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When you say “Bits and Pieces” to a Scot of my vintage, this is what comes to mind: https://youtu.be/XoRLIJJSG4o?feature=shared

All the more for the rest of us! I’ve been eating these for 70+ years.

Code 83 to code 100 join: https://www.railpictures.net/photo/853680/

2/6??? I was done! My Black 5 and B1 smokebox plates cost me 10/- each!

I would say “Seriously?”, but I have seen people try it. Quote - “It’s only a very small change.”

For those (few?) who didn’t get the reference: I had a disagreement with them over the cause of a delayed flight and how it was to be compensated, and have only ever flown once with them since (there was no sensible alternative).

I was commenting on your definite statement that: “If it did have a numberplate it would have been a replica as the locomotives sold to private scrapyards had them removed before sale.” to show that not all locos sent for scrap had their plates removed first. Add to those that I provided pictures of, the two plates I have, plus the two others that I can specifically remember where and when I saw them. (I know there were others, but after this time, I can’t be specific.) That’s out of the few hundred(?) I saw in scrapyards, not the ‘20,000 others’ that BR ever owned. Yes, I knew 48624 lost its smokebox plate while it was in Barry. If you read the caption on the picture I posted, I saw the engine the next year with only the fixing bolts and a small part of the plate still attached. I assumed at the time that an ‘enthusiast’ had removed it with some kind of blunt instrument and I still think that’s the most likely explanation. I really didn’t think a Woodhams employee would have gone out into the yard just to remove the single smokebox plate still in the yard.

Some people obviously didn’t get the memo about removing plates before sending engines for scrap; https://flic.kr/p/i7wHZK https://flic.kr/p/i7xhn8 https://flic.kr/p/cfvdty https://flic.kr/p/cuTiE7 and I would be quite surprised if scrapyards knew/bothered about sending plates back to BR.

The first line of Iain Banks’s book “The Crow Road” describes a mishap at a cremation - “It was the day my grandmother exploded.“

That is definitely not true in all cases. I have two smokebox plates bought from the same private scrapyard at different times. I have also seen plates available for sale in another yard. (Unfortunately, the employee responsible for sales was not present, or I might now possess an A3 smokebox plate. 😢)

Don’t you mean a cold piddle?

My dad taught an evening class, one night a week over winter. Part of his route to the school took him (on foot) past a very good fruit and veg shop. We got to sample some unusual things over the years. Can’t say I always liked them, but it was good to get to try them.

Lots of sympathy to Emily! I broke my collarbone when a bit older than Emily (3 or 4), also doing gymnastics on furniture. I still remember something about the episode - going to hospital on a Glasgow Corporation bus, and going home on another bus with the same conductress. My wife, my sons and their partners accuse me of worrying too much when seeing grandkids clambering about on chairs, sofas etc. but I broke my collarbone doing that - they didn’t!

Krispy Kreme made an attempt to invade Canada. Locally, there were newspaper adverts, flyers, TV adverts etc., plus news reporting on the opening day of the first franchise. After their first experience of Krispy Kreme donuts, very few people went back for seconds. Many people didn’t even try them a first time, based on reports from people who had. There is still only that single Krispy Kreme shop in BC. Timmies rule! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hortons

Forecourt of a hotel in Victoria, BC: I wonder if they host dentists’ conventions.

After my aunt had her second eye done, my uncle went round the house replacing all the 200 watt light bulbs with more sensible ones.

The engine is obviously an attempt at representing a camelback: https://www.deviantart.com/rattlerjones/art/Number-Four-1187-925312328

Wrong response to that question: https://youtu.be/r30rw64OlDA?feature=shared

I assume it’s the ginger and black shape in front of the fallen log at the edge of the path.

You must be superhuman!

Close! https://youtu.be/dxNMgoiNLFs?feature=shared

Yesterday’s main activity (apart from changing time on the clock in the car - q.v.) was watching soccer games. 9 year old granddaughter has been playing for three or four years - goalkeeper and defender. Yesterday was two games in the end-of-season tournament, and she got to play the second game as a forward. She scored her first-ever goal! They won 4-1. Understandably, she was over the moon. Then her dad’s team were playing in the cup final of the league they play in. A good, hard, but generally fair game (only two yellow cards - both sides of the same incident). They won 5-2 and move on from the local competition into the provincials.

Relevant experience yesterday, while resetting the clock in the car to account for the change to daylight saving time: - As happens every six months, relearn the sequence, through several menus, to change the “hour” figure on the clock. - Decide to try to do it ‘automatically’, by Bluetooth from a cellphone. Never done it this way before. Connect the phone successfully, but answer one question wrongly, don’t upload relevant information, time does not change, and I can’t find the way back to answer the question differently - Go through the manual process (with several wrong turns as usual) to change the “hour” figure - Due to the length of time since first starting the process, have to reset the “minute” figure too. - Success! - Driving the car later in the day, realize that I’ve somehow managed to hide the digital speed readout during the process. - Have to learn a new sequence, through a different set of menus, to recover the digital speed display. - My wife suggests that next year, instead of changing the clock in the spring, I put a post-it note on the dash saying “add one hour”, to be taken off in the fall.

Most of the province of Saskatchewan stays on central standard time all year. The provinces immediately east and west of it do change to daylight saving time. That means that for part of the year, Saskatchewan is on the same time as Alberta and for the rest of the year, it’s on the same time as Manitoba.