Early Risers.

[polybear]

BH

TBSB....

Burgerall energy - shattered all the time.  Red stuff bein' sucked in a few days.

ER & TNM only scanned so apols. if special stuff missed.

VSBT's to @Barry O - if bear right then you told 'em to wedge their cricket.  Not surprised - your posts suggest it's been a PITA for a while.  Good move - play trains instead.

BG

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

I have had a couple of quiet days lounging about. I slipped over on a track up in the hills on Saturday and sprained my ankle. The swelling is now reducing and the bruising has stopped spreading but mobility is only slowly returning. It won’t affect my ability to drive home as it is my left foot and the car is an automatic. Anyway Aditi would be happy driving it on the autoroutes.  
It is cooler here today, the thunderstorms forecast for yesterday never appeared. I was able to hobble down for meals fortunately. Although our room is on the third floor, we are right  next to the lift. 

Tony

[Erichill16]

Morning All,

Picture from yesterday.

[Tony_S]

Hopped down to the terrace bar.

[Andy Hayter]

8 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I go to the relevant first-level page (e.g. wheeltappers for ERs) and look at what shows up with a bold title. On many first-level pages I can see a non-bold item on the first page which I have looked at, so I know that all the newer stuff is above that. For places where I haven't looked for a few days I might have to go back a few pages. Then I look at the new threads to see which sound interesting, and click on the circle or star to the left of the title to get to the page with the first unread item. (circles are where I have not pasted in the thread, stars are where I have posted at least once).

 

Different people use the site in different ways and I would not want to criticise anyone for the way they use it.  If it works for you, that's all that matters.

 

For myself:  I have a quite wide range of interests, so doing things your way would be a bit laborious.   View new content brings up all new posts in bold followed by older posts in un-bolded text.   I quickly see new posts in the wide range of topics that I follow.  I also pick up on some topics that I might well otherwise have missed - for example a layout centred around one of my interests might be posted in the group that interests me - for example "French Railways" but it might equally be posted under the layouts group, which is an area I rarely visit.  

 

Now if you have a relatively narrow range of interests, my method will probably be just as laborious to you as your way is to me with my very wide range of interests.

[tigerburnie]

Over night rain was quite heavy and very welcome, flattened a few fleurs, but I don't eat them so no worries, Broad beans took a pasting though. although it's 18 degrees, it feels fresh and quite pleasant.

Sad news of a death on the East Coast Mainline near Montrose early this morning, someone hit by a train.

[DaveF]

It started raining here in the mid evening, nice and gently so the soil got thoroughly wetted before the heavy rain came during the night - about 20mm in all.  Everywhere was just about dry again when I got up at 07.30 this morning.  The plants look a lot happier.

 

This morning I got the housework done then I decided to to a bit of shopping before looking at the computer.  A visit to Lidl enabled me to buy all I needed, including a few plants to fill a large gap, I also remembered to get some cash back as now and then I use cash.  I also had a look at the Quayside and saw a big blue thing which runs on rails on the far side of the harbour, it will be traveling to Fort William with alumina.  Then I had a walk in the park in the sunshine with a gentle warm breeze.

 

Back home in time for coffee and to do some ironing, the window cleaner has just been.  He was very apologetic as he has decided he needs to charge £5 to do all the windows and wipe the frames each visit.  I need a bit of pointing doing on the wall near the bathroom window, he will do it in a few weeks, he thinks the cost will only be in 2 figures.   He can do it standing on the garage roof so no scaffolding is needed.

 

David

[New Haven Neil]

A'noon. 22c sunny periods, fresh breeze, so quite pleasant.

 

Had a bad night presumably due to the weather change, hips and foot all screaming for attention.

 

Nipped into the Bright Lights of Ramsey for supplies, a pedestrian had just been knocked down by a car turning into the road the Co-op is on.  Looked nasty.  Driver lady protesting to all and sundry the pedestrian had stepped out in front of her, but all 4 wheels of her car were on the wrong side of the road straddling the give way markings for the other direction - she had cut the blind corner, probably going too fast to take it properly.  First aider beat me to it so directed traffic until plod arrived, all of 50 yards from the police station - in a van. Still no ambulance when I left, as the ambulance station is half a mile away I presume they were attending to something elsewhere.

[zarniwhoop]

10 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I do the same.

Discussion is about this button on the right:

 

I'd forgotten about the 'on the right' part. Did something ages ago to get rid of it, and have now forgotten the details. Probably only available to subscribers.

[BoD]

Afternoon all

 

Another poor night’s sleep so I have decided to do as little as possible today in the hope that minimising movement might aid the healing process.  

 

It gives me the chance to make some small plastic boxes with metal wheels mucky too.

 

Enjoy the rest of your day.
 

 

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I've been able to contact Virgin Media about the loss of my e-mails. Apparently a lot of other people are having the same problem but it should be back 'some time today'. That would explain why I had to wait 20 minutes to get through to the gentleman in India.

[Barry O]

Just started to rain here.. erm.. the sky has gone very , very dark.. Gulp!

 

As it happens I can now do some more forward planning regarding my upcoming pension arrival.(at last the Building Societies interest rates for SAVERS have gone up)

 

Everyone is bleating about the interest rates. When we moved into our maisonette our interest rate wnet up to 16%. It wasn't nice.. but you just have to get on with it!

 

Baz

[BoD]

19 minutes ago, Barry O said:

Everyone is bleating about the interest rates. When we moved into our maisonette our interest rate wnet up to 16%. It wasn't nice.. but you just have to get on with it!

 

I agree to a certain extent Baz, but house prices (and hence mortgage repayments) were comparatively lower back then*.  Weren't mortgages limited to 3.5x your annual wage or something like that?  I feel for anyone trying to get on the housing ladder today?

 

* average price is 65 times higher now than in 1970

[tigerburnie]

£20 k bought us a 3 bed semi, with interest rates at around 15 percent, but I was only bringing home just under a £100 a week, cash(do you remember that stuff).

[BoD]

4 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

£20 k bought us a 3 bed semi, with interest rates at around 15 percent, but I was only bringing home just under a £100 a week, cash(do you remember that stuff).

 

I'm sure that the figures are out there but I wonder what % of a wage went on mortgages for similar properties back then compared to today.

[Tony_S]

We bought a £11600 3 bed semi in 1977. We had a 95% mortgage. In those days endowment mortgages were common and considered a sound investment. I was suspicious as it still seemed like gambling to me. The main problem then was getting a mortgage. Our salaries (teacher and FE lecturer) didn’t quite meet the criteria for the loan but the nice man at the Bradford and Bingley suggested putting Aditi as the main applicant and me as the +1/3 rd salary, then it would work. He asked if I minded not being the first named applicant. I said I wasn’t bothered.  We sold that house for £85000 in 1990. Part exchanged really with the builder of our present house. That was exciting when the interest rates as mentioned earlier by Baz went up to 15%. There were quite a few mortgage defaults down our road. The price of property really fell. In fact in probably was when we moved in. Our neighbours similar house had been £40000 more the previous year but fortunately they had a bank fixed rate (and low interest) mortgage. 

Edited June 19, 2023 by Tony_S
Corrected original price of first house. It has been £12600 but we haggled as he wanted a quick sale as the previous owner had already purchased a property.

[southern42]

50 minutes ago, BoD said:

Weren't mortgages limited to 3.5x your annual wage or something like that? 

 

That was worked out from: 2x the man's wage PLUS 1.5x the woman's wage (total 3.5x). Tough being a woman, back then, eh, especially if she was the higher earner.

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by southern42

[jamie92208]

19 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

£20 k bought us a 3 bed semi, with interest rates at around 15 percent, but I was only bringing home just under a £100 a week, cash(do you remember that stuff).

My daughter doesn't use cash any morjust pays with her watch or phone. 

13 minutes ago, BoD said:

 

I'm sure that the figures are out there but I wonder what % of a wage went on mortgages for similar properties back then compared to today.

I bought my first house in 1975 for £6,600 0. At the time my take home was£104 per moth and my £6K mortgage cost me £56 per month, my take home did rise though when my mortgage tax relief,remember that,was sorted out.  I had no phone,car or TV.  I once told no 1son that a Sky subscription was a luxury and quoted him the above. I was told that I knew nothing about life. 

 

Jamie

[Tony_S]

I have been loaned a walking stick. The waiters at breakfast today, were most concerned and had a look for one but said they were sure Madame B would find one when she came to work. She did. I had no idea how to use a stick but YouTube was helpful. If you Google using a stick, an awful lot of the replies are about self defence. The knob on the hand end of the one I have been loaned could certainly do someone a mischief. 
My uncle (Mum’s evil step brother, though by the time of the following tale, a reformed character, well at least to the family) was returning from a visit to the dog track. This involved quite a long walk along a footpath. John must have looked an easy touch to two bad lads on bicycles. He had grey hair and walked with a stick due to leg injury. The youths probably didn’t know he also only had one eye and one lung. Anyway they threatened him and demanded his money. They didn’t get it and as they rode away empty handed they threatened to report him to the police for hitting them with his stick. 
Another Uncle John story. All through the war years he used to terrify my mother telling her that officials would be calling to take her away to join the land army or similar. In fact she would never have been old enough during WW2. John was convinced his lack of lung and eye would save him from conscription but he was called up and put in the Pioneer Corps where he did a lot of digging.  

Edited June 19, 2023 by Tony_S

[Tony_S]

24 minutes ago, southern42 said:

 

That was worked out from: 2x the man's wage PLUS 1.5x the woman's wage (total 3.5x). Tough being a woman, back then, eh, especially if she was the higher earner.

 

Aditi has always been the higher earner in our household. We were fortunate back in 1977 to find a building society that would use the highest earner being female. The manager said also as I was a physics teacher that was a very safe job…

Edited June 19, 2023 by Tony_S

[Tony_S]

29 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

daughter doesn't use cash any morjust pays with her watch or phone. 

I think I can pay with my phone but haven’t done so unless using the Shell app at a petrol station counts. I don’t do that anymore since 2FA makes the process fail enough times to not bother. My watch will do lots of time related things (like find time signals in lots of places ) but predates smart watches. Also,it didn’t cost much. 
I must admit though that my inner nerd/geek did like cashless cardless toll transits on this holiday. 

[TheQ]

The base rate went to 14.88 % in October 89,  mortgages were generally 2% above base rate so if you were unlucky your interest rate was 17%.

 

Average annual full time salary 1989 £11746

Average house price Oct 89,  £59,533, my house at that time £60,000.

£59,533/ £11,746 so the average house price was 5 times the average salary 

(59533/100)*17%=  £10,120 or 94% of the average salary...

 

Average interest rate today 6%

average annual full time salary today £33,000, 

Average house price today £285,000

285000/33000= 8.6 times average salary.

(285000/100)*6 = £17,100. Or 52% of the average salary

 

So in 1989 the average person could be paying in the worst situation 94% of their wages to pay their mortgage against 52% today, so who was worse off??

 

I know in 1989 -90 we made a loss with both salaries it still wiped out our savings, then to cap it all in 1989-1995 there was a house price crash the value of our house dropped to £28,000 from £60000.

I had to go work in Saudi for 6 years to dig us out of a very big hole...

 

[DaveF]

I can remember my mortgage payments when I bought my house in 1980.  Mortgage plus endowment policy came to about £180 a month (approx15% interest rate), take home pay was less than £400 a month as a teacher on quite a high salary for the time.  Then there was the car repayments, and so on.  At times towards the end of the month things got interesting.  

 

I had a pleasant lunch - ham, cucumber, tomato, radish, apple and orange with French bread followed by a half a grapefruit.  During this afternoon I sorted out some photos I took this morning and ordered two new batteries for a small Canon Ixus I keep in the car as the battery does not hold its charge well any more.

 

I also put the plants I bought this morning into the garden after first letting them soak in a bowl of water for a while.  Then I sorted out my box of camera chargers, batteries, memory cards, body caps and so on and found a few items to get rid of.

 

Next will be tea - just the rest of the ham on what remains of the French bread and a creme caramel.

 

It's warm today for the coast, 23C at the moment so I am not sitting in the garden!

 

David

Edited June 19, 2023 by DaveF

[tigerburnie]

I don't wear a digital watch and my phone is not connected to the internet, it rings when someone wants me, went for a meal a while back, when it came to paying the lad behind the bar said you can pay by phone of watch, to which I replied you better find someone to take some cash or I've just had a free dinner, no signs anywhere saying "no cash", they took my money.

[Ian Abel]

Morning all.

 

Friday evening a great charity get-together, good food and music, worthwhile event for kids needing help and support.

Outside air was "acceptable", but by the time we were done/leaving I was glad to be back in air conditioning.

 

Saturday, a quiet day, some to-do items and relaxing inside as the weather was up and down air-quality wise.

 

Sunday/Fathers day, good day, attended the Twins game (we LOST, no surprise now, they're very average at present) but good to be with the family enjoying the game.

Only downside was a complete failure flustercuck at the exit to the huge multi-story parking lot, a gate broke and we were stuck waiting for 30 minutes in a huge line to exit.

 

Air quality today expected to be "good", 16c and partly cloudy first thing, 30c the expected high.

 

Carry on.