Early Risers.

[tetsudofan]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

Thats so they can trail round the area picking up lots of other people to cross contaminate..

 

... but to give them their credit they did ask if an ordinary car rather than the normal van could be used.

 

Keith

[roundhouse]

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

There is a new estate near us that was told not to eat any thing grown in the soil there. Indeed our street is on the site of the old gas works any veg is grown in tubs 

Our house is built on an old laundry. I think the whole building is buried under the garden as keep finding rubble including clinker from the old boiler house. All vegetables and tomatoes are therefore grown in tubs. Just planted the Swedes in larger pots today.

 

Brother has sailed into Gibralter this morning after helping a friend collect a new catermeran from La Rochelle. Hes hoping to come and stay with Mum for a month or more if he can get a flight, as apparently there is no quarantine requirement from the rock to the UK . If he goes back to HK then he will have to quarantine for 14 days so he might aswell wait here for his two kids to return from HK assuming uni's and colleges reopen.

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

S*ddin' editor had to be cleared yet again

Aft-a-noon all.  

 

Same problem as Mike on a seemingly unpredictable basis.  I open the reply window and it is full of a post I made a day or two ago and requires clearing.  I too don't know the rhyme nor reason. Answers on a postcard, please .....   It happens on the iPhone as well so it isn't a gremlin inside the computer.

 

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

the hotel bar is sufficiently refined to not only ask which gin you would like but also which tonic water you would prefer

Ditto the Coach & Horses on Kew Green and its very mediocre opponent across the road, The Botanist.  The former has tried to maintain its semblance of quality (and is priced accordingly with pints of ale starting at £5.60; a single "house" G&T was £6.80) while the latter is a venue I shall never willingly enter again.  The glasses were poorly washed and I was served with a finger-stained one so unclean that the Doom Bar went flat instead of presenting with a crips creamy rim and lacing down the glass.  SWMBO had lipstick on the edge of her G&T glass and not in her colour.  The food took over an hour to come out with only one other table in use and was awful when it arrived.  Feedback was posted and received a very firm denial from "The Manager" suggesting we had not been there but somewhere else.  

 

In a sign of the times it is mask-washing day.  We have enough handmade by SWMBO for three days each of daily commuting (although she is unlikely to be travelling at all for some time) and I have developed the habit of laundering mine on Tuesdays (with two still available for Wednesday in case the rest don't dry) and Fridays.  Yes I am exempt but I can wear the fabric ones for 20 minutes or so on the train and do so out of respect for others.  I'll deploy the sunflower lanyard if I enter a shop or use the bus though the latter is unlikely at present and the former confined to in-and-out visits to the corner shop who aren't in the least bit bothered about you complying.  

 

I'll be back later.  There are things to read, write, make and do none of which is achieved by sharing my thoughts here   

 

 

 

 

 

[simontaylor484]

Just finished wrestling with a fray bentos pie tin for the last 45minutes for the eldests tea Swmbo had been trying longer at least i didnt have to break out the heavy cutting gear. 

 

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where the sun has fought through the clouds.

 

I took a big step at the weekend and went to see my parents for a socially distanced-ish lunch. I was recalling that my grandfather and his parents also lived for a while in Sidcup in the years before the war (and possibly after it too), something my Mum only told me a few years after we moved here. This has sparked my Mum digging up old papers and me sending a link to the streetview of that house as it now is. She also happened to find newspaper cuttings of a wedding report from around the time I was born, on the back of which were estate agent adverts for houses in the same street. They're worth more than 100 x as much now!

 

Tomorrow sees Elder Lurker turn 18. Where has that time gone?! Hopefully the Kevin the teenager years will miraculously end just like they did on the show...!

 

 

i have a few days off and the in laws are visiting - Mrs Lurker is very much looking forward to seeing her Mum, and her step Dad is very much looking forward to my red wine

 

have a good day all

 

[The Johnster]

Good afternoon from the mean inner city.  I shouldn't be here, in both senses; I shouldn't be in the mean inner city because I should be rich, rich beyond the imaginings of emporers, and live in a house, a very big house, in the countreeee, big enough to keep my tropical fishes, and of course a decent size layout, within walking distance of of a decent pub.  And I shouldn't be posting on ER because I'm anything but an Early Riser, unless early afternoon counts.  But I think i 'get it', a place to tell everybody all about the boring, trivial, and inconsequential aspects of one's existence.  And very recently discovered by your intrepid porter.

 

I'm on no.2 mugatee, and will require at least one more before achieving escape philosophy.  Assuming this can be achieved, I am bidden by the squeeze to undertake the perilous journey to Clifton Street to purchase of some milk and toilet paper, which she has agreed to finance.  I will most likely visit Tess of the Coes Local, for local people, we'll have no trouble here, tell me, are you at all, local?  We didn't burn him.  In normal times this would entail a beer in the Clifton or 4 Elms, but the plague is still up us.  

 

After that the day is mine, to waste here or have an operating session or even (dramatic chord) do some modelling.  Ra the cosmic dung beetle rolls across the sky and time, running from the reel of the future to the reel of the past through the film projector lens of the present, drags on.  I am content overall but wish I could go to the pub.  They are re-opening, those that can be bothered and have survived the lockdown, next Monday; some are already serving outdoors but none near me.

 

I orta scoff something before I go out, and have a tuna melt in mind.  Oh, for tuna, as Karl Orff would say...

 

Have a nice day, now, y'all!

[iL Dottore]

18 hours ago, brianusa said:

...IL dottore bemoaning the spoiled kids that seem entitled to special menus, which I thought was just an American thing....

      Brian.

Sadly, No. It seems to have spread through the Anglo-Saxon World and I wonder if it because in much of the younger generation in the Anglo-Saxon world "family" has become less important than "doing you own thing", so (and again I speculate) in the absence of an extended family (which would ensure the youngsters "toe the line") poor mum and/or dad must cater to their offsprings's merest whim....

16 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

..... I have managed to get nearer to Wrexham as I have been through it on a train which stopped at the station there, I didn't alight.

A fortunate escape, if I may say so. An acquaintance of mine, who knows that area well, opined that Wrexham provided the villages of England with their idiots.....

9 hours ago, chrisf said:

....I do not use a microwave and have no plans to do so. ....

There IS a God!

One way of improving British Restaurant food with one fell swoop of the pen would be to ban microwave ovens from any establishment puporting to sell "cooked" food to an unwary populace...

9 hours ago, TheQ said:

....I must recommend Morston hall  https://www.morstonhall.com/ Run By Galston Blackstone, 40 miles to the North west of Wroxham.. but at £95 a meal I won't be joining him....

Hmm, £95 is a bit stiff for Dinner (especially when you consider that recently I spent only £45 for a two course dinner at a 1 Michelin starred restaurant in London!). Their menu is nice enough, but asking £18 for a 125mL glass of Rose Champagne to go with afternoon tea? Seems a bit outrageous for Norfolk.

The Stationmaster suggested The Victoria and I went and had a look... I am a bit sceptical that they can provide all their restaurants and the bar with ALL the various items on the menu without resorting to "ready mades" (the prices, even a la carte, aren't so high that they could finance an entire brigade de cuisine, unless the pay in Sidmouth is pretty low - even by kitchen staff standards). Having said that, they have some nice things on the menus.

8 hours ago, southern42 said:

....Take care and play safe. 

_________

Best wishes

Polly

I always "play safe", but I thought that the exhortation was "play nice"?

2 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

...the latter is a venue I shall never willingly enter again.  The glasses were poorly washed and I was served with a finger-stained one so unclean that the Doom Bar went flat instead of presenting with a crips creamy rim and lacing down the glass.  SWMBO had lipstick on the edge of her G&T glass and not in her colour.  The food took over an hour to come out with only one other table in use and was awful when it arrived.  Feedback was posted and received a very firm denial from "The Manager" suggesting we had not been there but somewhere else.....

How do these places survive? Presumably very cheap beer and/or a blind eye to certain types of (hem hem) "informal trading" (it has been known)

Perhaps an unannounced visit from a food standards bod would help focus the manager's mind on customer service, quality of food and all round general hygiene???

1 hour ago, simontaylor484 said:

Just finished wrestling with a fray bentos pie tin for the last 45minutes for the eldests tea Swmbo had been trying longer at least i didnt have to break out the heavy cutting gear. 

 

Fray Bentos Pies! So wrong, but somehow just so right! Like their steak and kidney pudding, the FB pies never seem to make it from the suitcases (after a shopping trip in the UK) to the long-term larder (repository of important foodstuffs generaly unavailable in Switzerland).

 

Well enough talk of food. Off to prepare dinner: Pineapple Curry (a Sri Lankan recipe) and Roti

Edited July 28, 2020 by iL Dottore

[TheQ]

Received a message by MS teams from a person I've never heard of , who tells me I have agreed to a "meet",  to discuss  " cool stuff" I work on,  at a time long after I would finish work at some distant time in September..

Whoever he is he will get a very snotty reply tomorrow,  if I can work out how to do that, having never been shown how to use MS teams, it just appeared on the computers one day.

Roughly saying,  

"I've never heard of you, so will not be discussing anything about work, unless authorised to do so by someone I know. 

I NOT have agreed to meet you nor anyone else, with the covid 19 virus situation,  I doubt we will be meeting. 

I'm an aging man I don't work on " cool stuff" like a spotty teenager. 

You have selected a time long after I finish work for the day, so no chance.. "

 

Meanwhile in non rant mode,

Funnily enough I was making pineapple curry yesterday,  though I doubt to IL Dottore's taste,  mind you I'm not sure it will be to mine either, I haven't tried it yet.. 

 

Exceedingly heavily traffic all the way home,  the new road works traffic lights have moved to where they have actually dug a hole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ian Abel]

Chewsday...

 

Little to report, slow going with work and recovery!

Jemma returned from her trip, apparently Atlanta airport is quite busy - one of the few hubs that everyone flying Delta is now getting routed through. JFK was still pretty quiet.

 

Tonight a social distancing happy hour with our travelling companions. 

 

18 first thing and partly cloudy - headed for 30 and sunny but low humidity - YAY!

 

Carry o n

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

Just finished wrestling with a fray bentos pie tin for the last 45minutes for the eldests tea Swmbo had been trying longer at least i didnt have to break out the heavy cutting gear. 

 

H Going back over 60 years I can remember my mum struggling to open one of those oddly shaped Fray Bentos pie tins - I think dad did it in the end, somehow.  I x can't recall that we had them after the encounter with the fist one.

 

Flavio judging by the amount of the building taken up by the kitchens and what they served up when we ate at the Victoria I don't think anything came put of a packet or from any sort pre-digested meal components.   The soup would indeed gave been truly remarkable had it been concocted from a catering pack although a very long time ago a chef showed me how to turn ordinary catering pack powdered soup (from a well known Swiss company) into something which would fool many folk about its origins so it can be done although it does involve a bit of work and the use of certain vegetables to effect the disguise.  We always get freshly made soup using only basic materials on the ship and it's fairly easy from each day's menu to predict what the soup will be at lunch the following day - but none of that delight this year alas.

[Harlequin]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

Received a message by MS teams from a person I've never heard of , who tells me I have agreed to a "meet",  to discuss  " cool stuff" I work on,  at a time long after I would finish work at some distant time in September..

Whoever he is he will get a very snotty reply tomorrow,  if I can work out how to do that, having never been shown how to use MS teams, it just appeared on the computers one day.

Roughly saying,  

"I've never heard of you, so will not be discussing anything about work, unless authorised to do so by someone I know. 

I NOT have agreed to meet you nor anyone else, with the covid 19 virus situation,  I doubt we will be meeting. 

I'm an aging man I don't work on " cool stuff" like a spotty teenager. 

You have selected a time long after I finish work for the day, so no chance.. "

 

Meanwhile in non rant mode,

Funnily enough I was making pineapple curry yesterday,  though I doubt to IL Dottore's taste,  mind you I'm not sure it will be to mine either, I haven't tried it yet.. 

 

Exceedingly heavily traffic all the way home,  the new road works traffic lights have moved to where they have actually dug a hole

 

If that message was an email, don't reply and don't click on anything inside it! There are some known scammers buzzing around MS Teams trying out all kinds of "social engineering" tricks to extract your personal info.

 

[iL Dottore]

5 hours ago, tetsudofan said:

..."performance status WHO 0". What does that mean they said. "Fully active, able to carry on performance without restriction" I said. "Oh" they said....

The next time they ask you about how able you are, Say that you are at “ECOG Performance Status Zero” (ECOG is the acronym for eastern cooperative oncology group and the ECOG scale is used to assess performance in patients with cancer. It is somewhat more detailed and focused that the WHO Performance Status Scale)

TBH I absolutely love confounding nursing technical and medical staff when they say something anodyne like “now we’re going to give you a sleeping pill“ by replying - with a straight face - “is that going to be a benzodiazepine, a sedating antihistamine or something more fun like a phenobarbital” The expression on their faces when they realise that I know as much as they do (and given my age and obvious experience they also have the worrying thought that I might actually know more than they do) is utterly priceless....

 

Mrs iD is firmly of the opinion that were it not for the fact that I am soppy about dogs and have artistic  tendencies towards music and theatre, then I would be “a right evil barsteward”.

 

Having played a couple of right evil s*ds on stage, I must say that whilst the handsome hero might get the girl, the villain is so much, much more fun to play.

[skipepsi]

The Lurker said; 

 

This has sparked my Mum digging up old papers and me sending a link to the streetview of that house as it now is. She also happened to find newspaper cuttings of a wedding report from around the time I was born, on the back of which were estate agent adverts for houses in the same street. They're worth more than 100 x as much now! 

I would argue they cost 100x as much.  

 

Mention of Fray Bentos pies lead me to open one hiding in the cupboard 3 mins to open using an  Ikea can opener!

Edited July 28, 2020 by skipepsi

[TheQ]

Never had a problem opening a Fray Bentos tin,  take one good thing opener and... 

 

Just had to go to the neighbours to sort out her camera and laptop.  Basically set up the date,  show her how to take SD card and plug it in.. 

Oh I had a look at what's wrong with the old camera..... Dust on the lens. 

 

 

 

Ahhhhg the hippo bags advert is back.. 

Edited July 28, 2020 by TheQ

[PhilJ W]

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. Good news, I don't need new glasses, well no new distance ones anyway. I do need new reading glasses, that I was well aware of anyway. What surprised me that the optician said that they need to be weaker. I opted for two new pairs of reading glasses, one to carry around with me and one for use at home. One set of frames is by Land Rover, a match to the frames of my distance specs which are by Dunlop. I was pleased to learn that there has been no changes in my distance vision for seven years, even the slight cataracts that I have have not changed in that time. They were supposed to contact me today about my shed thats supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Not a word so I expect it will be no show tomorrow. If they don't show up by ten I'll be on to them.

[New Haven Neil]

Evening.

 

My editor is empty for the first time in a week, Mike!  Anyone any idea how to switch on a lot of the things in the menu bar now - my score through and several other buttons are now missing.  There's no little switch thing to see.

 

Mention of Sidcup reminds me I used to have relatives there, Walton Avenue or something like that.  My cousin got seriously rich so they moved out to a big house in Matfield.

 

Weather here has been miserable for March, sorry July.  Rain was showers rather than continuous, but aligned perfectly with my lunchtime walk or trips across the yard to the warehouse.

 

 

[PhilJ W]

I have just had to clear my editor, nothing to it just click on the bar that says 'Clear editor'. I noticed that items remain in the editor (or should I say don't clear from the editor) whenever you start a new page of the thread or someone else submits a post the same time as you. In both cases it takes a little longer for the post to be made so perhaps the system 'forgets' that the item has been posted.

[Coombe Barton]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

Received a message by MS teams from a person I've never heard of , who tells me I have agreed to a "meet",  to discuss  " cool stuff" I work on,  at a time long after I would finish work at some distant time in September..

Beware - Teams has attracted a load of Phishing stuff. I was targeted today.

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

I have just had to clear my editor, nothing to it just click on the bar that says 'Clear editor'. 

 

I don't see that I have one of those, Phil!

[tigerburnie]

Early night tonight

G'night all

[Coombe Barton]

... out and about in the Thirteenth Century ...

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/postcards-from-the-periphery-2020-03/

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. While I was in Tess Coes this afternoon I saw by the door packs of three face masks for £3:50 so I decided to get a pack. I tried one on this evening and was pleasantly surprised to find that my glasses didn't steam up and sat on my nose correctly. 

51 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

I don't see that I have one of those, Phil!

It only shows if there's previous post in in the edit box. I am on a laptop, other devices may be different.

Edited July 28, 2020 by PhilJ W

[polybear]

 

6 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

One way of improving British Restaurant food with one fell swoop of the pen would be to ban microwave ovens from any establishment puporting to sell "cooked" food to an unwary populace...

Hmm, £95 is a bit stiff for Dinner (especially when you consider that recently I spent only £45 for a two course dinner at a 1 Michelin starred restaurant in London!). Their menu is nice enough, but asking £18 for a 125mL glass of Rose Champagne to go with afternoon tea? Seems a bit outrageous for Norfolk.

 

Fray Bentos Pies! So wrong, but somehow just so right! Like their steak and kidney pudding, the FB pies never seem to make it from the suitcases (after a shopping trip in the UK) to the long-term larder (repository of important foodstuffs generaly unavailable in Switzerland).

 

 

HOW MUCH???  Jeez......

My Saveloy and chip roll comes in at £3-60.  Throw in a bit for some home supplied b.beans and it's job done.

I do note the same place seem to think that twenty seven quid for brekkies is worthwhile too.  Weatherspoons here we come....

 

As for Fray Bentos Meat pies - I worked with a guy (ex-RAF Fairy) who put one in the oven for din dins.  Apparently you're supposed to remove the lid (or pierce it?) first.  By all accounts it blew the oven door open and sprayed meat pie all over the kitchen walls.

Incidentally, this is the same guy that, when informed by his good wife that she "keeps getting tingly electric shocks off the washing machine" that she should wear wellies and turn it on and off with the broom handle.  The front wings on his mini were sewn on with stainless steel locking wire.

And I came within just a few seconds of getting a face full of hydraulic oil at 3000psi (from 24" away) - I moved just in time, having learnt that Ray's advice wasn't always the most reliable.  Fun days.

[Barry O]

Goodnight all!

[Gwiwer]

It is past time for bed.  The cat is unwell. A friend in Australia is in electronic conversation with SWMBO threatening to end it all.  It is going to be a long night.