Early Risers.

[Kingzance]

11 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Always good to vote early. I voted a week ago (postal).

 

SWMBO a very early riser today as she has to go and inspect fifteen local polling stations to check all working properly.

As a work colleague used to say "vote early and vote often". I am a firm believer that we should all be required to vote but that we should have a further option on every ballot paper - that marked "None of the above"!

[Joseph_Pestell]

18 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

As a work colleague used to say "vote early and vote often". I am a firm believer that we should all be required to vote but that we should have a further option on every ballot paper - that marked "None of the above"!

 

I agree with compulsory voting. Dread to think how low turnout is going to be for today's local elections and the seemingly futile European elections later in the month.

 

You would not think that a "none of the above" box was necessary. But I have had the responsibility of checking ballot papers and some efforts to spoil a ballot paper are bizarre and not clear at all. Returning Officers have certainly counted some that I would not have counted.

Edited May 2, 2019 by Joseph_Pestell
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[SouthernRegionSteam]

Today is a special day for my dad; who has his last day at work today after 50 years of it!
Needless to say, we have loads lined up for him; he's already had a cooked breakfast, and we've played a little prank on him this morning. But more importantly, a large number of us will be doing a surprise visit to the building site he's at where we will then have lunch at the neighbouring cafe. Oh, and then there's a party to be held at the local, before yet another birthday celebration in the evening on Saturday at our steam show! My mum and I have cooked over 40 portions of lasagne and curry, so we'll need to retrieve them from the family farm today at some point (it's the only freezer space we could find!) On top of that, the banner I drew for our show will be arriving at some point today, and I still want to do some model-making. Oh, and did I mention I've started producing a video of my dad's retirement... phew, I need a lie down... (but I think a cup of tea and a belgian bun will have to suffice instead!).

I'll let you all know how it all goes, but for now, please excuse my post-and-run!
Best wishes to all in ERs (and may your sheds be forever watertight!)

[Tony_S]

17 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I agree with compulsory voting. Dread to think how low turnout is going to be for today's local elections and the seemingly futile European elections later in the month.

 

You would not think that a "none of the above" box was necessary. But I have had the responsibility of checking ballot papers and some efforts to spoil a ballot paper are bizarre and not clear at all. Returning Officers have certainly counted some that I would not have counted.

I was chatting to one of the leaflet deliverers last week and she said it could be a record low turnout for this area. We have decided to go soon rather than wait until this afternoon. The polling station for the adjacent ward is the school near us. We have to walk past it to get to the polling station for our  ward. We vote in the foyer of the Catholic Church. It has plenty of parking but I don’t predict a queue today. 

Tony

[Robert]

The thing about voting is that you often don't realise how important it is, until you can't do it anymore!

[TheQ]

A definate lack of fire starting material this year, only one leaflet recieved and that was from the orange lot, at least the paper isn't too shiny this time...

 I drop into the next village's hall to vote on the way home from work, that's about 2 miles from home.

Only 1667 days till I have to make a special trip out to vote, when I've retired..

[Tony_S]

Slight delay to voting.  Yodel are delivering some beer. I am number 4.

Then we will depart. 

[jamie92208]

Evening all from a few minutes south of the equator and about 166 degrees west. We could hardly get further away from our daughter and the new addition if we tried. However she seems to be doing well after a difficult birth but fortunately she managed it on her own. We celebrated in style at diner tonight with a bottle of bubbly and I have been christened 'Grumpa' , I have no idea why of course. Anyway here is a piccy of little Emily.

 

If anyone is in touch with Debs can they pass it on but not on facebook please. The new parents have an embargo on that at the moment.  Anyway, it's goodnight from me as I'm off to listen to an appropriate Pink Flyd track.

 

No Internet for a few days now.

 

Happy birthday to Kingzance.

 

Jamie

I

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. The bin wagons dawn chorus this morning was added to by the road repair gang visiting my street to repair some of the potholes that keep appearing like a rash. Only problem was they closed of part of my road therefore denying access to the bin wagons, you couldn't make it up. I too have already cast my vote by post and I will also vote in the Euro elections which should be interesting as the parties at the extremes of the argument can't even agree among themselves. Belated birthday wishes to KZ, thats it for now, be back later.

[roundhouse]

Congrats to them Jamie and hope your trip is going well.

 

A shed free day apart from getting the gardening tools out of shed no 2 and putting polythene protection left over from future shed 3 into shed 1. Timber for framing ordered this morning for delivery Tuesday so hopefully shed building will recommence Wednesday.

 

in meantime I have been repairing more G scale track and now just have the far end curve to relay and repair the bridge. Might get it done today but suspect it will be BH Monday. The short odd looking loco is a freelance one that my other half bought many years ago but its great for testing track. The bigger locos will be out once the full circuit is working.

Edited May 2, 2019 by roundhouse

[lightengine]

It's overcast in sunny Teignmouth today.

 

It's great living in a small town. You can easily tell when the cheap coach holidays are in town for the day because on an overcast day with a hint of dampness the cafes are full of people wearing jackets and scarves.

 

Voting was done and as usual I was told that by my leaving my electorate card the council have to store it for 12 months. My reply was to take it up with central government.  I wonder if mine is the sole one in storage. 

 

The local elections might be interesting this year because recently the council decided to extend the dog walking on the main beach ban.  Instead of running beginning of May to end of Oct it now starts the beginning of April. In April this year apart from Easter weekend the beach was deserted of deckchair sitting occupants because the weather was pretty adverse.  However, to rub salt into the wound, the sand also left the beach but the dog walking part of the beach was quite resplendent in recently deposited sand.  A few years ago the council announced that the beach "award" scheme was under threat because birds roosting under the pier poo in the water.  No sh1t sherlock! 

This year they questioned about removing the rocks and boulders that have been left by the sand being scoured away.  Almost as though a volunteer army would go down and collect rocks, boulders & stones.  Just a few months ago councils around the country were warning people that they could not collect pebbles off of beaches.

It's cyclical, the sand goes down and days, weeks, months later it builds up again and days, weeks, months .......... you get my drift.  I have photographed it on several occasions. It can vary several metres in just a few days.

 

I'm off to watch the pigeons poo on an empty beach.

 

 

[bbishop]

Afternoon awl,

 

Back from attaching the doors to a shed; in 7mm of course.  Welcome back to Mike and (briefly) Jamie, although I doubt if the latter will get much internet time!  Congratulations Jamie.  Now off to donate a pint of the red stuff; according to the paperwork this is number 94.  It may be going to Sutton .....

 

No voting in London today, but it should be very interesting in three weeks time.  The fence that Corbyn is sitting on may prove to be a chevaux de frise.

 

Keep well all, Bill

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, lightengine said:

A few years ago the council announced that the beach "award" scheme was under threat because birds roosting under the pier poo in the water. 

 

Is that why so many seaside towns have mysterious pier fires? 

One local beach had a cleanup some years ago. Of course someone wrote to a local paper claiming the tidying had changed the essential nature of the beach. Put it this way, before the tidying I would not have walked my dog on the beach. 

[SouthernRegionSteam]

5 hours ago, SouthernRegionSteam said:

...On top of that, the banner I drew for our show will be arriving at some point today...

 

If only! Got a delivery time for between 11.30 - 12.30am. Then got delayed 'til 2.30pm, and now they've just rung to say it'll be here at some point tomorrow, but as they're an all-day delivery service, they can't tell us even a rough time. Which means:

Quote

... a large number of us will be doing a surprise visit to the building site he's at where we will then have lunch at the neighbouring cafe. 

 ...will not be happening as we've been waiting for this parcel instead. Oh well, on the bright side I've got some model-making done; so it's not all bad news!

[New Haven Neil]

A'noon.

 

If you think RMW is slow, you want to try it in a ferry in the middle of the Irish sea!

 

On our way home, not that we want to, but work for us both beckons.

 

Congrats to Jamie and his family.

 

I was reading the posts about the free prescriptions over 60, and checked out Fraggle Rock rules as I still pay on an annual basis - we have to be state retirement age. Boo hoo.  Ever worse is the fact that they no longer send out renewals for the annual thing as they have made all the relevant civil servants redundant.  The result of that was that I had several months with out a valid card.....so I got my prescriptions free - no-one ever checks - so where is the saving here if everyone doesn't renew in time?  There will be a lot of folks who didn't know renewal notices had been discontinued, as they didn't tell anyone. #sigh#

 

Had a nice visit to the Ratty yesterday, saw a friend who has just become permanent paid staff there, currently relief driver - nice lad.  Spotted a bloke I thought might be Simon, but reading his posts he was elsewhere.

 

 

[Ian Abel]

Congratulations to Jamie both grandparents and parents. Start of a great journey

 

BIN day arrives. BINs dutifully placed correctly.

 

Quiet again yesterday, a couple of hours laying floor after work and that was it, me buqqered for the evening

Today, not much, work, then choir rehearsal, AFTER the required happy hour beer and pizza.

 

7 and continued cloudy here, 14 expected high.

Enjoy the day.

[81C]

Afternoon All

I was hoping for a railway day today that went out the window earlier but now I'm back on my perch to finish off the wagon kit that arrived yesterday.

Some news from my youngest daughter to say the beer cooler tankards have arrived at her flat the resort we are staying in has a beach waiter service 

so you lug the first couple of pints out to your sun bed then nice chappy comes round every so often to take your order/tankard away and it comes back

full of ice cold beer . I bung the head waitress at the beach restaurant a big tip at breakfast the first day and my breakfast and  lunchtime Al Fresco

table is reserved for the stay it's a half a minutes walk away from the sun bed, bliss.

[The Stationmaster]

Afternoon all,

 

Two centre (Waitrose - train spotting branch) and Tesco (Class 165 spotting branch) shoppoing was completed in a bit less than 3 hours notwithstanding idiot drivers who apparently don't know how to release their handbrake and geriatric twits in Tesco.  The latter included a bloke who came in through the door pushing his trolley and stopped to comb his hair while blocking the doorway; maybe he was using the comb to (unsuccessfully) fire his brain into operational status?

 

I'm having a little bit of amusement at the expense of one of our recent fellow passengers who joyously ribbed me yesterday that while we'd had two nights in port last week this week would see the ship in and out on the same day with barely 9 hours alongside.  So far it has been in port for 30 hours - maybe I should send him an email ?

 

On a more practical front after a late lunch (homemade vegetable soup) we were eventually out to the Polling Station to cast our votes.  Our Polling Station covers  a large chunk of the South Ward but in the first 8 hours of voting fewer than 200 people had voted although a few were rolling up after collecting their offspring from school, and it has been raining for the past 30 minutes so I somehow doubt we'll see a great improvement in numbers unless the weather cheers up.  As ever in local elections I indulged in a spot of tactical voting by using only 6 of my 8 available votes for seats on the town council -  the sort of thing I've been doing for almost half a century and it can (and in the past has) had an interesting impact on the outcome as I'm far from being the only person who does it.

 

Enjoy the rest of your day - if the weather allows.

.

Edited May 2, 2019 by The Stationmaster

[roundhouse]

It's been a good day working on the railroad the garden. Plenty of digging and sorting out track joints. I did manage to get the first loco to complete a whole circuit in give years. Now the task is to maintain it and improve some parts to keep it running. It's almost 25 years ago that the first bit of track was laid so it has lasted well.

Now time for a few beers and tomorrow a trip to the new Kernow shop. Must he good and keep my wallet in my pocket. Can't see that happening though.

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Went up to lay down on the bed for forty winks after lunch and it turned into about eighty winks. Arthur Itis then woke me up to tell me that its going to pour down about ten tonight. Good news is than I've found a suitable baseboard for the 'Mini-Micro' layout in Tess Coe's. Its a wooden place-mat about 6 mm thick and is the perfect size. Thats it for now, be back later.

[Ian Abel]

Well, that's about 30-40 minutes I'll never get back...

Decided to take a look at the DJ Models thread, if you've NOT been there, DON'T DO IT, it's mind numbing

[Simon G]

2 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

Had a nice visit to the Ratty yesterday, saw a friend who has just become permanent paid staff there, currently relief driver - nice lad.  Spotted a bloke I thought might be Simon, but reading his posts he was elsewhere.

 

 

 

Yes, I am still down in the south!  Pity, as it would have been good to meet.  If you are back in Cumbria please let me know, and I can try to  arrange a garden railway visit with a mutual acquaintance as well!

 

Today has been spent repairing fence panels this morning, then meeting with an old university friend in Reading this afternoon.  A very pleasant natter was had over tea and cake, and hopefully another meeting in Cumbria on the Ratty in July.  I then got rather wet walking back to my mothers house from Wokingham station.  Just as well, I had taken a rain coat!

[grandadbob]

The visit to the optician went OK with no significant deterioration since my last visit although I was told to reduce my hours on the computer and take more breaks.

Just had a visit from a landscape gardening friend to discuss the garden revamp. He will keep the plan very simple as per my instructions which will hopefully keep the price down. Possibly. 

Time for a beer I think. 

[AndyID]

Cruise-ship, measles, what could possibly go wrong?

 

The vaccine didn't exist when I was growing up. I don't think I had the measles although like most my age I did get mumps, whooping cough and German measles.

[AndyID]

4 minutes ago, grandadbob said:

Time for a beer I think. 

 

If you insist but I better wait a couple of hours. The Sun isn't anywhere near the yardarm.