The Night Mail

[jjb1970]

People I know who worked on cruise ships always said that there was often an inverse relationship between the public persona of famous people and their behaviour off camera. Some who carefully cultivated an avuncular everyman or zany all round great fellow image were complete *****s and others with a rather negative public image were most charming and courteous. Over the years I've never got involved with celebrity culture but I have interacted with quite a few recognisable politicians and public officials from various countries and I have found a similar inverse relationship between public and private in that bubble.

[jjb1970]

On snakes, this was found in Orchard Road, the flagship shopping area and a tourist magnet of Singapore.

 

[jjb1970]

There's always a welcome waiting at the airport from the local wildlife.

 

[polybear]

8 hours ago, Northmoor said:

That might have a rather negative effect on Britain's reputation with the other countries after a while.

 

What, worse than it is already?

 

7 hours ago, SM42 said:

SM42 Towers is full of mozzies. 

 

I find myself having regular pat downs to discourage landing of said beasties. 

 

They are quite remarkable really. 

 

You try to take them out, clapping style and they disappear. 

 

Not squashed between your palms, nor falling to earth from the shock wave of a near miss.

You're convinced you got em but they have vanished. 

 

Crafty little blighters. 

 

Anyway time for bed. 

 

Night all

 

Andy

 

Sounds like you need one of those leccy zappers like wot they have in upmarket chip shops.  Or the tennis racket version - they're great fun

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

There's always a welcome waiting at the airport from the local wildlife.

 

Where's Riki Ticki Tavi when you need him. 

 

Jamie

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

What, worse than it is already?

 

 

Sounds like you need one of those leccy zappers like wot they have in upmarket chip shops.  Or the tennis racket version - they're great fun

 

With the tennis racquet zappers, you have to pause occasionally to tap out the smoking corpses.  Also, I'm convinced that the targets can hear the whine of the electronic inverter that produces the zapping current, allowing them to evade your strike....

 

Also, apparently the device might have an effect on heart pacemakers.

 

[jjb1970]

The funny thing here is society has evolved into a sort of 50/50 split. Half the population goes outside and enjoys the remaining green areas and feels very comfortable with the wildlife (noting that you have to beware the dangerous varieties). The other half live in air conditioned apartment blocks, offices and malls and has no awareness of what is living around them and reacts to encounters as you might expect. From time to time the big lizards like monitors, or macaques or otters visit malls and food courts, half the people there find it amusing and enjoy the spectacle while the other half will be jumping on tables and screaming in fear for their lives.

[Dave Hunt]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Not furniture from a certain blue and yellow emporium by any chanc?

 

Anyway, I think that your lack of success is due to your approach: you are thinking like a fighter pilot (zoom in, shoot everything up, zoom out), you should be-- instead – thinking like a scientist: sort, categorise, measure, analyse, theorise, conduct a trial or two and then put into action. 
 

Building Ikea furniture is like learning how to an appendectomy: you start with some simple cases, learn how it all goes together in practice (there are only but so many ways of putting it together). And once you have mastered the basics and learnt the immutable ways of putting things together, then the assembly of even the most complicated item becomes straightforward (albeit often time consuming)

No, it I wasn’t from the blue and yellow shop and as for your appendectomy analogy, in this case it would have been like making the surgeon operate via the patient’s leg using only a blunt spoon. 
 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Not furniture from a certain blue and yellow emporium by any chanc?

 

Anyway, I think that your lack of success is due to your approach: you are thinking like a fighter pilot (zoom in, shoot everything up, zoom out), you should be-- instead – thinking like a scientist: sort, categorise, measure, analyse, theorise, conduct a trial or two and then put into action. 
 

Building Ikea furniture is like learning how to an appendectomy: you start with some simple cases, learn how it all goes together in practice (there are only but so many ways of putting it together). And once you have mastered the basics and learnt the immutable ways of putting things together, then the assembly of even the most complicated item becomes straightforward (albeit often time consuming)

When Dave assembles furniture, he needs the instructions otherwise he ends up with a Picasso style of construction when the artist was at his most surreal! 

 

 

 

 

 

What IKEA makes if Dave follows the instructions:

 

 

What Dave manages without instructions:

 

 

[Dave Hunt]

20 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

The funny thing here is society has evolved into a sort of 50/50 split. Half the population goes outside and enjoys the remaining green areas and feels very comfortable with the wildlife (noting that you have to beware the dangerous varieties). The other half live in air conditioned apartment blocks, offices and malls and has no awareness of what is living around them and reacts to encounters as you might expect. From time to time the big lizards like monitors, or macaques or otters visit malls and food courts, half the people there find it amusing and enjoy the spectacle while the other half will be jumping on tables and screaming in fear for their lives.

When we lived in Singapore there weren’t many air conditioned apartment blocks or malls and everyone seemed to accept the wildlife as part of everyday life, merely being careful to keep away from the dangerous ones . To be honest, the latter hardly ever intruded anyway. I think that jjb’s post highlights some of the ways in which the advantages of modern life have also resulted in the loss of acceptance of, and interaction with, the natural world around us.

 

Dave

[iL Dottore]

26 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

.....as for your appendectomy analogy, in this case it would have been like making the surgeon operate via the patient’s leg using only a blunt spoon. 
 

Dave

But that's one of the FUN ways to do an appendectomy!

[bbishop]

On the train to meet THE DOCTOR. 

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Also, apparently the device might have an effect on heart pacemakers.

 

 

Does that apply to static grass applicators as well?

[rockershovel]

11 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Point 1 - This is one of my shout-at-the-news-on-the-radio triggers.  Torville and Dean were "Amateur" skaters in the Sarajevo Winter Olympics........... "Professional" does not equal competence.  Likewise, when did something being "only satisfactory" become unacceptable?  By definition, satisfaction must have been achieved.  Far too many journos seem to have very little grasp of English meanings, like the sports reporters who refer to some footballer as a "legend".  This is funny because when the word is applied to history like the Ancient Greeks, it means that a fair proportion of the stories are probably untrue, so therefore the player is actually less good than the writer is implying.

 

Point 2 - We've often found that best places to visit when abroad are the areas where that nation's citizens take their weekend breaks.  So in Germany the Bavarian Alps and lakes are excellent places to go.  In Italy the Amalfi Coast, while very popular with foreign tourists, also attracts plenty of Italians.  At a very local level, when in busy tourist hot-spots like Venice and Florence, our Golden Rule of always walking about ten minutes away from the main attraction has invariably produced better food, friendlier service and at about one-third discount.

Scientists like Newton, and for that matter fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes weren't using the term "amateur" in the modern sense. 

 

They used it to mean "lover of" or "enthusiastic". Newton was handsomely paid for some (though by no means all) of his research through academic appointments and patronage. 

 

"Amateur" in the modern sense of "unpaid" or "of less than professional quality" is a fairly recent usage. Athletics, and some sports (notably track running and rugby union) used the term "Corinthian" to denote this - hence the occasional use of Corinthians in club names. 

 

Nor was all Newton's research of high quality. He devoted many hours to alchemy, or as we call it today, "mystical gibberish" or "magical thinking"

 

 

[Hroth]

17 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Does that apply to static grass applicators as well?

 

Apparently.

 

They both use rhe same technology and a fly zapper can be converted into a static grass applicator using a fine sieve and a minimal amount of ingenuity!

 

I've recently read a comment about the possible adverse effects of using static grass applicators.

[rockershovel]

7 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

People I know who worked on cruise ships always said that there was often an inverse relationship between the public persona of famous people and their behaviour off camera. Some who carefully cultivated an avuncular everyman or zany all round great fellow image were complete *****s and others with a rather negative public image were most charming and courteous. Over the years I've never got involved with celebrity culture but I have interacted with quite a few recognisable politicians and public officials from various countries and I have found a similar inverse relationship between public and private in that bubble.

I once met George Cole. I was working on a tunnel job immediately off Leicester Square, and we were doing survey checks early on a Saturday morning when the compound gates were rattled by someone asking if they could bring their car in. This was a common request which we invariably declined. 

 

However the driver explained that they were due for a photo shoot outside the Odeon and wanted to keep out of sight until scheduled. We were intrigued and let them in. 

 

George Cole was in full "Arthur Daley" rig and was quite happy to... well, hold court, I suppose. I did get a distinct impression that we were seeing him "in charscter" but he was a charming and amusing guest who produced some quite "meta" observations about what a gift a character like that was to a previously mid-rank character actor, and why would he care about type-casting in the best role he would ever get? 

 

After an hour or so and all the pictures anyone cared to take, his driver fetched him and off he wentc

[PhilJ W]

9 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

People I know who worked on cruise ships always said that there was often an inverse relationship between the public persona of famous people and their behaviour off camera. Some who carefully cultivated an avuncular everyman or zany all round great fellow image were complete *****s and others with a rather negative public image were most charming and courteous. Over the years I've never got involved with celebrity culture but I have interacted with quite a few recognisable politicians and public officials from various countries and I have found a similar inverse relationship between public and private in that bubble.

My cousin was a professional musician living and working in Blackpool. He often met many of the big name stars in the sixties. His favourite was Bob Monkhouse who always made a point of thanking the musicians after a show. He said that Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson were also OK. But no one liked working with Ken Dodd.

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

My cousin was a professional musician living and working in Blackpool. He often met many of the big name stars in the sixties. His favourite was Bob Monkhouse who always made a point of thanking the musicians after a show. He said that Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson were also OK. But no one liked working with Ken Dodd.

 

Careful with his money is the phrase I often heard. 

 

The amount of mail he got was about a full sack a week, yet he never gave a Christmas tip, his missus did though. One of my drinking buddies Ray was his regular postman for a few years. Now also no longer with us.

 

If she saw him then it was a fiver in his hand with a "Get a drink, but don't tell Ken" comment!

 

 

[SM42]

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

But that's one of the FUN ways to do an appendectomy!

 

The other is to do your own

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32481442

 

4 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

My cousin was a professional musician living and working in Blackpool. He often met many of the big name stars in the sixties. His favourite was Bob Monkhouse who always made a point of thanking the musicians after a show. He said that Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson were also OK. But no one liked working with Ken Dodd.

 

Possibly they liked to get home before sunrise. 

 

Andy

[AndyID]

 

 

6 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Apparently.

 

They both use rhe same technology and a fly zapper can be converted into a static grass applicator using a fine sieve and a minimal amount of ingenuity!

 

I've recently read a comment about the possible adverse effects of using static grass applicators

 

Anything that can produce an electrical spark is a good source of electromagnetic interference across a wide range of radio frequencies. (That can include model railways.)

 

Under certain conditions that can couple enough energy into pacemaker electrodes inserted into the heart to stimulate a heart muscle contraction. The electrodes are acting as radio antennae.

 

The good news is radio frequency field strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source.

[Dave Hunt]

5 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

My cousin was a professional musician living and working in Blackpool. He often met many of the big name stars in the sixties. His favourite was Bob Monkhouse who always made a point of thanking the musicians after a show. 

My parents lived for many years in the same Bedfordshire village as Bob Monkhouse and said he was always friendly and approachable as well as giving time to village events and charities when he wasn’t away on tour. Next door to them lived Dick Palmer, AKA Duke D’mond of the Barron Knights who was a great bloke. I’ve spent a good few evenings at his house getting p!ssed with him and some of the other band members but never accepted an offer of a lift from him as his driving record was appalling.

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

11 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Where's Riki Ticki Tavi when you need him. 

 

Jamie

Comparing the market......

[SM42]

11 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Where's Riki Ticki Tavi when you need him. 

 

Jamie

 

Almost a Disco Polo hit that.

 

 

 

Popular at weddings it is

 

Warning.

 

Your brain may melt

 

Andy

[polybear]

6 minutes ago, SM42 said:

Popular at weddings it is

 

 

For what?  Getting people to bvgger off home at the end of the night?

[New Haven Neil]

One of my bosses I worked for here 20 years ago worked in a bank in the tax haven days when she was young 'un.  One of her first tasks as a teller was to go into a back room with Mr Dodd, and count the cash he brought in a suitcase.......

 

The same person, many years later called me out of my office in a rush, she was a senior body in tourism then - the call was to meet Dave (hairy biker RIP) Myers who was filming on the rock - another really sound, what you see is what you got bloke.