WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Stanley]

Tiz, sorry but I'll never convert to unshaven. CSM Talbot ('Terrible Ted') did too good a job on me!

[Tripps]

"No shave - no breakfast" was quite a good incentive.

[Big Kev]

Hopefully the image is clear enpugh for you to read, I agree fully with every word

[Stanley]

I'm not too sure about it Kev. he had to write a piece for his column and squeezed a very complicated answer into 500 words. My own feeling is that he has simplified too much and perhaps started with the wrong question. There are times when a child has to be convinced they are important for their well-being and confidence. If there was a fire the first thing you'd save would be the children because they are the most important thing in the house. When Vera and I discovered that we couldn't live together I left the family home because it meant the least upset for the kids, at the time I considered them to be more important than I was and have never had the slightest doubt that was the right priority. I suppose the core of family relationships is that this is a far more complicated question and can't be boiled down to who is the most important. God knows that the most important member of our family recently was definitely Janet but who knows, I may be wrong!
On another level, China being nice to me about the winding engine....

[Big Kev]

If there was a fire the first thing you'd save would be the children because they are the most important thing in the house.

I would save the children because of love and parental responsibility. I think we're looking at slightly different meanings of the word important...

[PanBiker]

Mary, Gus and Sally interviewed and broadcast by Radio Lancashire regarding BE Bosom Friends purchase of No 2 Green Street for conversion into a permanent home for the support group, community facilities and centre for complimentary therapies. The property comprises the former Green Street WMC tap room and all the upper floor of the building which will be remodelled into the new facility.

[Big Kev]

Mary, Gus and Sally interviewed and broadcast by Radio Lancashire regarding BE Bosom Friends purchase of No 2 Green Street for conversion into a permanent home for the support group, community facilities and centre for complimentary therapies. The property comprises the former Green Street WMC tap room and all the upper floor of the building which will be remodelled into the new facility.

Good stuff, I was reading about the new premises over in Facebook land

[Tizer]

If there was a fire the first thing you'd save would be the children because they are the most important thing in the house.

I would save the children because of love and parental responsibility. I think we're looking at slightly different meanings of the word important...

Yes, I think you're coming at it from different directions. I don't agree with everything in the article but I agree with the author that there's a danger nowadays of parents giving children too strong a feeling of self-importance, especially in America. It can result in Donald Trump syndrome - narcissism, self-importance, bullying on social media.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How about this as an example of incompetence?....A British cruise ship, the Caledonian Sky, has run aground on a pristine coral reef in Indonesia, smashing through the reef and causing extensive damage. This is a reef whose beauty is the very thing that attracts lots of tourists to the area and underpins the local economy. The ship was caught at low tide despite being equipped with GPS and radar instruments. That's bad enough, surely nothing worse could happen....could it? Yes, it could. A tug boat was deployed to help re-float the cruise ship and this has caused even more damage because they did it at low tide instead of waiting for high tide!

[Stanley]

We weren't running the job Tiz......
A visit from daughter Susan. Somewhere somehow Vera and I did something good.......

[Tizer]

It's great when kids turn out well and are keen to help their parents and grandparents. We don't have children so our equivalents are Mrs Tiz's sister's family, but they are in the Home Counties, and my cousin and her family who live about 15 miles away from us. The cousin is in her late 40s, she and her husband are self-employed and they have two teenage daughters. We all get on well together and they give us help `coping with modern life'! At the moment they're keeping an eye open for a house that we might move to when we need to live in a less remote location and they send us links to pages on the Rightmove web site. It's surprising how well they've worked out our needs and preferences. Sometime we'll have to move closer to shops and other facilities when our ability to drive begins to fade but it's a hard decision to make when you're used to living in a very quiet location with distant views and open spaces around you.

[PanBiker]

My land line has a permanent engaged tone, can't make outgoing or accept incoming calls. I have done all the normal tests, disconnected everything, plugged a corded phone into the master socket etc. Have logged into Talk Talk (our broadband and phone provider) to register the fault but Sally has just rung me on my mobile from the Post Office. Apparently the staff there have been inundated with folk complaining about the same problem, looks like it's an Open Reach problem affecting numerous providers. I'll put all my kit back together and wait a bit to see what happens. It's been off most of the day, broadband side of my VDSL signal is obviously OK.

Interestingly the router warning log is full of intrusion alerts all referenced from different IP addresses, the log entriy timings are from when the engaged tone problem started.

[Stanley]

My landline is normal Ian.
How much better I felt after these two major operations.

[PanBiker]

Our land line came back on late last night, most TalkTalk customers were effected by the outage. Post Office telephone customers are through TalkTalk as well.

[Tizer]

How much better I felt after these two major operations.

Your `scorched earth policy' has produced good results in both cases, Stanley!

My attention was grabbed by data on the use and disposal of plastic bottles...
`Greenpeace suggests the top six global firms sell plastic bottles weighing more than two million tonnes a year'... `More than five trillion plastic pieces weighing more than 250,000 tonnes were afloat at sea, and a recent paper showed that even marine organisms 10km deep had ingested plastic fragments'...`Plastic bottle litter on beaches up 43%, conservationists say'...` 90% of all seabirds have swallowed plastic - and by 2050, it's virtually certain that any bird found dead will have plastic in its stomach'...`anyone consuming an average amount of seafood would ingest about 11,000 plastic particles a year'.

[PanBiker]

The Jackdaw pair nest building on Ash Grove, they have inspected all three terracotta pots on the stack but have chosen the middle one, same as last year.

[Stanley]

Funny you should mention that. I note that the errant louvre on the ventilator outlet at the Pigeon Club has stuck open again. Last year jackdaws nested in there but it dropped down on them towards the end of the season. I wonder whether they'll remember and avoid it......?
Barlick in Bloom volunteers planting what looks like quickthorn where the shrubs were taken out at the bus stop.

[Tizer]

I suspect this is the explanation for those reports in the distant past of people dying due to `spontaneous combustion'. There's always a rational answer once you delve far enough!
`Skin creams containing paraffin linked to fire deaths' LINK
"Skin creams containing paraffin have been linked to dozens of fire deaths across England, the BBC has learned. The products for conditions like eczema and psoriasis can leave people at risk of setting themselves ablaze. If people use the creams regularly but do not often change clothes or bedding, paraffin residue can soak into the fabric, making it flammable. The medicines regulator has updated its guidance and says all creams containing paraffin should carry a warning. Despite warnings going back more than 10 years, BBC Radio 5 live Investigates has discovered there have been 37 deaths in England since 2010 linked to the creams....."

[plaques]

`spontaneous combustion'

I once read that in some cases very obese people have died and fallen near an electric fire. Also the room that they were in had virtually no ventilation. The result was that their body fat melted and ignited. Just a the extreme bits were left unburnt.

[Tizer]

That's what I meant by reports in the distant past of people dying due to `spontaneous combustion'. The BBC article says that people's cream-soaked clothing has been found to catch fire even from a lit cigarette. Those past stories could be of accidents that began that way. We used to daub on our skin substances that I guess were more inflammable than present creams. Ointments had less water in them and often also contained volatile chemicals whose vapour could ignite.

[Tizer]

This was brought to my attention by the Green Flag car breakdown service:
`Speeding drivers: new law will mean bigger fines for drivers who earn more' LINK
At first I thought that some pensioners would be able to speed with impunity because they don't earn any money - but I don't plan to test the theory!

[Stanley]

A visit yesterday by two old friends. John was Keeper of Navigational Instruments at the Science Museum in South Ken and Lillia was an Italian TV star known in the Berlusconi press as 'Golden Breasts'. She's still a good cuddle! Lovely to see them and we had a good 3 hours together reminiscing..... I told them we were betraying our ages!

[Stanley]

The return of winter! Hard cold snow driven by the wind stinging your ears. And last night at about 22:15 I swear there was a bolt of lightning but no accompanying thunder.

[Tripps]

Today is a memorable day.

I have run three blogs in my lifetime. The first dating back about 15 years - pre ' social media' . The first never developed - being bombarded with ads but it's still there. The other two are still semi active. I've never actively promoted any of them - they are publicly discoverable, but they are just for my own amusement, and to show my kids I'm not a Luddite - (that failed by the way).

Today - I got an email saying I had my first 'follower' Bless you 'mattweeke' whoever you are.

[chinatyke]

And last night at about 22:15 I swear there was a bolt of lightning but no accompanying thunder.

The snake has awakened in Barlick also.

Here's another gem my wife came out with this morning. I pointed out that she was wearing her jumper inside-out. She said, "It's OK. It will be right next time." She worries about nothing and her favourite English word is "later"...

[Stanley]

Fame at last David..... China, tell her Majesty that in England that is good luck!
Today John Clayton visits so that will be good..... (But bad for the shed!)