Gwiwer

Loud'n'Proud, eh? In Japanese culture it is disrespectful to be overheard using the lavatory. In the UK one respectfully tries not to draw attention to yourself but there is normally no need for sound-deadening devices. I’m unsure of US etiquette. In Australia it can be a case of “Strewth. That’s better. I needed that one, mate” after a resounding (and resonating) visit to the bush-dunny. After checking for spiders and snakes first.

That sounds like low-hanging fruit to me

There has been a lookage in the muddling box It has been cloned with wetter and soup.

Ah yes. It happens every season. Geelong vs Western Bulldogs. Is it raining ….. ? Other apt pairings include Dockers vs Port (Freemantle - Port Adelaide) and Cats vs Lions (Geelong - Brisbane, ex-Fitzroy),

I certainly remember the days when the outside privvy would be supplied with carefully-torn pages from the Daily Telegraph. The indoors lavatory had the luxury of Izal Medicated! Rough is as rough does. We were brought up hard in them days. None of this namby-pamby soft tissue then. In other news it is warm, sunny and very windy. Not as severe as the seaweed-mongers would have us believe, not too windy for Dr SWMBO to have set forth on the tricycle bound for the WI market and an hour or so sketching in church making use of her pastels and art-paper. But windy enough to have removed the well-anchored bike cover from the bikes (though not from its anchor points) and windy enough to have lifted a near-empty sack of briquettes over the wall from the neighbour’s. Stay safe. Keep yer hairs on.

The band. Capital T and D. To avoid any ambiguity. One of the few to have endured the trial by time and have been out their thrashing their kit since 1979. They have worn out quite a few drummers along the way. Olga is quite a handy guitar-wrangler too. Two of my favourites. Both covers.

It can be a very valuable networking tool and a means to find people in the same professional sphere as yourself whom you might only have heard about or not even have known of. I have an effectively unused account; I found it wasn't for me and I wasn't getting anything from it. Dr. SWMBO uses her account pretty much daily and has a huge worldwide professional network going on it. She sometimes tells me she has been "found" or looked for by others and also that she has found someone there whom she might have met at a conference some time in the past or knows only by their published work. It has proved very useful for her indeed. Horses for courses. It is largely a professional networking platform. As for the antisocial media as a whole I am growing less enthusiastic of it by the day. It now spams me far too many irrelevant and inappropriate adverts where ever I look. When I go into the "Why am I seeing this advert" link the usual reason offered is that "This advertiser is seeking to engage with people like yourself". Fine. But I don't transact any business in US$, I don't buy anything from Temu, I don't have a mortgage or loan needing protection (nor any form of "Over 60s Life Plan") and I most certainly do not require any services which might be offered by under-dressed ladies who appear to be much less than half my age. I should put some of the apps to bed. But there are one or two good friends who only communicate using one or other of them. It's a bit frustrating to keep an app just to talk to at most two people but unless we can find another way or our friendship fades then that's how it is. What would be nice is to have a definitive means of knowing whether someone is simply no longer interested in maintaining a friendship; sometimes it is possible to tell if you have been "blocked" but not always. That, however, relies upon the other party actively "switching you off" as opposed to just not replying to messages. Just tell me "So long and thanks for all the fish" rather than keep me hanging on and sending the occasional "Hi how are you?" into the void of cyberspace. Grumpy old git mode will now be put to bed.

Given the apparent predisposition of ERs to medical issues I might be forgiven for having initially misread that!

£270K fine? Methinks the Wife Widow is rather justified in being p1ssed off. Hopefully the Judge that awards compo will be a lot more sensible and give the Companies concerned a right kicking. A rather modest fine indeed but reading the full article will disclose the facts that the maximum penalty (of $1.5m) could not be imposed because this case was heard in a “lower court” (Melbourne Magistrates) rather than a “high” criminal court. His Worship also commented in judgement that “there is no penalty this court could impose which matches the severity of the incident and extent of loss.” To have only issued instructions by handbill left in the cab in the hopes the driver would read them is not safe practice. Daily notices must (in the UK) be displayed on a designated notice board at the sign-on location and staff are required to sign to say they have read and understood them. The temporary diversion of trains via the Wallan loop required a deceleration from line speed of 100kmh to 15kmh without trackside signage or advance warning. ARTC signalling does not retard the train in the way British signalling does. Staff past and present who I know as friends have been widely critical of ARTC on many fronts. Track condition is one of those. Despite the loss of the train crew the integrity of the train construction withstood most of the forces involved and saved many lives. The power cars are the adapted British HST design; the trailers are all-local built by Comeng but are structurally similar to the British Mk3 coaches. I shall probably hear more as the judgement and implications roll out across the industry

We had one of those Upon the Hill of Strawberries. You approached the main road from a residential one at a staggered crossroads. The markings and signage are both “Give Way” not “Stop”. Turning right you were faced with traffic emerging from the almost-opposite residential road which - in that direction - was just ahead of you and would expect to turn ahead of you. But turn left and you were right on a light-controlled pedestrian crossing. I don’t mean a short distance from it - once you were committed to the turn you had passed the light! There was no signage to indicate this existed on either of the side roads and no way to see the colour of the light at all. If traffic on the main road was stopped it was red. But unless some kind soul let you out when it changed you were stuck there. When traffic cleared you went not knowing whether the light was green or not. Coming the other way - making the right turn off the main road - you were obliged to stop and obstruct the crossing before you could complete the turn. The light might have turned red whilst you were astride the crossing. Very very poorly thought out. And under the control of TfL (Transport for London) who never replied to calls, emails or any other attempt to talk about it. At the top of the blue line. You can judge for yourselves the distance between side-turning and crossing and the angle one would be expected to see the lights from if entering the main road. The light us on a pole which appears as a dirty smudge exactly where the wavy white line meets the solid stop line. Reviewing DaveF’s post it’s about the same distance. But you cannot see the traffic light

In the UK some public omnibuses began in much the same way. A vehicle which could take livestock to and from market one day and shoppers to town the next. In some cases they were swap-body chassis but others were genuine all-purpose, or utility, vehicles. As late as 1984 I was aboard the local bus from Port Isaac into Wadebridge - run by Prout's for those with local interest although it was a pensioned-off former Western National coach - when a local farmer and goat sought to board. Never mind the less-than-able claiming difficulty getting themselves and their shopping trolleys up and down four or five steps at the door; this unlikely pair were admitted and the goat was eventually persuaded to sit in the aisle. As I was near the front I was also able to confirm that the farmer paid his own fare but the goat was charged as for a dog. Presumably there was no separate "goat" fare available. They were off to market; farmer was expecting to return sans-goat "if 'ee were lucky" Fast-forward around 15 years and I was driving for Western National around St. Ives. We had three standard pre-set fare levels with dogs charged at a standard 50p for any one-way trip. Some adult fares were only 20p and many were less than 50p meaning a dog fare could be more than that for its owner! We sometimes got asked what the big bold letters printed on our tickets stood for. Easy ..... AS - Adult Single AR - Adult Return CS - Child Single CS - Child Return SS - Seagull Single SR - Seagull Return ..... which caused a few smiles at times. The S-prefix of course meant Senior in the days before there was widespread free travel. We also had a lot more combinations which could appear but in some cases seldom did so. Some of those were AW - Adult Weekly, CD - Child Day, DG - Dog (or goat?), PA - Penwith Adult (a promotional open-jaw ticket supported by Penwith District Council which allowed outward travel from A to B and return from C to A), MW - Midweek Maximum (a company promotion which offered a maximum return fare of £2 on Wednesdays in winter), KW ("Key West" - a multi-operator weekly ticket valid on most buses across the south-west) and quite a few others.

It's a pick-up. A ute should have a purely utilitarian tray on the back. This may or may not be integral with the cab unit but to my mind it should not be stylised in the same manner. Other opinions are available. Especially from those who frequent ute-musters.

Removing those stones from the tyre treads will cure that! I do get irritated at times by the occasional click-click-click-click-click of a stone which has lodged itself in the tread and has yet to be removed. An occasional embuggerance of living in a rural area; either one of necessity has to pull into the soft stuff to allow someone else past on a narrow road or enough topsoil has washed off onto any road complete with stones which then lodge into the tread. Unofficially that's a (non-reliable, unscientific) means by which one knows that there is a legal amount of tread on the tyre! G'daftarnoon all. It is persisterating down yet again. Tradition required that to happen during yesterday's Ban-Collar Day but tradition on this occasion failed to materialise. Just two hefty but brief downpours occurred. It being Dr. SWMBO's birthday yesterday she had asked to be taken somewhere nice for a picnic - even if that meant an "in-car" picnic in dubious weather. First we had to visit Boots in PZ as she required some prescription medication. "Sorry - no can do - we don't have stock of it" was the response after she had waited half an hour in a long slow-moving queue. As we were passing anyway we then tried the Hayle branch where she arrived to see the duty pharmacist leaving the counter for lunch. I suggested we picnic first and return later but she was determined to wait having been told they only had very limited stock of the required. So 45 minutes later the pharmacist returned, attended to her needs and presented her with two days-worth of "emergency dispense" medication. For which she still had to pay the full dispensing fee. So after a total of 75 minutes waiting time she had enough for two days and had to go to the pharmacy in town again this morning for the full prescription. They ALSO only had two days-worth in stock but asked her to come back tomorrow (again!) when they have had their delivery. She came away with what they could offer but on this occasion no fee was charged because they have yet to complete her full prescription. A bit so-so from various NHS services there, then. I do wonder whether the problem is supply or demand (possibly both) when standard blood-pressure medication is in such short supply over a wider area. There seemed to be no such shortage of the "morning-after" pill though; she mentioned that several in the queue ahead of her were after one of those. It seems to have been a busy Easter on the casual encounter scene! We did manage the picnic. In the car due to the cool wind blowing. Up on the North Cliffs near Hell's Mouth in stunning light and with dramatic cloud formations.

@Dave Hunt - all the best Of classical music - I'm not averse to some and hold my late father's 800-strong CD collection including a very wide range across the genre and somewhat beyond. He was quite a fan of "earlier music" too. I am slowly listening to them but at the rate of one or two a week I might not get through the mall. I suspect he never did either as a few have turned up still in their sealed cellophane outers. They are catalogued but listing composers and works means nothing to me if I haven't heard them. So the 3-2-1 goes like this Also-ran: Pictures at an Exhibition (specifically the Barry Douglas piano solo version or the electronic one by Isao Tomita) Honourable Mention in Dispatches; Carmina Burana (which dad always insisted would bring about the end of the world if everyone on the planet simultaneously hit the strident D-major in "O fortuna") 3. Rite of Spring 2. "Rach 2" piano concerto 1. Saint-Saëns "Organ" Symphony with the volume turned up above 10.

Good morning. Welcome to Tuesday-after-Easter. Easter Moanaday. Still a holiday in Tasmania.

Dinner tonight was a roast leg of lamb. Not the part-leg one often gets chez-supermarché but a full one. Only because all the major supermarkets have been offering these at half price or less this past week and it was too good an offer to pass by. That's around £15 for a perfectly good leg which (they claim) serves "7 - 8" and will most certainly do so albeit that is likely to be two of us four times over! And with a further benefit of loyalty points offsetting future purchase costs. All rather nicely set off with roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and halved brussels. Plus steamed cauliflower florets and baby asparagus. Thyme jus, thick gravy optional, mint sauce on the side. It's been a good day for the alimentary canals. We enjoyed hot cross buns for breakfast - maybe the last for this season but who knows - then joined friends for lunch near Falmouth. Not too far to drive and a pleasant little spot in the lanes near Constantine which offered a superb shakshuka (in my case) and other similarly-themed "brunch" items. All six of us were well pleased with our chosen dishes. And that was Easter. Pask Lowen as we might say locally. Dr. SWMBO ventured forth into the morning service which included a Christening leaving me to clean up indoors before we headed farther afield. Tomorrow is her birthday. More food and surprises are planned.

I guess there are some "clever" plates there given the MAN suffix to some marks. I recall when wer were teeny tiny critters that there were two bikes - don't ask me what sort because to barely school-age me they were just "Mobikes" - parked as a pair with plates HE 151 and RU 12. He is one; are you one too?

Only to be expected when your commentator, who has significant input into the scripting often writing the greater part of it, is a tender 97 years young. That he is still semi-actively making new material is remarkable and testament to the passion of the man. His shoes will take some filling. Dr. SWMBO seldom knows officially when he will be out filming but has met him a good many times. Usually in the hour before the public gates open at Kew but after those who work “office hours” start. The “outdoor” teams often start much earlier than that and are sometimes tasked with ensuring a particular plant, location or shot is ready for the cameras. All somewhat under the radar, of course, just as are His Majesty’s occasional visits. She has been introduced to both more than once and has been singled out for mentions by Sir David for some of her work.

Back in the 1950s however very few would have had even one car. The provision was adequate for the time as, in all likelihood, was the local bus service. Hertfordshire is one of the most supportive authorities of bus services outside London and Manchester but service provision is still far less than it was 50/60 years ago when Routemasters were among the types you could find trundling past fairly frequently.

I've had it a couple of times too, and very slow page loading. win 10, Edge. Seen on an increasing number of occasions across the past week or so along with ever-slower loading times. MacOS / Safari or on the iPhone - slower if anything on the phone.

Try this for size.

The train finally reached Penzance at 2.32am. We arrived home 20 minutes later. I have never seen so many people disgorging from one train here, never mind the hour. It was heaving. And that after having made stops at almost every station since Plymouth. Some additional delay was caused by the time it took for those who wished to do so to alight at intermediate stations. The one and only all-night taxi was suddenly swamped with demands to go here, there and everywhere. It was also quite surreal to drive out through town (where there were quite a fair few folk about even at that hour) and onto the open road across the moors. Not alone as I had expected but leading a convoy of six cars! At a quarter to three in the morning one of those behind had clearly had enough of following the defensive drivers and - with a clear night and no oncoming headlights - decided it would be smart to overtake the lot of us. Dirt flew up from their offside wheels as they did so; they must have come perilously close to grief to have run through the dirt at 60mph around the bends but they vanished into the distance. We were indoors at 2.50am. After a wind-down cuppa and a well-travelled donut we were in bed at 3.30. I made it up for 10.45 but the others - Dr SWMBO and His Furship - are still raising zzzzzzzzz. Happy Goat Friday. At least we have the week ahead together with no work to worry about.

Now 3 ½ hours late and threatening to arrive closer to 3am than the expected 11pm.

Indeed. And what am I doing at this hour? Awaiting Dr SWMBO who is running around 3 hours late. Flooding caused her booked train to be cancelled. The next - and last - one was delayed by the need to remove “excess” passengers before departure. The crew were unable to close the doors due to the numbers hoping to travel. Several other trains had also been cancelled meaning this one was expected - on a holiday getaway evening - to carry five loads not one. As no-one was able to move inside an extended toilet stop was made at Westbury with this train now 98 minutes late. “Control” being made aware that some 300 passengers were aboard for Cornish stations agreed to hold the last connection by 85 minutes to avoid a lot of hotel and taxi bills. Dr SWMBO has just left Plymouth and is expected at Penzance just after 02.00. Some 3 hours late. A free ride for what that’s worth. I drove up to Cornwall Services (the old Roche Victoria location) on the A30 in case there was a need to collect her from Plymouth. I can now head west once more and probably enjoy a lengthy wait at the buffer stops. Something like this Happy Goat Friday from the Getting Wet Railway

The current A270 was the old A27. It still takes its time-honoured course from one end of the modern by-pass to the other through Hove and Brighton.