runs as required

would you Would you be happy with this? This is Oakley Fife - as someone suggested dh

Wife and I find we are both in the same 'over seventy with underlying health conditions, heart disease and currently undergoing Chemotherapy'. Most nights my young wife awakes with coughing and hot flushes. Come the morn all is well once more as we stir the porridge. I heard an opera director on the wireless declare Prokofiev's most psychological opera was 'Peter and the Wolf' ! I sneak out undercover of darkness (son tells me the Spanish police are using drones to spot curfew breakers) for essentials like Co-op yeast we run out of - I remember my grandma always kept it going on the kitchen window ledge. dh

So sorry to hear of your turmoil James, but fortunately it doesn't inhibit you posting your elegant highly entertaining posts, always eagerly awaited I've just been charged with circulating next door's bellringers that we are abandoning Practice nights and Service ringing until further notice. As one of the agnostic ringers (allowed to tip toe out during the first hymn) I felt (selfishly) miffed because it is excellent exercise for octogenarian pear-shaped slobs like me. The bell and clock mechanisms have a lot of counterweights improvised from bits of signalling and pw kit still lurking in dark recesses of the spire 'borrowed' from the N&C at the bottom of the hill and the narrow gauge lines in the 4 pits formerly in our old NW Durham UDC . dh

Another snobby larger-than-life character was the chain smoking Nicholas Ridley - of the famous Border Reivers family. An old friend was his Perm Sec at Environment, where NR was implacably anti-planning until ... it came to an application for spec houses just next door to him somewhere in ?Wilts. That’s when he coined the acronym NIMBY about his own backyard. dh

Of the two MH was by far the most charismatic, I was lucky enough to be taken seriously by him about not letting Liverpool die (as advocated by other cabinet ministers)

I remember that as originating with Michael Heseltine.

Shurely a coal mine is a rare item in Ulster! dh

But I still can’t guess where that swing bridge was actually located on the route of the North Country Continental - was it Lincoln or somewhere else on the GE/GN Joint with the Wolds as a backdrop?

Sounds like the comforting voice of Freddy Grisewood of the Home Service ...

As rail enthusiasts, what must bind us together is an awareness of what happens to railways in wartime. In effect they are quickly annexed and operated by Governments. It looks likely this will also happen in this PanD as well. Will it happen also to airlines? Or will the winners turn out to be the Corporate giants e.g. “Fly Amazon Prime”

Sorry for my earlier post offending everyone. It followed from talking to a neighbour from the former colliery ‘avenues’ on our way up to the Co-op on the MainRoad. We were both on the same retirees’ daily round to collect a paper and eatables; the difference being that this morning we found we were both intending to sign on for Home Deliveries. So .... It seems it is not an easy thing to arrange Home Deliveries. Perhaps this is a helpful link Despite their claims, neither the Co-op, nor Morrisons (the next closest supermarket) will deliver to our postcode. Next door (who have the virus) have deliveries from Waitrose, but say their list is now closed. Does anyone have any more up-to-date advice? dh

It is interesting that it is not Immigrants or Asylum Seekers, but the Rich who introduced the Virus to the UK (via Alpine skiing holidays or flying back from places in denial like the US) . Would that have been true of the Black Death - or the Plague of 1665 ?

I’d imagine that quite a few of us on RMweb fall into the age cohort that is about to be officially corralled. Can I propose some “cake box challenge” occupation to be launched on the site that will get us beavering away two metres apart? The most depressing thing I came across in one of the Sundays was a whole page list of telly watching via Netflix etc. I think it was Disraeli who said when he felt like reading a novel, he sat down and wrote one. Myself, I think I might venture into “virtual railway modelling”.

Everything changed for us this morning! The gap between north and south has suddenly slammed shut. I came back from bellringing next door to find our other next door neighbour (who’s half of our Tudor semi I’d been guarding) was home from skiing in Austria. Ringing his doorbell I found, through shouting through the window, he’d returned having had the PanD symptoms since last Tuesday! He has decided upon a personal lockdown for 14 days. Until yesterday we were still receiving calls from the smoke disbelieving that we were still going out to listen to curlews returning to the moors above the old Stanhope & Tyne from Waskerley. We’ve decided we need to have a PLAN explicit about Choices that are open to us. Wife and I are both octogenarians - I’m currently undergoing Imunotherapy for liver cancer so have a lower chance of survival than my young wife. The way we are approaching this enforced self-isolation is by starting a Journal bio - and sorting our chaotic family photographs (in four different formats).

Are we talking of the Hapsburg Jaw, or the Wars of the Roses? All a bit introvert - a bit like an inside cylinder 4-4-0. dh

I've been reflecting on this along different lines. AFAIK the majority of M'learned Friends are partners (therefore co-owners in various proportions), several maybe 'interns' - maybe paid nowt. I was wondering about the clerical workers - many of whom I bet travel in from cheaper peripheral London areas. Would they get paid to stay away? Or maybe have to find new jobs. I once worked for a large firm of engineers who had to move out of Portland Place to Regent House, above a petrol station in Brixton after the retirement of a couple of Senior Partners. Watching trains was brilliant, but a sod of a commute from Highgate .

Older son's law firm has just commenced working from home (approx a dozen solicitors in all). He says depending on how it goes, they could save themselves many hundreds of thousands in rent on Marylebone High St. Second son (self employed in offshore H&S) had one day in Margate earlier in week, second gig in Aberdeen Thurs & Fri where he says one of the organising engineers withdrew with the symptoms overnight. There were "finger buffets" at each event. Back home now, son rang to say he's commencing 'self isolation'. Interesting times !

Bernard Shaw would famously apologise "I'm sorry I've not had time to shorten this"

I believe the book proved too successful! I understand the print run sold-out and it is now unobtainable - I've tried without success to buy one as a gift for my old walking companion. We used to do an annual midnight 'hike' up from Whaley Bridge - Windgather - Cat Tor - Shining Tor up onto the E/W water parting and then down home along the the C&HP. The views westwards while walking up that ridge were spectacular at night. We often speculated about where the LD&ECR might have run around Errwood & Thursbitch (Have you read the Thursbitch novel?) dh

It is also where the wheel came off the horse bus in the the Blaydon Races (still a difficult turn until the N&C was cut back at the bitumen/cement silos c1980, by which time the street corner pubs had all disappeared and the Scotswood Road became today's bland 50mph dual carriageway 2 IIRC Paradise also features in another (Scouse) song or rather sea-shanty: "As I was a walking down Paradise Street, Whey Hey, Blow the Man down ... " dh

I’d forgotten about this long mutually beneficial phenomenon in Italy between the FS and the military. Spending on barracks was always reckoned to be saved by half the military dossing on the overnight trains between Messina and Torino. dh

But we enjoyed Antwerp station on the way home!

Bruges is generally considered to be have been permanently closed since about 1640odd. We visited on my wife's 50th birthday. Bruges was so closed that she hung out of the hotel window over the canal stark naked and shouted that I take a photo of her body that she would never ever see again. sic transit ... ? dh

1 My mum could not stand visiting 'dead' towns on Sundays; I, on the other hand, used to love them. I could cycle happily through them and stop and sketch bits of townscape that appealed to me. 2 In Crawcrook, just long the road from us (not noted for being the most up-to-date place in the world) I found yesterday, the old family owned shops still shut early on Wednesdays. 3 I see James is able to influence appropriate local Teeside adverts being inserted in between CA posts!

Gosh we are straying a long way from the WNR here. Freud is alleged to have claimed “There is no such thing as a Joke” - to which Jimmy Connolly (married to a shrink) is said to have responded “That is because he never played the Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night” dh