AndrewC

I want to know how you managed to type that without wetting yourself laughing.

Moaning all from the boring borough. Tonight's plan of popping to Peterborough to drink for the Ukraine have been scuppered by a small plastic NHS supplied thingy with 2 very bright red lines on it. Yep, forking covid again. I'm really tempted to spend the day on public transport coughing on all the maskless rat licking, motherf*cking, ar*ebadgering, c*ntpuffins. Bit of a headache and a strange (for me) cold, but this has really screwed up my Easter. For anyone else who likes a decent beer, please check out Euroboozer to see if there is a local near you serving beers from Kyiv's Varvar brewery tonight. https://drinkersforukraine.com/ Enjoy the day, I'm going back to bed. Addendum: They've now created a map for imbibing Varvar tonight. https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5671808,-3.3797106,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!6m1!1s1S-TYoSzjGtQfkS7ton0q9oYaGqKFheqM

As HMRC seem to be making up things as they go along, I would talk to a customs broker to see if you need a Carnet or not for the layout and stock. My understanding (having worked on some of the new systems) is that if you are making any money from the exhibition, your layout and stock would qualify as tools of business. (much like a musician now has to Carnet and catalogue every single item they take into the EU to play a gig) If you are exhibiting purely as a hobby the it becomes a very grey area, especially if you are being paid expenses. It could be argued that your attendance is generating part of the show's income. Likely you would be best off with a fully recorded inventory before leaving the UK. Again, contact a customs expert first. I'd hate to see you nailed at the border upon return with no proof of original export.

You can have some of ours. We seem to get far too many spiders of varying species. We've had to start culling them as their webs were trapping bees and other beneficial bugs. Not to mention the sheer volume of webs everywhere. Moaning all from the boring borough. Another steaming pile of poo day yesterday and its twin brother appearing so far today. <meh> Little else, so I'll bid you all a good day.

When we moved here (18 1/2 years now, yikes) we went from the normal Canadian 100l hot water tank to hot water on demand from a combi-boiler. After our first gas bill we put an egg timer next to the shower. Moaning all from the boring borough. Quiet weekend. Managed a couple of small things off the honey-do list. Had enough of the current employer already. For all the nicey nicey hurrah crap they peddle, it is still filled with the same corporate bullsh*t that lead me to leaving my last employer. Flipped the red light on my LinkedIn profile and have had a couple of nibbles already. We shall see how it goes. Just need to keep filling the pension pot for another 110 months. Computer says 3368 days until retirement. A mate of mine wants me to join him but that means going down the contracting route. More £ but far more hassle. <sigh> Anyhoo. Coffee and more meeting merde awaits. Enjoy the day.

I know exactly where you were standing. I've crossed that bridge hundreds of times. Bow River below, Sulphur mountain behind you along with the park admin office.

You've been to Calgary then.

I was thinking it would probably have been a good idea to look at the planning history and current allowed use before even renting the place. Then again what sort of idiot takes a brand new, never used take away, then strips it down to the bricks. They've thrown away everything including the freezer, tables, chairs, even the bloody windows went. What a total waste. Fools and their money and all that. (as mentioned by Winslow as well)

Moaning all from the boring borough. Crabtree still missing in action. Another <bleep> week of <bleep> caused by a cluster of <bleep>puffins and <bleep>badgers. Nice to see the forum and ERs back to quasi-normal. Today is a lesson in wasting money. Just along from us is a small parade of shops. The council has long tried to keep a balance of retail and food. There are already 3 food outlets. (including very good Indian and Jamaican restaurants. Before covid one unit became a cryo-spa for sports injury recovery. This was owned jointly by one of the WHU ladies players and one of the club's owners. They spent a fortune and it was very busy. Covid closed it and it never reopened. Between lockdowns it had been gutted and transformed into an ice cream bar. (oooooh the irony) That never actually opened as the council refused the change of use. They must have spent at least £40k on that. After a year of sitting empty with half the old signage and half new signage, (Cryo-lounge + Milkshakes) this past week it has been gutted again. Planning application for a restaurant/takeaway with a large amount of ventilation etc. No doubt a kabob shop. Council's planning site has the application for change of use again but it hasn't been approved yet. No doubt they'll go down the same road as the Ice cream people. Spend a fortune only to be told "no chance". Going back on that address there have been 3 previous attempts to change it to a restaurant/food all of which were rejected. Idiots all around. Time for work, coffee, weekend. Enjoy the day.

Once upon a time they used to burn turf and manure to keep warm. Perhaps the nice Irish people could dump a few tonnes of manure off so the Russians can keep warm.

Is there a canal big enough that goes to Bedford?

The newest pair of ferries are fitted with a magnetic docking alignment thingy. It fails on a regular basis. Throw in the labour issues as well and the Woolwich Ferry is about as reliable as a bridge made of pasta. The new boats should last forever. No wear & tear being inflicted on them, that's for sure.

Moaning from the boring borough. Another Monday. Blergh. Big steaming piles of crap to contend with today. I hope Chris is enroute by now. Just saw the news that SleazyJet have cancelled over 100 flights today so far due to covid staff shortages. Premier Inns are generally quite good. Still owned by Whitbread. I do prefer them to Travelodge or the lower end Ibis hotels. Like Baz I wouldn't want to be a test subject for arrow v kevlar. However, I have a fairly lengthy list of people I'd love to put forward as testers. With and without kevlar. Not much to report. A quiet weekend puttering. Re-seated a slipped roof window in the greenhouse. Repaired the mounting bracket for one of SWMBO's garden mirrors. Finally put the last spindles on the stairs after a lengthy period of indecision between cutting short spindles where the banister meets the newel post, or just filling that small triangle of space in. Some darts in the man cave were played as well as some train time. That is all. Enjoy the day.

Moaning all from a still boring borough. A touch of frost this morning. Alas poor Crabtree is no more. Lost amongst the orphaned bytes on Dreadfulserv's broken storage. Looking at my attachments list, only about 25 pics from nearly 300 survive. Doubt I'll be bothering to try to recover them and restore the images to various threads. Shame as I bet there are a lot of forum members who have lost many times that amount of images. Images from those who have passed over the years are probably now lost forever. Right, time to stop moaning and get on with the day. Some employed work to do. Some coffee to drink. Some Top of the Pops to watch.

Could be worse. Could be an NCE decoder. Bought a dozen about 10 years ago. They have all failed. Most just no longer respond at all, even to a factory reset/power cycle. I've got 26 year old Digitrax Dn93s that are still going strong. My few TCS hold outs aren't that bad but they are really designed for big ugly motors like what are found in old Athearn locos. For that purpose they are very well suited. These days I've standardised on Loksound v5s.

The mud created by the Sahara dust sticks to any and all horizontal surfaces. Just spent the best part of an hour, half a bottle of cleaner, and many many rags just to clean off the BBQs and tables outside. I think I shall also be taking the Landy down the street for a shampoo and set later on.

Moaning all from the boring borough. Sunny for the moment but cloud predicted for later in the day. SWMBO's most recent retest came out positive again. <sigh> That means a few more nights of sleeping in the office. Today I shall mostly be working (mostly Teams meetings again) with my breaks consisting of cleaning off all the red mud from yesterday's muck/rain. It is on everything including the car and BBQs. Little else to report. Like Chris, Network Rail will have their big box of Hornby track out this weekend on our line, making a trip to Norf London an adventure in itself. With the plague rat in the house, it has put that plan to rest regardless. Not sure if it is just the way the pages loaded on the site but I seem to have duplicates of the last several postings showing. On that note, I'll head for some coffee and bit you all a good day.

I thought I was the only one to have done that. I'm on my third set. One broke, one worn and now used just to snip piano wire, and the third for track until it gets worn.

There is always ye olde London towne for a city break. Wait, hear me out. Easy transport and easy to get around in. Tons of things to do from the theatre, Transport museum, other museums, etc. Fast easy days out to Brighton by train. Bluebell railway is easy to get to by train. Rochester castle and the Medway is a short trip. You can still get a decent price hotel room if you stay outside of zone 1-2.

Good old Hermes. (insert a page of profanities here) Far worse than Yodel around these parts, and that is saying something. If ever there was an example of putting lipstick on a pig, this is it. I think I've relayed this before but either the depot or the driver managed to steal around 300€ worth of beer from us in 2 separate orders in a row. First order that went missing had a tracking history like this, in this order: out for delivery, delivered, at depot, left at neighbour, left in safe place, at depot.....(for several days), unable to locate, damaged, destroyed. F*cking stolen more like. The supplier and their parent company in the Netherlands no longer uses Hermes at all. That cost herpes over 1M€ per year. Obviously our little orders added to the massive bales of straw that eventually broke the camel's back. The last box we received from them via Hermes. All Post NL / Parcel farce now.

Would it be a Samsung fridge perchance? Seems there is a design flaw in many of them. Ours ices up despite the so called "fix" being implemented several years ago.

What I did was grab about 20 at a time and since I was working from home even way back when, it was a simple task to pop one into my own PC, then carry on working on the company laptop, when finished it auto-ejected. Lather, rinse, repeat. Took about 15 weeks in the end.

Greetings all from the plague pit. SWMBO feeling a bit of a "cold" coming on. Took a flow test. Positive. F*CK. Waited an hour, tried again, still positive. I'm feeling a bit stuffed up and exhausted. Test, negative. What a great way to start the week. Hifi, ours is more midfi. An ancient Kenwood receiver. So ancient it is 110v and from Canada. Same applies to the Sony dual cassette deck. The matching Kenwood CD changer died a couple of years ago and was replaced with the closest we could find. Onkyo. We also had the front room and dining room wired so that we have speakers in every corner. More ancient tech with JBL mini monitors, Within a month of getting the cd player we decided on getting a Sonos speaker or two. That has grown to 5 speakers, a boost, and connect (to the Kenwood) The CD player has hardly been used since. All of our 1000+ cd collection has been ripped to mp3 and is available on demand in any room in the house. For proper listening we use the Rega RP1 turntable and Sennheiser 590 headphones. That's about it. Coffee time then another long day of make work meetings that should be emails. Enjoy the day.

Has anyone found out yet whether or not the new car parking charges will be in place. The proposed £8 per day charge for parking is/was supposed to be implemented this spring but no actual date has been stated on the Ally Pally website.

Greetings from a soggy and still boring borough. Glad to see that Kelly has finally undergone repairs. Home soon I hope. Another basically wasted weekend so far. Managed a couple of minor tasks around the house but nothing to dent volume 1 of the honey do list. On the upside we did have a rather nice unwind for vinyl Saturday. (normally Sunday) First listen to a very rare live (and liner signed by Kenny Jones) recording of the Small Faces in Belgium, followed by various others, and finished up with Thelonious Monk. Playlist can be found on SWMBO's Farcebook. The rule of threes seems to be happening. The fridge is making suggestions about filing its retirement papers. The dryer sounds like it is filled with mice on occasion. Worst of all our espresso machine that had recently shown signs of old age, finally passed on yesterday. Looks like around £2200 of modelling tokens / holiday money will be spent in the coming weeks. <meh> I have a catch 22 when it comes to diy in the house. If the weather is nice I want to be outside. If the weather is crappy and I'm inside, I can't bring out the power tools to cut and shape any bits that need fitting as I really have to do it outside. more <meh> Oh well. enjoy your Sunday. Breakfast time and I need to try to remember how to operate the Koffi pot.