Oldddudders

Enough. I eat a fair bit. Currently have some Soumaintrain on the go. Real French cheese which spreads easily straight from the fridge. Not always available in Summer due to being so runny.

Some poxy musical where people rush around on roller-skates, I believe.

If I see VL in my supermarket I will buy it. Full of bijou achievable layouts without a great outlay. And prototype drawings of the sort RMwebbers would want. I find the publisher to be pretty good, too, stocking a decent on-line model shop, including Peco and Gaugemaster. Their main title, Loco Revue, sometimes has translated transplants from Peco magazines.

Deb's parents - and Deb was presumably there but rather young - had once dined at the next table to him in a Cadaques restaurant, where Dali lived.

Add in fruit and veg and that sounds pretty healthy to me, as long as the bread has some goodness. Good Friday always strikes me as the most important day in the Christian calendar, being the origin of the cross that is the emblem, yet isn't even a holiday here, while Monday is.

"Small but still quite nasty"!

The Best Is Yet To Come - Jackie Gleason

It still does me - I can hardly wait!

I do recall that dispute, having been in the DMO at Beckenham for about a week continuously, although I tended to pop out most evenings to see wife Deb. Sleeping on my office floor was feasible, and I was given a cooked breakfast every morning. I wasn't alone in these duties, and the Staff Relief lady, Ginny, who looked after relief signalmen and was pregnant, was also there some nights. Obviously I spent a lot of time in Control, where there was a blackboard with latest data etc. One item I particularly remember was a quote from a rebellious Grove Park driver, who I happened to know "Buckton [then Gen Sec of ASLEF] doesn't pay my mortgage!" I wonder how many friends Derek had left after the dispute was over. These things linger and people have long memories.

She's a kid. She saw something interesting and created something in response. Creativity was not exactly universal among kids of my generation.

I got back from UK on 7th March, and have hardly been well since. Started as a cold, but that was fairly short-lived. Then I was short of breath and the usual asthma meds weren't having much effect, so I went to the doc. She prescribed anti-biotics and steroids, short courses of each, and a chest x-ray. The latter revealed not much, but the x-ray facility recommended a scan, which I have now booked for 3rd April - the first available date. They asked for me to have a creatinine blood-test first, so I rang the doc to get a prescription. That was last week, but nothing has arrived, so I rang again today - she's on holiday. So that's that. In the meantime she had prescribed a further, longer course of both anti-biotics and steroids, and I'm just about finishing those. I still don't feel great, but breathing is normal at least. At 75 you become aware that being weak and wishy-washy can happen fast. Friday I see my rheumatologist about the osteoporosis, and she is always fun. Hopefully she will prescribe the usual annual infusion of zoladronic acid, which does seem to increase my resilience in terms of standing etc. All this means I have struggled to have the motivation to do even basic modelling tasks, but yesterday I grasped the bullet and put decoders in three recent arrivals - hardly a task of Herculean proportions!.The Kernow GWR railmotor is a delight, and I'm very pleased with it. It had been on the expected list for more than a decade, and was worth the wait. Next was a model first announced even longer ago - an LS Models Picasso railcar, decorated as X93953. Of 250 such railcars, this was the only one decorated in blue and white, when, after a late-in-life refurbishment, it was put to work on the Bréauté - Fecamp branch in Normandie in the '80s. I wanted this one because it is the only Picasso on which I have ridden, being preserved by my local line, the Transvap. Their P Way is absolute rubbish - but the big railcar smoothes it all out! Third model is the Wisbech & Upwell GE tram loco, which arrived as part of my Rapido mystery bag, much to my delight. It needed a Next 18 decoder, so looking in my stash I found a boxed lordly LokPilot. Sadly this proved to be duff, and it has been replaced by a rather more humble Dapol Imperium, which works perfectly.

I am aware that since Piper Alpha that whole area of study has mushroomed into a necessary part of the project development paperchase. Indeed ISTR having discussions with a senior chap from Arthur D Little more than 30 years ago, downstream from the Clapham Accident. But I am not clear at what point in the last 47 years the likelihood of yesterday's disaster might have been considered significant enough for study, still less the justification for the huge investment needed for real mitigation.

Summer Love - Neil Diamond

47 years of safe operation tells me the system employed for outbound and inbound vessels is essentially safe. The power-loss at a critical point that caused this awful event is a very one-off one-off.

They do indeed look flimsy - but are evidently up to the job if unmolested. And that's the problem - the irresistible force of a large ship drifting, as apparently here, would require enormous, probably almost impossible, levels of protection.

Stubby 47 of this parish built me a fine station building a few years back. As he lives in Cornwall, familiarity w GWR structures may not be an issue. Whoever you choose to engage, original drawings always help to ensure agreement between client and builder about dimensions.

I'm sure the nation's signallers don't quite see it that way. On 1.4.94 they were all transferred to Railtrack, with a national wage-scale, just as in BR days. Membership of RMT made no difference - the traditional parity or comparability between signallers' and drivers' incomes disappeared from that point on.

The very idea of a bridge that suddenly gives way beneath your feet or wheels is the stuff of nightmares for many, I'm sure.

Wet in Sarthe, too, and set in for a few damps days to follow.

I thought all unions opposed RDW. Nothing to do with members needing a day off. No RDW means more staff to cover the work. More staff means more union members, means more dues, means a bigger union, means more political muscle. Unions and politics are forever entwined.

My late friend Mike worked for Philips more than 50 years ago. He was sent on courses in the Netherlands, where the instructors spoke excellent English. There were some memorable sayings, though. "You can dismantle anything - because someone must have mantled it in the first place!" Yeah, right.

Asset-rich as against cash-rich. Realising the asset value isn't practicable for most.

Red Bull aero is the mutts, I suggest.

Point taken, but I feel compared to our youth, that the two principal parties are no longer so clearly defined as toffs and cloth caps.

Very hard to identify those second properties, since the owner will be paying council tax etc as if they lived there full-time, whereas tenanted property taxes are paid by the tenant. Any attempt by government to get a register of such places with a view to regulation would hit a storm of protest from wealthy people who tend to support governments.....