AndrewC

I'm beginning to wonder if Gordon has a 'thing' for nurses. Seriously, get better soon Gordon. Andrew

Wish I had known how rare this book was. I accidently bought a second copy several years ago. Shipped it to a mate in Canada about 6 months ago in exchange for some transfers and Details West parts. £220????? Arrrrggghhhh!!!! Can you say D'oh? And no, I'm not parting with my remaining copy.

Sky Pilot - The Animals

Another waste of a day so far. DLR shut down this morning when some moron decided to have a stroll along the tracks at South Quay. Oh well 40 mins less time spent in the office.

Could be worse. I worked for a company that referred to HR as "The People Place" pass the sick bag. We jokingly refer to SWMBO as a toner cartridge as that's how her management treat her. Disposable, forgettable, but they run around in a mass panic when it doesn't work properly.

Another week begins. 5 more days of sitting on my a*se doing b*gger all at taxpayer's expense. At the current burn rate they will run out of purchased time before they even get the actual project work started. Still, it pays the bills and lets me keep up to date on RMWeb.

Me too. A pint in the Green Man, pie & mash at Duncan's, then £2 to stand on the North Bank. Back in the day when footie was more than a Sky Sports marketing product. Then again my local club (Welling United) had a promotion with the local 'spoons recently. Pint, burger, and a ticket for a tenner. Today the Green Man is a housing development. Duncans is still there but impossible to get near on match day due to the lack of alternatives, and you need a member card & at least £40 to get into the ground.

Colin, I wouldn't panic too much. A couple of bits of info, with the track in place the distance from the as built first row to the pitch will be only 1.5m greater than the current distance of the west stand to the pitch. One other thing that has been kept quiet until now is that WHU ARE looking into a £10million system of retractable seating which will cover the track when not in use. If the retractable seating idea is workable the supporters will be closer to the pitch than the west stand and Bobby Moore stands are now. Lets be blunt. The area is dying a painful death. Green St has become a sh*thole. Apart from Ken's cafe and a couple of run down pubs there isn't much in the way of businesses that will be impacted. Most supporters used to live locally. These days I seem to remember reading its less than 5%. Nearly 20,000 supporters go through Stratford's transport links already on match days. For them its going to be a time saving. Most fans are looking at this through claret tinted glasses. Upton Park ceased to be the place we all loved years ago.

We were tempted to elect Tony for every position on the board. In the end I think that got whittled down to director of interval beverages.

Gordon. Its going to be a pain literally, but far better than the alternatives if they screw up the anaesthetic / analgesic. Been there done that. Both my ankle surgeries ended with the analgesic wearing off far too early. I also woke mid way through my appendectomy. Not pleasant.

Robert, it comes down to supply and demand. Its also dependent on how the barrel of oil is distilled. The oil companies would love to be able to say 'turn this 10k barrels into diesel, the next 8k into gasoline, etc. They can't. Different grades of oil 'separate' (for lack of a better word) into different products at different percentages. Diesel is actually a middle distilate which requires more refining distillation at a higher temp than naptha or gasoline. Gasoline is what is known as a straight run distilate. Arab light crude contains less middle distilate than West Texas Intermediate or Brent. Therefore the higher percentage of Arab light in the refining stream means more barrels of oil to produce the same output of diesel. On average a barrel of WTI (42 gallons) yields: gasoline 19.3gal, distilate fuel incl diesel 9.83gal, kerosene 4.24gal. Arab light yields about 8gal of distilate fuel per barrel. Its not surprising that diesel is now more expensive than gasoline. The same is now true in most parts of North America as more and more vehicles there are diesel powered. I spent too many years in the oil industry shuttling between Calgary and Houston. Its amazing the kind of crap your mid retains.

Dear Don, please send us some of your excess heat. Just 8-10 degrees worth would be nice. We're more than happy to pay the postage and packing costs. signed, Frozen of Bexleyheath. B) In other news, not much happening again. Off to the Erith exhibition in Dartford shortly. I have next week off to get some work done around the house. Yawn.

Too Much Pressure -- The Selecter

More likely the psychological barrier of the Darford Crossing. For us Lakeside is closer and a much better place to shop but we usually end up at Bluewater just so we don't have to suffer the pain of the toll booth queue. Land Rover love their surveys. I get one every time they so much as change a light bulb on the thing. Keeps the office minions busy I suppose.

Good day all. Good to see that Tony is thawing out. No heat is not nice at all unless it happens in July. Got the Landy back from the dealership last night. Cleaned, running properly, and £10 less than the original estimate. The repair has also corrected some of the flakey electrical behavior it used to have. Off to the Erith club's exhibition in Dartford tomorrow and Sunday. Helping on Santa Barbara. If anyone is going, please stop by and say hello. I'm the grumpy one. No wait, that pretty much describes all the operators.

Good day all. Another fun filled exciting day here in the boring boring borough. Had the Landy booked into the dealership to get the electricals sorted. I knew it would be touch and go driving it the last 4 miles with no alternator. Made it just over half way before everything packed in. Kind of interesting to see bits of the thing shut down little by little with the engine still running. Lucky for me my bank's gold service package now includes road side assistance from Greenflag. A quick call and within 30 mins I had been picked up and delivered with the Landy at the dealership. Still waiting for the dreaded phone call saying just how bad it is. I'm hoping the worst case is the worst case I've been expecting. Work is strange. My contract at Crossrail expired before Christmas but they keep calling me back for a week at a time. All well and good but they don't actually have any work for me to do. Who knows where I'll be in a couple of weeks. Edinburgh perhaps if the next project I'm scheduled for goes ahead on time. Canary Wharf, if Crossrail actually put in a formal request for a fixed peroiod of time, or ????? stay tuned. Its one of the downsides of IT consulting.

Greetings all you groovy protoplasms. Another chilly start to the day here in the boring boring borough. I'm beginning to think this part of SE London is duller than Belguim. Got a quote on the LandRover. £390 for a new alternator incl labour & VAT. That's the dealer rates. The local spanner wanted £100 for a used one and £150 to install it as its such a <bleep> of a job. I think for an extra £140 I'll play safe and get the new one properly installed with a year's guarantee. Spent part of the past couple of days working on the club modules. Ballasting is sole destroying. Need to get to 4D models to pick up some sculptamold so I can get on with the rest of the scenery. The insomnia fairy has been visiting the past couple of nights. I drop off for about 20 mins then I'm wide awake and restless until 3 or 4 am. Not even Melatonin is working this time. Thats about all. Have a good one.

Its beyond bl**dy awkward. Its a 2002 Freelander which means its got to be done from below. Remove most of the cooling system, then the air-con compressor, finally the alternator. The spares place is quoting £140 for a refurb replacement. A new one from Landrover is around £220. I figure by the time I pay for a refurb, rent a pair of ramps, and spend 4-6 hours crawling under the damn thing its not worth saving a couple of hundred. Can't be a*sed really. I'd rather just pay to get it done and stay clean. My days of crawling under cars getting covered in oil & muck are long gone. Robert, my first car was a 72 Datsun 510. Paid $200 for it the day I turned 16. By the time I traded up to a Cortina a year later I think I'd replaced about half of the car with parts from a wrecker's yard. Even with all the parts I bought I still made a profit on it. The alternator in that thing was dead easy and took about half an hour to replace. 3 bolts and voila. Just looking under the hood of the Freelander gives me a headache.

Thanks Gordon. Its a family that bought the place and they are doing the work themselves. From what I can see on the Bexley website there is no planning permission in place for the property. I think they are just pushing the boundries of what is acceptable DIY v a full re-development. Basically they've gutted the place bit by bit to the brickwork and started again. Not sure I want to go down the road of grassing them to the council. I'd rather them just get on with it and finish. From talking to the chap he thinks another 3 weeks and they'll be done. Bad news on the car, looks like the alternator has gone to the great scrapyard in the sky. Queue visions of £££ at the dealer tomorrow.

Morning all. Acool cloudy day here. A few things happening in the boring boring borough. Next door has been banging and hammering since 8am as usual. They're 5 weeks into a total rebuild and its getting annoying. 7 days a week 8am to 6pm like clockwork. They seem to have filled enough skips for 4 houses though. I wonder if they are tunnelling across the whole terrace. We headed out for a day in Rochester yesterday. Shopping, lunch, etc. Just to escape from the noise and dust. Treated myself to a new toy at the Signal box. An Athearn Genesis SD70Ace in MoPac livery. Couldn't get the sound fitted one so for the moment it's fitted with an NCE decoder and Digitrax SoundBug. Sounds ok, not great but ok. The day was cut short when the Landy started having a disco with the charging system light. I'm hoping its nothing more than a loose belt or the sensor wire to the alternator. I'm going to have a play with it today and if not successful its off to the dealership tomorrow. Thats about it. Have a good Sunday all.

Sorry Jim, that pic fails the cliche test. You have a postal van without a black & white cat visible in the window.

Well hasn't this week just turned into a big bucket of suck! I want a do over please. Hope everyone else's is going a lot better than mine.

Southeastern has once again screwed up my workday. In the last 6 months the amount of billable time they've cost me would pay my season ticket for the next 4 years. The sooner those clowns lose their franchise the better. Worse now than Connex ever was.