The Lurker

Surely there are different pay rates for the same job within the US? That is prevalent in the Uk - some places especially London tend to be more expensive and command higher pay scales and so the work carried out is more expensive - I guess it is a vicious circle.

If that is the one in Sidcup, that delayed Younger Lurker and I on the school run yesterday - the road we used everyday (Willersley Avenue) was blocked off with forensics boys and the gazebo things they set up. We didn't know what had happened - I just guessed it was an RTA but Younger Lurker could see all the forensics stuff and so we feared it was a stabbing or shooting.

Not seen this year's winner but a number of years ago (well before the Lurker boys), Mrs Lurker was working at Channel 4 who were sponsors. They ran staff competitions with various attendance prizes. We were there the night Tracey Emin's Bed won (or at least was displayed). The following year, it was not opening night but stull before the hoi polloi were let in. One of the exhibits was a blob of blu-tac stuck on the wall with some comment on the permanence or lack of it in art. I couldn't restrain open laughter. We left shortly afterwards and we've not been back.

You want to make sure you don't end up with Ricketts with that kind of cloud cover.

Greetings from what was a very wet piece of the Boring Borough when I got up this morning - the rain woke me several times but fortunately it did not rain on any of us on our various peregrinations. My boss showed us pictures of the snow she'd got in Switzerland and I used that as part of my reasoning not to have a business trip there next week.... We are inching our way towards concluding year end. The trouble is the auditors occasionally ask new questions. I have had to go back to one location with something I thought the auditors had accepted but have now realised they don't understand and want new evidence....I think we will have to start telling them that the deadline means exactly that. But it doesn't help that group finance announce they are going to make a couple of changes but then take ages to do so. There are several I am waiting for, one of which I was informed of about 2 weeks ago which still has not been put through. EDIT - earlier in the day I heard the sound of bagpipes. They played for 5 minutes or so and then stopped, only to start up again a while later. Then a piper came round the corner leading a funeral procession. Not sure which house it had come from - clearly not someone I knew (despite having lived here the best part of 20 years!)

Took us years to go but I am glad we did. I had forgotten about the railway - which I think was mentioned- but I hadn’t forgotten the guide playing a tympani to try to reproduce what it was like when the caves were used as a shelter during the blitz - we got noise but of course not the vibrations and dustfall.

It’s ok the BBC has an article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-67564925

Greetings all from a Sidcup that has also seen snow and was bitterly cold. It did warm up on the lunchtime walk and the snow did not settle. i am glad it wasn’t like this earlier in the week as we did tree planting- we were supposed to plant 240 to celebrate 240 years of the company but got carried away and did 280 - a mixture of oak, willow, cherry, crab apple and other native species. the place was old landfill in an old chalk pit for the cement works that used to be there EDIT the Kentrail site has neat little history of the area: https://www.kentrail.org.uk/kent_portland_cement_works.htm and the company that owns it also extracts methane from the landfill and heats 2000-3000 nearby houses. it was quite exposed but a good view of the Dartford bridge

Happy birthday GDB

Yes that is a problem at primary schools these days - and toilet training is nothing to do with covid; that's generally just lazy parenting. Toilet training takes a bit of parental effort, and perhaps a few missed "going out" opportunities. Ironically, Covid should have been an ideal time to toilet train because we were all restricted from going out to a greater or lesser extent.

I think that the Pogues in Leeds in 86 was the hottest, sweatiest gig I ever went to. It was a cold night and when I came out of the student union, my trousers steamed like a race horse!! He drank a bottle of wine between songs. And sometimes a guinness instead. As is said above, it's a wonder he lived as long as he did.

PB is spotted at Invicta Models on a break while filming “Honey I Shrank the Bear’

I saw over the weekend the news that police had been called to a fight at the Hamilton show in Manchester. I have had to remind myself that it is not for a few weeks that Jim is going....

According to various books, Robins on mainland Europe are less trusting than those in the UK so possibly quite a rare occurrence.

Greetings from the Fold in the Side of the Hill, at the Southern edge of the Boring Borough. We had a frost here too, second of the year. I too have been landed with a cold but still managed to do leaf clearing in the back garden- and some of the ones that have blown down the street and into the front garden. in other news I ordered an Advent Calendar from Beer 52 for Elder Lurker and me but it has gone missing- they claim it was delivered but it most definitely was not. I shall be pursuing this further especially as something Elder Lurker has also ordered something which has not arrived- in his case he couldn’t get in touch with the delivery people because the code did not work and it has been - he thinks - returned to sender.

Can't be you...that boy doesn't have pencils up his nose ;)

Every civilised person understands cricket. It's a mark of civilisation. It's how we knew Piltdown Man was a direct ancestor of sapiens - he was found with a fossilised cricket bat. CB Fry (English cricketer, athlete, footballer, rugby player, acrobat and ice skater, who turned down the throne of Albania because of the likely cost) once said something along the lines of if we had only taught the Germans cricket, Nazism would never have got a foothold. What he couldn't have guessed was that if we had taught them cricket, they would have dominated it, and knocked England out of world cups in a series of last over bowl offs...

They also included the island in East Indies that was the home of Nutmeg. This was an English possession having been given by the locals because they were far more friendly than the VOE.

I thought the first series of Blackadder had exploded the myth that Richard III was a tyrannical hunchback years ago ;)

Elder Lurker once, when he was about three, said to me “Mummy’s only got one pair of hands….she’s not a robot you know”

Although if they clamp you they could…

Roadworks have struck this part of the Boring Borough. This time they have dug and closed Station Road in one direction sending the traffic on a several miles diversion to the next opportunity to cross the Dartford Loop line. This of course means that the diverted traffic meets all the traffic trying to use that route (Bexley Lane/Foots Cray Lane). It took me nearly an hour to return from dropping Younger Lurker off at school and that was after bailing out and driving several further miles to Bexley. It was literally quicker to walk the 3 or so miles! I got back to a message from my boss asking if was joining the call to Vietnam, where we have a politically driven tax case to deal with! I have played home IT technician today. One of our laptops has an intermittent fault when it stops charging, even though plugged in. Over the 3 1/2 years we've had it, I have asked Curry's to repair it a number of times and they have replaced the transformer several times and the battery. The most recent time, when I was suggesting they replace it, they suggested I made sure all the windows updates had happened, which I did, and lo! it started to charge. This time, I referred to the notes I wrote down and managed to get it to update and start charging again. Meanwhile we seem to be keeping the auditors at bay. I have proved that my proposed correction to Mexico's reporting is better than theirs...IMO of course.

I've read that the very long straight could also be an issue because the tyres will cool considerably on it. That could make controlling the car after it interesting.

In the case of our office, it just stands for London Bridge Street

I assume this is because Bear has never drunk alcohol and has therefore sidestepped the requirement to have a large doner on the way home (“chilli soss m’fren?”). You could always tell you’d had a doner by the little drips of grease on your shoes…