As promised, my charity-shop acquisitions. A brand new Pyrex Cafetiere and my Classic Bikes Encyclopedia. I actually have owned 3 which are featured - a Model 18 Norton, A Royal Enfield Bullet and a BSA Bantam. I think the latter qualifies as a classic, not because it was an outstanding motorcycle but due to the volume which were produced and owned. Mine was very underpowered and the hills between Ashbourne and Derby were a severe test. The other two though were marvellous beasts.
The full throated roar of that long-stroke, single cylinder, 500cc Norton was a 'once heard, never to be forgotten' experience. The Cafetiere is cafetiere, but brand new, boxed and £2.95p I suppose was a bit steep.
As you will see from Picture 2 the Xmas Card hangers are filling up nicely. Bungus's card was one of his own photos, and very nice too. But - is it due to Y and I becoming pernicketty but don'y you receive so many awful, naff cards these days.
And as we discussed at Mansfield Nat Trust last night, some of these stereotyped 'Hi' letters are terrible. I know that as a blogger I should be careful but we aren't really interested that Uncle Arthur put some more shelves in the garage. In fact I feel it is rather rude to feel that anyone might be interested. A handwritten paragraph, somewhere on the card, is infinitely preferable.
I cooked Sea Bream for lunch (from the Lidl range) and it was quite splendid. Quite like Sea Trout but a unique flavour, and 25 minutes in the oven is recommended, which seems sensible to me although I now Bungus differs. I also did a tray of oven-baked veg which worked well, as usual thanks to Delia.
My Epson Printer is messing-about and producing random streams of alphabetical letter, with numerals mixed in, and when plugged in makes my systems-tray twitch. Reg suggests an 'uninstall' followed by 'reinstall' from the original drivers. I'm sure he is right but I shall have to leave it till tomorrow. He was kind enough to print off a few copies of a 'word' doc. I have prepared for this evening, about the team-blog.
Fortunately my laptop otherwise is OK and I have now put my WoW photographs on a CD instead of a memory stick.
Comments ....Pleased to hear that Playing Card bingo is widely played. But 13 cards !! Mansfield National Trust would have dropped off before reaching the 'house' call.
How strange Jill that AOL doesn't like wet weather. Perhaps someone has stolen the lead of the Time-Warner roof. And Peter might be losing his Broadband altogther, due to his role in the Hospitals changing, and Google-mail going belly-up on Bungus.
I'm not an AOL expert Jill but usually to do mass deletes, you need to hold down 'Ctrl' while clicking successive files. All that you click should then remain 'selected' while you press the delete button. Other systems, like google-mail for instance have little square boxes at the left of each file. If you click in each box you should get a tick appear. When all you want to delete are ticked, press the delete button. With most systems you are asked to confirm before it actually deletes them.
Quotation for the day......This is so true:-
"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking"
J. K. Galbraith
Ending there. Strictly come Dancing......It takes two. (it will have Philip Jackson, the real expert on this evening). Then sort myself out for the WoW evening meeting. And when I return I shall be too tired. Catch you tomorrow. Hope AnonymousRob continues to improve.....
Thank you for your help re AOL, I shall give it a go.
ReplyDeleteI used to catch sea bream when evacuated to Sussex during the war. We used to cook them over a fire on the beach....don't think I hve hd one since!
Out for lunch yesterday, I had roast belly of pork, haven't had that for years either, it was a cheap cut I cooked when we were first married and poor, but not like the version I had yesterday, which had super crackly crackling, yet the meat underneath was so tender you could have cut it with a plate. Crackling was attached, not done separately. Served with a sharp apple/sage compote and cider gravy and mash and peas.
Very pleased to see you are still doing photographs for your own pleasure!
I have never owned a motorbike. The nearest I got was a Vespa bought by an army friend in Tripoli before he was posted in haste to Cyprus. He left it with me to use (my army driving licence covered me) and sell. Unfortunately the paper work was incomplete. I don’t know what I did with it in the end. Otherwise I have only ridden pillion. When I was 15 a neighbour used to pass me motor bike magazines and I fancied a Matchless (a Fifth Former came to school on one at a time when the masters arrived on bus or bike – another Fifth Former, Jeff Ives, whom I was articled alongside later, and who owned Nuttall Temple Lake, used to come to school in a giant Buick with a glass screen separating the driver from the passengers). My dad said “No motorbike comes to this house.”
ReplyDeleteYou are right about the quality of most cards. Over recent years I have looked for cheap ones that lend themselves to added amusing comment but I didn’t see any this year (the one’s I bought in the Original Bargain Shop in Holbeach didn’t quite do it). And the quality ones tend to be very expensive (a veteran of the 8th Army with whom I worked used to cut up wall paper and fold it).
I also agree with you about ‘generic’ or ‘round robin’ letters.
Depending on the oven temperature, 25 min from frozen sounds reasonable but, like steak, I think fish is usually overcooked.
For my tea/supper I had a packet of stirfried frozen prawns with oriental vegetables and rice (plus a portion of noodles). They are very good with a splash of soy sauce and sesame oil and when I bought them were on offer at 50p. Having eaten, I looked at the packet: use by date, Feb 2004.
As you know, my Epson (much older than yours and well used) recently gave up the ghost (having sometimes done what yours is doing for a month or two) but Dan was in a position to supply me with a new Dell which is excellent (printing only - I have the Canon for scanning) at a bargain price.
If you email me anything you need printing … no trouble, except that it would mean you collecting it or waiting for a convenient time for me to deliver!
I had never encountered Card Bingo except at the expiring Ollerton & Bevercotes Miners Welfare.
I assumed it to be a North-East thing (most of the deaths in Ollerton are Geordies or Makentaks). We found one 13 card game acceptable but objected to being jeered (albeit affectionately) on the rare occasions that we won and declined to play another 2 games!
Slow Roast Belly Pork is the dish of the moment as Lamb Shank has been for a couple of years.
I have only tried a Tesco's Finest version (frozen) of the pork which was very tasty but the crackling (which is usually too hard for my teeth to cope with) was soft and I do not eat soft fat.