Early Risers.

[pH]

My wife and I grew up in the west of Scotland and so were quite used to living with a high annual rainfall. Then we lived for a decade in various places on the east side of England and apparently forgot about what a wet climate could mean. Moving to the Pacific north wet of North America, back to an annual rainfall within a couple of inches of that where we grew up, came as a bit of a shock.

[Gwiwer]

3 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

I'll have to try it in the summer.

Closed Wednesdays 

[Coombe Barton]

1 minute ago, Gwiwer said:

Closed Wednesdays 

Thought it was Penzance, not Camborne Station :)

[Gwiwer]

7 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

*Warning: may include cyclones, crocodiles, box jellyfish, Irukandji jellyfish, Sea snakes, sharks and overseas youtube influencers filming themselves. 

I’ll leave it to the skilled and informed judgement of ERs which of the above is the most potentially-dangerous. 

[Dave Hunt]

32 minutes ago, pH said:

Moving to the Pacific north wet of North America, back to an annual rainfall within a couple of inches of that where we grew up, came as a bit of a shock.

 

No surprises there then 🤣

 

Dave

[New Haven Neil]

Mad Saturday as usual.

 

Torbay Palms?  Do you mean Manx Palms? 😇  They're everywhere here, despite us being in the allegedly frozen and food-culture free north.

 

Actually achieved things today, for a change, after Mrs NHN was Pilated and I had a couple of miles walk we had a nice brunch in Glen Helen (prepared by South Africans in their style, to add to the culinary desert) then I split some....a lot of firewood while Mrs NHN gardened, then I washed the bikes.....well two of them, then we cooked a curry.  Ourselves, using fresh ingredients and spices, not a tin or packet. M25 my ar$e.

 

[jamie92208]

Bradford is allegedly the curry capital, of the UK and has some fabulous curry houses with their own specialities. Well worth a visit. My team once detected a case of criminal damage by the sauce in a curry that the suspect had in his car. According to the shift curry expert  that sauce was only sold at the restaurant he denied going to. 

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

That half hour eyelid inspection turned into an hour and a half, but I feel a lot better. Now to catch up on the RMweb threads that I follow and then Farcebook.

[Tony_S]

I never really experienced the Balti restaurant boom in Birmingham as I left before it really got started.  My brother worked near the Balti restaurant area and used to go for lunch. 
Being married to a Punjabi who doesn’t like the food in curry restaurants in this country has meant I am familiar with Punjabi home style food but not the local restaurants. I reckon between us we can cook anything we want, so eating out is for social reasons. Going on holiday is different, we wouldn’t look for English food when we are overseas. 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[Captain Cuttle]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

Torbay Palms?

They are actually called  Cordylines, this was or maybe still is the one at what was my parents bungalow in Coverack. Huge garden backed onto fields, great for star gazing i remember, also listening to the waves crashing on the beach, happy days.

[PupCam]

Evening

 

On 19/04/2024 at 20:30, polybear said:

Does Puppers recall what Lathes & Mill they are?

And if all else fails then https://Homeworkshop.org.uk is rather useful - fixed price (no "best offer" etc. - that's Ebay) and no fees either.  You can specify that buyers must be prepared to move/load etc.

 

The mill is a Senior (Built in deepest Yorkshire), don't know about the lathes one of which has been CNC'd.   Amazing what you can do with some stepper motors and some G Code.

 

11 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

From WhatsApp to Greggs - why is tech going down more?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxrz350qyy5o

 

Which is why modern society really gets my goat!  The total reliance on something that either isn't there all of the time or is completely inaccessible to a significant chunk of society (mostly but not exclusively the most senior members of our society).

 

22 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Well it seems to me  a bit illogical  if   insurance valuations are based solely on that?   Here there are still many old original  small cottages sitting on prime beachfront land amongst recently built  multi-million dollar properties. The real estate valuation (ie what you could ask for  if you sold it)  would be similar to  the surrounding mansions due to its  desirability as a knockdown - rebuild sitting on prime real estate, but the insurance valuation would be based mainly on the cost of rebuilding the dwelling  as-is, plus any risk (floodprone etc).  As you say, the land contains the value and you still have that after the house burns down.

 

There used to be a really useful online calculator for calculating your property re-building costs (in the UK) but unfortunately it seems to have disappeared.   It was most useful at insurance renewal times.   Maybe it's been taken down so that we (the great unwashed in the world of building) haven't got a clue, state a ridiculous amount (high or low) in our applications and then, should we need to claim, have any claims rejected as totally unrealistic re-building costs were quoted.    No, surely not!     Puppers aka "an old cynic"

 

13 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

And I’m damned proud to be ageist.

 

None of the staff in my little company is under 50 years of age - even our guard dogs (Lucy & Schotty) are over 50 in human years.

 

Yoof? You can keep the spotty, self-entitled, whiny little ******* 

 

In the usual context that's actually reverse-ageist and sounds like you've been indulging in positive discrimination!   

 

I never did agree with positive discrimination in any field; people (and dogs as appropriate) should be selected on their merits for the role whatever that maybe and not because they help "even-up a distribution" or put a tick in a particular box.       As an example, as a short-a**e, I would have had no problem with being rejected should I have applied to join the police force as a constable all those years ago.  I can appreciate that I would have been (still am) deficient in both the altitude and (at any likely time of application)  the mass departments and you could probably add to that list, bravery.    For me some key characteristics for a police officer include being tall and built like a brick outhouse (a bit like one of my neighbours who just happens to be a policeman who is built like a  brick outhouse).   Why?    Because size and mass provide an automatic air of authority and, if push came to literal shove, a most useful physical attribute of enhanced inertia in a tussle that someone my size simply does not have.     I'm reminded of this more amusing and light-hearted example.   

 

Positive discrimination appears to be part of the, if I maybe so bold and IMVHO, rather pathetic "Everyone can do anything they want and every one is a winner" culture that seems to prevail these days.     Well, life isn't like that and despite as much valid smoothing of whichever playing field it happens to be it will never be truly level and no, everyone is not and cannot be a winner.      Discrimination of any form based on characteristics that are irrelevant to the role (we all know what they are so no point in enumerating them here)  are of course completely unjust and unacceptable.    Deselection because someone does not possess some essential characteristic or experience for the role is perfectly valid and is not discrimination.     Similarly, selection just because someone has a specific characteristic or experience that is irrelevant to the role over someone who has the relevant characteristics and experience  is just plain wrong again IMVHO.     

 

Making things as accessible as possible to as many as possible is entirely laudable and I was reminded of an interesting example of something going full-circle  over a period of many years the other day.  The example in "Secrets of the London Underground" was the efforts by London Underground (or is it TFL?) to increase accessibility to stations by the removal of escalators  and their replacement by lifts, some of which will go in the lift shafts of the old lifts taken out of service 70 or 80 years ago when the new fangled fancy escalators were introduced!  

 

12 hours ago, polybear said:

Similar in the Aircraft Design Industry; one of the problems is that for systems requiring "dual redundancy" they get separate teams to design each one separately - but those teams went to the same teaching establishments and therefore think alike, meaning there's a risk they'll each make the same mistakes.

 

Although in some cases that I can think of, not only are different teams used  but different technologies are used too which usually forces different approaches so although the designers may have  come out of the same general mould the mistakes they potentially make in each case are likely to be very different by virtue of the technology used.     I'd rather have two different systems design teams designing a duplex safety critical system than one by a systems design team and one by a bunch of florists.

 

7 hours ago, Captain Cuttle said:

Well it has in sunny Newton Abbot but as my Cornish mother would say..........its a lazy wind today!  Wisteria as in 2009 with our then elderly cat Rusty and in 2024,  still its at least thirty five years old. It didnt like Essex but happier here but not so prolific now. The acer is about fifty years old and had a large flowering cherry tree in front of it. The  torbay palm tree is a similar age and still growing well.

 

I do like a nice Wisteria.  I was going to comment on the strange giant snake running through your garden but others have beaten me to it so I won't! 🤔🤣

 

ION

 

A nice thrash over to Woburn this morning on the RD but boy was it busy over there!      Probably 80 - 90 bikes at the peak and about 20 cars many of them classics.     The only trouble is the cafe is very small and as it says on the window "We don't do fast food just high quality* food ....".  Another problem is there is only one unisex loo and a lot of, shall we say,  older males.    Billy Connelly has got a very good rule about men over 50 to which I subscribe (often).  

 

* It's all relative and may not pass the iD test!

 

On my return there was some ladder stowage operations to be perform following the completion of the recent aerial activities around the roof and gutter.      This was followed by a little routine maintenance on the Beeza in readiness for another run out tomorrow which may well feature a change of two wheeled horse.

 

That's it.

 

Night all!

 

 

[Barry O]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

Bradford is allegedly the curry capital, of the UK and has some fabulous curry houses with their own specialities. Well worth a visit. My team once detected a case of criminal damage by the sauce in a curry that the suspect had in his car. According to the shift curry expert  that sauce was only sold at the restaurant he denied going to. 

 

Jamie

Was it from the Karachi ( or K) by any chance?

 

Baz

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[jjb1970]

My wife had never eaten 'Indian' food before living in England, and Indian food is pretty easy to find in Indonesia. Now she complains that Singaporean Indian food is inferior to British Indian food because it's too bland. I get her point as Indian food isn't as hot and spice here, but that's true of Asian food in general. Western people seem obsessed with spice in a way many Asian people aren't.  Yes there are some seriously hot dishes, mala can be bordering on being a safety hazard for example, but it's not the norm. Cooking uses a lot of spices and can be quite hot but it's driven by flavour, not heat. Many people find the western thing about spiciness and heat to be rather odd. On the other hand if SE Asian food is advertised as being hot and spicey it probably is........ One of my favourite heat dishes is buldak, a very hot Korean chicken seasoning and now hugely popular for Korean instant noodles. 

Edited April 20 by jjb1970

[Winslow Boy]

15 hours ago, Grizz said:

 

Yes……yes I did get an invite. 
 

However I was turned away at the gate….because they didn’t appreciate some of my essential ‘cultural tools and equipment’. Discrimination right there. 
 

Me politely putting my point across at the gate. Taken from security cameras on the day. 
 

You could at least put some strides on.

[Grizz]

4 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

You could at least put some strides on.

Funny, That’s exactly what the cops said. 

Edited April 21 by Grizz

[Grizz]

Woken up at 04:00 with a screaming sinus headache. Now got to balance taking some ibuprofen against my normal steroid meds. 
 

Ibuprofen doesn’t help my breathing, so it is a fine balance against getting rid of the headache and not being able to breathe. 
 

Tricky. 
 

Just mustering up the enthusiasm to limp off down to the castle kitchens to make a couple of Mokkas. Bleedin knee still playing up. 
 

The other day Mrs Grizz muttered a passing comment, something to the effect of “field ornaments get put down for less”…

 

How much sympathy????…….NO f in sympathy! That’s how much! 
 

Mmmmmph…..a person should be careful about how little sympathy a person gives to a person, especially when a person brings a person a Mokka every morning. 

Edited April 21 by Grizz
St

[TheQ]

I've learnt to go woof.. it gets more attention... Maybe learn to neigh....

 

Mooring Awl,

2.5 hours sleep, 2.5 hours sleep, 2.5 hours sleep.. a good total.

Left knee playing up, don't know why, I don't remember doing anything to it lately, but it's been steadily getting worse.

 

Ben the surprised Collie was taken for an early walk, I needed some air... Got to much air, to much very chilly air.. it's still blowing a hoolie out there from the north. The windspeed is currently 35 mph, which is way too much for sailing, the forecast max is 25 mph which is still a bit much. If it doesn't seriously reduce by leaving time I'll stay home and earn brownie points.

Thin high cloud forecast to change to a blue welkin later.

 

There's quite a few cordylines in gardens around Norfolk, some in the next village...

 

Time to think of something to eat...

[polybear]

Bear here.....

 

Today's mission will be extracting Harry the Honda from the shed once more (assuming Buddy over the road appears to assist) and then giving Harry his first bath since (I think) 2003; Sun is predicted for much of the day so the chances of Harry drying nicely afterwards are looking hopeful.  After that it's MIUABGAD - possibly more Harry-related tasks or maybe something completely different instead.

 

Bear gone.

[jamie92208]

9 hours ago, Barry O said:

Was it from the Karachi ( or K) by any chance?

 

Baz

Not sure but a distinct possibility.  It was green from memory and the Station Sgt objected to it being in the fridge in the office used to store blood samples until the proprietor arrived to identify it.  The silly thing was that the villain had purchased the curry and paid for it before throwing a brick through the window..

 

Jamie

 

 

Edited April 21 by jamie92208

[jamie92208]

Good moae from a sunny but chilly Charente.  Our house guests arrived yesterday lunchtime and we have become a French speaking household with some Franglais mixed in.  Monique and Gérard are retired farmers from further south in Les Landes.  They once hosted our eldest on a school exchange and we have remained friends e ER since we first met them in 1996.  Much laughter and Gérard and I payed attention to a bottle of Glengoyne cask strength that was looking g lonely in the cupboard.  This morning its the market and some sightseeing. 

 

Ttfn. 

 

Jamie

[Barry O]

Ey up!

Sunny morning here, fingers crossed  it stays that way.

 

As part of my cricket umpiring retirement I am still doing odd games (mainly friendlies) for a while to help to get away from cricket teas... these are, at least in Yorkshire, a thing of great nutritional value.

 

I have a busy week coming up as I am venturing North for a couple of days to catch up with history (a quick trip to Beamish is involved).

 

Time for my mugatea!

 

TTFN!

Baz

Edited April 21 by Barry O
Spullung

[Coombe Barton]

9 hours ago, PupCam said:

Which is why modern society really gets my goat!  The total reliance on something that either isn't there all of the time or is completely inaccessible to a significant chunk of society (mostly but not exclusively the most senior members of our society).

 

Or for those of us with the technology the pain of having to install their spyware app for a one-off use.

 

 

Edited April 21 by Coombe Barton
Autocorrect got me again

[monkeysarefun]

21 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

Or for those of us with the technology the pain of having to install their spyware app for a one-off use.

 

 

 

 

Or you download a spirit-level app and it pops up a box saying it needs to access your camera, photos, contacts, files and location.. For a spirit level app?  I wish there was a "tell 'em they're dreamin'!" response option.

 

Uninstalled....

Edited April 21 by monkeysarefun