chrisf

Good morning one and all I managed to trigger Poorly Pal's smoke detector yesterday. I was preparing pan fried salmon with tomatoes when this electric impression of a banshee started. Fortunately PP knows how to mute it but spent the rest of the afternoon flapping about the blinking red light and would not have it that it is supposed to blink. The salmon was delicious, by the way, even though I say so myself. JohnDMJ reminded me of something in his comment about sharing a shirt. Who remembers the communal sweater that John Peel imagined in 1968? I rather liked that idea and suggested that we made one for Rag Week and got him down to judge it. Sadly my appeal for knitted squares that would be sewn together produced barely sufficient to make a Belisha beacon cosy. I wrote to Peel again and admitted defeat whilst asking him if he would judge the Rag Queen contest, to which he readily agreed. On the night I was absent, having been admitted to hospital following a road accident. Much later he wrote to me enclosing his new address and inviting me to visit/write any time. Eventually I did and was received warmly. What a great bloke he was. We have discussed name badges oft times before. As Mike says, I wear one [when I remember!] and do wonder how else we are expected to recognise one another at shows. How I wish that I had the use of the power of telepathy. The RMweb meet seems to have gone out of fashion. One such was how I met Flavio, at Warley. It was surreal to spend 45 minutes talking to a guy from Switzerland about auto trailers! Lots'n'lots more to read today so best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed Chris

Good morning one and all My fridge smells of garlic. This follows some food prepping ahead of today's visit to Poorly Pal. The ingredients of our lunch are housed safely in several plastic boxes so all I have to do now is open them in the correct order - oh, and follow the recipe. Wish me luck. Yesterday seems to have disappeared under chores - ironing, laundry, cooking and of course the fodder run. The chronic unpunctuality of bus route 4 worked in my favour as the 8.40 appeared at 8.53 and I had to run for it,or at least try. Long gone are the days when I could run. Believe it or not, at school I was good enough at cross-country to be eligible for the house team. I got out of it because I had something on the team captain that he would not have wanted making known to the headmaster. He used to hoard file paper and sell it in times of shortage. I wonder what happened to him? Best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed Chris

Good morning one and all Amid the excessive herbage in the garden yesterday there stood out a large ripe strawberry, three months after I picked the last one. It was delicious. Thus enthused, I wielded the hoe to good effect and the results are in the green bin awaiting collection. More clearance work remains, of course. One day ... It's fodder run day. I have had an idea of what to cook for myself and Poorly Pal tomorrow so all I need to do now is buy it and prep it. I like to complete the shopping trip early but a threat is posed to my happy routine. The Council is consulting on a plan to charge uses of bus passes £1 before 9.30 am and after 11 pm. In many places, of course, passes are not valid at all before 9 30. Since the only buses to be seen after 11 pm in this town are those making their way back empty to the depot after an evening spent largely in carting subsidised fresh air around I am not sure what will be gained by that. I only use the bus because I have a bus pass. If I have to delay the trip by an hour to avoid spending £1, so be it. Alternatively I will take the car. So there. I see that we are being warned of an imminent rise in the price of petrol. Round here it has been creeping up for weeks, but unevenly: there is a 2p per litre difference in the prices charged between one branch of Tesco and the other. The approach of Brexit is having some odd effects. I hear on the radio that a Louis Vuiton handbag is now $15 cheaper in London than in Paris. Should I ever find the need for such an accessory I will certainly bear that in mind. Best wishes to all travellers, especially those stuck with riding on Southern, and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed Chris

Good morning one and all I do not normally go a bundle on cute little animals but there was one on BBC Breakfast yesterday - live coverage of a six week old baby rhino gambolling round his paddock. Gambolling is not an activity that I had ever associated with rhinos, lumbering being much more like it. When he saw his mother the gambolling turned into a gallop towards her. It made me feel positively soppy, assuming of course that feeling soppy can be positive. Later in the morning I got out the shears and tackled some of Mrs Electric Chair's overhanging ivy. In the process I could not help noticing that there are many more dock leaves than I remember and I plan to take some of them out this morning ahead of the green bin emptying scheduled for tomorrow. Late lunch was the promised sirloin steak and, hoorah, I got the saute potatoes right on this occasion. The good news is that the latest attempt at fruit set in jelly has set this time. The bad news is that it had not done so by the time I was ready to eat some of it yesterday. Step forward strawberry instant whip, a good substitute. I do not always tell Poorly Pal of my culinary misfortunes. He has left it to me to decide what to stir-fry for our lunch on Wednesday. How emboldened will I be? Best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed, with special thoughts to Ian for his very sad and cruel loss. Chris

Jamie has jerked a memory by posting a clip of Tom Lehrer. It so happens that I got to play "We will all go together when we go" on the radio something like 35 years ago. How come, I hear you cry. OK then. Circa 1981 I had got home from the beer festival early on the Saturday night and turned on Hereward Radio for the Paul Veysey programme. Paul was appealing for anyone who had any Tom Lehrer records to get in touch. I picked up the phone straight away. The upshot was that he invited me to join him on the programme two weeks later! I duly went to Peterborough with my records and we chatted on and off for a couple of hours, interspersing the words with Tom's music. Corny as it might have been, we ended the show with that song. Paul thanked me for coming and expressed the hope that we might work together again. Some hope. The next weekend I tuned in again, only to hear "This is the last Paul Veysey programme". Gulp. What happened? Was it anything I did? I phoned Hereward on Monday morning and was told that Paul has gone on holiday. He never came back. Much later I learned that he had left the radio business for the motor trade. Who knows what might have been? Jamie, you are a man of taste! Thanks for the memory. Chris

I think the version of Unchained Melody by the Goons is astronomically better that that by Jimmy Young! The version by the Righteous Bros is on the shortlist for my desert island. Oh dear, I've just has a idea for a new thread ... Chris

I can't make the link work but thank you for the kind thought! Chris

Good morning one and all The beer festival is over, seemingly with much reduced attendances. It was not as good as in times past for renewing old acquaintances but there was some nice tasty beer and, yesterday, roast chicken for lunch and a brief display by Bedford Morris Men. Once the Corn Exchange has been cleared today it will revert to its normal diet of not very varied entertainment, most of which is not to my taste. Perhaps the local branch of CAMRA will have one more go. Last night's concert by the Urban Folk Quartet was definitely one of two halves. The first part I found distinctly uninspiring and on that basis decoded not to buy any CDs. After the break it was a different matter and very much more enjoyable, with some conspicuously inelegant dancing at the end. In the hands of Dan Walsh the banjo is a much more exciting instrument than the combined egg slice and canoe paddle to which I am accustomed. He kindly signed a CD that he made with the remarkable Will Pound five years ago. Gosh, how time flies. Today there is a bit of cooking to be done. The victim is a nice piece of sirloin steak, accompanied by mushrooms. Yum. It will be a fine reward once I have caught up with the ironing, which has been staring at me for days. Other tasks are there to be performed but whether they all will be is one of those great unknowns. One that will be is to catch up with other parts of RMweb. Best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed Chris

After I posted this I remembered that the Brixham autos had boards showing Brixham on one side of the coach and Churston on the other, because of the configuration of the platforms at those stations. The same would have applied to Brent and Kingsbridge. Chris

Except for the one that ended up in departmental service. Some carried chocolate and cream in preservation. Somewhere in the past 17 pages it will tell you which. Chris

That is not a pannier but a Prairie. Chris [F]

Kingsbridge on one side and Brent on the other. Chris

Goooooooooooooooooood morning one and all. This reminds us that Robin Williams' fine movie 'Good Morning Vietnam' is on TV in the coming week. He plays a DJ, Adrian Cronauer, drafted into the Forces to boost morale. Epic. I remember the Great Storm. At the time I was working in Kensington and there wasn't a snowballs of making it by rail as there were trees and wires down all the way between Bedford and London. That was the only time in all my years of commuting that I didn't make it. Many thanks to everyone who chipped in on the issue of ghosts. It is a real comfort to know that one is not alone. The guy who came back to me, as it were, was a former workmate and a 7 mm practitioner. He was somewhat unorthodox in the workplace and achieved a great deal despite The System. We have him to thank for rounding up bits of Government funding for Luton Airport Parkway station which would never have got built otherwise. He was also involved with East West Rail and the Croxley Link. The former is faltering but then it always has. The latter is coming close to start of works at long, long last. It will cost more than anyone ever dreamed but that's the railway for you. At my final visit to the beer festival today I will raise a glass to him and to other absent friends. Cheers! Tonight the Urban Folk Quartet will be playing in a small theatre a few minutes' walk from the hovel. I'm not really sure what they play but if I like it there will be the chance to buy the new CD which is to be launched in two weeks' time. I recall now that I have two CDs by one of the band which are not signed - yet. Where did I put them? Tomorrow there will be some catching up at home. Oh dear, it includes ironing. Best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed Chris

Only in a parallel universe, I suspect. If the new line from St Germans to Looe had been completed prior to WW2 it would have been worked with railcars but apart from that I understand that there were no booked workings south west of Yatton. Chris

Since when did the charts ever indicate quality? I neither know nor care what is in them these days but I'm old enough to remember "Tears" by Ken Dodd spending six weeks at No.1. Chris

A nice obscure album track: Have Some Madeira M'Dear by Strawhead [Flanders and Swann] Chris

Affirmative. Re the two pics from the Cardiff Valleys, I have not yet discovered why those 117s went to Cardiff and were formed with 116 trailers but I'm sure there is a perfectly simple explanation. It is also noteworthy that set C315 is still "correctly" formed, ie as delivered back in 1958. Chris

Good morning one and all I think I saw a ghost yesterday. There was a guy at the beer festival who bore a stunning resemblance to my friend Jim. It could not possibly have been my friend Jim for he succumbed to bowel cancer two years ago. Pray do not blame the beer for I had only just arrived. It was weird, spooky and unsettling and there is no logical explanation. The festival appeared less crowded than usual and the crop of annual reunions - I see many former workmates and assorted chums only at this event - much diminished. I will return at lunchtime today and at lunchtime tomorrow but cannot face Friday night there and have a concert to attend on Saturday, when on past form the beer will be running out rapidly. Back in the real world, it proved simple even for me to work the self-service banking machine and the offending direct debit is no more. Bill's remark about the scan for aneurysms is interesting. I am, of course, in the target age group but my GP practice has never mentioned it to me. Perhaps they think there is enough wrong with me already. I recall that in 1992 my late father was called in for screening. An aneurysm waiting to happen was discovered, comprising a hole in an artery wall held together with a blood clot. The really scary bit is that he was on anticoagulants at the time and could have bled to death at any minute. The hole was repaired and he lived for another 13 years. Best wishes to Rick for his wedding anniversary, to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed. Chris

I remembered this one at the beer festival for some strange reason: Your Mother Should Know - Mike Batt [The Beatles] Chris

Rave On by Steeleye Span [buddy Holly] Bad Moon Riding by Battlefield Band [Creedence Clearwater Revival] However: no version of Telstar could possibly improve on the original by the Tornados, so don't even think about it. Chris

Good morning one and all May I thank all who offered advice on cancelling direct debits. I trust internet banking not one jot but I recall that in my local branch there is a self-service machine which I have been shown how to use. I plan to call in on my way to the beer festival at lunchtime, this being a much better idea than trying to cope with the task afterwards. I must be careful to cancel the right one ... A letter arrived yesterday summoning me to the diabetes clinic in three weeks' time. I was therefore galvanised into action and had a blood test yesterday afternoon, again steering clear of any distorted results caused by the beer festival. There was a rather scary TV programme on Monday night showing what can happen if the condition is left untended. Sister Phillippa, who conducts the clinic, is more than capable of speaking to me severely and that is just as scary. John CB: the new job looks promising. Fingers crossed that it works out. Best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed. Chris

Nominally ... Chris

No, for this has caused untold grief in the past. Were it not for the incident that I am about to describe I would probably have done so. A year or so back I decided to stop my subscription to Practical Photography because I was finding that I did not have time to read it. Between them the publishers and the bank made a complete hogsnorton of the process and I had to re-subscribe to three other magazines from the same publisher. Quite what it was that made the bank revoke my direct debit for the subscription to Rail without my consent, authority and prior knowledge I still have no idea. It took several months and a strongly worded written complaint to sort out and it cost the bank £25 as a "goodwill" payment. I do hope that the trainee cretin who committed the blunder has been put on less damaging duties and that I never meet him/her/it. Chris

Good morning one and all I have just had a slightly disturbing night. Why on earth was I dreaming about Fleetwood? We will never know. Part of yesterday was irritating. My bank statement revealed that a direct debit which I distinctly recalled cancelling had been used to subtract £14.76 from my account. Volkswagen had somehow overlooked the minor detail that I had disposed of my old car and no longer needed the service contract which cost guess what, £14.76 a month. Contacting Volkswagen Finance proved rather difficult. The telephone number at the foot of recent letters got me through to the Freight Haulage Association. Their number also starts with 03 but the other nine digits are completely different. I was left with no choice but to use the 0870 number. I hate 0870 numbers as much as I hate automated systems which make you press buttons endlessly with seemingly diminishing chances of ever speaking to a human being. I rang off from the first call and tried again. A kind human called Kevin confirmed that I had indeed cancelled the direct debit in question [phew, not ga-ga just yet] but reminded me that I needed to have done so 28 days before the next payment was due. I reminded him that I had done just that and said that this was beginning to sound like a technicality. The upshot is, I hope, that I will get my £14.76 back. Somehow I believe that pulling teeth is easier. According to the news the price of food in the shops has fallen substantially. Ah, that would explain why canned rice pudding has gone up by 33%. As Benjamin Disraeli observed, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Thank goodness the beer festival opens this afternoon. I think I shall attend. Best wishes to all travellers and to the ailing, recovering, supporting, grieving, missing and depressed. Today let us also think of the Freight Haulage Association. i wonder how many wrong numbers they get? Chris

Starting? Chris