spikey

I rather liked the following announcement ... "The inventor of auto-correct died last week. The funnel is tomato."

Mystery solved, I believe. Thank you one and all 🙂

As far as I can tell, in this neck of the woods the point is either to be Billy Big Balls or to impress the school gate mums, depending upon ones sex the gender with which one prefers to identify at the time :)

Picture credited to one J.E.Wilkinson.

That's what I thought, but that's what the caption says.

I have before me the September 1959 "Trains Illustrated", in which is a photograph that has me scratching my head. I saw a fair number of milk trains in my trainspotting days. but I don't ever recall seeing the likes of this. On May 20th 1956, 46100 "Royal Scot" is pictured near Tebay at the head of a Carlisle-London milk train consisting of 8 tankers, then van of some kind, then a passenger carriage (9-10 windows) and finally what I assume is a passenger brake van which is about half the length of the carriage. Unfortunately the repro's too iffy to make out much more than that. What would be the likely purpose of the carriage (i.e. would that be ordinary paying passengers)? And what sort of brake van looked like half a full-size carriage?

Thank you. The amount I don't know about post-1980 bikes is truly staggering.

Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is that black plastic square-section moulding intruding from the left in this picture?

I note what you say, but I find it very interesting how different people's experiences compare. The only person I know in the real world who has told me the actual figures for his own installation is a retired accountant who has had an 8-panel installation since 2016. He currently estimates that the earliest date at which he will have got his money back, assuming a kW/h cost halfway between what he was paying this time last year and what he's paying now, is October 2023. This assumes no repairs or replacements will be needed, and that the panels last without their output dropping significantly from their present level, which I understand to be lower than when new. Whatever, all I know for sure is that it's not for me at present :)

I see that the latest Moneysavingexpert guide to solar panels now puts the likely timescale to recoup the costs for a typical premises in the middle of the country as "anywhere between 14 and 24 years"...

Alas I have no sensible suggestions to make regarding apparel, as all I ever wore was Barbour jackets, jeans and your typical 1960s zip-back boots (with, of course, seaboot socks turned over the tops thereof as was the mode du jour) - apart from one pair of ex-Army dispatch rider boots and the 1966-pattern flying boots I managed to hang on to when the RAF and I parted company. I am though indebted to you for mentioning the Dellow, about which I was completely unaware. I could quite fancy one of those :)

... which were concepts that the British motorcycle industry didn't grasp until it was too late. I do wish I still had the list of defects that had to be sorted with the brand new Bonneville I made the mistake of buying in 1968/9 whichever it was. Incidentally, ref Mr Wolf's earlier mention of Nortons, I bought that Bonneville from Freddie Frith's in Grimsby. Fred had won a couple of TTs pre-war on Nortons, and in due course I got to know him quite well. Certainly well enough to know that by the time Norton introduced the Commando with The Green Blob on the tank, Fred had given up hope of them ever getting their act together ,,,

Gosh. I was put off learning the piano by my parents. When I was about 9, I came home from school one day to find a piano in the front room, this being a donation from a neighbour. Next came the blind man to tune it, after which I was expected to learn to play it with the (sole) help of a long strip of card with notation thereon which slotted in upright behind the keys. Needless to say, that was a total non-starter, and it was responsible for putting me right off the idea of learning to play an instrument until a tentative brush with guitars in my 50s. That too went nowhere. What finally did the trick was the impulse buy of £100-worth of Casio CTS300, to which I (surprisingly) took like a duck to water. Now on a Korg EK50 and loving the thing :)

Given the sort of tooling cost that must have been sunk into that abomination and the amount (cost) of all the presswork, it's very difficult to imagine how anyone could have thought it might be a money-maker.

At least we're not playing the viola: some of the music for that seems to be in the alto clef, or possibly the tenor - neither of which I knew existed until recently! Q. How do you stop your violin being stolen? A. Put it in a viola case.

Not a musician and at my age unlikely to ever become one, but I am enjoying teaching myself keyboards, learning to read as I go. Having said that, I'm not looking forward to getting my head round the bass clef, which is next on my to-do list. Always fancied guitar but could never get to grips, whereas with keyboards everything seems more "logical", and for me intuitive. One thing's for sure, at £300 the Korg EK50's remarkable value for money. Incidentally, Mrs Spikey used to play tenor sax but gave it up 35 years ago. The deal was that if I treated myself to a decent keyboard, she got herself another sax, which she finally did in the form of a lovely silver-plated Yamaha alto. The guys in the (pro) shop knew she hadn't played for yonks, and it was all rather intimidating for her, but to the amazement of one and all she just picked up the horn and started running through scales and arpeggios with very few bum notes, despite the blowing being hard work on account of the particular reed fitted. Verily, she's the musician I'll never be. Q. Why is a sax solo like a sneeze? A. You can always tell when it's coming, but you can never do much about it ...

National Hunt jockey?

Couple of observations now I'm on the laptop rather than my phone ... Ref the 'erberts posing with that Beeza, I've just noticed the bacon-slicer on the back wheel. Never seen that before! Got to be good for an extra 5mph innit ... And ref the MZ, could that win the award for the most ridiculous pillion footrest position ever?

Oh, I do like that. Very nice. Pleased to see that he solved the breather dilemma the same way I did i.e. he too CBA to take it another 8" and secure the now-downward-pointing end to the mudguard with a P-clip. I note the tax-disc holder on the wrong side of the bike, and am reminded of the time I got stopped by a very grumpy traffic cop on a Saint who had the confounded cheek to allege that I'd been speeding when for once I hadn't. He couldn't prove it, so reckoned he was booking me instead for tax disc not clearly displayed on nearside, forward of dualseat nose. That never happened, which was a shame, because when I mugged up on the relevant regs, I learned that the tax disc also had to be displayed behind glass. His was in a car-type thingy on the inside of his Avon windscreen, clearly visible through the Perspex. Might have been interesting in court ...

Oh blimey. I'd forgotten about the fashion for springs round zorsts ...

I omitted to point out that the £700 is for two pairs of thin varifocals, one being heavily tinted.

I am very much obliged to you for that. We couldn't see the wood for the trees. Thank you.

Sometime around the mid-80s, I impulse-bought a new CB400N when they were a very attractive price. Being young, we were prone to daft ideas at the time. Anyhow no sooner was it nicely run in than the Lady Wife says one night "Would that take us somewhere camping for a week?". Long story short, we did a 3000+ mile trip out to Bavaria and back the pretty way on it, complete with tent and all the gear. The thing never missed a beat. All I had to do with it was put some oil in and tension the back chain. It was everything that the unit 350/500 Triumphs should have evolved into but didn't. It was boring as hell.

At present I seem to have no grounds for a Section 75 claim. The issue boils down to the timescale, and time was not expressly of the essence in the contract. I guess that just as it could be argued that 9 months to get a couple of pairs of glasses is not at all reasonable, so too could it be said that in view of the alleged necessity to see this specialist chappie, the timescale is out of the optician's control. Dunno. I see a can of worms there. Ref going to an independent, alas that's out simply on the grounds of cost. We are not at all well off here ...