Early Risers.

[Gwiwer]

Happy Lunchtime all.  It's Cheeseday so in due course cheese shall be enjoyed.

 

Late start account another rather indifferent attempt at a night's sleep.  With it now even if I'm not quite sure what "it" is.  Edit : Elsewhere on RMweb I learned that I had spent a half-hour in the company of Ron Ron Ron (formerly known as Ron) yesterday without either of us knowing who the other was.  I've messaged him to rectify that and to apologise for my inadvertent appearance in his video clip of the Grey Train.  Apparently this was not Ron.  He posted a video which appeared to be his own but was in fact hotlinked to the original post elsewhere.  Misunderstanding resolved amicably

 

Off to mother's tomorrow but via  a different route to the normal Southern train.  This time I have delved into the world of M-ticketing and have a Metrobus day pass on the phone waiting to be used.  So the London free pass will get me as far as Epsom from where Metrobus 21 will take me via Box Hill, Dorking and Newdigate to Crawley via some former London Transport / Country routes I never managed to ride back in the day.  Then their 23 takes me through Horsham to Worthing.  And all for £6.70 door to door.  Coming back on the train however as evening buses are now a thing of the past.  The Senior Railcard discount on Southern's internet-only advance fares mean that costs me just £3.30  Who said train fares were too expensive?

 

Then it's a freebie to Southampton on Friday to visit the Recruitment and Selection Centre for the Grey Train Company with fingers loosely crossed for a positive result.  Regular part-time work once more would be a mixed blessing but on balance more of a good thing than not.  

 

Right - the suit needs a dry-clean for Friday but it's not so bad that it will walk itself to the shop.  The sub-post office in the village is the agent and has been pretty good at quick turnarounds.  It must be time to venture forth into the wide grey damp yonder.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Gwiwer

[AndrewC]

Hope you have withheld a considerable part of the agreed sum for that contract? It's the only way one can get contractors to actually finish the job. Mind, if they overrun their agreed time span, you can impose a penalty by not paying the full sum as they've failed their part of the contract first. I'm sure our resident wig-wearer can point you to the exact article in the Law books

 

No other news to report, so for now

 

I'll be back!

 

(just dunno when yet )

Apart from £1500 in materials they don't get anything until completion. There was no fixed date in the agreement only a semi-vague 2- 21/2 weeks depending on weather. More like whether they can be arsed to put in a full day. 

 

That said, the junior has arrived and is busily filling the skip with all the crap. Had they cleaned as they went, it would have saved them a lot of effort and difficulty in having to work around a pile of rubble and broken fence panels. Oh well, their problem, not mine. 

[bluebottle]

In the blink of an eye...........

Mornin awl

On the subject of typos, why do they only appear after you have pressed post?

 

Don't know about you, me old, but I'm most likely to scatter typos when I'm in too much of a hurry to point out an amusing typo on someone else's post before I'm beaten to it ...

[Tony_S]

Apart from £1500 in materials they don't get anything until completion. There was no fixed date in the agreement only a semi-vague 2- 21/2 weeks depending on weather. More like whether they can be arsed to put in a full day. 

 

That said, the junior has arrived and is busily filling the skip with all the crap. Had they cleaned as they went, it would have saved them a lot of effort and difficulty in having to work around a pile of rubble and broken fence panels. Oh well, their problem, not mine.

 

We are very fortunate that our near neighbour who is a builder knows all the reliable tradespersons. He will only recommend people who he would allow to work on his own house. He gets very frustrated when he finishes a job on time and then has to chase people for money, usually other builders or "landlords". The chaps who did our central heating recently were "recommended". They commented they were really keen to retire but Lee (our neighbour) kept finding work for them.

They cleaned up as they went along too.

[Coombe Barton]

Happy Hippo - you haven't have you?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-41161433

[Horsetan]

My Estate Account balances perfectly. Thank God for that. Thought I'd lost the plot there.

[andyram]

Afternoon all. The school holidays are over - or are they? This was not quite the way I expected to be starting the next phase of my career. The sickness bug that hit Amber in the early hours of Saturday, and Sarah late on Sunday night came my way last night. As a result I had no choice but to miss today's first day back. Thankfully the vomiting appears to have ceased but the high temperature and pounding head ache remain so I will be missing tomorrow too. Not good when I am on a supply contract and do not get paid for absences! The only saving grace is this week, and next week's payment will both arrive before the end of the month covered by my final pay packet from the previous job. Hopefully that will mean no financial issues caused by my enforced extended holiday.

 

Best wishes to you all.

[New Haven Neil]

A'noon.

 

A touch of Andy's bug here, not feeling too good and came home from work after lunch. Headaches, bad feeling guts, you-know-what.....and so tired.  Had an hours kip but feel no better :-(

 

60103 no I don't correct captions, but do tend to remember the corrections!  Next time I see the photo somewhere (they always pop up again) I have an 'aha' moment.  To my embarrassment a photo in an article I wrote in a railway magazine about my garden railway was incorrect, but that was because the editor used the wrong photo for the caption from the selection I had provided.  Clearly indexed too....harrumph.

[Gwiwer]

School holidays over.  Major traffic jams in Whitton and Isleworth where parents seem to be taking the law into their own hands, marching out to the centre of the road and holding hands up to stop the traffic in order to allow their darlings to cross the road.  Only one problem.  They aren't doing it in batches but are staying put for (in the instance I was witness to) upwards of ten minutes at a time while the school empties.  And of course there was the occasional cockwomble in the queue who lost patience and drove across when no children were actually crossing.  

[The Stationmaster]

Sick day all round it seems - the Good Doctor came home early due to the pain in her shoulder and has since visited the Doctor in order to get a script for a different pain killer.  Hopefully she'll be ok to accompany Mrs Stationmaster to Helsinki next week or I might have to substitute.  Fortunately (I hope) following a few days there she'll be off to hospital not long after in order for something in her shoulder to be surgically removed and that will remove the pain - well that is the consultant's plan.

 

And today was cockwomble gathering day at Tesco - one enroute who seemed to think it was ok to drive his Range Rover on my side of the road and who got a little upset when I drew attention to the error of his ways, the second one was in the car park and seemed totally unable to follow the correct way out in her BMW.  Then there were several in the shop itself although luckily (for them) none of them actually collided with me - but it was a close run thing, twice.  Why does someone go round a supermarket pulling the trolley backwards while looking towards the front of the thing instead of looking where they're going?

[Ozexpatriate]

I remain envious of any and all reports of overnight rain. Here the dry warmth continues unabated.

 

Today should reach 35°C, the high temperatures slightly moderated by the pall of smoke from multiple wildfires. The most recent of these was started over the long weekend by youngsters playing with fireworks on a forest trail. Hikers were trapped above the fire and had to shelter in place overnight before hiking to a forest road-accessible lake on the far end of the trail to be bused back to the trailhead the next day. The fire has grown continuously for two days and is now threatening towns on the eastern fringe of the metropolitan area.

 

A spot of soaking rain would be remarkably restorative, knocking down the fires, taking the particulates out of the air and washing off the ash fall.

 

The eerie sight of either a dim orange or a bloody, crimson moon is a nightly occurrence. Sunrise is similarly a hazy though of course brighter orange glow. 

 

EDIT: Anyone who has visited the Portland area - and particularly the Columbia River Gorge with it's scenery, not to mention the BNSF and UP mainlines, might find this photo gallery of the Eagle Creek fire interesting.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Ozexpatriate

[roundhouse]

I remain envious of any and all reports of overnight rain. Here the dry warmth continues unabated.

 

Today should reach 35°C, the high temperatures slightly moderated by the pall of smoke from multiple wildfires. The most recent of these was started over the long weekend by youngsters playing with fireworks on a forest trail. Hikers were trapped above the fire and had to shelter in place overnight before hiking to a forest road-accessible lake on the far end of the trail to be bused back to the trailhead the next day. The fire has grown continuously for two days and is now threatening towns on the eastern fringe of the metropolitan area.

 

A spot of soaking rain would be remarkably restorative, knocking down the fires, taking the particulates out of the air and washing off the ash fall.

 

The eerie sight of either a dim orange or a bloody, crimson moon is a nightly occurrence. Sunrise is similarly a hazy though of course brighter orange glow. 

 

EDIT: Anyone who has visited the Portland area - and particularly the Columbia River Gorge with it's scenery, not to mention the BNSF and UP mainlines, might find this photo gallery of the Eagle Creek fire interesting.

Yes it's a beautiful area. Seen some photos on FB today regarding the fire from the Washington state side of the river. Let's hope that ther is no loss of life and the fire doesn't spread much further. Hoping to visit the area over Christmas if all goes to plan but we shall see.

[TheQ]

Afternoon Awl,

Parent wombles yet to be seen here in this area of Norfolk.

 

Ben the Border Collie left for one hour fifteen minutes between SWMBO and me arriving home. He appears to have been a good doggy.

 

Ben walked by me, my calf still aching badly.

 

Claim for for my military pension filled in, to be deposited into post office post box. Tomorrow morning. 8 pages, lots of stamps put on envelope just in case.

 

I've visited the Portland area, don't remember any gorges or rivers. I do remember Weymouth and Chesil beach.

[Horsetan]

Just realised that if the CX owner fixes a viewing date on the Scaleforum weekend, then I'll have to give Scaleforum a miss. There's no way I'm passing up this chance.

[Gwiwer]

Those of us who have first-hand experience of major bush fires will know exactly what that red moon, brown sun and hazy sky mean.  And the smell of burning constantly in the air which also spreads into clothing and even taints food.  It all means major losses of natural habitat, often losses of private homes and sometimes businesses and occasionally - tragically - loss of human life along side the inevitable loss of wildlife.

 

It is a few years now since I was working in the insurance industry in Australia but if the need arose I would still be first to put my hand up, as I was then, and go to the firegrounds to assist customers (and indeed others) in any way possible. We were first in and last out among the insurers after the Black Saturday fires had gutted the State of Victoria.  I was assigned to take and process claims and offer friendship, sanctuary, food and water at the relief caravan at Marysville which had been a pretty little town surrounded by densely-forested mountains.  What I saw was black and grey ash.  The road was thick with it.  The air was thick with it.  If the wind got up we needed facial protection to breathe.  Very little was left unburned.  173 persons lost their lives many because the fires were so large and fierce they were unable to get out and others because the spread was at a rate never before seen in the world and no warnings were even possible.

 

I sincerely hope no-one here is directly affected by such loss nor has to go into the firegrounds in the line of duty.  To do so is to risk your life in the service of others.  Homes and communities can be rebuilt.  Nature returns without our intervention.  But lives lost are lost for ever.  

 

I still have, and shall always keep quietly but never display, a medallion awarded after being out there for a week.  Apparently the company, one of Australia's largest insurers, had determined I had provided meritorious service above and beyond the call of duty even in a major disaster situation.

[81C]

 

 

And today was cockwomble gathering day at Tesco - one enroute who seemed to think it was ok to drive his Range Rover on my side of the road and who got a little upset when I drew attention to the error of his ways, the second one was in the car park and seemed totally unable to follow the correct way out in her BMW.  Then there were several in the shop itself although luckily (for them) none of them actually collided with me - but it was a close run thing, twice.  Why does someone go round a supermarket pulling the trolley backwards while looking towards the front of the thing instead of looking where they're going?

Horrorsons have their fair share of them I reminded some scrawny little tw@t in his Vauxhall Chavette this car park was not a fecking race track.

[Ozexpatriate]

I've visited the Portland area, don't remember any gorges or rivers. I do remember Weymouth and Chesil beach.

One of these days I should like to visit that Portland - the namesake for the namesake* for the Portland where I live.

 

* In Maine.

[Ozexpatriate]

I sincerely hope no-one here is directly affected by such loss nor has to go into the firegrounds in the line of duty.

So far Oregon's wildfire season has not wrought enormous damage to personal property, nor will we likely see damages anywhere near the toll inflicted by Hurricane Harvey in southern Texas and Louisiana, or what Hurricane Irma might bring to the Greater Antilles and Florida later this week.

 

The fires have (mostly) been contained to densely forested, largely underpopulated areas. Hard work for the fire crews of course.

 

I'm no expert, but with the level of smoke we've seen this year, it feels much worse than usual.

[BoD]

Evening all.

 

Spent most of today fettling track work and under the layout wiring. Fortunately no accidents occured but my back aches a little. For some reason I have a sudden desire to 'motor on' with the layout. I'm sure it will wear off.

[jamie92208]

Good evening al from the Charente Maritime. A good drive down has been had after a rather disturbed night on the ferry. The house is OK and Peter and I have dined on my cooking and had a walk around the village. Tomorrow the trailer needs to be unpacked.

 

We did see HMS QE last night as we left, it is big and looks good in the flesh (or should it be grey steel.

 

Beth spent the day with her step mum and dad. The lump has been designated as cancerous so she has opted for a 2nd mastectomy. No doubt much support for her and Will will be needed, offered and given.

 

Whisky is now being consumed which makes me think of our sadly missed Jock.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

[Barry O]

Evening all.

 

Spent most of today fettling track work and under the layout wiring. Fortunately no accidents occured but my back aches a little. For some reason I have a sudden desire to 'motor on' with the layout. I'm sure it will wear off.

oh good, another operator for Chapel on Sunday. just means a trip to Swindon BoD..

Edited September 5, 2017 by Barry O

[BoD]

Swindon?

Is that further down than Leeds?

Edited September 5, 2017 by BoD

[Tony_S]

Swindon?

Is that further down than Leeds?

From where we live it is on the way to Wales.

[Barry O]

Swindon?

Is that further down than Leeds?

ye just keep heading south west.... 

[southern42]

' Evening all from red dragon land.

 

Raining at 4.00 am when I got up after 4 hours of being kept awake with a runny nose.  Cold remedy taken.  Nose still running accompanied by much sneezing!  Still raining when I got up and carried on till early evening when the sun briefly came out.  Off to make a cuppa and replenish the tissues.    aaahh....ahhhh...

 

Afternoon Awl,
Parent wombles yet to be seen here in this area of Norfolk.

Ben the Border Collie left for one hour fifteen minutes between SWMBO and me arriving home. He appears to have been a good doggy.

Ben walked by me, my calf still aching badly.

Claim for for my military pension filled in, to be deposited into post office post box. Tomorrow morning. 8 pages, lots of stamps put on envelope just in case.

I've visited the Portland area, don't remember any gorges or rivers. I do remember Weymouth and Chesil beach.

 

...and the F O G  H O R R R R N...