Liam

Spitfire Lager. Bliss!

Funnily enough I received another one this morning on our landline from ‘BT Openreach’. After being deliberately ambiguous for several minutes and asking the man on the other end to repeat himself several times, I asked where he was calling from. “61 Newgate Street London” came the reply. “That’s strange considering you’re using a Wolverhampton area number!” For some reason the line went dead after that - wouldn’t have a clue as to why...

Received another of these calls yesterday but this was a car accident scam. After getting through the automated voice I was put through to ‘Melanie’ who informed me that I was entitled to thousands of pounds of compensation. She asked me when the accident occurred, and I said that as a result of the accident I couldn’t remember when it was. The call only lasted two minutes though, and on reflection I should have said that the accident occurred on the 31st February.

The first time I travelled on the Eurostar I went from St Pancras to Calais Frethun. It seems like the service Avanti West Coast (and before that Virgin Trains) provided for the intermediate stations on the Trent Valley between Rugby and Stafford - only usually at peak times and alternating between stops at stations (e.g ones that stop at Nuneaton won’t stop at Tamworth as well). The stop at Calais Frethun meant that it didn’t stop at either Ebbsfleet or Ashford. Must admit that on the two occasions I used the Eurostar I didn’t travel to either Paris or Brussels (got on a London bound train at Lille on the second occasion), but I think that’s more due to the fact that when we tour Europe in the camper van we tend avoid most capital cities.

Taken from BBC News live updates: ‘Ebbsfleet and Ashford stations, in Kent, are to be mothballed after an "unprecedented fall in demand". It means passengers in Kent will need to start their journeys at St Pancras, in London. In a statement Eurostar said: "Covid-19 has had a severe impact on the travel industry and on our business and we continue to operate in very challenging conditions. "We have experienced an unprecedented fall in demand, with bookings down by 90% compared to last year. "The environment remains very unpredictable and has been exacerbated by quarantine restrictions which are now across all of our markets." The rail operator said it had not taken the decision not to reopen Ebbsfleet and Ashford before 2022 lightly, but said because of the "severity of the situation" it had to take action.’

Or for which side you want to position the bar at.

All you needed to do to make everyone on the train envious was hold the bottle up as the train passed you!

One method of dealing with scammers that I recommended to someone on another site was to play the BBC News theme tune down the phone (or on a computer and loud enough for them to hear), and then when you’re approaching the crescendo at the end say, “And we go live in 5,4,3,2,1... on air!”

Supermarkets could reduce their electricity bills if they only had one pair of automatic doors opening, and one side was for entering and the other was for exiting! I can’t remember where it was, but recently I saw a sign which said ‘When ascending these stairs, please walk on the left. When descending these stairs, please walk on the right.’

Well make your minds up!

Last month I went with my cousins to an outdoor water sports centre. In my opinion, the centre have done a very good job of being COVID compliant; pre-booking is mandatory, all the equipment is disinfected and sanitised after each use and the number of visitors on site is reduced to help enforce social distancing. In the last few years on average I have attended about four or five exhibitions a year, sometimes less due to the location of the school I was at and supposed to be sitting A levels at this year (until they were cancelled). With the exception of 2017, I have attended Warley every year since 2016, and probably would have attended again this year if the COVID crisis wasn’t around. I am not in the ‘at risk’ category, but my grandmother and one or two other elderly members of my family have been shielding, and that would make me be very cautious about attending exhibitions. I suspect one of the factors which led Warley to be cancelled was how people crowd round the layouts and trade stands, especially the Bachmann sales stand. It would be a lot different to the usual set up at shows, but could traders have just display items on the tables in front, and then when someone asks for a product they bring one out from a box or underneath the counter? This would minimise the number of people touching surfaces such as loco boxes, as you often find that people might move other boxes out of the way to have a rummage underneath for other locos/coaches etc.

Home of that well known Welsh pop group, Oasis.

I rated your comment ‘funny’ but wonder if I should have given you a round of applause for wasting so much of a scammer’s time.

Couldn’t agree more. Those 8 minutes were minutes where they could have rung off and phoned two more callers who are in a much more vulnerable position, so I waste as much of their time as possible. I am a member of a closed comedy page on Facebook and the other day when there was a discussion about ways to waste the time of phone scammers one person believed that ‘all’ the people calling you were trying to do was earn the minimum wage so stop wasting their time! If they’re trying to commit a crime then wasting their time is the best thing to do (if you have the time that is).

Yes, in fact they had probably never heard of Barnsley before I asked where their favourite place to eat out was!

I’ve edited it for more clarification, but it’s about a scam from people claiming to be from BT.

Landline rang this morning with an 01226 (Barnsley area) phone number. “Hello?” “Good morning sir, my name is ‘David Watson’ and I am calling from BT.” “Oh hi.” “We have detected some errors coming from your router.” “I see.” “If you are near your router can you tell me if you see any flashing lights?” “I’m near the router but the only flashing light I can see is from the neighbour locking his car.” “Ok” (he hadn’t realised I had led him astray!) “And what portable devices do you use to go online?” “Well I don’t have a computer, and I wouldn’t call it a portable device as you wouldn’t take it on a train would you?” “A computer, right.” “No, I said I don’t own a computer! In fact I hardly ever go on the internet at all.” “Oh right, I see.” “And you’re phoning from a Barnsley number - can you tell me what the weather is like in Barnsley today?” “I’m sorry?” (he asked me to repeat my questions several times, maybe because he wasn’t sure if I was had strong suspicions about the call) After another few questions, I was put through to his supervisor. After the usual greeting of ‘hello sir, how are you doing today’ I continued to press him on the legitimacy of the call. “If you’re in Barnsley, can you tell me what the weather there is like today?” “Sunny.” I still wasn’t satisfied, so asked him another question: “And where is your favourite place in Barnsley to go for a meal out?” After some umms and errs, the line went dead. If they were actually located in Barnsley then it wouldn’t be too difficult to name a pub or restaurant, and my suspicions of it being a scam were confirmed when I couldn’t phone their number back. We do use BT, but we had a new router installed about two months and it has worked flawlessly. But all in all I managed to keep the scammers on the line for 8 minutes, which is the longest yet. These cold calls are definitely something to watch out for.

That’s the first time I’ve noticed the applause button - when did it appear?

An engineer’s possession in the morning rush hour won’t be popular! Jokes aside, best of luck with the maintenance and hopefully second time lucky.

Presumably then you’ve laid on a replacement bus service?

You’ll definitely relax with that one! Might have a pint of Forty Niner later with a meal.

It is amazing how the beer is able to pour itself out of the can and into the glass...

I tried Banks Bitter a few months ago and wasn’t so keen on it, but I am very keen on Banks Golden, which has an incredible taste for 3.8%. Sorry to take this conversation down another sharp turning but does anyone know how long draught ale will keep for out of the fridge? When the travel restrictions are lifted I’d quite like to take some draught ale to some friends of ours up in Cheshire, but I don’t know how well it would cope with a long journey.

Chris and Jenny (they’re our wrens who take their names from Prof Chris Whitty and Dr Jenny Harries) were very busy on Friday morning as the young prepared to fledge, and then late morning the fledging occurred. It’s not the best of photos but here’s one of the fledglings.