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The Night Mail


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9 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Back in my banking days, a work colleague locked himself out of his month-old Mk4 Cortina estate just inside the entrance to the biggest car park in town.

 

We got round it by flagging down any of our customers that we recognised who were driving Fords and asking to borrow their key. Fifteen minutes, and four cars later, we were back in.

 

A pal of mine in the trade reckoned that you could open any Ford of that year with one of only five different keys, so we beat the odds, but only just.

 

John  

My next door neighbour bought a brand new house on the estate we live on, back in the '70s.  He challenged the builder in no uncertain terms when he'd discovered that across the whole estate - several hundred houses - there were only something like six different key combinations.

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My father was car parks manager for the London Borough of Havering back in the 70's. Most of the attendants carried a length of the flat plastic strapping used for sealing parcels. It could be slipped between the door and the frame, looped over the 'golf-tee' button and the button lifted. They could open almost any car in less than thirty seconds.

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40 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Back in my banking days, a work colleague locked himself out of his month-old Mk4 Cortina estate just inside the entrance to the biggest car park in town.

 

We got round it by flagging down any of our customers that we recognised who were driving Fords and asking to borrow their key. Fifteen minutes, and four cars later, we were back in.

 

A pal of mine in the trade reckoned that you could open any Ford of that year with one of only five different keys, so we beat the odds, but only just.

 

John  

 

Many, many Moons ago (1968) my dad was so taken with the new semi-automatic VW Beetle that he traded in both both cars and bought two, both of them blue. By then all five of us in the family were driving so I took the keys down to the VW dealer to get duplicates for all of us.

 

It was only when I got to the parts department and started reading off the numbers on the keys that I discovered they were identical :D.

 

(The chassis numbers were well apart.)

 

 

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43 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

The trucks bigger than the caravan!

 

 

Despite its apparent size (even bigger ones are available) that truck is actually quite economical for a full-size pickup truck. It has a 3.0 Liter turbo-charged diesel engine and will happily do 30 MPG on a long journey (Imperial gallons). If our son takes care of it it should easily run for another 250,000 miles.

 

I would have bought another truck with the same lovely engine but they are wickedly expensive at the moment. IIRC the engine was originally developed by GM but when they went bust they sold the design to Fiat-Chrysler for peanuts. They completed the development and ended up with a brilliant product.

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BTW, for those who might like to take a butcher's at Idaho but for all sorts of reasons won't be doing in person, there is a movie. It's a bit of a "commercial" but actually quite accurate.

 

Idaho: The Movie  

 

It's free if you have Amazon Prime (in the US anyway) and probably available from other sources if you want to watch something relaxing, or even soporific :)

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My father told me that during the war they travelled to Britain on an ex-liner. The cooking staff was still there, serving the same stuff. The was a big Ontario farmboy who had decided that he was not going to be intimidated by anything that the other cultures ate.  One day, lunch was tripe. Most of the guys took one look any went elsewhere. The one fellow cut a piece off his serving and started in.  After 5 minutes he said, "It's no use, fellas. The more you chew it, the bigger it gets."

 

When I was at university, a student group built a new residence.  There was a bit of a stir when they found out that the master key for the residence was the same as the apartment building going up next door.

 

I have a session with the fangmeister at 8:10 tomorrow morning.

 

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In the mid 80s I had a BMW 525i. One Sunday I was leaving a hotel in Keighley where I'd spent the night and drove off then half a mile or so down the road went to play a tape that I had in the glove box. When I opened the glove box the contents weren't what I expected and confusion reigned so I pulled over and eventually got out to look at the registration number - it wasn't my car but an identical one that my key fitted. I hastily returned to the hotel, found my own car in the carpark and drove home.

 

Dave

Edited by Dave Hunt
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I forgot black pudding: Yes please

 

White pudding: You can keep it

 

Many years ago when I was  a slip of an SM42 I got home from school before my parents had got back from work. This was not an unusual occurrence and normally I only had to wait a few minutes as at that time of life I was not trusted with my own key. 

 

In the hope that someone may be in I looked through the lounge window and saw that our TV was on the floor and on the shelf where it lived was another TV (colour as well ooooo!)

 

Most odd

 

Anyhow, parents returned and were also a little stumped 

 

They then found a receipt from the Co-Op for a rented TV

 

A quick dash across the road to use the neighbours phone to call them and find out what was going on. 

 

It turned out that someone had rented a TV . 

They had left a  key as they would not be in and had left instructions of what to do and not to worry about the dog as it would be locked in the kitchen. All the delivery man had to do was turn right in the hall and install the TV in the lounge. 

 

He though it odd the dog had not barked and having no instruction on what to do with the black and white TV he found, he left it on the floor. 

 

How had he got in?

 

Turns out the people at 36 had rented he TV and he misread the delivery note as 56. 

 

The people at 36 were quite angry that we had the same lock on our door as they did. It was as if we'd done it on purpose

 

The silver lining to all this was that the idea of renting a colour TV quite appealed and that's exactly what happened a couple of weeks later. 

 

Andy

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39 minutes ago, SM42 said:

I forgot black pudding: Yes please

 

White pudding: You can keep it

 

 

Black pudding: Technically blood pudding.

 

But what about mealie (or mealy) pudding, sold at chippies in Eastern Scotland?

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25 minutes ago, AndyID said:

care to guess the location?

No idea, but if we were there I suspect Aditi would be giving me a lecture about the rocks. Was the picnic site visited by Yogi Bear?

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1 hour ago, AndyID said:

DSCN0018.jpg.7a6ae69affab903b020bedcac126749f.jpg

 

 

Anyone, apart from pH , care to guess the location

 

 

North America 

 

Best I can do at this time of the morning

 

Andy

Edited by SM42
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8 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Right! But could you be a wee bit more specific?

 

The north, in the less arid bits.

Up Canada way

 

It looks vaguely volcanic, 

Montana?

 

Andy

Edited by SM42
Specificity
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When I got my first house I realised most of the keys matched the sailing club.. I could get into the SC, into the Kitchen into the pantry, and out of the back door all with my house key.. Sadly they changed the pantry key when it failed... the rest still work though..

 

Of up North Canada way, I see Vancouver is just about cut off due to heavy rains / mud slides,

I hope all participants on here from the area and just across the border are OK..

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7 hours ago, Northmoor said:

My next door neighbour bought a brand new house on the estate we live on, back in the '70s.  He challenged the builder in no uncertain terms when he'd discovered that across the whole estate - several hundred houses - there were only something like six different key combinations.

That was quite common in the 70's with several estates.  We werecalso told that Ford onlybused 5 different locks and any Ford key would open a Vauxhall Viva.  Don't ask me how I know.  In the early days of UPVC windows a whole estate in Knottingley had them fitted inside out. Burglars only had to pull out the sealant strip then lift the window out.  

 

As to the photo is it somewhere  near Lake Louise.

 

Jamie

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4 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

In the mid 80s I had a BMW 525i. One Sunday I was leaving a hotel in Keighley where I'd spent the night and drove off then half a mile or so down the road went to play a tape that I had in the glove box. When I opened the glove box the contents weren't what I expected and confusion reigned so I pulled over and eventually got out to look at the registration number - it wasn't my car but an identical one that my key fitted. I hastily returned to the hotel, found my own car in the carpark and drove home.

 

Dave

Ever do that with  an airframe for someone else?

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46 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

A friend in the UK has something called a 'Denali'.  I have lived in smaller houses.

 

denali-14.jpg.d393cfa5b202b161adecd07a84e07e3c.jpg

 

No, that's not her....googled picture.

 

 

 

Is that the "Queen of de Nile"?

 

It's actually the same length as the aforementioned RAM. That's a "crew cab". The bed is a lot shorter than the RAM's "quad cab". Its back seats are a bit more cramped but the bed is longer at 6'6".

 

GM, Ford, Chrysler (RAM), Nissan and Toyota all offer similar versions of both types. There are also short cab versions with an even longer bed for real utility customers.

 

EDIT: That is basically a SUV with a practically useless exposed boot glued on the back :D (Just my humble opinion.)

 

 

Edited by AndyID
my bad!
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