Early Risers.

[leopardml2341]

Morning folks.

 

Why is it that weekend weather always bucks the trend of the preceding week's weather?

 

Was looking forward to being vaguely warm whilst continuing fettling and fitting mi summershed doors, but alas it seems like it's not to be. Current temperature 2°C and it ain't forecast to get any better, sleet and then snow.... I suspect I won't achieve as much as I would like.

 

The doors need to be on, for obvious reasons, before I start on the interior. Slowly, slowly etc.

 

Cuppa being drunk and then some breakfast, which will probably be bacon and black pudding butty

 

Will probably go and see how high the river is, after recent rain up in t' hills, as part of Doggo walk later this afternoon.

 

Whatever the day brings for you, make the most of it and stay safe and well.

[AndyB]

9 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Evening all from Estuary-Land. An item on Farcebook, a surgeon talking about the things he's had to remove from peoples bottoms, door knobs, hard boiled eggs (with and without shell) but to top it all a table leg complete with castor. 

 

Which end was the castor? This guy may have been trying to perfect the first truly mobile shooting stick! 

[Andrew P]

Good to see Pete, @trisonic And Dick, @Smiffy2looking in and posting again.

Happy New Year Guys.

[Andrew P]

Phone call from my Doctor last night, about 6pm to say that my Blood Test results were back and she was a little concerned.

Not Diabetic but closer than the last test so reduce sugar even more, (I've gone from 2 spoons in a muga tea /coffee to a quarter so cant go much lower).

Also something about my white cells, so;

No cakes.

No Crisps,

No fizzy drinks,

No alcohol.

No Bread,

No Potato,

No Pasta,

Only about 6 Chips with a meal.

 

And another draining of my valuable resources in a Month.

[5 C]

Morning awl,

 

Bless me mighty awl for it is nearly a month since I last posted on here and nearly a hundred pages have passed in that time. Far too many to read in the little weekend time I have available but greetings and good wishes to all, especially those who are struggling at this particularly grim time.

 

When I returned to work on 4th January, I anticipated it would be a couple of weeks before we would be dealing with the after effects of Chr*****s and telling to people to work from home and observe even greater restrictions. It lasted a couple of hours. 

 

Since then it's been pretty relentless and I could easily work through the weekend if I didn't stop and force myself to have a day or two away from the screen. Exercise is particularly hard to come by at the moment, with poor weather and darkness giving little incentive to go outside. 10,000 steps a day? I've barely managed 1000 in the whole of this week!   Last weekend's snow was a welcome distraction with the excuse to get outside and enjoy the fresh air and brightness. Nevertheless I am grateful to be in work, which despite the stress is enjoyable, worthwhile and challenging.

 

This weekend I will try and put the house back into some sort of order. First load of washing has been done but I really should finish the ironing from last weekend. Several muggsatea have already been drunk and a bacon and egg sandwich is contemplated. I would have mushrooms too but the examples lurking at the bottom of my fridge are looking a bit sorry for themselves. Which reminds me a supermarket trip may be needed. For excitement and variety, I may use a different one this week.

 

Regards to awl!

[Andrew P]

@chrisf, Don't worry about the Jab, I'm almost 71 and not had my call to arms yet, but Dee is almost 80 and had her call from the Dr's about 3 weeks ago and had her's done.

We will get done, but there are a lot of 70 plus still living out there, thank goodness.

[New Haven Neil]

Morning, 4c and dry, windy but, and from an unusual easterly direction.

 

Andy, welcome to our club!  Keep those carbohydrates low and you'll be fine.  Pasta and rice for me in particular are the baddies, (we all react to different things) but read the labels on things - the carbs per 100g sometimes are terrifying to the T2 diabetic!  If you can afford it, buy a meter although I do realise the progger may be an issue for you, yes its a needle but you can't see it in good ones, and it hardly can be felt.  I use an Accu-chek Mobile but that is top end, for convenience its great, but there are a lot cheaper ones around.  It soon enabled me to find out what affects me or not, 'eat to your meter' is the mantra.  worst thing...... Pizza bread - kills me. Pah!

[The Stationmaster]

Morning all,

 

Guess what - the rain has stopped, but to accompany that amazing event the 'feels like' temperature has dropped (hardly surprising of course as the wind remains ENE).   No jab here either and I get the impression the entire programme is a reflection of the mess which is anything to do with the NHS chair polishers sitting waiting for their Ks.  Maybe K should be a kick up the proverbial for that bunch?   However there are just under 9 million folk over 70 in the UK and if you then add in NHS frontline people plus various others such as staff in homes who are in priority Levels 1 and 2 you will probably get a total of around 12 million.   According to one source there are 3.32 million of us aged between 70 and 74 and another 2.33 million between 75 and 79.  According to the NHS by 28 January  a total of  6.2 million vaccinations had been given by 28 January although what that actually means is the number of doses if other numbers in their statement are to be believed.   So the implication is that they are just about down to the first group below 80 years of age in terms of giving the first dose.  In terms of full vaccination (i.e. both doses of vaccine) a mere 440,000 were given in the 4 weeks ending 24 January - in other words there is a huge disparity between those who've had a shot and those who have been fully vaccinated.   Also if the rate of progress doesn't change considerably those of us between 70 and 79 are unlikely to have been given our first dose by the end of February.

 

I don'y t mind waiting provided effort is devoted to getting the lost at risk folk properly c vaccinated by giving them their second shoyt.  But the chao ir polishers still seem to be following their own course of kb nw owing better than the manufacturers.

 

On a much brighter note the local squirrel is out in the front garden making its way through a poile of bird food the avaian mob have knocked to teh ground - easoer than robbing bird feeders.   With luck it will take away the rest and bury it.

 

Have a good day one and all and stay safe.  I'm off to wander through the amusements of RMweb

 

PS Excellent news about the Herbert Baz

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Great to see Trisonic and Smiffy and 5 C back again. Chrisf as Andy said the jabs are on their way. I am also 72 but I understand that the surgery has now run out of vaccine having started on the over 70's and once they get more it won't be long before I get mine. It all depends on when they get more but as soon as they do I've no doubt the jabs will re-commence.

44 minutes ago, AndyB said:

 

Which end was the castor? This guy may have been trying to perfect the first truly mobile shooting stick! 

The castor went in first. The guy told the medics it was an accident and he had fallen on an upturned table! Here is the article. 

A doctor shares tales of all the things people have stuck up their bums in his time at one of London’s largest hospitals.

There was a gentleman in a satin smoking jacket, with slicked back hair and a cravat around his neck. He brought to mind Noel Coward, only he was standing like John Wayne. It turned out he had the leg of a bed up his arse.’

I’m talking to ‘Dr. Ben Sergeant’ a former surgeon who spent several decades removing errant items from patients’ bottoms. ‘The story he gave me,’ says Sergeant, ‘was that he and his partner were in the process of moving home, and he decided to take a rest by sitting on the divan, which was upside down.

He told me that as he did, “I got quite a surprise as I’d sat down on a leg of the bed!”‘ Sergeant had his suspicions. ‘There was a central flaw to his story,’ he explains, ‘because the wheel was deep inside him, and the bolt which fixes the leg to the bed was sticking out the bottom. ‘I asked him how he’d got the leg away from the bed while it was inside him, and I could see the panic in his face as he realised he’d been caught out. He claimed he’d unscrewed it by turning round and round.’

For Sergeant, who’s worked as a surgeon in both the UK and the US, this was the up-the-bum item that flummoxed him the most. He remembers looking at the X-ray with a colleague who said, ‘let’s have a bet on this. If you can work out what it is, I’ll buy you dinner.’ Sergeant had to admit he had no idea!. He explains: ‘Very often the patient’s too embarrassed to say what’s up there, so we were lucky this guy was willing to tell us – even though the real story turned out to be that he and his partner were using the bed leg as a sex toy.’

The range of objects Sergeant’s removed could stock a nearly-new stall at a school fete. His collection includes a couple of vases, a pair of garden shears, ‘a whole variety of bottles’, and more than one ball. ‘I had to break pieces off one of the balls, to make it smaller, in order to get it out,’ says Sergeant, adding, ‘it took me two hours! I was actually thinking as I did it, “I don’t remember going to a lecture on how to get a f***ing ball out of some chap’s arse!”‘ Sergeant also found, ‘a very bright lightbulb that was dimmed by its passage into the nether regions – miraculously, it wasn’t broken’.

Then there was the high pressure air hose – ‘the guy claimed his pals at the garage had been horsing around, but it did a huge amount of damage and actually blew a hole in his bowel!’ No less of an issue to dislodge.

For his own part, Sergeant recalls a cucumber that was just shy of perforating a man’s colon. ‘The junior doctor didn’t know what to do, and my first thought was to leave it there and allow it to ferment,’ he explains. ‘But of course that’s not what I did. I gave him a bit of sedative and carefully withdrew it.’ Then there was the boiled egg. Sergeant says: ‘a well dressed older gentleman came in, wearing the sort of raincoat one usually associates with flashers. He claimed he’d been standing at a bus stop when a group of youths accosted him, and inserted a hard-boiled egg up his arse. ( ‘It was the fact that the shell had been removed which made the story so amusing to me, and the likelihood so bizarre.’

Sergeant heard about an aubergine jammed up someone’s backside over dinner with a colleague, who, ‘told us about it just as he was serving up the ratatouille.’ While this might have put more sensitive souls off their dinner, Sergeant says that any time you put a group of surgeons together they’ll inevitably chat about things they’ve found in people’s derrieres, usually over a nice steak dinner and a bottle of wine.

One of the more wince-making stories Sergeant recalls is that of a railway spike (‘effectively a very large nail-like thing’) embedded in someone’s bum, and, ‘the classic case of a guy who stuck a stick of dynamite up his arse – literally.’ Another of Sergeant’s own medical experiences involved the extraction of a single stem vase – which he kept in his office for some time afterwards. ‘It surprised me,’ he recalls, ‘because something one normally associates with beauty, was not in a terribly beautiful place. ‘The patient claimed he’d been miming along to Bohemian Rhapsody, using the vase as a microphone, when the doorbell rang and he got such a shock, he swallowed it. ‘I tried to be a compassionate and understanding doctor, but it stretches the bounds of credulity that a glass vase could go through his entire gastrointestinal tract and find itself the wrong way round in his rectum.’

Then there was a chap who turned up at the emergency room with a large bar of soap in his bottom. ‘He said he wanted a pretty young nurse to remove it,’ says Sergeant, ‘so I dealt with it, then told him to leave. About four days later, he was back again – I recognised his name on the chart immediately. As soon as he saw me he jumped up and ran out. It’s an interesting way to try to meet women, but we’re hospitals, not pick-up joints.’

Sergeant was working at a large London hospital when he removed around 100 condoms of heroin from the insides of an unconscious man. He explains: ‘People who smuggle drugs will put the cocaine or heroin into condoms, tie them off and swallow them, or stuff them in the , or the .’ One incident that resonates with him was when a man was brought in from Heathrow airport, where he’d been found unconscious in his seat when the plane landed. ‘An astute doctor immediately put a finger in his bum and pulled out a condom of heroin,’ Sergeant explains. ‘X-rays indicated that there were multiple condoms in his bowel, so we took him to the operating room. ‘Two massive policemen came in with us, and the moment I made the first incision, one of them just crumbled. ‘I took about 30 condoms out of the guy’s stomach, then around 40 out of his small bowel, and more from his colon. I said to the copper, “my God there’s a lot of these – how much is each one worth?” He didn’t respond to that or anything else I said, until finally I asked if he’d mind if we could have a bit of a party!” He said, “focus on the operation doctor, your jokes aren’t appreciated.”‘ Fair enough.

Contrary to popular belief (and passages from American Psycho) gerbils as bum-pets seems to be a bit of a myth. Sergeant has never come across one, and nor has anyone he knows.

[laurenceb]

Where is the "What the h**l!"button?

Good to see Pete T & Dick S2 yesterday

[Tony_S]

4 hours ago, chrisf said:

Perhaps Stalag Surgery has forgotten that I am 72, nearly 73 and a cancer patient - or, as the case may be,

You will be in the same group as I am. Letters for the over 75s are going out now. The over 70s and people like me who are clinically extremely vulnerable (one  gets letters and texts from Matt Hancock to tell you this) are next. However if your local clinics have any vaccines left over they may contact you if you are in the “next” category rather than waste it. 

[Dave Hunt]

I don't know whether it will be of any comfort to Chrisf but Jill and I, who are 73 and 74 respectively but have no extra medical issues, have just received our letters about Covid vaccine and have made appointments for next Tuesday. As previously suggested, from what I know of people who have had or are about to have the jab, it would appear that the organisers are working their way down the age list so Chris should hear soon. 

 

Have a good and safe weekend everyone.

 

Dave

Edited January 30, 2021 by Dave Hunt

[grandadbob]

Speed of getting vaccine seems to vary considerably area by area.   The Boss and I are both 72 and not extremely clinically vulnerable but got our first jab last Sunday.  Many of our friends and neighbours in the same age group have been done or have got appointments but some are still waiting to hear.

Edited January 30, 2021 by grandadbob

[AndyB]

"The castor went in first."

 

Clearly not an engineer then. 

 

Gives a whole new meaning to "being after a desk job". 

Edited January 30, 2021 by AndyB

[Tony_S]

6 minutes ago, grandadbob said:

Speed of getting vaccine seems to vary considerably area by area.   The Boss and I are both 72 and not extremely clinically vulnerable but got our first jab last Sunday.  Many of our friends and neighbours in the same age group have been done or have got appointments but some are still waiting to hear.

There are regional variations. Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk areas were a bit slow to get started and were lagging way behind the north of England. I think they are up to speed now. 

[Barry O]

My sister was contacted on Wednesday and had the jab yesterday.. mind you she is a little bit older than @chrisf

 

It is flipping freezing outside.. but walk to Post Office and back has cleared my head and woken me up!

 

Time for a mugadecaff!

 

Baz

[petethemole]

I'm the same age as Chris and T2 diabetic, and this morning I got a NHS letter inviting me to book the jab, so hopefully Chris won't have long to wait.

 

Saturday usually involves laundry and today is no exception. I have two loads to do and enough for another 'cool' wash mid-week.  Other tasks may be selected from the mental pool of things that need doing....or not, plus a bus ride to Aldi to investigate their new beer stock, https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/shopping-deals/aldi-now-selling-99p-beers-23402292

 

Have a good day, stay elfy.

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

Has anybody else come across this 'Just 3 Words' thing?  It is being regularly pumped in tv ads here and is apparently a phone app which uses 57 trillion entries to cover every 3 metre square area on earth.  It's not clear to me what it does about languages as i'm sure english won't be much good in plenty of out of the way places.  It appears in reality to be some sort of dumbo alternative to long established methods of location such as latitude & longitude or, in the UK, OS map references.  If a mobile 'phone can apparently work out which square you are in surely it can do the same as the sat nav in my car and give a latitude and longitude down to seconds?

[Dave Hunt]

The 3 word thing is accurate to within about ten feet or so and recently saved a chap's life when he was stranded with a broken leg in freezing conditions - the rescue services located him straight away and said that it had been much quicker than lat and long positioning. It is available in more than one language but I'm not sure how many. A friend has it on his phone and demonstrated it to me a while ago by showing that the opposite corners of our house have different codes.

 

Dave

[BSW01]

Good morning (just) everyone 

 

Late night last night, so consequently we had a lie in this morning. Just got to the workshop and about to start testing my home made decals. If all goes well, I'll print if a full set fit the turntable control panel. 

 

Stay safe, stay sane, enjoy whatever you have planned for the day, back later. 

 

Brian 

[Coombe Barton]

23 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Has anybody else come across this 'Just 3 Words' thing?  It is being regularly pumped in tv ads here and is apparently a phone app which uses 57 trillion entries to cover every 3 metre square area on earth.  It's not clear to me what it does about languages as i'm sure english won't be much good in plenty of out of the way places.  It appears in reality to be some sort of dumbo alternative to long established methods of location such as latitude & longitude or, in the UK, OS map references.  If a mobile 'phone can apparently work out which square you are in surely it can do the same as the sat nav in my car and give a latitude and longitude down to seconds?

We might understand lat and long and how to say it, but "What Three words" is close enough for emergency services, is much simpler to operate in an emergency, which is what you're going to use it for, and consequently, much more useful.

If you're injured then the simplicity would be very, very welcome

[AndyB]

So another good bit of news is that the covid saliva test developed and piloted by University of Southampton last year is apparently being rolled out to schools and colleges across Hampshire. That'll make a reliable return to school a more practical proposition. Most likely to be used for those who come into contact with someone with symptoms, avoiding a cycle of perpetual 10 day self isolations.

 

For those not familiar with it the person being tested only has to produce a small saliva sample into a bottle which goes off to a lab. No swabs. Turn around is now about 12 hours. 

It's been used for a while now to keep student and staff infections in check on campus. 

[AndyB]

20 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

The 3 word thing is accurate to within about ten feet or so and recently saved a chap's life when he was stranded with a broken leg in freezing conditions - the rescue services located him straight away and said that it had been much quicker than lat and long positioning. It is available in more than one language but I'm not sure how many. A friend has it on his phone and demonstrated it to me a while ago by showing that the opposite corners of our house have different codes.

 

Dave

The Chinese language version is very simple. 

When you type in your location it comes back with a message saying....

"Thank you, but we knew where you were."

[PhilJ W]

Back again, opened up my e-mail this morning. There was one supposedly from Ikea telling me that I'd won a £500 Ikea gift voucher. My suspicions were confirmed when it commenced with 'Hello Dear,', just that and no name. I see the 'EU covid jab' thing is in its death throes, not entirely surprising but it makes this mornings tabloid headlines look a bit ridiculous.

4 minutes ago, AndyB said:

The Chinese language version is very simple. 

When you type in your location it comes back with a message saying....

"Thank you, but we knew where you were."

Many a true word spoken in jest.

[iL Dottore]

20 hours ago, trisonic said:

...but online in the USA the character know as "Little Krankie" in Edinburgh has been feeding secure information on UK supplies to the EU to curry favor. Whether this is true or not I cannot say...

 

Later, Pete.

Welcome back Pete. Long time no see!
Regarding the point above, I wouldn’t be surprised. When politicians leave pragmatism behind and embrace ideology, then most anything - in their minds - is legit if it furthers their aims.

Perhaps we should insist that politicians serving the public be treated like the first Roman dictators: that is no monies earned whilst in the position, creature comforts non existent (sleeping on a wooden cot, eating plain boiled food) and after a year: OUT

16 hours ago, Tony_S said:

....Am I allowed to say  “completely deranged”?

No! But you are allowed to say “complete f*****g brainless w****r“

13 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

I think AZs biggest plant is in the uk but the have one in Holland and one in Belgium. These two are having problems.

I think the issue is if AZ don’t send some vaccines over to the EU then the EU will block the export of vaccines out of the EU and into the UK.

Switzerland, at least, knows that the EU is certainly no friend of any country not “in the club” and even in the club there are - how can I put it - “platinum card holders” and “bronze card holders” Like any huge bureaucracy, the prime aim of the massive EU bureaucratic machine is the wellbeing and profit of the EU bureaucracy (cynical? Moi?) 

3 hours ago, leopardml2341 said:

...and then some breakfast, which will probably be bacon and black pudding butty

NOW we get to the important things in life..

Crispy streaky or soft (but hopefully not soggy) back bacon?

Bacon and black pudding! Add a decent soss or two and you’d have a meal fit for Zeus!

3 hours ago, Andrew P said:

...And another draining of my valuable resources in a Month.

That’s a tad melodramatic, Andrew, Old Fellow. A standard blood draw will not even be noticed by your body. In fact, you’d be surprised at how much of your body you can loose and still live and function (albeit not necessarily happily). I don’t remember the full list of what you can - literally - live without, but it did include: one kidney, a good part of the liver, a portion of the stomach, a length of the large intestine, the spleen, the appendix, the testes, one auditory nerve (and apparatus), one ocular nerve and eye, a proportion, if not all, of the olfactory and gustatory nerves, certain parts of the cortex, a number of your digits (and I forget what you can loose the most of and still function: fingers or toes). And, if memory serves, external genital1a were also considered superfluous.