AndrewC

and the Grand Canyon was formed by a Yorkshireman after dropping a penny in a gopher hole.

Remember, a snail is just a slug in a caravan.

mix a bit of salt with some carpet deodoriser powder (shake n vac etc) leave it on overnight. That will do the trick.

Shame our calendar is full this weekend. Mr Roundhouse, myself, and others will be in Bodegraven & Rotterdam over the weekend. Moaning all. Tuesday. Basically its like a Monday but with slightly less suckage. Chiropractor visited. Ouch, but things moving a bit. Work is still boring. Probably a good thing in reality. Gives me the chance to split my day up into achievable chunks with a rest in between. B*gger all else to say. Enjoy your day.

Good moaning all from the boring borough. OFIM once again. Back and shoulder bad this morning. May have to give in and take some pain relief. Not a lot happening. Some light work around the house. I've got 6 and a bit weeks to get the modules ready but spent far too much time just playing trains. My latest roster addition. Work is a mixed bag. Was supposed to be starting on a long project. That's been delayed yet again. In its place I was to do 6 weeks for another client. This morning that got cancelled due to office politics. That gives me 3 free days of study and reading. Peaceful bliss until some arsebadger wants my time but won't go through the proper channels to pay for it. Short 3 day week at least. Off to the wilds of Bodegraven and Rotterdam for a pair of beer fests. Brussels warmup on Thursday. Ian: 10:25 or 10:55 Rotterdam Centraal, Platform 16. change at Woerden. See you there. That's about it. Enjoy your week.

That reminds me, time for an eye test. The employer pays for our vision care but only at a base level. Up to now the frame selection was limited to the "Jack Duckworth" collection with only the most basic of lenses. (coke, pepsi, or fanta bottle) Varifocal were permitted but if you wanted decent quality optics with anti-glare and all the bells & whistles you had to pay for the whole thing. Now they've done a deal with SpecSavers. Still basic but we now get a base amount voucher and can pay for upgrades without having to cover the whole cost, just the difference.

Morning all from a soggy boring borough. The garden wall is finally finished. Now just have to wait for the "other guy" to pick up all the tools and remaining rubble sacks. I'm not holding my breath. His timekeeping is abysmal. If not for the carrot of payment I doubt they'd even bother returning. I will say they did a good job though. Just bloody disorganised and slow. Good luck with the job hunt Andy & Rick. Question of the day: how fecking large does a doorbell have to be before Parcel Farce or Yokel notice it exists? moronic bunch of asshats. Now I have a round trip to the depot in Dartford that is further than the parcel had to travel in the first place, or wait until the middle of next week. Enough of that. Time for work. On today's menu we have a senior architect who has been dropped into a major project working with a product that he knows nothing about. Rather than employ one of our team to do the work, I get to play tutor for the day. It'll all end in tears. Pass the absinthe. The pinched nerve has been a b*gger all week. That means a quiet weekend at home staring at the ceiling. Enjoy your weekend.

Welcome Allan. Your toenail on the other hand will have to register on his own.

Apart from £1500 in materials they don't get anything until completion. There was no fixed date in the agreement only a semi-vague 2- 21/2 weeks depending on weather. More like whether they can be arsed to put in a full day. That said, the junior has arrived and is busily filling the skip with all the crap. Had they cleaned as they went, it would have saved them a lot of effort and difficulty in having to work around a pile of rubble and broken fence panels. Oh well, their problem, not mine.

Morning all from the boring borough. Trapped nerve pain seems to be getting worse again since last week. Physio tomorrow. Time to draw a line under it and nag until i get a specialist referral this time. My p*ss is getting close to boiling point. The builders S Karr, Go & co still haven't finished the walls and no sign of them or the skip this morning that was supposed to form today's clean up operation. They assure me it will all be completed by end of day tomorrow but at the rate they are putting the walls up they have at least 3 more days work including the clean up. Good thing its a fixed price contract. Have been hoping to get some work on the module done but just not up to it. 8 and a bit weeks until its next outing. Unless there are some real improvements in my health quickly, I'm very likely going to have to pull out. News update: the skip has been delivered. No sign of the builders though. They've got a 2 hour window to clean up the front garden before it gets hauled away. If they don't finish in time they'll be footing the bill for the driver to hang about or to book a second skip. Sometimes supporting small and local doesn't pay off. Time for a rest and heat liniment. Enjoy your day.

Morning all from the boring borough. Best laid plans to be playing trains in Burgess Hill hit the buffers this morning with my back really playing up. The chemical kosh to settle things down meant of course I couldn't safely drive. Now, some 6 hours later I'm finally awake and coherent. The rest of the day will consist of enjoying the last of the summer on the patio with a book. Major light show last night that lasted around 2 hours. Needless to say I had 3 rather disgruntled cats trying to take over the bed at 02:00. Happy Birthday Tony. Any sign of cake yet? Well done Neil on nailing the cockwomble with the dash cam. I'm very tempted to get one. It seems like the standard in driving has gone way down hill in the past decade or so. Time for one more coffee. Everyone have a good day.

Insurance in this country boils my p!ss. Every bloody year the renewal comes in at a vastly inflated rate. In the case of the AA for the past 5 years on the house I've gone through the same charade. Quote is up about 30-40%. Go visit the meerkats. Get a quote there from the AA that is lower than my present rate. Call AA, get the meerkat rate. This year not so lucky so I jumped to the highest rated amongst the cheapest premiums. Same happened with the car 2 years ago. Direct Line decided that after 11 years of no claims, I was suddenly a risk worth doubling the rate for. Called them with a meerkat rate from a competitor, said they couldn't match it, so voila now with LV at 20%ish lower than what I was paying Winston Wolfe. Really tired of playing games with these cockwombles.

you forgot Elton John's tribute to Buzz as well. Wok-it Man.

Oh, and before anyone else posts it. Buzz Aldrin was the first man to cook in space. The Police wrote a song about it even. Wok'n on the moon. .... hat coat airlock

Shame as many Liverpool supporters sang about that programme. Wok on, wok on, ...........

Good morning all from the borough of boring. Wall construction still progressing at the expected snail's pace. Had a word with the boss, labour will be charged at 300 bricks a day. Looks like the work will come in under the estimate because of the slow progress. Work is stalled again. I've spent the past 2 weeks on "training". This equates to on line course work and exams. I should end up with 4 more certificates by the end of the day. Wot joy. What little project work I have done is now mired in red tape as the sh*tgibbon that manages the project's expenses and time reporting has fecked up the numbers. This means nobody can bill any of their time to the work that has been done. My prediction is the usual mass panic as the month end numbers won't match the work projections. Argh! Tomorrow sees me schlepping down the M23 to Burgess Hill. I shall be spending the day helping hindering Mr Roundhouse on his namesake layout. If you are in the area come and say hello. This will be a good test of my back/neck/shoulder to see whether or not I've healed sufficiently to manage Millarville at the Freemo meet in Wells in 9 weeks time. If the postal gods play nice, I should have some new toys for the module by then as well. Right, back to work. TFIF Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Morning all from the little construction site in the boring borough. Another day, another brick in the garden wall. To be fair, yesterday the junior brickie managed to dig out and pour the footings for the third side of the wall. Other than that it was too wet to lay bricks. Result: just managed to score tickets for the Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary at RAH. I missed the whole Diana thing as I was too busy with my mum's last 2 weeks of palliative care. Afterwards I found the over the top grief and all the shrines full of tat quite vulgar and tacky. (see also Amy Winehouse) That's about it from here. enjoy your day. Time for another coffee.

My first car was a green Datsun 510. One of my mates popped in the Yellow Submarine sound track cassette. Several minutes of "we all live in a green Datsun" were sung by the rest of the gang in the car. Ian A: CFO generally stands for Chief F*ckup Orc around my office. Last year's Chrimbo prezzie.

May have to stretch the wheels on a couple of Canadian interlopers again. Shame there is no place for an RDC or 2.

Greetings from the borough of boring. Still in recovery mode. A bit better and no longer relying on pain killers. The fog is slowly lifting from my addled brain. Congrats Dom & Mrs Dom. The usual congratulations and commiserations as appropriate. Still playing catch up. The great garden wall build enters day 7. I think we hired the slowest brickies on the planet. To be fair the main fellow has had to cry off most of the time as his Mrs went into early labour and hasn't been able to be on site for more than a couple of hours. Its just been his junior doing all the work on his own. With luck they should be finished and cleared up next week some time. Back to work. An hour meeting which should have been an email is about to begin. <insert profanity here> Enjoy your day everyone.

I know a Bill Bishop.

Well didn't that gem of news just brighten up a dreary Monday. WOO HOO. Lets just hope this is the first step to a longer term outlook.

Morning all from the boring borough. Thoughts and condolences to Lorna & Andy. Quiet day planned. Major rant about the fustercluck of tw@waffles that pretend to be a functional GP surgery coming soon. (Recently identified as the worst practice in the borough by the local gnus rag) Enjoy your weekend.

Good moaning all from the boring borough. Happy Birthday Andy. Another round of physio yesterday. Still no improvement so one more session next week and if no improvement then, a referral to a specialist. Likely outcome is surgery. A great train hotel is the Izaak Walton in NW Montana. Originally built as staff accommodation. There are also 4 (now 6) cabeese that can be rented along with an FP45 loco that has been converted into a luxury suite. They are also expanding with a group of nearby cabins. We've stayed there a few times now, the most recent was this past June. If you get a trackside room you can literally lie in bed and look out the window at the BNSF mainline. That's about all from me. Off for some more pain killers and to try and get some work done for my very patient employer.

Managed 1/3 of the tap list in the short time we were there.