PhilJ W

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Arthur Itis was back with a vengeance this morning, I could barely walk to the bathroom. I have taken a pair of co-codamol and they are starting to kick in.

Goodnight all.

Dapol have just announced a 00 scale 14XX class including 1401 in BR black, due for release Quarter 4 2025.

42 minutes ago, No Decorum said:

Don’t tell me! Could we be in for another relatively flawless loco like the Standard 2? Consternation at Hornby! “How did that slip through? Don’t let it happen again!” Sarcasm mode off. Seriously, If Hornby can start producing decent locos it would be very welcome. They’ll probably be relatively expensive but I don’t mind that so much if I get a decent product. Who knows? It might start to turn the company around.

I have several Ruston 48DS models and they are very good and can even run over points without the match wagon and without stalling.

There was an obviously pregnant vixen in my garden a couple of weeks ago but no sign of any cubs yet. Last year I watched a vixen suckle one of her cubs in my back garden. Later one of the cubs, despite its siblings running away would come up to my patio doors and paw the glass as if begging. It appeared to be smaller than its siblings but a lot braver.

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I decided to take an eyelid inspection this afternoon instead of shopping. I'm not short of  bread, milk and eggs and there's three dinners in the fridge so no need to shop today.

2 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 I'd lump the  1980's-vintage NSW Transit cops in that category! 

Insufficiently adequate   to get into the actual cops, they patrolled the trains and stations of the NSW rail network, armed and ready to prove it at any justification. My experience of them was when 3 mates and I were going into the city one Friday night to see a band - one of my mates showed his University of Wollongong*  travel card but it was denied by the ticket selling guy.

. My mate said something or other under his breath and we boarded the train but unbeknown to us, the ticket guy must have had a secret button or something because 5 minutes into our trip, 2 of the NSW transit police forces  finest came into the carriage  and confronted us.

The older one told my mate to leave the train as we pulled into Warwick Farm station and reached for his gun to make the point more obvious. The rest of us weren't sure if we were meant to follow or stay aboard, until the younger pretend cop  said "Yous can go too if yous want" so we did.

Warwick Farm station is a minor stop where only one in 10 trains pull into so we had quite a wait, but we still got to the venue well before the band bothered to show up.

If it had come to a shoot out I reckon my mate sitting behind the two cops could have taken at least one of them out via a  kidney punch or a whack behind the knees and I could have gone for the younger ones gun and held him hostage until they honoured the Wollongong travel concession card and refunded my other mate the cash discount he'd been denied.

* no, not Woolloomooloo, just to fend off any M. Python fans...

It all comes down to the selection process for police officers. No police force is immune from employing a 'wrong un' but to employ rejects from another police force is just asking for trouble.

Or friendly fire.

28 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

Has anyone asked your police what they'd rather be armed with?

They have, and the majority preferred not to be armed.

58 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Having dropped her off at the station I took the opportunity of negotiating the Sainsbury's Grand Prix which, for a Sunday afternoon, wasn't at all bad.  Everything on the list was available except ghee.  I can probably get that another time; I don't need it every day nor even every week.  I then came home and came face to face with C0ckwomble Driver No.1.  Heading over the moors on that hilly and winding road the oncoming bus had stopped at a rural farm lane to set down a passenger.  Two cars were behind; the first came around with plenty of room to spare and the second waited.  As the driver would have been unable to see anything at all around the bus due to the curvature and hills I expected they would stay waited.  

But no.  

I was perhaps a bus-length away from coming past when out he came, into my lane, with me approaching at a cautious 45mph.  I hit brakes, horn and headlights all at the same time and stopped in short order only to see a green something cut sharply into the fast-closing gap with an erect middle finger poking from the driver's window in my general direction.  I really MUST get that idiot-cam fitted because if it had been recording I would have had his plate and referred him to the local constabulary.  Who are running a "send us your dash-cam footage of dodgy driving" campaign and publishing the results online.  

Would the bus have been fitted with cameras?

With reference to American and other countries gun laws I do recall reading that the fifth amendment states, or did state that the right to carry arms was to protect the citizens from the British. After the American Revolution and the subsequent* French the British were fearful of a British revolution** so restrictions on firearms were introduced. This even extended to Robert Peel's Metropolitan*** police who had to make do with cutlasses.

*It is said that the American Revolution inspired the French Revolution a few years later.

**So fearful in fact that they spied on British citizens who made regular trips to France during the revolutionary period. One of those spied upon was William Wordsworth who had a French mistress. He was spied upon by a John Mogg, an ancestor of mine.

*** The first police officers were recruited from the middle classes, the same group that the revolutionary leaders came from.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Not a bad night, only one call out by bladder control and with the warmer and at the moment dryer weather Arthur Itis is hibernating. I have been doing Wordl every morning now and I have found the word on 17 consecutive mornings so far. I put it down to my liking word search puzzles in the papers. I received a letter from the NHS re. covid jabs. On the website you can search for the nearest place where you can get your jab, there is one in Basildon and two in Benfleet one of which is in @Tony_S's local shops at Tarpots so he didn't have to go to Bluewater. 

50 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Or rescue a Bear from a Charity Shop instead; I was most dismayed to see that a rather nice Vintage Bear came away from the coal Drops yesterday without being adopted - and only a tenner as well (reduced to a fiver as the event progressed and sales were slow).  He must be really sad....😢

Didn't you consider adopting it?

15 minutes ago, TimberValleyRailway said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226100192583?

 

So many questions...

It's not even a Hornby wagon in the thumbnail!

Must be trying to outdo Gostude, he's got nine up for sale all identical and all at £90 plus £8 postage, dream on.

Goodnight all.

Give it some viagra?

Evening all from Estuary-Land. I gave the fridge a really good clean out this afternoon. Behind one of the drawers I found a (vacuum packed) packet of cooked meat (beef). It looked and smelt OK but I decided not to chance it so binned it. It had a best before date of November last year. I was clearing it out because the drain was blocked by ice, the package was near to the drain hole and was also covered in ice.

4 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

When I was having investigation biopsy for prostate cancer in 2011 which involves biopsy clippers up a place I'd rather not think about, I was trying to put on a good face (or other part of the anatomy) on it when the doc said that he was doing the same thing to an old Warwickshire farmer who expressed surprise with the phrase "BU99ER ME!"

Doc said it was the strangest yet most accurate description of the procedure he'd ever heard.

4 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Well probably preferable to clippers via the other access route. 

That's all I wanted to read after having an episcopy of my bladder just over a week ago. It turned out to be a prostate problem but at least a biopsy wasn't required. I was still peeing razor blades for the rest of the day however.

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

But the quantity distributed in pre-packed plastic sacks was trivial. My mother's house had two coal bunkers holding about 1/4 ton each, and that was nothing unusual. My present house still has the remains of a bunker of about 1/2 ton 

 

When we lived in Hackney the coalmsn would deliver a ton at a time through a manhole in the pavement into a dark, damp room under the pavement 

Members of my family lived in Victorian/Edwardian houses during the 50's and 60's and they all had coal cellars as you describe. My house was built in 1959/60 and has a coal storage shed attached (since re-purposed). It was only towards the end of the 60's that most new houses were built without an open grate. By then coal was being replaced by electric and gas heating which was not as labour intensive as an open coal fire. Coal as a fuel had been in decline since before the war except for the generation of electricity and one of the nails in the coffin was the advent of North Sea gas. The bulk transport of household coal by rail ceased to be viable well before that traffic ceased.