runs as required

It must have been 'pre-used' on one of those 'sarf Lunnon' drugdealers' smart little hatchbacks. dh

I have a great pact going with our very understanding lady dentist in a Durham ex mining settlement. I say "just fix something that'll see me out - we've only got about 5 years left to worry about now" She laughs (though I notice the new nurse always looks embarassed) and gets to work. After she's 'hacked to key' as we termed it in the building trade, she stuffs the equivalent of concrete in, vibrates it into the crannies and charges me £35 whatever. I strut out feeling like Jaws the James Bond baddy. Nowt's fallen out ...yet. She makes all her profits (to keep her driving the latest Range Rover) out of all the 'State of Art' stuff in my wife's mouth. dh

On the other hand (as a Mondeo driver!!) I've always been convinced that the only way you should be charged for motoring is similar to the way you are charged for energy use - so you get metered and charged monthly for what you've used. Before the Blaydon bridge was opened, we at Newcastle University had nearly 3 years of using Newcastle Western bypass for experimenting with various methods of monitoring driving/speeds/roads use - and a simple way of charging for road use emerged. It was apparently because of fear of the Mondeo drivers' lobby (and the Daily Mail) that the Government rejected any attempt at such a rational policy and stayed with the crude Council Tax type of taxation for road usage. dh Ed: bad typing

Sorry.... With my old bangers its usually a Bad Earth. Always worth trying to check the earth lead from the battery is hitting bare metal. dh

The clever name caught my eye and opened up a most interesting thread facing some important strategic decisions. First, I'd like to sympathise with your family difficulty in coping with your father's decline. It is the most painful thing to have to witness and react to. As you are hopefully about to move back into the hobby, with a good few decades of retirement ahead it does seem sensible to take stock. 1 First off you will find your reduced purchasing power as an OAP more than offset by the increased amount of time to research, acquire and perform rewarding new skills. 2 So do a quick Strengths and Weaknesses list of skills you enjoy (and would like to foster) versus those (like the baseboard building you mentioned) you dislike but have to undertake. And what's your balance between carrying out projects and running trains? 3 The passage in red above caught my eye . Have you actually itemised those 'Many things' as a critical audit of your system? 4 The next thing I'd like to offer as one who looks back on some wasted opportunities during my long retirement, is that the longer I left things to just get added to and bodged, the less I was physically, as well as mentally, able to re-structure crucial aspects of my projects. In my case - once past the early to mid seventies, I was finding it difficult to crawl into awkward spots (despite being an enthusiastic caver when young!). 5 I recommend identifying explicit task options that rationalise the layout (making the most of the sophisticated electronic kit you've already acquired) and decide between them using Strengths and Weaknesses checks. 'Futureproofing' is virtually impossible, much better to try to incorporate 'adaptability'. Best wishes dh

Your bio sounds like you routinely went in for far more deadly rides than the Major. You're the lucky bu**er in my book......to still be around posting! dh

! Don't under-estimate India's capabilities. I'm always proud that it still echoes so many aspects of Britishness - despite all the sh"t it endured during the Raj. 2 I learnt my lesson 30 years ago about trying to regulate the application of technology in developing economies. A lot of people argued against the spread of computers and mobile phones - and now look at all the world wide instant connectivity. These days everyone can watch live BBC TV etc.at their local corner shop world wide - thanks to Honda prtable generators. And you can rent 10 minutes of the shopkeeper's SIM card to slip in your family's phone. In 1968 it took a week for news of my daughter's birth to be transmitted from Lusaka to Buxton! No wonder there is heavy economic and social migration from Africa/Asia to Europe in 2015. dh

An uncanny set of pics above of Central station's entrance canpy, recalling foggy Sunday winter evenings when I'd be scurrying back to college in Liverpool with a bag of clean washing and my old mum's slab of bread pudding stuffed in my rucksack. Amazing! dh

2 Continuing from earlier post, I confess there were downsides to our weekend: I came out of Railex NE to find 2-3” snow (OK, OK, 50 -75mm in horrible wet metric snow) – thick and dense over the Town Moor, though rain once more down at the Scotswood Bridge. Got home to find I’d dropped my iphone somewhere at Railex. Boo! 3 Wife commands me to go out in thick snow storm to thoroughly search Mondeo – even down the backseat ! Boo! 4 Find it actually right down the backseat Hooray! (though how did it get there?) 5 Sunday – because of sub-zero ambient temp, wife instructs me to defrost freezer. Boo! 6 Find the forgotten truncheon of gimmicky £5 Lidl Frozen Canadian lobster. By (late) supper time it had thawed and, splitting it nose to tail, we grilled each half topped with a thick gratin garlic/white wine paste. Cracking good! (technique remembered from 45 years ago as an upcountry Tanzanian construction project manager in Tabora/Kigoma when presented with bribes problematic unfrozen lobsters brought up as gifts by visitors from the Indian Ocean coast.) Hooray! 7 Indigestion 03.00H - 05.00H. Read pile of old railway mags Boo!/Hooray! dh

I do agree about it being a surprisingly good Railex NE The week-end proved an up and down roller coaster for me - with Railex NE decidedly an ‘up’. A highlight for me was the 00gauge live steam stand. I fessed up to a Mallard set stashed away in the loft, an embarrassing Christmas present from my eldest perhaps ten years ago when he’d wanted to get us all into trains again along with the grandchildren. After a few efforts, we'd all agreed Live Steam impossible to cope with and reverted to the usual (SH) DC kit. At Railex I was introduced to Richard, the original inventor of the system (in 1972) who, along with the others claim it a Hornby marketing failure. The instruction manual had been faulty. They hand out stickers to paste over the misleading sections in the manual.. Club members were demonstrating a number of their own locos: an LMS class 5 and a Standard 4-6-0 as well as (perhaps fittingly) the short lived 4-6-4 LNER Hush Hush I was quite fired to get the boxed set downand give it another go - as well as visualise a garden layout cicuit for the Oxford son’s/grandson’s yard-com-garden. dh Ed: syntax Postscript Happy Hippo in the post following this one, recommended watching a video on driving Hornby Livesteam but couldn't recall a link; try this I've also found this link to the 00 Live Steam Club HTH

Yer wrang there Hinnie. The politiko was using coal int'bath as an argument against giving folks dacent cooncil hoosis. They'll now tak yer hoos off yer after 5 years .. whativva. Progress its called ! dh

Looks like I'm not the only one in need of a refresher update on driving !! I'll put you all right after I've had my Christmas present. dh

You're right! Seems like only last week he was beginning to go without the stabilisers on his two wheeler. That's why I feel I'm due a refresher! dh

It's over 60 odd years since I passed my driving test; ought I to have an appraisal hour with a driving instructor? He promises not to ground me afterwards by notifying Swansea but to give me feedback on what I should be attentive to. I'm going to first do the theory test and I've suggested the hour's appraisal as a Chtistmas present after discovering the guy outside waiting to take next door's 16 year old out for a lesson. dh

‘Ave yerever ‘ad an embarrassing moment? Could be the start of a new Wheeltappers thread… Any road up, here’s one from this morning that might amuse ERs: My ‘hand-me-down” iphone 4 has stopped working: though it indicates “100% charged”, next click it will go blank, implying its empty. I took it to those Apple Genii at the Metro Centre who, after alll trying it, handed it back saying " you need to book it in, but maybe you'd be better off buying a new one. Then I took it to a specialist in the Shields Rd, Byker who said repair could be £50 to £60 - but not till next week. Wife remembered yesterday: “what about that nice guy who used to fix your old one over in Sunderland Shopping Centre” Went across this morning to find a very pretty dark haired young woman minding the stall. I fished the phone out of my back pocket and showed her. She took it saying “I’ll have a look”. Then she said (though I couldn’t be sure of her foreign accent, but it sounded like) “Look its full of bumfluff ! A Good thing I have long nails “ She opened a little wire thing (like my Grandma's old Primus pricker) on her key ring and dug an appalling lot of grey greasy gunge out of the bottom connector socket onto the white surface of the stall (to the applause of a growing crowd of onlookers). Finally she said “There! Look how the socket is now white again inside. And its working again for you." She handed it back saying “ There is No Charge”. . I told her “what you have just done for me is worth a tenner to me” But she was adamant “I said No Charge! – so why don’t you make a payment to a charity box further along instead?” Which I did. Wife reckoned she was probably Muslim.... dh I haven't read through above pages yet, but hope those with hospital related worries are managing.

Fine in theory... but if you're a braindead old git like me, you always mis-remember which wardrobe contains the only decent bits of kit you've got that fit. 2 Poor old Cooper... of course he's purring - 'cos he knows about you doing a runner.. Clearly he's read all the tickets. Declan our sweet talking Irish vet tried to reassure me that cats also purr when they are utterly miserable. Made me feel a load better, as I struggled to hold Wilf down while he got worked over. dh

Ah!...effing pussers. They very nearly carried off my young wife and her baby sister (in mini skirts up to their bums) during wild RN parties on the rocks in front of Grand Harbour, Malta in the 1960s. I believe the pusser's rum got spliced after the gin ran out. I never ever got invited, preoccupied with 'all nighters' on the drawing board. dh (must go and finish painting the bathroom ceiling)

I have to admit I thought Land Use/Transportation planning represented the future while working for BR(E) CCE's in the early 1960s at the time when we had close connections with Dutch Railways (with work at Parkeston and the Hook) and had a number of exchange visits. Working on their Ronstadt railway based urban strategy, the Dutch were already airing the merits of 'floating' built development versus wholesale polder reclamation (it was only 8 years since the disastrous East Coast Low Countries killer floods). Nowadays it seems that raft-type ‘floatable’ built development has become the Dutch norm, grouped around attractively planted recreational water bodies on a floodable landscape - rather than trying to keep their fingers in higher and higher dodgy dykes. Particularly attractive are Dutch recreational/commuter village parks. From my Northern fastness, I can’t understand why we don’t go that way in hard pressed areas like the South East and the Thames Valley. dh

I didn't know Geordies were Hanoverians - I understood the nickname came from all males apparently being called George (like Paddys and Jocks). The Catholic Charles's troops holed up in Newcastle's keep, I understood, were very unpopular. Most locals supported the Scots (as they seem to do again today) 2 Just been talking to a guy (from the Forest of Dean) who walked up from Newburn past Wylam up to Ovingham yesterday who told me the river was raging at Wylam bridge and whole sections of timber buildings were being carried past under the Hagg Bank bridge (cf Ron Hegg's amazing model ). He reckons people in places like Gloucester, Tewksbury and Shrewsbury have long ago adapted their lifestyle to regular flooding of ground floors. I wondered how you could actually do that - the pubs along the Ouse in York are very austere and dour below their proudly displayed flood level markers. dh Edit: usual poor proof reading

Vey shocking news pictures of Carlisle, Cumbrian and Borders floods - just 6 years after all the new flood defences were projected!. Sister had no electricity in Morecambe in the shadow of that great nuclear power station. They had no alternative heat source and she and invalid husband sat by the gas rings in their kitchen. 2 Got to finish madam's Christmas tree job off this morning. Bought yesterday afternoon from usual source: "Al tree sizes 12 poond Hinnie" from just beside the site of Newburn station alongside Newburn bridge. Interesting that, although the angry muddy river water was nearly up to the soffit of the bridge girders, the flood plain* was not flooded though Corbridge was bad - and Alston further up has already been mentioned in an earlier post. The river Tyne changed course just here during the night in the great flood of November 1771. It washed away all bridges below Corbridge including the houses and shops on Newcastle’s inhabited bridge (with some loss of life). Part of the parish of Ryton-upon-Tyne (until 1974 in County Durham) still lies north of the Tyne's present course. Joseph Cowens radical industrialist of Blaydon Burn, originator of the Blaydon Races (and funder of Garibaldi's Redshirts) was the first Chair of The River Tyne Commissioners 1862. .As well as constructing the river mouth breakwaters, they consolidated the Tyne's banks along the Willows (still tidal here 12 miles upstream) to stabilise the river’s course and control flooding. Waste slag was used from the former Newburn steelworks. dh *site of the Battle of Newburn 1640 where the Protestant Scots beat the Newcastle Royalists using a cannon hauled up onto the top of Newburn's Saxon church tower!

Ambitious idea! Please forgive my crude re-drawing from memory of one of my favourite cartoons (I think from a Punch anthology) dh

Wow! Gone 'modular' I see. dh

I clicked like about the above - but I'm also impressed by the 'go faster' look to the canopy stanchions raking forward towards the platform edge. Very sexy! dh

The BBC Regional news lastnight and this morning's main North East business paper 'The Journal' leads with this story about Nissan launching its new 'Infiniti' top of the range car amidst a bigger wrangle over Nissan ownership which threatens the future of car manufacture in Sunderland. The French government is increasing its ownership (and therefore its say in the management) of Renault who have had a controlling interest in Nissan since the 1990s. I find all this puzzling 1 Because I understood (from British arguments about not supporting our steel industry) the EU forbids State subsidy/interference.in commerce 2 I thought the French gov had already Nationalised Regie Renault in1945 following de Gaulle's expropriation of the company after Louis Renault had died in mysterious circumstances in prison as a collaborator. It is troubling because there are nationalist mutterings (from you can guess who) about us supporting the French over terrorism though they are threatening our 'most successful car maker'. dh

My long departed old mum would get up early Christmas morn to be sure to get our sprouts on in time. I never ever did like Brussels sprouts until I went to Italy. And did anyone else take their Christmas pud, all done up in a cloth, round to the local "Industrial and Equitable Co-operatve Society" steam laundry as we did about 9.00am Christmas morning to be sure to have it ready by dinner time - i.e. sometime after 12 noon ? dh.