or me.  Various trials and ponderings later I discovered that the actual ticking was caused by Kitty's neck (= a plastic rod at the end of the pendulum) whackin' against the insides of Kitty's front paws.  The fix involved pulling Kitty's head off, then slipping a loose piece of shrink sleeve onto Kitty's neck to act as a dampener.  Job done - and Kitty gets to see another day.

 

Talking of necks - and painful left paws - I realised that all I have to do to get the upper left paw down to the elbow hurting is to tip the Beary Bonce backwards a bit.  Dr. Bear suggests a trapped nerve - if so it can bluddy well get untrapped PDQ cos' I've had enough of it.

 

Bear gone.

[Barry O]

6 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

No wonder the Poms do so badly out there.  Having to pitch and bowl for the extra four-and-a-half-and-a-bit inches would make all the difference.  In some cases it's the difference between run out and not out.  

 

Where's @Barry O Baz when you need him? 

I am here.. officially test matches all play too 22 yards. The number of balls in an over is 6 as per the MCC Laws of cricket. On the other hand the whippersnapper of the ICC (Dominated by Indian Cricket Board and the Oz cricket board currently) change the laws to suit themselves. As in bouncers over the batters heads are wides according to the ICC, no balls in the Laws. This means test match bowlers are more likely to bowl over the head bouncers.

 

A good bowler won't be bothered with the extra few inches so long as they have practiced bowling on that length.

 

Rin outs are different. No test umpire gives a run out now. The off field umpires review them. The 4 and a bit inches could be a problem but there are more flaws in other areas of the professional game to worry about run outs.

 

A local evening league still uses 8 ball overs. This means they need to bowl 96 balls in a innings. Colin Graves "invented" the hundred.. why? His team plays in the 96 ball league.. go figure!

 

Baz

[Coombe Barton]

… if someone tells me they’ve been playing the lute for ten years I say they haven’t, they’ve been playing the lute for one year and spent nine years tuning the damned thing.” ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2023/02/11/infection-rate-a-quarter-up-since-start-of-month-school-absences-up-and-a-gathering-about-the-failed-brexit/

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

Our requirement is a combi oven of 25 - 28 ltr capacity, which ups the price somewhat..

Our current microwave combi oven/grill microwave is quite large but one of its size (claims 40 litre ) doesn’t seem to be available now. We got a combi oven one as we only have a single main oven so it was useful at one time to have a separate oven. Nowadays it rarely gets used as anything other than a microwave. I have already chosen what I will replace it with if it fails but Aditi doesn’t like the look of that one but I suspect it is because she hasn’t seen it in person just online. 
Tony

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

As you well know Baz change is seen as dangerous.

"Back in the day"* it was common in Portland coffee shops (before being amalgamated into the mermaid empire) to see handwritten signs on the tip jar saying:

Quote

IF YOU FEAR CHANGE

LEAVE IT HERE

* When people still used cash for such transactions instead of NFC-based electronic wallets et al.

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Perhaps send the bill to Chancellor Schulz.

I doubt Rishi would want the bill for something like this one from 2021.

 

Then there was the blockbuster discovered in Frankfurt in 2017 that caused the evacuation of 70,000.

[PeterBB]

23 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Rummaging has been banned for years at our recycling centres. We went today and as usual it was all very organised. However from next month Essex recycling centres will be by appointment only, 15 minute slots booked between a week and one day in advance. Arrive by car only. Suggests one visit per week. When we tidied our loft last year we were going daily.

A silly idea because you do not know when you will have the time and of course the likely result ... my guess would be more fly-tipping.  Derby instituted one of this type and also a maximum of 12 visits per year ... so what do new residents do with what was left behind?

 

[Gwiwer]

Evening all. As the good PC of Dock Green used to say. 
 

Some digging over of the borders occupied the afternoon. The hedge is about to pop its leaf buds and the soil is ready to receive wildflower seeds. Some of the stray grass removed has been relocated to the bald and rutted patches where careless van drivers have driven over the grass rather than the drive. For which there is no excuse whatsoever. 
 

 

 

In other news the trip to Devon planned for the week ahead is in doubt. Dr. SWMBO is taking longer than she would like to recover from a cold. Our two friends with whom we should have been staying have come down with the Great Pestilence. We might be staying home all week. 
 

 

[polybear]

8 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Evening all. As the good PC of Dock Green used to say. 
 

Some digging over of the borders occupied the afternoon. The hedge is about to pop its leaf buds and the soil is ready to receive wildflower seeds. Some of the stray grass removed has been relocated to the bald and rutted patches where careless van drivers have driven over the grass rather than the drive. For which there is no excuse whatsoever. 

 

Buddy ex-next door also used to get suitably p1ssed off at such behaviour outside his house; he filled a bucket with concrete then, once hardened he tipped out the resulting lump, painted it white and parked it in the appropriate place.  Worked wonders.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

I recall a few years ago they tried to revive a few sitcoms with mixed results (Are you being served ...

I imagine that sans the bawdy/scatological "jokes" Are You Being Served? would be down to about five minutes of content.

 

Fawlty Towers / Farty Towels / Flowery Twats / Fatty Owls / Watery Fowls etc was perhaps the best written sit-com ever. The writing, usually weaving two or three story arcs into a single climax in the final act was exceptionally tight. This is really difficult to achieve and is perhaps the reason that there were only twelve episodes ever written. One wonders just how much the exacting attention to the craft in the Booth/Cleese writing collaboration led to their personal breakup (before season two was completed).

 

I watched a contemporary sit-com last night. It had two independent story arcs that were completely independent, largely character driven and part of multi-season storylines. Nothing wrong with that, but not the technical craft demonstrated by Fawlty Towers.

 

In contrast there were 69 episodes of Are You Being Served?. (See what I did there? 😉 But it is factually accurate if Wikipedia can be trusted.) And 74 episodes of On the Buses. Dad's Army ran to 80 episodes.

 

The 'cleverest' sit-com writing (in my opinion) is Yes Minister of which there were only 21 episodes, not counting the 16 episodes of Yes Prime Minister (which I never saw).  The level of writing talent needed to accomplish this sort of thing is not conducive to dozens of episodes.

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[New Haven Neil]

Morning - well maybe count it as tomorrow.....

 

Microwaves - ours is 19 currently, had one internal repair on a plastic clip that one button pushes.  One drop of superglue.

 

Miserable night last night, very poor sleep, hips on fire.  Wondering about a new mattress, but not sure what, currently a Tempur Cloud 9 memory foam multilayer thing - too soft?

 

Saw friend Jayne's new doggie Meg today, she's a re-homing (Meg, not Jayne....) from friends, whose other dogs and her were not getting on.  Seems settled already after 5 days, Billy her other collie is fine with her (she's a tri-colour collie) and Jayne has already started agility lessons with her. That's Meg, not Jayne.....who is quite lithe, though.

 

 

[Erichill16]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

.

 

The 'cleverest' sit-com writing (in my opinion) is Yes Minister of which there were only 21 episodes, not counting the 16 episodes of Yes Prime Minister (which I never saw).  The level of writing talent needed to accomplish this sort of thing is not conducive to dozens of episodes.

 

I seem to recall they were Margaret Thatcher’s favorite programmes as they were so ‘lifelike’.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Never attempt to decimalise imperial measurements.  Use the closest available imperial fraction.  

Wotz an "imperial fraction"? (A half crown?) 😉 Is it vulgar but not improper?

 

Mileage posts on US highways use decimal fractions of a mile (tenths) - 10.1, 10.2 etc.

 

Not miles and chains. Or furlongs, rods, poles, yards, etc. About the only place yards appear is in American Football* Except of course, it is called "a game of inches" despite there being no "inches" anywhere in the game.

 

* and by consequence "football fields" (120 yards) being used as a "relatable" unit of distance.

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Dad's Army ran to 80 episodes.

But “Bodger and Badger” had over a hundred.