The Night Mail

[AndyID]

Sunrise over the lake this morning. AKA my excuse for not putting up a Christmas tree 😀

[Flying Fox 34F]

It’s -14 Celsius this morning, but who cares when I have this to look at whilst eating my breakfast.

 

Paul

 

 

[Flying Fox 34F]

In Romania at the moment, there is a big Hoo-Ha about the cost of 3rd Party car insurance.  The population are struggling with the concept that a car in a minor prang, can be written off due to the cost of repairs.
Bad driving is endemic across all age groups apart from the majority of new drivers.

Ironically, major accidents end up on the TV news, but there has been no attempt to clampdown on bad driving.  It appears to my British eyes, the local Police are as bad.  So, not a good place to start from.  Perhaps the big Insurers will have to influence things?

 

Paul

[pH]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

You will need at least five 12 volt batteries to get any sort of reaction 🤣

And you know this how? 🤨

[Mike Bellamy]

44 minutes ago, Flying Fox 34F said:

It’s -14 Celsius this morning, but who cares when I have this to look at whilst eating my breakfast.

 

In your former home town, that's a bit different to the view out of my bedroom window across the Harrowby Road allotments and up Hall's Hill. However I'm sure we had temperatures like that back in the 1960s as I had ice on the inside of the window even though my Dad was a plumber and heating engineer !

.

[Flying Fox 34F]

Morning Mike,

 

I had a 1970’s view of the houses in Victoria Street, complete with ice inside the windows, until central heating was installed, then we moved to Denton Avenue a year later.  I prefer the current outlook.

 

Paul

[jamie92208]

I remember ice on the inside and metal framed windows, putting your face out from the bedclothes and debating whether or not to get up.  Central heating certainly made things a lot better in the mid 60's.

 

Jamie

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, pH said:

And you know this how? 🤨

Do we really want to know.

[GMKAT7]

Good morning folks,

 

My wife is another one who talks about ice on the inside of the windows at home into the 1970s. She even mentions that the fish tank started to ice up.

Tough these Derby lasses.

 

She thinks I am posh because we had central heating at home in the late 1960s. Coal fired though, smokeless fuel briquettes from the Homefire Coventry plant (coal flavoured eggs 😅). Well, they were local.

 

Cheers, Nigel.

[Oldddudders]

Until I was 16, we lived in a tied C19 cottage with no bathroom and no flush toilet. My parents then bought a detached house in a private cul-de-sac. Built in 1929, It had a coke stove in the kitchen, coal fires in both downstairs rooms, and, yes, Crittall metal windows. After a couple of Winters they had gas-fired central-heating installed. You never look back fondly once you've enjoyed that. 

 

The neural stimulator debate misses one important point - for the average male, a picture of a pretty girl nude generally will get his instant attention...

[iL Dottore]

2 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

The neural stimulator debate misses one important point - for the average male, a picture of a pretty girl nude generally will get his instant attention...

and then you whack him with the hammer? Could work.

[SM42]

Waking up to icy windows was a common winter experience  for a young SM42 too. 

 

We lived in a traditional ( 1926 built ) semi with central heating, but the timer was set to switch it off at 11 every  night and back on a 7 am. 

 

Being in bed kept you warm, except your nose  and cold feet were not an uncommon experience if you stayed up late watching a  film. 

 

Things got better when the boiler  was replaced with a combi.

Still switched off overnight though but warmed the place up a lot quicker. 

 

At SM42 Towers we don't use the timer, just adjust the thermostat. 

There is no regular time that we can set when no-one will be cold with the shift patterns we both work, so last out turns it down, first in turns it up. 

 

Andy

Edited January 21 by SM42

[iL Dottore]

You don't have to go back to 60s to find dwellings that iced up inside during the winter. In the early 80s I shared a cottage in Hampshire that had two storage heaters on the ground floor (dining room and living room), an Aga in the kitchen, a fireplace in the living room, a wall mounted single bar electric heater in the bathroom (also downstairs) and absolutely NO heating of any kind upstairs. Not only did the windows ice up inside, but on very cold nights I awoke to a thin film of ice on the eiderdown just below my nose: the moisture in my breath having precipitated out and frozen.

 

I think that this is probably why the British have (had?) a reputation for being bad lovers: by the time you had divested yourself of your heavy flannel pajamas and snuggled up to your significant other (who had done the same) things will have - quite literally - started to cool considerably and not just amorous ardour. So before you started loosing assorted appendages to frostbite, you quickly "did your duty" as fast as possible before crawling back into your flannel PJs and snuggling up to the hot water bottle.

 

A long and leisurely exploration of and refinement of the "arts of love" was something  left to those devious Continentals with their centrally heated apartments and/or loads of sunshine.

[Winslow Boy]

44 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

and then you whack him with the hammer? Could work.

Is that the Pentagon/Government issue hammer? If so have you filled your  QR/ZDF 13-106AC form? Don't forget it needs to be in triplicate and signed by your immediate supervisor and head of department. I believe there's also an average three month turn around time for standard items. Non standard items can take a bit longer- sometimes up to six months I understand. This of course assumes that there's not a moratorium on new orders due to savings and restrictions on spending anything over £5. In which case you'll need form QR/ZDF 13-106AC/A - note the 'A' as if you use form QR/ZDF 13-106AC Accountancy will reject it and notify your head of Service and you'll be asked to explain why you used the incorrect form to them, which will need to be in quadruple and signed by your immediate supervisor, Head of Department, Head of Service and Accountancy.

Edited January 21 by Winslow Boy

[iL Dottore]

I've never understood why people turn their central heating on and off: surely the most energy intensive aspect of using central heating is the process of heating up the house/flat. Once the house is warm, then replacing heat lost through windows and doors (which is minimal with well insulated double or triple glazing) requires minimal energy, certainly less than turning the heating off, allowing the place to cool down and then heating it up again.

 

At Schloss iD, the house is fairly well insulated (albeit we would like to improve it), which means the central heating is set at 19*C day/17*C night and remains on from about early November to mid-March (usually). Despite these low central heating settings the living room, dining room and kitchen stay about 21 - 22 degrees and the bedrooms about 19 - 20 degrees. Overall our winter energy costs aren't that significantly different to our summer energy costs. Installing high quality double-glazing (sealed units with an inert gas between the panes) when we first bought the house was definitely a good move.

[Happy Hippo]

10 hours ago, newbryford said:

 

Isn't that the same for any item supplied to a government department - regardless of nation?

We did have well meaning civil servants who wanted to source nuts bolts and screws from any of the DIY sheds as it was  much cheaper.  They were unaware of the engineering specifications required to secure a camera and light unit under a helicopter, that would be hovering over population centres in a certain province.

[Hroth]

My mothers hobby was viewing houses for sale.

 

In those far off days, you could just pop into an estate agents and get a key to view an empty property on your own, without supervision.  The house they had during my early years had gas central heating, with what seemed a huge boiler in the kitchen.  My mother used it for raising dough, airing stuff, and the cat slept on it.

 

One day, in the early 70s, my mother came back from viewing a house that she was very enthusiastic about. That weekend, we were all dragged about this house, and the Monday following, our house was up for sale and the new house bought.

 

Instead of gas central heating, it had storage heaters that were woefully ineffective.  I remember ice forming inside our bedroom windows, gas fires that had to go on in the winter evenings because the storage heaters were at their last gasp of heat, and huddling up in thick jerseys and blankets to keep warm.

 

By the next winter we had gas central heating!

 

[SM42]

Approved suppliers are a licence to print money and all because it makes the accountant's job easier. 

 

I prefer the Dilbert method. 

 

Give each manager a budget and a list of approved products ( thus meeting any standards required and reducing COSHH paperwork)  and let them source what they need. 

 

Andy

[br2975]

16 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Flavio's Folterkammer. 

 

 

The other side of his modelling room and workshop:

 

 

.

Reminds me of a house I  visited many moons ago in the "Strangetown" area of Cardiff; from where a very intelligant, attractive, single, self employed lady ran an 'escort' agency.

.

The house was decorated throughout by Laura Ashley, and spotlessly clean, as she employed both a cleaner, and a gardner.

.

When asked by my 'boss' why I didn't "put her on the book for running a brothel" - I took great delight in telling him, as she was the only woman using the premises, it didn't constitute a brothel, so there were "no offences disclosed"

[br2975]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

Crittall metal windows.

.

Aaaaargh !

.

Crittall windows were fitted to my childhood home, and were fitted to our current house (been here since 1979) when we moved in.

.

My father, a cabinet maker and joiner, renewed all our windows with timber framed ones as a stopgap - until we could afford uPVC all around..

.

Cost in 1980 for timber, glass, putty, primer, paint and a new front door for a three bed semi.... a tad under £400.

.

At the start of the pandemic, we decided to replace our then uPVC windows.

.

One salesman who offered us a quote was a former school chum, working for Anglian.

.

George scribbled on his pad, scrolled around his company tablet, then came up with a figure................... £18k

.

I burst into hysterics, which caught George off guard.

.

"What's so funny ?"  he asked.

.

"I didn't pay that for the house !"

.

We went elsewhere, paid a lot less, and were more than satisfied with what we got.

[Oldddudders]

3 minutes ago, br2975 said:

.Reminds me of a house I  visited many moons ago in the "Strangetown" area of Cardiff; from where a very intelligant, attractive, single, self employed lady ran an 'escort' agency.

I suppose there is a sort of hierarchy within the oldest profession, and escorts would certainly be on a higher plane than the lady with a rented room. In the '60s in Soho, I certainly saw a sign saying "Young lady gives French lessons. 2nd floor, please walk up". All of these people - although not the lady running the agency - are to be pitied. It is simply not natural for a woman to be so completely indiscriminate about her partners. 

 

Anent Brian's tale of double-glazing, my father had taken the decision to have the windows replaced, and a firm was in the course of manufacture, when he died unexpectedly. Sadly the solicitors were unable to claw back anything from the firm. 

[SM42]

I had a similar double glazing experience. Started at 20k and over the next few months they kept calling and the price kept coming down. I finally gave in at 3k. 

 

Still a lot for around £500 of glass and a couple of hundred in plastic ( in those days,) but I suppose they did need to pay the fitters (3) for two days work as well. 

 

 

I've just remembered that Mrs SM42' has decreed that we need a new lamp and shall go hunting for one after she gets back from church at 11. 

 

To compensate, she is buying me breakfast. 

 

To compensate I've bought a couple of wagons that should arrive when she's at work

 

I really must get out of bed and get ready to do battle in the lighting department .

 

Andy

[Oldddudders]

BHS were famous for lighting. The Range may be a good substitute.

[newbryford]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

I remember ice on the inside and metal framed windows, putting your face out from the bedclothes and debating whether or not to get up.  Central heating certainly made things a lot better in the mid 60's.

 

Jamie

 

You were lucky to have windows.....

All we had to live in was a cardboard box in middle o' t' road

[iL Dottore]

18 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

I suppose there is a sort of hierarchy within the oldest profession, and escorts would certainly be on a higher plane

Certainly in French and British society, since  Georgian times (and whatever the French equivalent was) and well into Victorian times, a Courtesan was much, much more than just a bed partner. The very best were not only beautiful, but intelligent, erudite, business savvy and a lot more besides. Many became long-term lovers to various members of the aristocracy and the political classes. And whilst shunned by "polite society" such was their pervasiveness that they became a de-facto "alternate" society. The majority of Courtesans plied their trade with the upper middle class and the aristocracy as the cost of maintaining a Courtesan was prohibitively high.

 

It is claimed that one of the reasons a good Courtesan was highly prized, was because they could hold forth intelligently and eruditely on topics that "a well bred lady" was not supposed to have opinions on (or even know about). This forthright female insight was much  valued by many members of the aristocracy who were also politicians, given that – for various reasons – they were unable or unwilling to discuss such topics with their spouses.

 

An interesting factoid: much of London's Georgian and early Victorian housing stock (the really nice properties in the West End) is due to the fact that at that time one of the few things a Courtesan could invest her money in (and successful Courtesans could make a lot of money) was property.

 

Edited January 21 by iL Dottore