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Have fun, I won't be in the country. Bill

Mal, Irrelevant - Italy v Scotland (sorry, but true) Good result - England v Ireland Great result - Wales v France, but as usual I turned off after a minute and only turned on again as the clock hit overtime. Wales always lose if I watch them so self imposed abstinence. Once played against a girl's team - got off with the hooker! Bill

Three locks, a No8 and a blind side wing forward. The old fashioned "steamroller the opposition off the park" routine. Ireland, Scotland and Italy are playing with two open side wing forwards and are beating England to the breakdown. Apropos Old Boys clubs. Thirty years ago my club was putting out five teams, now down to a couple . One issue is the need to provide substitutions, including a complete front row. In my day we upgraded the largest back row to hooker and I moved across to loose head. Still threw in to lineouts and (often) took the drop kicks. Multitasking? Bill

A day spent in the warm. I watched two Rugby games, one irrelevant result and one good result, then as usual couldn't bear to watch Wales. If I had, we would have lost. Second in the Six Nations isn't bad. Anyway I've been busy with the Charles Roberts order books. Bill

No dog in South East London, incompatible with lifestyle and garden security. I'm a Jack Russell Terrier person. They are now, somewhat confusingly, three different breeds. The Parson Russell is the long legged variety and the Jack Russell has shorter legs. These are both Kennel Club breeds which is rather worrying. The third breed is the Russell Terrier and my long departed Todhunter of Halscombe (Toddy, Tod, T,That Dog, where's that bl0ddy dog - he answered to all bar the last) met that description. He was a Somerset farm dog, built like a tank and would dig under, smash though or jump or climb over any fence. Jack Russells can climb, Toddy could shin up a tree trunk at a 20° angle, the problem being no reverse gear!. Retrieving him from 10 foot up a tree could have been an interesting exercise, except that on command he would jump into my arms. He loved children and cats, hated foxes and squirrels, and beat up German Shepherds just for the fun of it. Bill

I use cork tiles as underlay on my layout. Glued shiny side down. I can buy them on-line from Wickes. Bill

Houmus in Scotland? What has happened to the deep-fried Mars Bars? Bill

Afternoon all, Worryingly I may have been slandered on a model railway related issue. The tittle tattle was told to a third party, who won't give me the details, and anyway I cannot discuss on a social medium. But your support would be much appreciated. Chris, I have received two warrants from those awfully nice people in Glasgow. Generally, I have been advised by BT that my latest direct debit has failed and could I provide them with my account details. At least matsuda-at-hokuchin.co.jp made a decent fist of the logo etc., the attempt of shinobu-at-snow-eaters.com was just naff. Best wishes all, Bill

My take is "The Railway" is a social club. I think his application shewed him as a "retired security consultant". Bill

That's awl for now. B

Just back from a Diocesan Council of Trustees meeting near London Bridge. Southeastern sort of running. By the by, my late mother would have been 100 years old today. Bill

My father always got names wrong. After shouting for "Timmy" for five minutes, he stormed into my sister's room and demanded to know why she hadn't answered. She drew herself up to her full 5' 2" and replied: "I'll respond to my name, to my brother's name, but not to the cat's name". Bill

Ich bin zurückgekommen. Southeastern trains are suffering from the cold. There is a new timetable - random. Bring back the EPBs! Bill

Off to German classes. Ich mag irgendwann sein. Bill

I have a brace of the Chinese Lenz three way points on Höchstädt. Not brilliant, they have a cast frog which needed some filing before acceptable running was achieved. The Peco Lenz has a proper frog which, I imagine, gives no problem. However it is near the code 143 - flat bottom - standard and not the code 125 - quasi bullhead - standard. Bill

Which is chez Gwiver? Bill

Bob, Test drive a Skoda Yeti. Either a saloon car or, by removing the rear seats a 15cwt van. And plenty of head room! Bill

Back home off a busy duty. COPD patients are suffering big time. Quick catch up before visit to tooth doctor. Bill

Good news about Debs. Yesterday HJ took me to the Paul Carrack concert at the Palladium. Great concert, but somehow not memorial. Bill

I'm incredibly helpful to the nice Microsoft people and press the Windows key and type exactly what they ask, viz: microsoftdotcom. Why do they then get so narked with me? Bill

Chris, This may have just enough capacity for your filing system Bill Cray supercomputer for sale on eBay Sixteen GigaFLOPS if you need them If you fancy buying a decent bit of computing power you could do worse than bid for a Cray Y-MP C90 which is listed for sale on eBay. Bidding opened at $35,000 and has now jumped to $43,210. The machine is called Mario and is described as having been the world's most powerful supercomputer seven years ago. It's in good working order and capable of 16 GigaFLOPs and you don't need security clearance to buy it. The sellers describe it as an extremely reliable workhorse for R&D computing. Mario, a black and gold beauty, contains '16 vector processors, each capable of 1 GFLOPS performance, main memory amounting to 512 MegaWords (4GB), and a 512MW (4GB) Solid-state Storage Device (SSD) serving as an extension to memory. He comes with raid controllers and disks providing over 130GB of high-speed disk storage.'

Jamie, Sorry to hear your news, hope it doesn't dampen the day for Beth and yourself. Bill

Not the brightest of felines. Our one would knock the wrapping onto the floor, so the dog got the blame. Actually, we're talking Christmas turkey here, we heard the crash in the kitchen, found a confused dog protesting her innocence and the cat nowhere to be seen. Knew who to blame, thou'. This is the cat who would beat up my kid sister for her Friday fish supper. Bill

Belated congratulations to Chris for hitting a big number - all he need now are daily t-shirts and a computerised filing system. Is anyone aware of a redundant weather forecasting mainframe, nothing smaller will do. Also to Jamie, for appearing in Steam Days. Good that Debs is improving. I've been busy writing an essay on "Die Bibel und Martin Luther". I've learned a lot. Bill

Verily.