Early Risers.

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Thoughts?

Aditi’s Mum lives in a 2 bedroom penthouse flat. It is on the third floor of a purpose built building. It has a very large main bedroom with a spacious en suite. The lounge dining room is huge. The kitchen has plenty of workspace and enough space for a table for kitchen meals. There are roof lights so rain noise is higher than in a normal building and pigeons tap dance on them too. The managing agents keep the communal garden neat but seem to leave the external maintenance longer than I would like. The second bedroom and main bathroom are adequate  and there ismamroofmterrce where MiL can have a few plants. For someone with limited mobility when the lift is faulty (not often but lack of spares had caused long repair times. Parking is in dedicated spaces in an underground car park. 
Is  the proposed view from the garden apartment nice?  Is it next to a busy road? 
 

Aditi was looking at some properties (just out of curiosity, we are not moving) in Northamptonshire near her brother. One of the properties in the “offers over £1 million” section  didn’t appear to have a kitchen sink, just a half depth butler sink in the dining room attached to the  kitchen! 
We made a decision some time ago that we will stay here. It is easy to maintain and there would be no problem installing things like  stairlifts if we became less mobile. We had all the soffits and fascias replaced with upvc when they started to rot.some years ago. 
Aditi’s Mum and Dad bought the Enfield penthouse as their property in Nottingham was too big (both house and land) and incredibly expensive to heat. Aditi’s Dad died before they moved. Aditi’s Mum missed living in Nottingham but would have found it difficult to stay there without considerable support. 
 

Edited April 24 by Tony_S

[Ozexpatriate]

5 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

On the other hand, oats grow happily in cold damp climates so oat milk is better on both the water front and carbon-footprint front.

Oat milk is the "sustainability" preferred option.

 

As you point out, almond milk is a sustainability nightmare.

[monkeysarefun]

6 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Whitney Houston was a big influence in this.

 

 

 

YEs THAT kind of stuff. 

 

In comparison this clip of Pte Hettie Adams back in 2022 is showing  what she did tonight, at that years ANZAC-eve game. 

 

 

New Zealand don't play AFL but they are part of the ANZAC commemorations and the capacity crowd and the players at the MCG were as  respectful in this clip  as they were tonight.

 

 

 

 

[DaveF]

I've just looked at an e mail from a bank I use.  They are going to change my credit card from a Visa Gold to a Visa card as they no longer issue Gold cards.  That means they will change the account number so anything that keeps my details will have to have them reentered.  At least the direct debit I use to pay it each month will be redone by the bank to take account of the new number.  However I will check that actually happens.  Also the credit limit, interest rate, PIN number etc is unchanged.  So why change it?  I can't see any savings for them.

 

Apparently it is to give an "even better customer experience".

 

David

[Ian Abel]

Hump day.

 

Yesterday, taxi service followed by an assault on Costco. Objectives captured with the help of Jemma, the Mrs actually walked with us, we took it easy and she's definately feeling the improvement of a cortisone shot.

Jemma stayed and had dinner with us. Watched the men's NBA basketball playoff as the Mrs likes the game and Minnesota are present. They're favorite, BUT, taken the first two games from one of the favourites, so fun to watch.

 

Today taxi services again, followed by a quiet day. Work is slow as one of the key client members I work with is on vacation.

 

3c and sunny first thing, 15c the high with sun all day. That'll help the roses and other flora wake up more 👍

 

Onward.

Edited April 24 by Ian Abel
Correction - NCAA -> NBA

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

Thoughts?

Flavio, I don't comprehend your loathing for open-plan but that is your prerogative.  The penthouse has an open-plan dining/living space - it is only the kitchen that is separate.

 

The architect of the ground-floor unit does like rectilinear. That put me off.

 

I would prefer the penthouse - but as Tony says, the lift cab be a 'single point of failure' for some, though the stairs look 'nice' as an option. I presume the 'front door' is at the bottom of the stairs?

 

The lift also looks very small.  Is there a larger service lift somewhere below? I don't see any "space" for it anywhere. Not 'your' problem, presuming you hire movers, but getting furniture (or later, replacement appliances if needed) up there might be tricky.

[monkeysarefun]

16 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

I certainly don't want to talk to my guests when I'm cooking. Mrs iD does the "gracious hostess" bit, whilst I cook up a storm in the kitchen.

 

 

 

I can envision the starting sequence for the new Swiss TV series "Cooking With @iL Dottore":

 

The  music starts : 'Lets cook"!,.... lets cook!,..... lets cook!,........ Cooking with @iL Dottore!:

 

 

scene cut to  @iL Dottoreslamming the door of his kitchen room.

 

Roll end credits.

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, Ian Abel said:

Watched the men's NCAA basketball playoff

Ian, are you a closet time traveller?  The NCAA final was on April 8. (I can tell you who won.) 😉

 

 

[Ian Abel]

54 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Ian, are you a closet time traveller?  The NCAA final was on April 8. (I can tell you who won.) 😉

 

 

DUH!!! NBA of course 🤣

[polybear]

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Re. older dogs:

 

My two (Schotty and Lucy) are definitely aging (Schotty is about 12 - 13 and Lucy about 14 - 15) but are doing well. Both are rather stiff in the morning and Schotty - like iD - has arthritis. I take diclofenac on a PRN basis, whilst Schotty gets a dose of a Cox2 inhibitor plus gabapentin (half a dose in the morning, a full dose in the evening). He also gets regular physiotherapy.

 

Lucy is now almost completely deaf - (although I sometimes wonder how much of Lucy's deafness is like Mrs iD's [ahem] "hearing limitations": i.e. selectively turned on and off!) and she still has intermittent GI problems and could stand to gain a kilo or two, but otherwise both she and Schotty are happy and pain free (the aches of aging excepting). At this rate we could see both Schotty and Lucy getting to 16 or so.

 

ION

In the ongoing saga of leaving Schloss i.D. for pastures new, we now have two candidates in mind: one, an existing penthouse (which covers the entire top floor of the building) and the other a yet-to-be-built state-of-the-art eco garden apartment. Both have positives and negatives.

 

Here are the two apartment footprints.

I'm slightly more in favour of the penthouse, Mrs iD the garden apartment. The penthouse apartment is slightly larger at 170m2

 

Thoughts?

 

The second one; does it have access to a communal garden - or is there a public one very close by?  Private Gardens need maintenance, which may get more difficult with age - meaning getting someone to do it.  The design design of the first one is very boxy and a bit weird.

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

ION-2

I'm getting seriously cheesed off at the travel agent who arranged my trip to Japan last year.

 

I decided to use them again this year and I tasked them to (amongst other things) find me an advantageous Business Class fare to Japan using Asian airlines and novel routings (as our chum @jjb1970 has often spoken about) - so what do they do? They offer me two routings out of LHR at astronomical prices - the sort of price I would be quoted (as a non travel industry person) by booking on the airlines' own websites. I thought that travel agents could use their purchasing muscle and insider knowledge and status to get very advantageous fares (in this case, obviously not).

 

I had a go myself, and without much effort found a routing through Shanghai for 1/2 of the price of the cheapest flight offered by the travel agent! Unless they up their game, they may find themselves loosing a customer....

 

 

No doubt they're on a better earner with commission etc.

[polybear]

Bear here.....

 

Another day at the Hospice Warehouse - busy but pretty uneventful; unfortunately there was a distinct lack of Donuts or cake today 😢 but the Manageress dashed to a nearby shop for some emergency choccy bikkies, so all was not lost.  The book man had also managed to locate a travel guide to Malta for Bear, and an electronic crossword "helper" for a neighbour & friend of Bear's was also located by one of the Superstar Ladies working in the sorting room**; my friend was so pleased with it when I gave it to her I thought she was going to cry - she's notgottalot and living on a very limited income so it was a real result.  Bear will naturally make suitable financial redress to the Charity accordingly.....

 

**Not a job I could do - some people donate, well, cr@p (or unsuitable stuff such as knives) that has no chance of being sold whatsoever (or the money it was raise just doesn't justify the shop space or time taken to list on Ebay) - I think they do it just to save a trip to the local dump.

 

Bear gone.....

[New Haven Neil]

Motorcycle we did.  Too far we went, I ache like nothing on earth now.  Cause?  Well we like to ride light little lanes, and look for ones we haven't previously been down.  As you may imagine after 22 years on a small rock there's not many left, but we found one today.  However, after a couple of miles of increasingly difficult riding, we came across a ford that was too deep and too slippery to risk - a hundred yards from the end.  So we had to turn around and go back!"#sigh#  The footbridge steps were too steep to get my cruiser up, although the Guzzi would have made it, and maybe the Hunter. Pah.

 

 

The Neb river doesn't look much from there, but it was certainly too deep for those bikes!

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

... The Open University was 55 yesterday. Many of us early adopters will remember the broadcast programmes on BBC2. And the kipper ties. ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2024/04/24/pandemic-affected-education-turning-up-would-be-good/

[PupCam]

Evening All!

 

8 hours ago, grandadbob said:

Good morning,

The Boss and I had our boosters yesterday (Moderna as well Tony) and Herself is feeling quite rough whereas yours truly is feeling fine, can't even feel the injection site unless I press it.  I've always been lucky and never had any real side effects but Chris always suffers.

 

Bob's back!    Jolly good 😀

 

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Well, "zimmer" just means "room" - so they can fulfill any function wish. The number of bedrooms that will be needed will depend upon the <nocturnal snoring situation> - currently a topic of much debate 🤣😁

 

The garden apartment has been designed with an open-plan kitchen/dining/room space, something I utterly LOATHE*, but as we are still at the architect's plans stage, these can be amended.

 

* I'm afraid I'm very old fashioned and prefer dedicated rooms to open plan living.

 

As in "where to keep the frame" 🤔😉

 

 

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Küche is kitchen.

 

I certainly don't want to talk to my guests when I'm cooking. Mrs iD does the "gracious hostess" bit, whilst I cook up a storm in the kitchen.

 

Besides, you won't believe how long the cheesy pong from a Fondue hangs around....

 

Not as long as the smoked code that we had for dinner on Sunday ....

 

3 hours ago, DaveF said:

I've just looked at an e mail from a bank I use.  They are going to change my credit card from a Visa Gold to a Visa card as they no longer issue Gold cards.  That means they will change the account number so anything that keeps my details will have to have them reentered.  At least the direct debit I use to pay it each month will be redone by the bank to take account of the new number.  However I will check that actually happens.  Also the credit limit, interest rate, PIN number etc is unchanged.  So why change it?  I can't see any savings for them.

 

Apparently it is to give an "even better customer experience".

 

David

 

Not another improvement for us customers.  Their generosity knows no bounds.

 

ION

 

Well I was up and out relatively early (8:45 ish) this morning as I had to disappear up the M1 to the frozen North (well, Hinckley actually).     A friend had invited me to join him on a Triumph Motorcycle factory tour.    It would have been rude to refuse!     And what an excellent day it was too.    

 

 

I won't pollute ERs with a whole load of old motorcycle photos (I'll do that later on the appropriate thread)  but I thought this machine was so way-out and has an appropriate name for a model railway forum (that is technically banned from this thread) that I'd chuck these in as they may be of interest to a wider audience.     All I can say is Guy Martin must have very, very large spheroids ........

 

 

 

 

Other than that not a lot to report.

 

TTFN

 

 

 

 

[Tony_S]

Evening all.

The Moderna vaccine after effects have gone now and I feel normal (well, normal for me) again.  I went out and gave the garage another sweep so that the solar power system  technician doesn’t get bits of pink foam on his clothes. He will only be here for 30 minutes checking everything is ok.  The pink foam was from some scenic carving for the model railway layout in the garage. It doesn’t spread as much as the bobbly expanded polystyrene but it can still be messy.  Access to the batteries and inverter was still as it was when we had another battery fitted recently so I didn’t need to move much and there is nothing stored near the inverter and batteries . As the inspection is only 30 minutes I don’t think the roof panels get inspected. I assume if they haven’t fallen off and are generating the correct voltage they are ok. 
Tony

 

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

 

YEs THAT kind of stuff. 

 

In comparison this clip of Pte Hettie Adams back in 2022 is showing  what she did tonight, at that years ANZAC-eve game. 

 

 

New Zealand don't play AFL but they are part of the ANZAC commemorations and the capacity crowd and the players at the MCG were as  respectful in this clip  as they were tonight.

 

 

 

 

She nailed it, well done, I think I got something in my eye. 

 

Beth is safely in dock and I'now home after a few hours on the station watching trains.

 

Jamie

Edited April 24 by jamie92208

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I spoke to my sister a couple of days ago, my brother's estate has finally been sorted and his bungalow has been sold, that's over a year since he died. In fact although I say 'his' bungalow he only owned one fifth of it which he had inherited from his second wife who died a year before he did.  She inherited it from her first partner who owned it with four of his cousins. He died over forty years ago and tracing those four cousins or their heirs has proven difficult.  

[Gwiwer]

1 hour ago, Coombe Barton said:

... The Open University was 55 yesterday. Many of us early adopters will remember the broadcast programmes on BBC2. And the kipper ties. ...

My late father started studying with the OU and tuned into BBC2 at those time appropriate to what ever he was studying.   I forget the subject matter now.  I do however remember him being very wary of the OU summer school at the University of Bath.  Having never progressed beyond Public Elementary in his formal education thanks to the conditions of the time arising from the activities of a certain moustache-sporting German this was all very new to him but he was determined that he "could do something with his life".  

 

His concerns were not borne out.  He was worried that it would be a case of "University - Big; OU - tiny and in a couple of rooms".  It was very different on reality and he returned having thoroughly enjoyed himself.  Not only was the OUSS given the run of the entire university but this included supervised visits to the greenhouse where "research" was being lawfully conducted into the cannabis plant.  A heated glasshouse full of them!  Visits were supervised and timed but hey.  The only time my dad ever got up close and personal as a student with recreational substances!

 

He didn't complete his course.  As I remember he suffered one of several redundancies in his working life and found he could no longer afford the fees to continue whilst on the dole.  To his admitted dismay he felt embarrassed and shamed that he was "unable to make anything of his life".  And he went to his maker pleading much the same despite having been thought of by many who knew him as a good, kind, thoughtful and caring chap.  

 

He never wore a kipper tie either; dad was always a cravat man and could look dapper as you like when occasion required.  Even when it didn't he often chose to sport a cravat just for sitting in the lounge doing crosswords, listening to music or reading the paper.  

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[woodenhead]

So another eventful trip but £20 coming my way care of a late arrival home.

 

At midnight last night I got a message from Avanti - my return train was cancelled, I should get the one before (1853) or the one after (1933).  You can guess what I and most other people who got that message did - we went for the earlier service. What did Avanti turn out for a train they knew was going to be busy, the first off peak to Manchester in the evening knowing the next one had been cancelled, a 9 coach Pendolino!

 

They played games, said it was platform 14 (and there was a Pendo parked in 14 at 18:30) but decided to swap to the Pendo that had just arrived at platform 1 at 18:40 instead.  So I had arrived at Euston from Euston Square at 18:28, I went to the loo (near platform 1) because I expected the train to be busy, so off to platform one for the loo, then returned to platform 14 for the train and joined a polite queue (barriers open, no Avanti staff manning it).  After 5 minutes standing the platform changed, so back all the way to platform one again so really getting the steps in today. 

 

Got onto the train on the unreserved coach C and the train filled and filled, people crowding outside trying to get on.  The guard politely suggests those standing might like to catch the 19:33 and when that doesn't work pulls a new stunt - if you don't get off then the train will have to go slowly to Manchester.  Yes the guard actually tried to guilt standing passengers into getting off the train because it would be their fault sitting passengers will be late getting home - unbelievable.  

 

Me, I spy a partial refund voucher, there was already trouble at Tring, and the train though scheduled to depart at 18:53 actually left 15 minutes late, so I was looking at the positives. 

 

In the event it arrived 20 minutes late back at Manchester having got stuck behind a stopper I think between Colwich and Stockport, then held at Ardwick.  Certainly I did not notice the train going 'slowly' as threatened by the guard.

 

One pizza later, it's time for bed.

 

Night all.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

We’ve had another good day out today, lots of sunshine, even though there was a cool breeze. Disappointingly, the orchard area was closed, due to the ground being waterlogged, but we still managed to see some of the blossom. When we went to the cafe, it was closed for a refurbishment, but the did have a small temporary one in use, so we didn’t miss out on a drink or a slice, but FFS, it’s only 2 years old! We also came home with some more plants for the garden (and some more seeds), so, weather permitting, I think I’m going to be busy tomorrow. 

 

As anticipated, we spent the rest of the afternoon, relaxing and reading. We also did a spot of eyelid inspection too, I think all this fresh air is making us tired! 

Edited April 24 by BSW01

[BSW01]

Goodnight all 

[zarniwhoop]

If I may, I'd like to ask a  question of anyone here who uses Ocado (I searched for fresh white asparagus - tess'co sometimes have it, but in very thin pieces which are hard to peel - and I see Ocado have it, with prices for that and blood oranges which make the purveyor of custard tarts look cheap ) - Are they reliable in providing what you ordered ?

 

TIA. ĸen

[polybear]

9 hours ago, PupCam said:

 

 

 

Sadly after seven years it looks as though he won't be going back.  Money I suspect.  Poo.

 

1 hour ago, zarniwhoop said:

If I may, I'd like to ask a  question of anyone here who uses Ocado (I searched for fresh white asparagus - tess'co sometimes have it, but in very thin pieces which are hard to peel - and I see Ocado have it, with prices for that and blood oranges which make the purveyor of custard tarts look cheap ) - Are they reliable in providing what you ordered ?

 

TIA. ĸen

 

At a guess I'd suggest "It all depends" - based on area, depot, how p1ssed off the staff are on that particular day etc. etc.

Perhaps they should be fined (a quid? - going to the Customer) for every item that's unavailable.

[iL Dottore]

Morning!
 

Unfortunately today I had another 3am “emergency poo run” with Lucy, poor mite. Fortunately, a vet visit for Schotty is scheduled for early next week (for his physiotherapy) so we’ll take Lucy as well.

 

Thanks for your comments, it does look like that we will be going for the penthouse flat rather than the garden flat (it got the seal of approval from GP Friend and Mrs GP Friend - which has helped nudge Mrs iD towards the [ahem] “right” decision).

 

I’ve never understood this craze for open plan living. OK, I get the point that you may want to be sociable, but do you really need to turn your flat/house into an approximation of an aircraft hangar or warehouse to be so? I think that there’s a lot to be said in favour of dedicated rooms (so library/smoking room, home office, m**** r****** room and so on). Another consideration is that with dedicated rooms you can avoid the “whole house smells of XXXX” scenario (plus, separate rooms means that I can have my wicked way with the young scullery maid in the library and not disturb Mrs iD having Earl Grey Tea and buttered crumpets with her friends in the withdrawing room).

 

To answer PB’s question we would have access to a communal garden, though “garden” may be stretching tye definition a bit - flower beds in the front and a narrow lawn at the back.

 

Moving house: Oh What Fun…..