The Night Mail

[jamie92208]

19 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

I seem to remember it was "spelled" in Scotland in the 50s but maybe I've become too accustomed to the US spelling. The
substitution of "t" for "ed" on verbs doesn't seem quite right to me now.

Beth, as a former secretary says that itbis I spelt or he spelled so both can be correct depending on the usage. I am not going to argue with her.

 

Jamie

[simontaylor484]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

You would have had a good hike up from the station.  Such a pity that the line through Morley High closed.

 

Jamie

Luckily we got a taxi, There was no way I could have got up the hill with my knees we had to get to Tingley

Edited August 21, 2022 by simontaylor484
Missed off text

[pH]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

The substitution of "t" for "ed" on verbs doesn't seem quite right to me now.

How about the older Scottish ‘it’ ending instead of ‘ed’ (still heard in places)? I think it’s similar to the ‘ed’ ending that appears in Shakespeare, where the ‘e’ is actually sounded e.g. ‘crabbed’ pronounced much like the Scottish ‘crabbit’.

Edited August 21, 2022 by pH

[Happy Hippo]

Having muttered about the issues of joining the 7 mm scale  embossed stone at right angles, I went out to the garage for a session of  self complaining and moaning to myself  about how life is so unfair when I had a semi-cunning plan.

 

Do I have a foam cutter and a load of closed cell foam?

Can I cut it into stone block sizes?

Could these be interlocked and glued in place to make the buttresses?

 

The answer to all three questions is yes. Although I fear that having made the buttresses out of interlocking foam blocks, I might be so dissatisfied with the embossed stone work that I'll have to make the whole retaining wall out of individual blocks to match! 

 

Perhaps it wasn't a semi-cunning plan at all but another stupid idea.

 

(I blame the war gaming diorama fraternity for this.)

Edited August 21, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[New Haven Neil]

I eat spelt cereal, I find it has a lower glycaemic index than wheat based cereals so I don't get a blood glucose spike from it.  The 'Rude Health' people do it.

[newbryford]

Missed it yesterday:

 

"Harder," she cried, gripping the workbench tightly, "Harder!"

 

"Alright," I said.

 

"What's the gross national product of Nicaragua?"

[PhilJ W]

[PhilJ W]

[bbishop]

7 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

The above mentioned Brian (Wheels) Stubbles was exhibiting at a CMRA exhibition and they were fully aware of his needs. So they allocated a space for his layout with no step access and close to the disabled toilets. When he arrived he found another layout being set up in his allocated space. The other layout owner refused to move as it was his 'regular' space that he always had. In the end Brian, having travelled some distance agreed to use the space allocated to the other exhibitor. But in doing so he could only access the disabled toilets by going outside the building and crossing a gravelled area. A complaint was made to the organisers pointing out that they were in breach of disabled legislation. In the end the other exhibitor was blacklisted by many clubs. 

 

Nice story, Phil, but couldn't have been at the CMRA show at St Albans.  The disabled toilet was on the ground floor (in the lobby) and that was the only level to which Brian had access.  There were no lifts to the basement, stage or balcony.  Pupcam (occasionally of this parish) planned the show with the exhibition manager and I was responsible for setting out the barriers, this included the route to the disabled toilet so no exhibitors could encroach on it. 

Very few exhibitors had a regular space at St Albans.  Most were on the balcony where issues with the pitches meant the exhibitors had to design their stands to make best use of the space.  Also our Scottish trader was by a door because he broke down quickly and we could use the space to sort out our electrical equipment.

Bill

[PhilJ W]

16 minutes ago, bbishop said:

 

Nice story, Phil, but couldn't have been at the CMRA show at St Albans.  The disabled toilet was on the ground floor (in the lobby) and that was the only level to which Brian had access.  There were no lifts to the basement, stage or balcony.  Pupcam (occasionally of this parish) planned the show with the exhibition manager and I was responsible for setting out the barriers, this included the route to the disabled toilet so no exhibitors could encroach on it. 

Very few exhibitors had a regular space at St Albans.  Most were on the balcony where issues with the pitches meant the exhibitors had to design their stands to make best use of the space.  Also our Scottish trader was by a door because he broke down quickly and we could use the space to sort out our electrical equipment.

Bill

Sorry I must have made a mistake about what exhibition it was but it wasn't St. Albans but somewhere up that way.

[SM42]

Beer and sandwiches at SM42 Towers. How 1970s

 

9 minutes short of 19 hours on the road. 

 

4 hours of that waiting at the tunnel

 

It was absolutely heaving and we left at least one n hour late, mixed in with people booked on much earlier and later services. 

A case of shifting who they could when they could.

 

The French border guard was very vocal when I  mentioned the all important stamp in my passport "B***dy brexit" he said. 

" You need to get a Polish passport"

" I'm one generation of an Irish one" I replied

" oh s**t" he said

 

Not a conversation I was expecting I must admit

 

 

[SM42]

It was a bit of a shock to hear that Brian ( wheels) Stubbles had passed

 

He came to our show twice with his layouts and he was such an outgoing person with great sense  of humour. 

 

We had an absolute scream during the exhibitons he attended.  

 

Great memories of a great person. 

 

The exhibition circuit will be a little duller now. 

 

Andy

Edited August 21, 2022 by SM42

[polybear]

6 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Sorry I must have made a mistake about what exhibition it was but it wasn't St. Albans but somewhere up that way.

 

The CMRA exhibition moved in recent years to Stevenage - which was A Very Good Move Indeed (and made Stevenage worth visiting for one day a year, which is something I never thought I'd hear myself saying...).  Could it have been here maybe?

 

[rockershovel]

14 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

The house in Dalston in which my mum was born was the sort of property aimed at senior clerical staff, chief clerk in a bank for example and were very well built. I had some relatives living in the same street on the other side in a house that was a lot larger being over four floors, semi basement, first, second and garret and with a two storey 'tunnel back'. They were late Victorian construction but were Jerry built. The tunnel back was coming away from the rest of the house because it had not been tied to the house when it was built. It was condemned as a slum by the local council and was demolished c. 1970.

Our main residence, near Newington Green was similar. It was originally quite a prosperous area.... we had difficulty selling up for enough to move to Cambridge in the early 1960s.

 

This country was a nett exporter of population until the 1980s, with over a million leaving in the decade following 1945 and almost two million by the early 80s. My mothers family returned as the Empire dissolved, but most re-emigrated to Australia, Canada and the US. 

 

London Underground was widely expected to significantly contract. When I worked on the Angel Station Reconstruction in the early 90s most of the drawings dated from the 1960s, having been completed and shelved. 

 

[Winslow Boy]

8 hours ago, SM42 said:

Beer and sandwiches at SM42 Towers. How 1970s

 

9 minutes short of 19 hours on the road. 

 

4 hours of that waiting at the tunnel

 

It was absolutely heaving and we left at least one n hour late, mixed in with people booked on much earlier and later services. 

A case of shifting who they could when they could.

 

The French border guard was very vocal when I  mentioned the all important stamp in my passport "B***dy brexit" he said. 

" You need to get a Polish passport"

" I'm one generation of an Irish one" I replied

" oh s**t" he said

 

Not a conversation I was expecting I must admit

 

 

 

Was that in French or was a hello, hello type conversation.

[SM42]

1 hour ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Was that in French or was a hello, hello type conversation.

 

I said hello in French 

 

He replied in English and Polish 

 

After that it was all in English 

 

My O level French only gets to hello, please, thank you, numbers, buying an ice cream and a few others words that are useful, like identifying a cake shop.

 

It doesn't extend to current affairs

 

Andy

[jjb1970]

On hobbies and audio, one of the problems audio hobbyists have really struggled to come to terms with is that audio has long been a 'solved problem'. In vinyl days a lot of the tweakery did make a difference, there were interactions between room and turntables and it was important to be able to set up the arm and cartridge. Amplifiers were still evolving (though the measured performance of solid state amplifiers was already excellent in the early 70's. If equipment had valves they needed upkeep etc. Once music went digital all the need for tweakery basically disappeared, performance of amplifiers was way beyond any audible thresholds for distortion and noise and speakers have been a mature technology for decades. You do have to set speakers up but there are plenty of guides to help you do that and nowadays there are lots of digital processing technologies to do a lot of the set-up automatically by using a mic to listen to test signals and adjusting the speaker input. However many audio enthusiasts cling to the notion that digital is like analogue, buy into snake oil like cable lifters, magic rocks (no I'm not making that up, people fall for it), using valves to add euphonic distortion, a faith in the superiority of analogue etc. Actually if people like the sound of vinyl that's a personal choice, but it should be admitted that technically it's an inferior format with a much narrower dynamic range (in fairness largely obviated by the use of compression in recordings over the last few decades) and higher noise. The characteristics of vinyl can actually be recreated digitally and given that almost all recordings have been recorded digitally for decades it amazes me many still cling to the idea that music can't be properly reproduced digitally (if you buy vinyl you're getting a digital recording on an analogue carrier). The ones that amuse me are the ones who buy a turntable with a wi-fi or BT link to wireless speakers and tell me that digital technology can never produce the same sound as analogue with absolutely no sense of irony. The result has been the hobby getting progressively sillier and withdrawing into deep depths of voodoo and snake oil. For all that, I still love audio, but I love it as a bit of a gear head, not because I'm under any illusions about sound quality. I feel the same about cameras and bicycles, there's nothing wrong with buying a nice bike or camera if it's what you like and you can afford it, but I think we should be honest about why we like these things.

[bbishop]

4 hours ago, polybear said:

 

The CMRA exhibition moved in recent years to Stevenage - which was A Very Good Move Indeed (and made Stevenage worth visiting for one day a year, which is something I never thought I'd hear myself saying...).  Could it have been here maybe?

 

No, the exhibition was on one level.  He might have been pissed off when wheeling in the Bowls Hall, because the carpet was a bit draggy, but otherwise .....  Anyway he didn't exhibit there.  Bill

[PhilJ W]

7 minutes ago, bbishop said:

No, the exhibition was on one level.  He might have been pissed off when wheeling in the Bowls Hall, because the carpet was a bit draggy, but otherwise .....  Anyway he didn't exhibit there.  Bill

I think it was a school premises using two separate buildings, the corridor connecting them had a couple of steps so he had to take a route outside to access the disabled toilets. Our club did visit the St. Albans show a few years earlier but we weren't exhibiting just visiting. Brian came with us and we ended up carrying him in his wheelchair up and down the stairs!

[iL Dottore]

(for @newbryford)

From The Way of The Shed

 

The Mantra of The Table Saw

• How many fingers do you have Gakusei?
• Ten, O Sonshi
• How many fingers do you want to have?
• Ten, O Sensei
• Then who is your friend?
• Misutāpusshusutikku, (Mr Push Stick) O Sonshi

[Happy Hippo]

8 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

(for @newbryford)

From The Way of The Shed

 

The Mantra of The Table Saw

• How many fingers do you have Gakusei?
• Ten, O Sonshi
• How many fingers do you want to have?
• Ten, O Sensei
• Then who is your friend?
• Misutāpusshusutikku, (Mr Push Stick) O Sonshi

I'd be happy with eight fingers like most normal people.

[bbishop]

Thanks Phil, I think I know the location.  Firstly I was eliminating clubs that would not have condoned such behaviour, such as Brambleton or Watford.  The Masonic School was a large building and, as you say, there were two halls separated by a long corridor.  I can't remember the name of the club but they weren't particularly welcoming and they always exhibited the most appalling O gauge layout with unmodified Lima and "pour on" ballast that would have been over scale for Gauge 3.  And the school was freezing cold.  Bill

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

My O level French only gets to hello, please, thank you, numbers, buying an ice cream and a few others words that are useful, like identifying a cake shop.

 

It doesn't extend to current affairs

My French also doesn't extend to current affairs. Sherry has made it quite clear those are not to be considered. 

[Happy Hippo]

3 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

My French also doesn't extend to current affairs. Sherry has made it quite clear those are not to be considered. 

My French currant affairs is limited to this:

 

brioche aux groseilles

[Dave Hunt]

On 19/08/2022 at 08:51, Northmoor said:

......However, an old friend once had an experience meeting a new neighbour which I think sums up some young men and football.  The two of them spoke for a minute about moving in, where they worked etc., then the new guy said, "Who do you support?".  My mate looked at him blankly and after a couple of re-phrased questions realised he was being asked what football team he supported.  Once he replied that he wasn't interested in football that was basically the last conversation they had in the year they were neighbours, limited to one-word acknowledgements/greetings afterwards.  It was as if the new guy didn't know how to hold a conversation with someone they didn't know well, if it wasn't about football.

 

 

I was once on a train sitting opposite a couple of young (mid 30s ish) blokes who struck up a conversation with me. One of them asked if I was a golfer, to which I replied no, then whether I had watched some football match that had been played the night before. "No, I'm not interested in football," I said. One of them then said, "So, you don't have any real interests then?"

 

????

 

Dave