JohnDMJ

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

It won't be that fast - the railway barriers are down again at Ford for the next six trains to pass!    

Indeed, although the most I've ever noted has been 5! (However, one can always turn left with the gates down and head towards Arundel!!)

A couple of years back, Yapton Crossing was converted from AHBC to CCTV and in the survey, it was logged that the barriers were down for 40 minutes per hour!

I am researching an article for our Right Lines Ezine on the local signalling practices to try and shed some light on why Ford and Yapton crossing are not car-friendly and need to book an audience with the local MOM to get the correct operational information!

1 hour ago, Gwiwer said:

Split loyalties here of course.  We are ready with fan-repellent aerosols and stale meat pies which can be lethal at 50 yards .  A sizeable contingent knows it is easier to take the train to the Hill of Strawberries and walk into town than to join the melee of around 80,000 all trying to get into the pubs, fill up with falling-down waters, avoid covid, urinating in public and stumbling into people's hedges.  I accept that with the two of us being respectively Cornish and Australian that there will sometimes be a clash of support but neither of us is an egg-chasing fan. 

 

Some aspects are better and some not so.  When folk bemoan the lack of doorstep deliveries i remind them that we now live in an age when it's not just the baker, milkman and Betterwear salesman who call at your door but the entire supermarket and indeed almost anything one can buy is now available for home delivery.  What is lacking is the choice to select our own fresh items to suit personal preference. 

 

Health services?  I don't recall any difficulty in seeing an NHS doctor, dentist and even optician in the 1960s.  Covid aside it was hard enough to find a GP appointment two years ago and NHS dentists (especially those taking on new patients) are rare than rocking horse poo.  

 

Socially we have lost a great deal of respect and courtesy and have forgotten how to interact nicely with our fellow humans.  Is this because the population has massively increased?  Because it has become much more ethnically diverse (bringing with it, perhaps, widely differing traditions and expectations?) or are we just in an ever-faster dog-eat-dog race to a finish line somewhere?  I was asked recently by a colleague why I always took off my uniform baseball cap upon entering a building.  To me it is second nature - a chap always removes his hat when entering.  Some of my colleagues had never heard of that.  Just as a chap would open a door for a woman and offer his hand to her if there was a step or two.  

 

It is easy to look back through rose-tinted glasses.  What we should avoid in my opinion is looking forward through blinkers.  There are around 67 million of us on these shores alone, plus the occasional Caulkhead or Manxman   We cannot live comfortably in splendid isolation; we have to at least acknowledge others around us and their equal rights to share the air we breathe and the space we stand in.  Who knows - one day we might even start shaking hands again.  

 

I am reminded of Gerard Hoffnung's "Misleading advice to tourists" which includes such delights as "Upon entering a railway compartment make sure to shake hands with all the passengers"  From 5m 00s here though the entire clip may amuse.  

 

 

Don't forget the brick layer!

10 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Have a good POETS everyone.

Not awl of us get one!

It's just POTS!

20 minutes ago, Metr0Land said:

Another Cathy Cat one but a repeat already.  The one about the dual mode vehicle which they disappointingly kept calling a world first despite the pre war (don't mention the war) existence of the LMS Karrier road-railer

 

https://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lms_ro-railer.htm

Anybody thought about the UK Class 73? 3rd rail electric or Diesel electric?

Good Afternoon, or it was!

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

G R O A N ! ! !

and today’s @JohnDMJgawd-awful joke of the day award goes to…. (envelope please)….

(drum roll)….

…. @Gwiwer

 

(and heartfelt plea to ERs please don’t encourage them…..)

Infamy, Infamy, you've all got it in for me! (mis-quote of Kenneth Williams in Carry On Cleo!)

5 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Not Cockney per se, but rather the use of a certain slang term for a cigarette.

How, these days, can a reference to the LGBT etc. society be considered offensive?

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Captain Cynical is not a happy Supervillain at the moment (and when Captain Cynical is not happy, he shares it around….).

 

I followed the Mary Berry recipe to the lette

 

Who is Mary Berry??

A  true Gent. RiP, Les.

Good Evening Awl,

Elsewhere:

11 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Good morning all,

 

Finally, a rant: [rant mode ON] as we are approaching the end of year festivities, what’s all this reticence about calling Christmas - Christmas? No one seems to be going around saying that you can’t call Hanukkah - Hanukkah or that you can’t refer to Ōmisoka. However, instead of wishing people a Merry Christmas or sending Christmas cards, we now have to send “seasons greetings“ and wish people “happy holidays“. To quote the great Ebeneezer Scrooge: “bah, humbug!” Acceptance of other peoples cultural festivities is a two way street you know! [rant mode OFF])

 

iD

Agreed! Each has their own take on the various celebrations made for whatever reason.

I adopt the French approach: Joyeuses fêtes ! = Happy Festival!

Evening Awl.

I have one question ref:

8 hours ago, AndrewC said:

<grumble zone>[snip]

The train itself seemed to be missing any form of suspension. Our carriage bottomed out several times and even at slower speeds there was a lot of hunting & bouncing

</grumble zone>

 

Enjoy the day.

Sounds like you had the new modern e320 Seimens set. Not a patch on the old e300 sets! Absolute carp as I wrote in a letter to Today's Railways:Europe when they first came into service; even the crew were very much anti their performance.

Thing is they're not articulated like the e300 so there's no load-sharing between coaches; each coach behaves independently and they have been hammering 7 bales of brown stuff out of the track since they were introduced.

I quote from Gaugemaster's Right LInes ezine:

"In another innovation, the TGV [e300] was designed as an articulated set, i.e. adjacent passenger coaches shared a common Jacobs-style bogie. This had the added advantage that coaches could be ‘coupled’ at various points around their frame, making the set more rigid, stable and comfortable. Due to this design, it is interesting to note that, with one notable exception, every TGV which has been involved in an accident has remained upright and in-line.

The Eschede derailment in Germany brings this point home for me; the ICE suffered a wheel failure causing it to hit a bridge parapet. As the coaches were not articulated, the train concertinaed."

In trying to recall the underground systems I have used, London and Paris feature heavily. Then Marseilles, Lyon, Munich, Bruxelles and, of course, the Isle of Wight!

51 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

With the improvement in materials and materials technology, CAD and CND manufacturing and a better understanding of the science behind it all (metallurgy, thermodynamics, etc) and applying all that to the construction and production of frames, wheels bearings, boilers, pistons and cylinders, etc., could you build a modern steam locomotive that is lighter, more efficient, faster and less polluting than their pre-1970s forebears?

CND?

Class 73s were the first hybrids IMHO.

Anything burning fossil fuels may be an anachronism. It depends on what is decided as "green"

8 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

However, SWMBO has stopped me doing this...

She got it wrong then?

Good Evening Awl, and good to touch base with GDB!

Elsewhere, I feel an 'orrible pun coming on:

3 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Managed to get to Leatherhead with just the one jam on the M25.

 

On the subject of taxes, many years ago the one paid for using a car was called the Road Fund Tax and the money collected was used for maintaining and building roads. That was obviously too restrictive for creative government purposes so it was rebranded as a vehicle tax and the money just disappears into the big black hole instead.

Is that why they're called pot holes?

Hat, coat, fast taxi ...

At Lake, you had 'Buckets', IIRC, as you say, selling radios and other electrical appliances along with model railways.

I can not place the one you suggest in Sandown but do recall the Sports and Model Shop on the corner of Regent Street and Carter Avenue with a sizeable model railway section; once my local shop!

Sandown, however, does ring bells with the original Upstairs Downstairs in St John's Road, a few doors down from The Commercial pub before it suffered the indignity of being renamed The Old Comical! The shop now seems to be a pet store.

If one overcooks vegetables, the vitamins are boiled out reducing their nutritional value to zero. What a waste of energy to produce nothing!!

Back again!

It's good to see that I am not the only one eating sweetcorn fresh out of the husk! It is more tasty and nutritious than when cooked.

38 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

I prefer Brussels eaten raw, indeed most brassicas are eaten raw by me, I often wander round the garden in the summer and eat what is around and don't go into the house for hours, a cabbage leaf with a carrot just pulled up, wipe the mud off on your trousers and then eat. I haven't cooked Sweetcorn, apart for the grandkids on the barbie since living up here, almost 20 years now.

Brussels: best way to eat them; can't understand why they have to be reduced to pulp as most on here suggest!

I'm not sure if this is a challenge or a dare, but to all those who post against the Sprout, please try one raw!

Good Evening Awl, for another telephone medical consultation is under the belt and being analysed!

Elsewhere:

10 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

What, no sprouts?

Sprouts are, in effect, model cabbages. Should be tender and crunchy and not boiled to a pulp.

Morning Awl, for I have not yet ascertained whether it is good or not.

@chrisf I wish you well with your Swiss machinations; I regret that I will not be joining you this year.

35 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

It seems that we have a closet linguist amongst our midst.  As you mention it, it does seem rather odd that zucchini is the same for the plural and the singular (although Wikipedia does give the singular as zucchinA).In regards to pronunciation, Dr SWMBO’s family has got it partly right, phonetically it would be something along the lines of tzu-key-nee (assuming you want to use the Italian pronunciation – which also seems to be the same across Europe).

 

Given that any zucchini bigger than the very baby ones you can get occasionally are mostly water; zucchini – at least in my view - has to join cucumber as one of the most pointless vegetables around (It can also be, apparently, quite toxic – again according to the Wikipedia article)  You can make a passable soup out of them and as other posters have pointed out, it can also make a half way decent cake. There are many different dishes from various cuisines that use zucchini, but they all seem to add lots of really good ingredients to make the zucchini taste of something.

Zucchini as both the singular and the plural; sounds somewhat sheepish! Courgette (zucchini) and Aubergine (egg plant??????) seem perfectly acceptable names to me!

Good Evening Awl,

An interesting read has been had today, with two differing views of the same subject from opposite sides.

8 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

You have indeed been lucky. From many of the experiences posted on ER, others seem not to have been so lucky with their GP.

All my friends and acquaintances who have worked in the NHS in different roles and who have moved to Europe or the US to work as clinicians or to work in the medical industries all say the same things: The frontline of the NHS (Doctors, Nurses, Technicians) is usually pretty good, The rest of the NHS? Overly bureaucratic, inefficient and in places downright incompetent.

 

One of my ex-NHS friends was telling me last Saturday that during his surgical rotation he and fellow students were to participate in a 7:30 am procedure. When 7:30 came around, there was no patient to be operated on. Why? Because there was no porter to take the patient from the ward to the operating theatre. “No problems” said my friend and some of his colleagues, “we’ll go to the ward and get the patient ourselves”. They weren’t allowed to do that because “they hadn’t been trained in the correct manner to push a gurney“. The net result: a poor patient had his/her surgery cancelled and a group of surgeons, an anaesthesiologist and the operating theatre nurses were left standing around twiddling their thumbs until the porter eventually turned up and the second patient scheduled for surgery that day was wheeled into the operating theatre.

As long as people refuse to admit that there are flaws in the NHS (a lot of which have nothing to do with funding) and that the NHS is not the envy of the world and start to have a grown-up discussion about what the NHS is for, how it should be funded and how do you Futureproof the system, then I do not see the present postcode lottery in terms of excellence of care as changing any time soon.

8 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Having been in the past an administration manager of a very busy outpatients department, I totally fail to see how we could have been more efficient or less bureaucratic.  With 8 staff (6 whole time equivalents) we were doing 49,000 appointments a year, servicing 42 clinics and 32 clinicians.  Our service level agreement was for 35,000.  And still we get slagged off.  This is why I left the NHS. 

In any multi-disciplined organisation, there will always be those that do the job and those that "administer" it. Staffing levels become irrelevant if those employed have the right experience in their respective fields.

I do not recall the full circumstances of your cyber-foot, but respect to suggest that if the medically qualified involved had not taken the decisions they did at the time, then things may have turned out different. We'll let admin sort it out later!

Evening Awl,

Another hectic day at the office so home to (try and) relax for the weekend.

It seems that a warning shot across the bows has caused some ructions:

10 hours ago, chrisf said:

 

Great.  That's another £4k I didn't want to save.  I would have been quite happy to wait till next week to hear that.

 

Chris

As other posters have said, local 'work-arounds' are possible, so all is not (yet) lost! Await FT's advice.

Morning Awl,

14 minutes ago, chrisf said:

Yesterday's news that direct flights to Morocco have been cancelled comes as no surprise.  I had planned to spend two weeks and a lot of money in that country in November but I came to the view that the timing was wrong and decided to pull out.  There was an element of cold feet in my decision.  As time goes on I may yet think better of it and decide to explore Morocco.  On a not unrelated topic I can't help wondering what factors may combine to ruin C*****mas in Switzerland for the second year running.   Perhaps I should stop worrying until I hear from the travel company next week.  Sadly my sub-conscious is taking no notice.

Update from GOV.UK for:

Switzerland travel advice

Switzerland travel advice

Change made:
Updated information on Switzerland’s COVID-19 restrictions and testing requirements: NHS COVID Certificates will be no longer be accepted for entry into indoor hospitality, cultural activities and indoor from 25 October (‘Coronavirus’ pages).

Time updated:
12:45pm, 21 October 2021

13 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Thanks John. (My question was intentionally bl00dy silly )

In my job, there is no such thing as a 'silly question'! However, how we answer the question depends on our perception of the questioner.