Liam

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. 

21 minutes ago, 57xx said:

"Manchester? Cambridge? Leeds?"

So she confirmed "Manchester".

 

Home of that well known Welsh pop group, Oasis. 

On 01/08/2020 at 21:24, Steven B said:

Eight and ten minutes? You're not trying hard enough! I managed to keep a "Microsoft" engineer busy for over 20 minutes. He got rather confused when I started describing what was on my actual desktop rather than the one on the computer screen. To his credit he didn't get too annoyed when all my computer was showing was a black screen (oh, did you want me to turn it on?). Eventually I had to hang up but not before calling him a crook and suggesting that his parents wouldn't be proud about his choice of work. I think that upset him as he called straight back to exchange another couple of insults....

 

On the positive side, when you do get a genuine caller from a call centre they're usually quite happy to tell you what the weather's like wherever they might be.

 

Steven B.

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. 

1 hour ago, D-A-T said:

If you have the time I think you have a civic duty to keep scammers on the line as long as possible because then they aren’t ringing a susceptible person like my 86 year old Mother who doesn’t understand the modern age.
Only after a visit to her bank did we (myself and the bank) get her to agree to never move any money without talking in person to one of us, or her neighbour who I trust implicitly, 1 hour after she had the call (to avoid the scammer keeping the line open).
By the law of averages the scammers must be successful in a number of cases. 

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). 

8 minutes ago, Nick C said:

The area code is probably randomly generated (as will be the number), so they probably didn't know they were supposed to be in Barnsley until you told them!

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

2 minutes ago, PenrithBeacon said:

Perhaps the thread's title is misleading?

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. 

27 minutes ago, Hroth said:

A new sign!

 

Not a groan or whatever, but a spot of applause.

 

Perhaps we might get some more useful responses?

 

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

3 hours ago, AY Mod said:

OK; yesterday's issue is believed to have been identified so we are going to go for it again on Wednesday morning. Therefore the site will be offline from 08.30 again.

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. 

3 hours ago, AY Mod said:

We hope to keep the disruption to a minimum.

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

31 minutes ago, 43110andyb said:

After 3 night shifts a chance to relax with a beer in the garden today! Pure UBU 4.5%

You’ll definitely relax with that one!

Might have a pint of Forty Niner later with a meal. 

28 minutes ago, Bert Cheese said:

Well I had recently planned not to drink on weekdays in a small effort to make inroads into my ever increasing weight, sitting on my arris all day at work is the main problem though, and my best and easiest excuse to others for my recent bridging of the 16 Stone mark...not something I'm particularly happy about to be honest!

 

Of course I'd like to blame a friend for my obvious lack of willpower tonight though, gone to form a bubble or some such 2020-speak with his girlfriend in Lincoln and has been sending me photos of the local brews he has been imbibing over the last couple of days.

Naturally this led me to rummage in the booze cupboard to continue my current stout based adventure...this time something a little different from Untitled Art Brewing of Waunakee in Wisconsin...a rather nice and oily Honey Stout at a surely nutritious 12% ABV.

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

On 29/06/2020 at 22:23, black and decker boy said:

Webster’s Yorkshire bitter kept me afloat for many years. Not enough abv% to cause any morning after effects but tasty enough and great value.

 

my life would have been a lot more head achey with today’s 5 & 6% IPAs as standard weekend fodder

 

Banks bitter was one we avoided and switched to their mild when on holiday

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. 

Hoping to do an All Line Rover in the summer (‘hoping’ being the operative word) but all being well I’m planning to go along the Airedale line on one of the days, and would quite like to stop off at Saltaire Brewery. Just wondered if anyone had been in their tap room before, and if anyone knew how long a walk it was from Shipley station? 

The blue tits fledged on Monday, and I saw one of them make their first flight out of the nestbox. They have now moved out of our garden, but the excitement remains with Chris the wren (his surname could alternatively be Packham or Whitty ) and his good lady, who have a nest in the large tree to the right of our garden.

Last night, while we were preoccupied with a virtual pub quiz, Chris made his way into our conservatory to have a look round and probably scour for insects. Trouble is that he left us a little present...

A shepherd once told me that it takes five sheep to make a jumper. I didn’t even know they could knit! 

Pure Gold tonight - it’s been customary for me to have a Purity beer on Wednesday nights as that’s the night of their Pure Pub Quiz. 

On 10/05/2020 at 18:48, Phil Bullock said:

Havent seen a bullfinch for years....

I hadn’t seen Mr Bullfinch for a few years, but all of a sudden he made a reappearance yesterday morning. He might be scouting feeding locations.

Our blue tits are also extremely busy - last night they were still active at 20:30! 

Not the best of photos but one of our nestbox guests was helping themselves to breakfast of some peanuts, and then a bullfinch turned up. 

8 hours ago, saxokid said:

Looking forward to some layout build from this now Liam

Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say so. Certainly this lockdown is making me contemplate other layout ideas, such as one based on Chris Nevard’s ‘Brew Street’. It wouldn’t take forever to build and it would also fulfil my ambition of having an exhibition layout. 

16 hours ago, NHY 581 said:

For completeness, here is the vidjoe that featured in the Virtual Rmweb show, documenting Sheep Dip. 

 

As said elsewhere, my thanks to Andy Y for his invaluable help in putting things together.

 

 

Stunning work Rob!

4 hours ago, vaughan45 said:

Thought I would (not) drop by with my very much still under construction Kingfisher Wharf

Amazing work!