WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Tardis]

Baroness Warsi was here yesterday too?

[Stanley]

A Xmas card from Dr. Ed Furgol, my old comrade at Pendle heritage.

[Big Kev]

The start of the Barnoldswick Santa Fun Run, captured by Gus
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10 ... =2&theater

[Stanley]

Word that all three of my daughters are ready for Xmas in Oz. Susan flies out of Manchester this morning... It will be nice and quiet!

[Tardis]

Last week, sterling’s trade-weighted index, which is a pretty good guide to its average value, was 9pc higher than its recent March low and stood at its highest level since August 2009. Against the dollar the pound has been trading at well over 1.6 and against the euro it has been at 1.2.

[Stanley]

Daily Mail article defending the pay rise for MPs saying that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Does this also apply to the 6.5 million workers in poverty?
How lucky we are with the weather.....

[Julie in Norfolk]

It didn't attract my attention today, but did attract it at the funeral last week. I knew that one branch of my family ran a cinema in 1911 in Brierfield, one person said where it was situate but as I was distracted I didn't quite get the location. It isn't the one that was later turned into an indoor football pitch. Does anyone here know where it might have been? There was also family scandal with a family member making off with the money...

[Stanley]

Don't know the answer to that one Jules but I'll bet someone does!
Just had mail from Oz, daughter Susan is there, showered and has my great grandson Alex on her knee! Janet says she is in 7th heaven, I can well believe it. Lovely to know my daughters are all together and enjoying themselves. Now that's another good Xmas pressie!
Jack and I can go for our morning walk without a care in the world... Lovely!
By the way, she told Janet she had an arguing couple next to her almost all the way.... Sounds like my idea of hell.

[Marilyn]

When we came back to Oz in October we had a small, rude, over-indulged boy ( about 4...and wearing a nappy ) and his blissfully ineffective mother sitting in the seats in front of us on the plane. That lad kept standing on his chair and reaching over switching channels on our TV screen, poking his tongue out, making monkey-faces, throwing food, calling us names and even trying to tip the food over on our food trays. His mother did nothing.
I kept telling him to turn around and sit down please...I daren't do or say any more as it was obvious the boy was of a minority culture and I thought any complaints may be viewed the wrong way.
My TV kept seizing up because of his runs of pushing the buttons. The staff reset it for me a few times and I had to wait ten mins each time. In the end I gave up, and switched it off.
His seat was covered in food, spilled drinks and melted chocolate when they exited the plane.
I will never fly economy again. It was a nightmare!

I hate getting chatty people next to me, and I hate getting someone who stinks of perfume or garlic.

[chinatyke]

I will never fly economy again. It was a nightmare!

I hate getting chatty people next to me, and I hate getting someone who stinks of perfume or garlic.

Hey Maz, don't you get those type "up front"?

Just because they have money doesn't make them well bred! Ozzy Osbourne, Sharon, Kelly come to mind...wonder where they sit.

[Thomo]

Julie, the cinema in Brierfield was on Burnley Rd, in the dip on the Burnley side of the main set of traffic lights. It later became the "77" night club before reverting to a multi screen cinema unit.

[Tizer]

Maz, if that kid had been sitting next to me he would have met with an unfortunate accident. I never liked airline food and would have been glad of somewhere to deposit it and to solve a nuisance problem at the same time!

Some photos here on the BBc site from the Nelson Mandela memorial service:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-25313600

[Marilyn]

Far be it from me to spark an International Incident at 30,000 feet, Tiz.
Luckily we only sat behind the little tyke...I felt sorry for the young lady who had to sit next to him.
When we prepared for the landing his mother only strapped him in until the staff took their seats. Then she allowed him to stand again, unrestrained. I must admit I was hoping a small bump might dislodge him and teach his mother a lesson.

I realise things could be just as bad in First Class, Chinatyke. How correct you are. I want one of those self contained sleeping compartments where I exist in my own bubble, wrapped in an oversized white terry dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers.
It will never happen of course...

[Thomo]

Whilst working on the 1942 Chapter of the book today, and describing Barnoldswicks Air Defences, I came across this pearl of wisdom from a past Lord Mayor of Pendle "There were no anti aircraft guns in Barnoldswick as the Germans did not have bombers capable of reaching there"!!! Who bombed Liverpool, Manchester and Carlisle then I wonder? The only thing that could not make it here in 1942 were their fighter escorts, and that soon changed as well.

[Stanley]

Worst I ever had was a child kicking the back of my seat. I had to endure it because remonstrating with the parents did no good. Nice thing was that the stewardess had noticed, did her best to stop it and was very nice to me for the rest of the trip, I got treats!



What attracted me was a visit from Doc yesterday. As you can see he is well and if anything thinner. He's well on with the new house and is in good form. He said he hadn't had a lot of time for the computer as he's working so hard on the house. I brought him up to speed. Nice to see him looking so good and looking forward to setting off in Hocus Pocus next year.... (Jack went into ecstasy when he realised his mate was here.)

[Stanley]

Intriguing news about possible developments in the case of the sinking of the Gaul. (LINK) There have always been persistent rumours that the sinking of the trawler wasn't simply a case of being overwhelmed in a storm off Murmansk. This area has always been a hotbed of intelligence gathering and if the DNA of the bodies found on shore matches that of the crew some very interesting questions will be asked.

[Belle]

Maz, I am with you on the "don't talk to me" take on sharing seats on public transport. Best people to sit beside are young men with their hoods already up, you just know they don't want conversation! I have enjoyed many peaceful train journeys this way, they look so relieved when I get my book out and blank them!

[Stanley]

Not a lot so far, it's colder outside and I'm in the last six days of eye drops. Good!

[Tizer]

I've just received a Christmas letter from a friend and well-known, retired chemistry professor. In it he relates how at his recent 90th birthday the family "shared birthday cake suitably decorated with a tonsured, bespectacled, white-coated professor handling test tubes".

[Tardis]

News today that Lancashire is consulting on removal of the last bus service from Burnley to Barnoldswick by Mainline

http://www.pendletoday.co.uk/news/local ... -1-6311725

It's always been full when I've been on it.

[Stanley]

Tiz, he may be 90 but he has not lost his command of the language!

[Bruff]

The rather startling revelation that the judge at the trial of assistants or whatever they are to Nigella Lawson, saw fit to reprimand the PM of all people for comments made and relevant to the case in a published interview. Which I might add, led to the whole of yesterday morning being taken up with legal arguments around their implications, at of course some expense.

I have wondered on here before about the suitability of the current PM for the office he holds, largely around his very public displays of casual and easy discourteousness and barely latent prejudices. However, I struggle to see how a half-wit would deem it fit to make the comments he did, so quite what that makes him I'm not sure. I cannot be the only one worried that a person with such a chronic lack of judgement is, daily if not hourly, called upon to exercise that judgement. Say what you like about Blair, but at least he reserved his comments on an on-going trial to that of Deirdre Barlow.

Richard Broughton

[Cathy]

I am on Nigella's team, her ex husband has tried to pull her thru a hedge backwards, goodness knows what he put her thru while they were married, he is the insecure one and is grasping at straws . I see Nigella as being strong, aware (after her trials), traditional in family ways, worthy to be full of self esteem. We all go thru stuff. Her husband is left well behind and is grasping for sympathy and recognition that he doesn't deserve. I think he is the kind of abuser who doesn't leave behind physical marks, emotional yes, goes without saying - very cunning.

[Tizer]

Tiz, he may be 90 but he has not lost his command of the language!

Definitely not! He was disturbed when British journal editors wanted to change his spelling of sulphur to the American version, sulfur. He asked them if they wished him to spell phosphorus as fosforus.

Richard, like you I was gobsmacked by all the fuss over Cameron and Nigella Lawson yesterday, and I see him as a loose cannon now. Matthew Parris in The Times a couple of weeks back wrote an article which revolved largely around pleading for Cameron stop shouting all the time.

[Thomo]

And I am with Cathy on this one. Also unless I am much mistaken, or just plain thick, there is a topic specific to politics on this site, and that is where this should be. Nigella has never done anything at me, nor I suspect, David Cameron. What he said, rightly or wrongly has got sod all to do with politics, its another example of a mountain from a molehill. We all have our own political leanings, and those of us able to look at things from an unblinkered point of view have to accept graciously large amounts of one party diatribe. Nigella, whatever her parentage, is an interesting Woman to watch when in her kitchen, and whilst I do not agree with drug taking, what she does in her own time is none of my concern, or anyone elses. Her "Husband" thinks he is something special, and I wonder what his relationship with the two PA's was?!! This issue is being "blown up" out of all proportion by the media and the opposition, but is that not what they do best?