The Night Mail

[Tony_S]

21 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Mad Max saga

I think I saw Fury Road all the way through but I think I have only ever seen short clips from the Mel Gibson films. 

[monkeysarefun]

3 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

That k's for that.  The skint hat I found there two years ago was over 4' long so far too big for a viper, which we do have.  We've also found three more skins at the edge of the path that the drain goes through. We think that they hibernate under that area.  I gave one skin to our step grandson, when he was eight, for the nature table at his school in Lincoln.  I'm not sure that the teacher was impressed.  Young Ryan loved it though. 

 

Jamie

 

 

Snake ID is a fascinating art, -   I got  drawn into it here when I found a small brown snake, but when I called a snake catcher to take it away  I learned that brown snakes (of which we have many species and they are not necessarily all  dangerous)   are not the same as Brown Snakes ("worlds second deadliest  snake!") of which we have a lot everywhere too.

 

Its all in the capital letters!

[monkeysarefun]

2 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I think I saw Fury Road all the way through but I think I have only ever seen short clips from the Mel Gibson films. 

 

 

Definitely UnAustralian, though you are excused from not seeing Mad Max 3.

 

[Tony_S]

2 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

Definitely UnAustralian, though you are excused from not seeing Mad Max 3.

 

Whenever my son visited anywhere he always liked to tell me if I thought I would be content to live or hate living there. Melbourne got a ”happy” and he thought I would be very happy in Cork, something to do with talking to people on buses. Not sure why he thought I would like Melbourne, he certainly did. 
Matthew had done quite a lot travelling staying in hostels or backpacker hotels. He was quite convinced all the male Australians he met were a special “export model”, not at all like the people he met in Australia. 

[Winslow Boy]

7 hours ago, SM42 said:

And now the hay-fever has kicked in. 

 

Andy

Me too. I thought I'd managed to get away with it but no it struck me yesterday. Trying to figure out what caused it and I think it was horse chestnuts flowering.

[Steamport Southport]

49 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I think I saw Fury Road all the way through but I think I have only ever seen short clips from the Mel Gibson films. 

 

The first one is a bona fide classic if you like "Cult" movies.

 

It's more of a revenge movie than anything else. Think of it as a Spaghetti Western with cars and motorbikes!

 

The critics hated it when it came out. Now it gets good reviews on websites such as IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad for a film that cost $400,000 to make yet made over $100 million at the box office!

[Happy Hippo]

3 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

We had a good morning, first off the molehills were put into the barrow, well three barrowfulls actually. The fist one and a half went to bank the potatoes up.  the rest is filling in holes in the lawn where former tree roots have rotted.  Then we had coffee sitting out in the sun.   That's when things got interesting.   Beth told me that a snake was coming out of a downpipe drain.   I fetched my camera and this slowly appeared.   Not the best angle as I didn't want to move too close.

Then about 4" appeared and looked at me.

I did get a better view of the head before it went down again.

We think it's a viper as the French call it.   I think that's an adder in English.   We have in the past found discarded skins coming out of that entrance and from underneath the path.   An interesting sight.

 

 

Now to go and mow the grass.

 

Jamie

 

1

 

 

1

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

Whenever my son visited anywhere he always liked to tell me if I thought I would be content to live or hate living there. Melbourne got a ”happy” and he thought I would be very happy in Cork, something to do with talking to people on buses. Not sure why he thought I would like Melbourne, he certainly did. 
Matthew had done quite a lot travelling staying in hostels or backpacker hotels. He was quite convinced all the male Australians he met were a special “export model”, not at all like the people he met in Australia. 

 

 

Yeah don't tell @Gwiwer but Melbourne would be the city  to pick to live in  if one  wanted to move here. Sydney has the harbour and is the better place for a tourist visit, but Melbourne has a better feel to it, its hard to put into words but it feels comfortable whenever I go down there.

 

Plus it is the home of AFL, the best sport in the world.

 

And it also has penguins.

Edited May 9 by monkeysarefun

[Happy Hippo]

As Monkey's are Fun has already stated, it's a non venomous snake, and looks very much like a Western Whip snake.

 

There are five known types of venomous snakes in France.

 

Asp Viper

Northern Viper (our Adder)

Orsini's Viper

Seoane's Viper.

 

The Asp Viper is the one with the worst bite.

 

The other three are fairly mild, and treatment is often only anti histamine and pain killers.

 

The fifth venomous snake is the Montpelier Snake, which is back fanged and delives a very mild venom if it bites.

It can grow to about 6 feet long and looks pretty ferocious, but is very timid and will high tail if approached.

 

You can easily identify the Vipers by their zig zag patterning, and if you get close enough by their diamond shaped pupils!

 

The Montpelier snake, and all the other non venomous snakes in France all have round pupils.

 

The Viperine Snake and Smooth Snake are often mistaken for Vipers due to their scale patterns, but they are harmless.

 

(Please note that the round pupil is not an indicator of a non venomous snake as in other parts of the world, Mamba, Cobra, Taipan, Tiger and Brown snakes all have round pupils.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

54 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

Not bad for a film that cost $400,000 to make yet made over $100 million at the box office!

 

The making of the first one is a classic tale. For instance the bad bloke in the opening scenes (The Nightrider) being chased by the police couldn't drive a car.

 

He only told the director on the morning of the shoot, so they got a stuntman to lie between the front seats and work the pedals and gearstick while the actor did the steering.

 

The scene where his car ends up in a fiery explosion was aided by a JATO that someone managed to secretly  liberate from the Australian Airforce. Apparently in response to a request by the director along the lines of  "how do I use this thing?'"  some bloke turned up at the shoot and convinced George Miller that he was a rocket scientist and so could get the JATO to do its stuff.

 

Turns out he wasn't and he couldn't and the JATO assisted car headed straight for one of the camera crew, before spinning sideways at the last second - luckily the footage was captured by another camera and wasn't wasted. 

Edited May 9 by monkeysarefun

[SteveyDee68]

2 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Is he playing Dan Dan The Lavatory Man? 🚽

 

 

I would expect so!

 

When they staged “Carry On Camping” I think every set piece from the film was faithfully replicated - including Barbara Windsor’s fly-off bra!

 

(I noticed the comment about “fried eggs” earlier - the actress in their production certainly had more “talent” in that respect than dear Babs! 🫢😆)

 

Steve S

 

PS

The same group also staged “Fawlty Towers” a few years ago, which is a stage adaption that has been available for some time and merges together three episodes (which means some of the best scenes such as “The Germans”,  “The Food Critic” and “Basil The Hamster”!) - the actress playing Sybil won just about every award going for her portrayal (she was so like the original it was uncanny) whilst the actors playing Basil and Manuel also garnered several awards between them. To say it was an  “amateur” production brings forth stereotypes of hammy acting and wobbly scenery, but that show was “professional” in so many ways

[monkeysarefun]

27 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Please note that the round pupil is not an indicator of a non venomous snake as in other parts of the world, Mamba, Cobra, Taipan, Tiger and Brown snakes all have round pupils.

 

Australia has two Taipan species, the Inland Taipan and the Coastal Taipan. The inland Taipan is considered to be the worlds deadliest snake by venom potency, it is in a magnitude greater than even sea snakes, it has enough venom load per bite to kill 100 humans and every bite is envenomated.  Luckily its remote habitat in outback regions of eastern Australia means that it is rarely encountered.

 

In contrast the Coastal Taipan is found from New Guinea down to northern NSW and can grow to over 2.5metres. Although it is placed 3rd in the worlds most venomous snake list (after the Inland Taipan and the Eastern Brown Snake) it is more feared due to it being an angry snake and the fact that unlike the Brown Snake, every bite is envenomated. There was no anti-venom for the Taipan bite up until 1955. Prior to this no Taipan had been captured to enable it to be milked.  

 

In 1950 a  man called Kevin Budden   went on a quest to find a Coastal Taipan so the venom could be collected. On July 27, Budden captured a 6-foot Taipan near Cairns. He carried the snake by hand, caught a ride from a passing truck, and took the snake to another local snake catcher, where it was identified as a taipan. While attempting to bag the snake, Budden was bitten on his left thumb but successfully placed the captured snake in a bag. Extracting a promise from the truck driver that he would get the snake to someone who would transport it south to researchers, Budden was taken for medical treatment. Not having any antivenom for taipans, Budden was given tiger snake antivenom. Although that helped counter the coagulating effect of taipan venom, it did not overcome the second effect of the taipan venom, which paralyses the nervous system. Though doctors initially hoped he would recover, he died the following afternoon.

 

Budden's captured snake was sent alive to the Commonwealth Research Laboratories in Melbourne where its venom was successfully milked by zoologist David Fleay, who was at that time the director of Healesville Sanctuary.  Venom from the captured taipan was instrumental in researching and developing an antivenom, which became available in 1955, and saved the life of an 11-year-old Cairns boy before the year was over.

 

The story of Budden and his sacrifice spurred efforts to capture other snakes and produce more antivenoms, including the Brown snake in 1956, death adder in 1958, Papuan black snake in 1961, Sea snake in 1962, and polyvalent snake antivenom in 1962.

[Happy Hippo]

The Coastal Taipan thoroughly deserves it's other name of the Fierce Snake!

Edited May 9 by Happy Hippo

[polybear]

5 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

 

 

  An interesting sight.

 

 

Other phrases are available........

 

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

On the bright side even @polybear would be able to give it a bit of a tickle under the chin.....

 

 

FRO Bucko.......

[Darlington_Shed]

3 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Looking at the trailer

 

Looks great! I really enjoyed the last one.

[J. S. Bach]

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 ...snip...  and the JATO assisted car headed straight for one of the camera crew, before spinning sideways at the last second - luckily the footage was captured by another camera and wasn't wasted. 

The final scenes in the old moonshining film "THUNDER ROAD" has a car crashing into an electric substation. The script did not call for the crash (or at least not that bad a crash) and when the stuntman driver crashed (he was killed in the crash) the cameras were running and the scene was left in in the driver's memory.

[Happy Hippo]

After a visit to the fang farrier this morning:  I have good clean teeth so am not required to visit until Feb 2025, unless I have a dental emergency, it was a Trayne Klubbe morning.

 

Today the emphasis was on 009, which after 7mm scale and 32/31.5mm gauge track, is verging on the microscopic.  It not helps when the sample loco we have is a Quarry Hunslet.

 

Still, schematics were drawn, and turnouts were unpacked and laid on the baseboard to get some proportion.  The board(s) overall are 8' long x 3' wide, although the plan is not to overfill the area with track.

 

To ease the stress, we ate Stem Ginger butter cookies and drank copious amounts of tea.

 

After Gordon left, I was on lawn cutting and muddy hollow bank clearance duties, which due to the ambient weather today,  made me quite hot.

 

NHN's tale of the non existent newts of Fraggle Rock reminded me that earlier in the week, when on another gardening detail Nyda pointed out what she though was a dead newt in rock pile.

 

It certainly looked very dried out, but when I picked it up, it twitched, so I moved it with some urgency to my temporary amphibian tank.

 

To our delight, it suddenly came back to life and is now swimming around quite happily.

 

Although we've had some frogs and plenty of toads in the garden, this was the first newt I'd seen in here.  There is a crested newt colony in an SSSI about 15 minutes walk away, but this one was definitely a Smooth Newt.

 

As the garden rebuild continues, we plan to create a bog garden area, and after this latest find, will definitely incorporate  a small permanent water 'tank' for the amphibians to enjoy. (With a suitable access/exit ramp)

[Dave Hunt]

To further the saga of amphibians in North Hipposhire, after losing all the frogspawn in our pond  I was a bit dischuffed as I used to enjoy watching the tadpoles developing but this afternoon when taking a break from SWMBO dictated jobs I was sitting by the pond and saw no fewer than four frogs in residence. I also saw two of the murderous little bu**ers (dragonfly nymphs) on which I've laid the blame for the demise of the tadpoles so they were hooked out and consigned to the compost heap.

 

Dave 

Edited May 9 by Dave Hunt

[SM42]

Today has been a tidying day at club. 

3 car loads of accumulated junk dispatched to the tip and at least one vacuum cleaner all but ruined. 

 

It was leaving an interesting dust stripe pattern when we ended activities for the day. 

 

Tomorrow I have gardening stuff to attend to before the weather breaks over the weekend. 

 

This may involve some painting 

 

Saturday and Sunday will be taken up with work. 

 

PAH!

 

 

Andy

 

[Craigw]

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The Coastal Taipan thoroughly deserves it's other name of the Fierce Snake!

 

The Inland Taipan is the Fierce snake. There are some very good videos on youtube of Taipans being milked at the Australian Reptile Park (Gosford) including one record one. They also have a couple of King Browns there that are serious units and seem to make a sport of trying to tag the handlers. I have two pet pythons that live in my modelling room. My daughter left them behind when she moved out. 

 

Regards,

 

Craig W

[DenysW]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Melbourne has a better feel to it, its hard to put into words but it feels comfortable whenever I go down there.

And when I was visiting there (1991-1994) they rolled the sidewalk up at 9 pm because the place was shutting down for the night. Amazingly variable weather.

[Gwiwer]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

Yeah don't tell @Gwiwer but Melbourne would be the city  to pick to live in  if one  wanted to move here. Sydney has the harbour and is the better place for a tourist visit, but Melbourne has a better feel to it, its hard to put into words but it feels comfortable whenever I go down there.

 

Plus it is the home of AFL, the best sport in the world.

 

And it also has penguins.

I have nothing against Melbourne 🤣

 

It was home for 17 years and a lot of those were good years. 
 

It is the most-European of Aussie cities in terms of vibe, familiarity and culture. And in terms of acceptance and welcome to those choosing to live there no matter where they have come from. 
 

My thoughts on some aspects of Aussie culture have been written before. Hard-working, hard-playing, hard-drinking and sometimes hard-fighting. You would get at least some of those in many nations of the world. 
 

But by “hard-working” I mean not necessarily sweating all hours for a pittance though some careers can be just that. Mostly in rural agriculture though. I always maintained that compared with the UK I was expected to work half as hard for twice the money. 
 

The spirit of mateship is a bit different to anywhere else. The willingness - the desire even - to volunteer for some pretty unforgiving tasks is endemic. Such as bush firefighting. 
 

Australia is brash. It’s loud. It’s quite in-your-face at times. And it can be deserted, silent, awesome, dangerous and unforgiving. At times. In some places. 
 

I felt mostly safe around Melbourne in a way I didn’t in Sydney nor Brisbane. Adelaide was ok. Bush towns, even those quite close to Melbourne, can be altogether different. Don’t wear rainbows or express a sexuality other than straight male or female. There were (and might still be) pubs where women are not admitted or only to a designated lounge. There are too many men whose attitude to women is that a “sheila” is only fit for the kitchen and - upon demand - the bedroom. It is their job to cook, clean, serve the men cold beers and keep quiet. I cannot support that level of disrespect. 
 

I didn’t find much of that in the city and suburbs. Only among country folk who might be “in town” for occasional business. 
 

But on the whole Melbourne people are warm, welcoming and openly friendly. Many Aussies are. But I found the traits more overtly displayed through Melbourne. 
 

I am happy to have retained a number of good friendships from those years. Almost all of them Melbourne people. And I am respectfully honoured to this day to have been welcomed to country by Boonwurrung and other Kulin Nation elders.  

[Happy Hippo]

3 minutes ago, Craigw said:

 

The Inland Taipan is the Fierce snake. There are some very good videos on youtube of Taipans being milked at the Australian Reptile Park (Gosford) including one record one. They also have a couple of King Browns there that are serious units and seem to make a sport of trying to tag the handlers. I have two pet pythons that live in my modelling room. My daughter left them behind when she moved out. 

 

Regards,

 

Craig W

Thanks Craig,  I had a 50% chance of getting it wrong, and I succeeded.

 

My interests are more with vipers and pit vipers rather than elapids.

[Dave Hunt]

My earlier fears that much of this afternoon would be taken up with rockery planting were proved groundless. Ah, I hear you say, so DH sidled off down to the shed then. Wrong! Although the rockery plants were simply taken out of the delivery box, given a sprinkling of water and then left in their pots until Saturday, it was decided by higher authority that I would get the pressure washer out and clean the outside of the conservatory and the patio. That wasn't so bad until it was decided that the conservatory roof was included and I had to get rid of the baked on bird sh!t. Eventually, using a yard brush, the pressure washer and a garden hoe (honestly) the job was done, as was I.

 

Dave

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Although we've had some frogs and plenty of toads in the garden, this was the first newt I'd seen in here.  There is a crested newt colony in an SSSI about 15 minutes walk away, but this one was definitely a Smooth Newt.

You might want to check for open planning applications with Hipposhire County Council.  Newt colonies are normally found only on land required for major construction projects.