WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Stanley]

Lovely account David, you should write more for us, I find your outlook on life very refreshing and envy you parts of it.
Maz and Tiz, that was my first reaction when I heard the modified sound through the TV speakers but the sound bar took it up to the next level. No regrets at all.
You're right Maz about second hearings but last night I went back and watched something I had given up on, 'Requiem' on BBC1. I watched the two episodes I had missed which took me up to episode 3 broadcast on Feb 9th, understood every word and then went to the current episode on BBC1 live. I am now totally baffled because it was the same episode! Either I have missed something or they cocked up and transmitted the wrong episode.....

[Tripps]

Thank you for the kind comments. The lack of attention I have paid to Cambridge is sinful - you would love it. Circumstances have been against me.

Here's the book that was launched - I got it signed by the author of course, and the lady who was the model for the cleverly designed cover. There's another absolutely fascinating story there, but privacy will be respected.

TheBlueHour.jpg

[Marilyn]

I have a feeling we tried to watch Requiem and gave up on it too.
Too confusing. May have been the wine we were sipping though. I remember asking hubby if he was following it because it's not often I have trouble keeping up with plots. In joint agreement we abandoned it.
( often I have to wake him up to see if he is following the plot! )

[Tizer]

Lovely account David, you should write more for us, I find your outlook on life very refreshing and envy you parts of it.

I'll second that. I sympathise with his car park experience because we've been fooled by similar splitting of a level into two different levels with the same number. Another car park experience was when I opened the back of the hatchback, heard a loud bang and realised it had hit the concrete floor of the level above. Somebody must have been stingy with their spending on the height of the pillars. Another time I was lucky to avoid being in trouble when I left Mrs Tiz in our car in the little Co-op car park while I picked up a bottle of milk. I came out with the milk, got back in the car, looked round to speak to Mrs Tiz - and she'd changed into a different lady! It was an identical model and colour of car and I had to make a swift exit before her husband came back with his bottle of milk! Mrs Tiz just thought it was hilarious - she'd watched me do it.

[Stanley]

I did that at Rochdale once when I had the big blue Granada Ghia. I unlocked the car and got in only to find out it wasn't mine! It was an identical model. Evidently when worn the door keys of one of them fitted all the others. I made a swift and unnoticed exit!
I solved the mystery of 'Requiem'. The BBC have put all the episodes on iPlayer before the series transmissions are done. I watched the last three episodes last night and the various plots are still unresolved, more loose ends than a broken tow rope! My first instincts about it were correct. Ah well....
Very good news from daughter Susan about the progress of probate and how it is working. We are sorted now thank God and can move on.

[Tizer]

I'm glad your probate has been sorted. That was done for my father-in-law's estate late last year after the passage of what seemed like a geological era but not all the money has been released yet. A portion has been withheld until Revenue & Customs can completely finish their checks and computations. It's time they gave up on the abacus and got a computer!

I remember the car key problem well. My first cars were old Morris Minors and Austin A35s and the little keys, worn as you noted, often opened other people's Minors and A35s. Being an honest bloke I can't say whether or not they would have opened fancier, more expensive Austin and Morris motors.

Did you hear about the 4.4 earthquake down this way yesterday? It was mentioned on the news services but it took me a while to track down the exact time of occurrence (journalists these days don't know the old rules of who, where, when etc). It was centred on the Swansea area at 14.31 on 17th Feb 2018 and I was trying to see if it fitted in with anything odd that I'd noticed because I certainly didn't feel the house shaking. Now I know it was when I was out for a walk so I would have missed ornaments falling off the mantelpiece etc. Nothing was amiss when I returned, everything appeared to be in place. The one thing that I can say occurred on my walk at about that time was I felt a sudden moment of off-balance and an elderly couple in front of me stopped and stared up at the sky. It meant nothing to me at the time but perhaps it was linked to the earthquake. On the other hand we're all prone to `making the observations fit the theory'. This web page is good for a laugh - humorous comments about the earthquake!...
`Britain reacts to an 'underwhelming' earthquake' LINK

[Stanley]

HMRC was our log jam also Tiz.
I saw the reports of the earthquake. I forget the name of it but there is a geological fault near Manchester that regularly gives minor tremors.
I'm listening to a news item on World Service about music written using Artificial Intelligence. Evidently there is a new book out 'Wizards and Robots'. If you accept the thesis I first came across in Thomas' book 'Religion and the Decline of Magic' (highly recommended!), that 'magic' is our description of any resource we use to influence matters over which we have no human control, technology has displaced religion as the new magic. I find that an interesting field to let your mind wander round.....

[Tizer]

This is an interesting article by the BBC's David Shukman about mining the ocean floor. He gets a bit carried away at the beginning with the story of Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer drilling ship being sent to raise a Russian nuclear sub in 1974 but read on and you get a good description of what's going to be happening to the ocean depths, the hydrothermal vents where life probably began and the amazing life forms living there (many of which we still have to discover).
`The secret on the ocean floor' LINK

The Glomar Explorer side-story is fun but the Glomar Challenger had been drilling the ocean floor since 1968 when the International Deep Sea Drilling Project began. LINK I was involved in analysis of core samples from the Challenger in the mid-1970s and about 300 sites had been drilled by then.

[plaques]

Tizer. Good Link. Must take some time out to read it properly.
I think my dentist has got one of these drills.

Dentist Drill..JPG

[Stanley]

If you look up Glomar Explorer and submarine on Youtube the complete film is available.
Yesterday as I crossed the Pioneer Car park on my way for milk from the Co-op I passed a car with a woman and two children sat in it. A man was heading for the car carrying four ready meals in foil cartons. He climbed in the car, dumped them in the lady's lap and drove off. The Hunter had returned from the Hill and tea was sorted! The world has changed......

[Tripps]

I was concerned by the number of beggars in Cambridge during my recent rare visit. I wondered what practically should be done. I now realise that all I need to do is vote Labour.

Corbyn will fix it

Such an easy solution.

[plaques]

You are right Tripps, a really stupid idea. By time the next election comes there will be millions sleeping rough. How can anyone afford to house all these people? Better to stop these pernicious incentives before they take hold. Also since the majority of young people will never be able to afford to buy or rent their own house the supply available will soon outstrip the top end demand in which case the housing crisis will automatically have been resolved. A similar logic applies to tuition fees. If we make them so expensive that poor people chose to go on the dole instead we will save £9000+ a year on the debt that never gets paid back and it will only cost about £2000 to have them on the dole. Forward to a brighter future.

[Big Kev]

Tornado jets on night exercises over Barlick this evening. Out of RAF Marham apparently.

[PanBiker]

Barlick Talk facebook is full of it, anyone would think no one had ever heard an aeroplane before, mind you, they were a bit low. Have to practice sometime though.

[Stanley]

I heard something but wasn't sure what....
On the face of it building a house for everyone who needs one and subsidising the rent sounds a bit far fetched as we have all been brainwashed into believing there is no money tree. However, look back to what we did in 1945 and then have a bit of a ponder. Perhaps that is what Corbyn was thinking about. (By the way, we gave free health care to everybody as well and that was ridiculed at the time as well) Never forget the government is spending hundreds if billions of pounds on showcase projects as we speak and did anyone ever ask your permission?
How long and difficult some tiny projects are.....

[Tizer]

Let's hope these young people can shame their elders into seeing the need for change. The Florida incident was the 18th (yes, eighteenth) school shooting in the US this year.
`Florida shooting survivors rally for stricter gun controls' LINK
"Survivors of a Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead are marching in the state capital to press lawmakers to take more action on gun control. Dozens of students packed into a room at the statehouse to meet legislators. It is the first organised protest of the youth-led anti-gun movement that has swept the US since the attack. Thousands of Florida students walked out of their classrooms in solidarity with survivors on Wednesday morning, according to local media. "We're here to ask for change and we're confident change will happen," said Noah Kaufman, 16, "We know the issues, and we know who is with us and who isn't."....

[Stanley]

I share that view Tiz. Notable that the Trump has shifted slightly in his stance. I thought one of the most telling signs was the roar of approval when the student publicly asked about NRA donations to the Trump Campaign......
The arrival of my new Presto HSS 5BA taps. Tiny and only £8 each, but the best you can get Good job I'm not just starting to build up the shed......

[Tizer]

A couple of articles in the latest Green Flag newsletter...
`Expert advice: why fuel flooding is a problem for drivers' LINK
(Refers mainly to cars of less than 1.4 litre engine capacity and a few years old.)

`Why are modern car headlights so bright? How to prevent dazzle' LINK

[Stanley]

My attention was grabbed by the arrival of three pairs of new glasses, new readers and computer specs and new general purpose specs in an industrial frame with side shields. As always they are slightly different and I have to get used to them so I have ditched the old ones and gone over to the new. So far so good.... The test is how soon I forget they are new.... Old specs are old friends!

[Big Kev]

As I understand it is when they dug the cellars out the drain in the cellar fell into the main outside street drain which was set at a very low level. The water table that the cellar was built into may come half way up the walls which hopefully could resist water ingress. The same applied to the floors. But has you say Kev if the table rises the pressure may increase to a point where it seeps through. And the answer is.... Don't Know.

That makes sense. The cellar has been tanked but only 2ft above the floor level (which is about a foot lower than original level). I did raise the level in one area but it has worked its way round the wall again, as this is the lowest spot I reckon the sump is the way to go. I could be chasing the ingress for ever

Problem solved, following the broken drain, at number 9, back in June 2017 Yorkshire Water have been out to a mains water leak at number 11. They repaired the old lead pipe in the back yard and the water has stopped running into my cellar, hurrah!
As an added bonus, while they were repairing the leak they found the old connection that used to supply my house (a branch off of the supply at number 11) and capped it off. The old 'live' lead pipe into my kitchen is now 'dead'

Anyone want to buy a submersible pump? lol

[Stanley]

Good! It doesn't surprise me Kev, you've seen me comment many a time about rotten lead pipe services not 25 yards from my back door and there are hundreds, I am lucky, this house was re-piped to the main in the late 1990s. A very common one is a party main up a back street that the water board have never adopted and there are a lot of them as well.
The callous disregard of the plight of the civilians being murdered in Damascus. It is as bad as anything I have seen in my lifetime.

[Tizer]

Are these lead pipes still conveying drinking water? If so it's no wonder Britain seems to be following the Roman Empire into decline and fall!

[Big Kev]

Are these lead pipes still conveying drinking water? If so it's no wonder Britain seems to be following the Roman Empire into decline and fall!

Yes they are. The main in the back street where I live is all plastic, it's the pipework from the stopcocks just outside of the properties to the stopcocks in the kitchens that are lead.

A lot of the houses in Barlick are like that.

[Tizer]

Home owners in the UK can ask their water company to test their tap water for lead level and they are obliged to do the test for free. Lead is more of a problem in soft water areas where the pipes don't get coated with scale. In those cases the water companies have to add phosphate to the water supply to remove the lead.

[Stanley]

Our kettles stay clean but the pipes carr up.....



Here's one from a property on our back street that sprang a leak when the water board increased the mains pressure too much. Plenty of pipes like that in Barlick like that are inboard of the meter and the customer's responsibility. Many date back to the first mains in the late 19th century.
Mains leccy arrived after the 1920s.....
The fact that yesterday in the shed I discovered that my old general purpose Varilux specs are far better at close work than the new ones so I have gone back to them in the shed and taken the guards off the new safety glasses. They are fine outside the shed.