The Night Mail

[rodent279]

11 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Proof that S space is only for imperially-dimensioned objects? Lesser mortals have to make do with O space, OO space, or even N space (stands for no space).

The flaw in that theory is that BA is a metric thread.

[simontaylor484]

1 minute ago, rodent279 said:

The flaw in that theory is that BA is a metric thread.

I always thought BA was a member of the A team that didn't like flying

 

We have an Interference Officer in our house when doing a job if you leave anything such as a tool for a couple of minutes it gets moved only trouble is she always puts it away somewhere different and you can't find the bu99er 

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

The flaw in that theory is that BA is a metric thread.

 

Ah, I knew that really, somewhere in the recesses of my personal M/F space. Does that mean it is eschewed by true S scalers?

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

 

 

Get a second, identical remote control, complete with correctly positioned and charged batteries for her but on a different channel.

 

Now that's what I call sneaky ....

 

 

Hmm yes sneaky Puppers but falls foul of the your to blame when a) you say you can't fix it and b) when you're told to get another one that does work. So I'm afraid only 47% pass.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Winslow Boy
Puppets for Puppers

[Tony_S]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

And there was littlevold me thinking that all Swiss Miss's were paragons of neatness and tidyness, and would never leave clutter and mess behind.  Please don't shatter my illusions.

 

Jamie

We were having a holiday near Lac Leman one year and had a boat trip from Yvoire to Nyon on the Swiss side. As we got off there was a woman clearly looking for someone British to talk to. She was married to some sort of UN person in Geneva and basically wanted to moan about the Swiss. She was very disappointed as she had believed she was coming to a very orderly country and she was upset that “ they were as bad as the French”. 

[Tony_S]

10 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Hmm yes sneaky Puppers but falls foul of the your to blame when a) you say you can't fix it and b) when you're told to get another one that does work. So I'm afraid only 47% pass.

Because I gently teased Aditi that I can tell by her tone of voice that she thinks something is broken, I have noticed that recently she is more likely to mention that she has researched the problem on the internet and would I just check it before she orders a replacement from John Lewis/Amazon/ etc. 

[Oldddudders]

6 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

We were having a holiday near Lac Leman one year and had a boat trip from Yvoire to Nyon on the Swiss side. As we got off there was a woman clearly looking for someone British to talk to. She was married to some sort of UN person in Geneva and basically wanted to moan about the Swiss. She was very disappointed as she had believed she was coming to a very orderly country and she was upset that “ they were as bad as the French”. 

I think that is the French-speaking corner of Suisse, so she could expect little more.

[Happy Hippo]

10 hours ago, laurenceb said:

I think that I have got it, but it has gone off

Gone off where?

 

Somebody has it!

[Tony_S]

1 minute ago, Oldddudders said:

I think that is the French-speaking corner of Suisse, so she could expect little more.

A few years before we had booked into a hotel advertised as Geneva but it was a few metres over the border in France. I was chatting to a French chap once who lived really close to the Belgian border. He was absolutely horrified at my query about them sharing a cultural link due to language. 

[Dave Hunt]

8 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Yes, they were mandated from the very start at the Rainhill Trials, although then they were a bugle blown by the fireman and known as "The Audible Means of Approach" rather than a whistle. Locos have had proper whistles since approx 1831.

 

IIRC the first locomotive to have been fitted with what was effectively a whistle was on the Leicester & Swannington,, later part of the Midland, following a collision between an L & S train and a wagon loaded with beetroot and eggs. The device was conceived by George Stephenson and was at first termed a 'steam trumpet'. 

 

References to not being able to make omelettes without breaking eggs or similar are not required.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

7 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Gone off where?

 

Somebody has it!

 

Of course they do, it's somewhere in S-space. However, let's remember that there is a sometimes forgotten link between S-space and the dimensionally close-by but unattainable by men SWMBO-space where items that have been hexed by the magic phrases, "Well, I haven't seen it," or "Well, where did you last have it," or "Have you tried looking in...." can go to. Unfortunately the length of time that things remain in SWMBO-space before they are released back into S-space is infinitely elastic. Quite a few things that were once in my shed are probably there.

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

1 minute ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Of course they do, it's somewhere in S-space. However, let's remember that there is a sometimes forgotten link between S-space and the dimensionally close-by but unattainable by men SWMBO-space where items that have been hexed by the magic phrases, "Well, I haven't seen it," or "Well, where did you last have it," or "Have you tried looking in...." can go to. Unfortunately the length of time that things remain in SWMBO-space before they are released back into S-space is infinitely elastic. Quite a few things that were once in my shed are probably there.

 

Dave

A pair of Nyda's spectacles went missing about 15 minutes ago.

 

I have just found them..................

 

On the seat of the exercise bike!

[PupCam]

38 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Hmm yes sneaky Puppers but falls foul of the your to blame when a) you say you can't fix it and b) when you're told to get another one that does work. So I'm afraid only 47% pass.

 

It may fall down on the plausible denial front but that is, as us system engineers might say, "An emergent property of the system" and is more than compensated for by the 100% watertight security that such a method affords which is the primary function of the exercise   

 

13 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

References to not being able to make omelettes without breaking eggs or similar are not required.

 

Hmm.   I love beetroot and eggs  but Beetroot Omelette?       I think I will give that one a miss Dave!

[Dave Hunt]

32 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

 She was very disappointed as she had believed she was coming to a very orderly country and she was upset that “ they were as bad as the French”. 

 

I was once in a group travelling to the French railway museum at Mulhouse. We took a flight to Basel, which is the closest airport,  and were crossing from the arrival hall, which is in Switzerland, to the French side to catch a train to Mulhouse. We were stopped by two very self-important French immigration officials who demanded to know why we were entering France and when they were told that we were on our way to the museum one of them said, "But why are you entering from Switzerland?" One of our number, John Poyntz, gave him a withering look and said, "Because the bl**dy airport is in Switzerland whereas the museum, unfortunately, is in France." The official's companion muttered something to him in French whereupon with Ill-concealed displeasure we were admitted.  

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

That summed up JP perfectly.

 

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

IIRC the first locomotive to have been fitted with what was effectively a whistle was on the Leicester & Swannington,, later part of the Midland, following a collision between an L & S train and a wagon loaded with beetroot and eggs. The device was conceived by George Stephenson and was at first termed a 'steam trumpet'. 

 

References to not being able to make omelettes without breaking eggs or similar are not required.

 

Dave

There was a collision at Weaver junction a few years ago where two containers were broken open. One contained Scotch and the other Caustic Soda.  Fro some time the area became known as , wait for it "Whisky and soda junction".  However  I have not heard of a level crossing near Leicester named beetroot omelette.

48 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

A pair of Nyda's spectacles went missing about 15 minutes ago.

 

I have just found them..................

 

On the seat of the exercise bike!

Yes, I once pounted out to Beth, from a safe distance, that the glasses she was looking for were on the top of her head.

 

As to The French, I once lost my passport in France. I got a flimsy bit of paper from the consulate in Nice that worked fine across borders. However when I wanted to cash some travellers cheques in Germany it didn't work and even my Police warrant card was no use with the bank clerk. I don't speak German but was able to say that I'd lost my passport. Then I repeated this once sentence but added, In France.  A look of grave concern and sympathy came over his face.  He said something about Franreich in a concerned voice and cashed the cheques. Obvioulsy he thought that if I'd had to endure France I deserved sympathetic treatment for trauma.

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

I was once told a story that I believe to be true by someone who claimed to have witnessed it. It happened in 1994 when a group of Canadian WW2 veterans were entering France at CDG airport to attend the D day 50th anniversary commemoration and one of them was asked by an officious French official whether he had visited France before. He replied that he had once, whereupon the official flicked through his passport and said that there didn't appear to be any evidence of such a visit. The Canadian replied, " No, Monsieur, the last time I entered France was on the 6th of June 1944 and we couldn't find any Frenchmen near the beach." Apparently there was a deathly silence followed by an outbreak of cheering and applause. He was allowed in without further ado.

 

Dave

[petethemole]

15 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

There is no such thing as an empty shed.

I had to think about this, but I agree.  If you have a new shed, it will contain leftovers from its constuction (wood, roofing felt etc.).  If it's your first shed, they will stay there, as the first contents.  If you already have one or more sheds, they will stay there, because the others are full and there is nowhere to put them.  It will also contain at least one spider.

[Compound2632]

Just now, petethemole said:

I had to think about this, but I agree.  If you have a new shed, it will contain leftovers from its constuction (wood, roofing felt etc.).  If it's your first shed, they will stay there, as the first contents.

 

This is because nature abhors a vacuum, so you won't have used such a piece of domestic equipment to help tidy up...

 

I'm off to do the stairs!

[Oldddudders]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

nature abhors a vacuum

So using one is unnatural. Suits me! 

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, petethemole said:

It will also contain at least one spider.

 Very true. However when I replaced the rotten roof on our shed (the second shed) I discovered some enormous slugs too. There are slug identification sites and I was quite fascinated for a while. I had only thought the sort that annoyed Aditi by eating hostas existed. 
 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Tony_S
Grammar

[jamie92208]

On 07/01/2022 at 13:22, Compound2632 said:

 

This is because nature abhors a vacuum, so you won't have used such a piece of domestic equipment to help tidy up...

 

I'm off to do the stairs!

Edited April 21, 2022 by jamie92208

[Happy Hippo]

9 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

 Very true. However when I replaced the rotten roof on our shed (the second shed) I discover some enormous slugs too. There are slug identification sites and I was quite fascinated for a while. I had only thought the sort that annoyed Aditi by eating hostas existed. 
 

I tend to over engineer repairs, so when the 8' x 6' store shed needed a new roof, it was replaced not with 12 mm T&G board, but with 18 mm ply sheet. Add some new wider cross members to support the sheets, which coincided with the joints between the ply sheets and I had a much more rigid structure than before.  Morgan and I had previously re skinned the sides, so the only original bits  left is the door, floor and some of the framing.

 

The felt was glued down using bitumastic paint, which stops the wind getting under the felt and also prevents having any punctures in the surface from felt nails, and thus preventing any accidental ingress of water.

 

All the slugs in our garden live under the weed barrier in the veg patch. or in the compost bins.  I presume this is so they do not have to travel far when they wish to dine out.

 

 

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, Tony_S said:

…and basically wanted to moan about the Swiss. She was very disappointed as she had believed she was coming to a very orderly country and she was upset that “ they were as bad as the French”. 

3 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I think that is the French-speaking corner of Suisse, so she could expect little more.

As an Ersätzschweizer living in a Swiss German Kanton I can attest that there are the Swiss and then there are the Suisse Romande. Believe me the British North-South divide has nothing on the Röstigraben. The French Swiss are - to put it diplomatically - “unique” (but the French cantons tend to have better food on average…..)

[polybear]

4 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

We have an Interference Officer in our house when doing a job if you leave anything such as a tool for a couple of minutes it gets moved only trouble is she always puts it away somewhere different and you can't find the bu99er 

 

Many moons ago Brother Bear came downstairs clutching a pair of shoes; when close to the bottom he remembered he'd forgotten something so put the shoes down on a stair and did an about turn and headed back upstairs to get whatever it was he'd forgotten.  On his way back downstairs he was met by SWMBO - who was heading upstairs clutching a pair of shoes....