Dave Hunt

3 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

Personally I am not a seafood fan but I still admire it when I see it served up. The "Seafood platter" would be our version of the "Full English Breakfast" as far as how it is held in reverence or whatever by our respective societies. . 

 

The seafood platter is a menu option for dinner time rather than breakfast,  best ordered when sitting on the deck of an RSL or surf club in a coastal town, watching the diehard  evening surfers ride the waves before the sun sets and the night sharks get them.

 

That brings back many happy memories of sunset feasts in Palm Cove north of Cairns.

Dave

10 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Same thing happens here from those who have never been here - we eat mainly bbq'd Witchety grubs  and pies  or  something apparently.  Actually being a hugely multicultural country so close to Asia and the South Pacific and  blessed with the ability to locally grow every type of fresh food our restaurants are brimming with diversity and authentic flavours as well as great fusion combinations.

Mind you, I think that the famous Aussie pies (including those 'floating' in soup, although mine always seemed to sink) are actually generally very good. And as for the seafood - yum yum.

Dave

In my early RAF days I knew a couple of the pilots who flew in the BoB film and one of them described the filmed scenes, despite some careful control and briefing, as 'raving dangerous.' I also know and once worked with (in fact, I was his mentor on his first squadron) one of the pilots who flew F14s in the original Top Gun (he was RAF on exchange with the USN) and was the one who can be seen flying past the carrier leaving a wake in the water. He earned himself a bit of a b0llocking for that when the film was released. Didn't do him a lot of harm though as he later became an RAF squadron commander.

Dave

In addition to my last post, don’t believe what you see in carp such as Top Gun.

Dave

Another nice day in North Hipposhire and for a change it’s not windy. We are scheduled for lunch at a rather nice restaurant to celebrate a friend’s ‘significant’ birthday for which occasion I have made a chocolate cake. The cake has already been delivered to the restaurant and armed guards mounted behind bear and hippo traps just in case.

Dave

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

When there was a Chinook Fly-past for the Aircrew** killed in the Mull of Kintyre crash, one of the Aircraft reported that their GPS Nav System was five miles out.....

 

**Who were basically "hung out to dry" and used as scapegoats IIRC - I think that may have been corrected now, at least in part.

Sorry Bear but the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash was caused by poor airmanship. When flying at low level you have to take into account something called safety height, which is basically to take the highest point within a certain distance of your route then add 10% and a further 1500 feet. If you fly into IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions, I.e., bad visibility and particularly fog, mist or cloud) you must climb to safety height. This the Chinook crew failed to do and whether their nav system was 5 miles in error or not was immaterial as safety height takes care of such uncertainties. I know personally several of the people who were involved in the Board of Inquiry for the crash, including the senior officer in overall command, and can assure you that whatever the press and other civilian parties alleged, there was no attempt to lay blame unfairly, mount a cover-up for system shortcomings, use scapegoats or anything similar. We were all as shocked and saddened by the accident as anyone and the last thing anyone wanted to happen was for blame to be allocated unfairly - indeed, there were differences of opinion for a while even within the RAF - but at the end of the day lessons have to be learned. Sadly, some lessons get repeated and this was one of them.

Dave

PS - the above safety height consideration refers to peacetime sorties. In actual operations, more risk is accepted.

I remember seeing it run at the Rainhill 150 and it just seemed to float along the track - a beautiful thing to watch.

Dave

And some attempts at humour fell on stony ground 😕

Dave

52 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I think one of the bits of knowledge we had to retain for 0 level woodwork theory was about elm and how it was used for docks and buildings that got wet and dried out as it was  rot resistant . 

I only did woodwork at school for one year aged 11-12 and all we did was make a load of different joints in bits of 2x4 IIRC. Not exactly fascinating stuff really. For the second year I had to choose one of art, woodwork or music and chose art.

Dave

And before HH intervenes, I refute the suggestion that I then became a p!ss artist.

5 hours ago, bbishop said:

All I know about guns is that when I put the sight thing to my eye, there is a bloody great bolt in front of my face.  In the CCF, the other cadets got the Lee-Enfields, I was given the map.

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

 They obviously saw potential Naval officer material.

Aren't most of the maps the Navy use just all blue?

Dave

5 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

And they support vast piles of stone architecture with apparently few problems to do with settlement - although the campanile of St Mark's did collapse in 1902.

I am led to believe that the greatest threat to the stability of Venice's buildings is the wake from cruise ships.

Dave 

1 hour ago, Ian Abel said:

You DIDN'T POST THAT, DID YOU!!! 🤣🤣

 

Fortunately, the Mrs doesn't see my ER thread/contributions, otherwise she'd be tracking you down sir! 😮

If mine ever saw it I'd be singing falsetto.

Dave

I've got one already. I call it the wife 😂.

Dave

4 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

First day on the job in the US I asked the department admin Nancy if she had any rubbers.

 

My finest hour when I first went to work in San Diego in the mid-80s was to ask a buddy in a bar one Friday evening in quite a loud voice, "Terry, can I bum a fag?" The place went silent until my mate said, "He's a Brit - it means can he have a cigarette." Even then, though, I still got a lot of funny looks.

Dave 

16 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

Hmm.  Preservative (preservatif?) means something else entirely where Jamie lives!

I think it means a local landlord*

Dave

* French letter

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Add in the fact that Timber Preservative has gone all cuddly?  (Creocote?  Cr@p - you can't beat good ol' Creosote any day - I believe the likes of Farmers etc. can still buy it - but in nothing smaller than 25(?) Litre drums.

 

Also, timber that is supposedly "treated" when manufactured gets such a miniscule dunking etc. that it's barely worth the effort;  when Bear created a raised flower bed in the back garden I used softwood "railway sleepers" (ever tried shiftin' one of those without help? - genuine hardwood jobs would be nigh-on impossible to shift on your own unless your name is Arnie).

I stood the ends in Creosote (I had a bit left) overnight - it really hoovered it up thru' the end grain.  Each one then got rather a lot of coats all over - so hopefully they'll last a while.

 

 

When we lived in Boston (Lincolnshire) there was a works just outside the town where telegraph poles were pressure treated with creosote (and, I believe in earlier times railway sleepers were treated as well). You could smell the creosote a mile away. The works stood alongside what had been the Boston - Grantham railway line and had its own narrow gauge system. It closed in the mid-80s.

Dave

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Perhaps what's needed is the vacuum loo, ensuring a good seal between derriere and porcelain.

Although the loos on the cruise ship we went on were vacuum operated, I didn't try seeing what would happen if the flush mechanism was operated whilst I was still sitting on it 😫.

Dave

A friend of ours is fanatical about closing the loo lid before flushing as she claims that otherwise there are zillions of widdle and/or poo particles ejected into the atmosphere.

Dave

Personally I think that if it is desired to hide appliances there must be something wrong with the appliances. When we were rebuilding our kitchen the salesperson made great efforts to persuade us to include new, built in appliances. I told her that as we already had extremely good, reputable brand appliances we would stick with them. She then tried the 'ah but it will look classier if they are built in' approach, to which I replied that we wanted a new kitchen, not a 12 inches to the foot scale doll's house. At that stage she gave in (and obviously accepted that her commission would be lower).

Dave

A nice day here in rural Hipposhire so I’m just off for a walk - only about half a mile this morning as I‘m feeling a bit sore after doing over a mile yesterday but I’ll do another short one this afternoon. I’ve also got a Zoom meeting with some friends later and I’ll be baking a cake for a friend’s upcoming birthday. So, best get on with it after I’ve finished this muggacoffee.

TTFN

Dave