Picture 1 is a Collage of front wall snaps. After the vandals, and then after Alex. He is brilliant the lad is !Although you can't see it, he has reinforced the left-hand end column with a steel post going through the centre and 18" into the ground.
He feels confident that they will have difficulty pushing it over again. But who knows ? All we can do is to hope for the best. It looks good and we must text him to say so.
We consider ourselves very lucky to have Karen to sort us out indoors and Alex to sort us out outdoors. And they are both such nice young people. Gives one hope for the future of the country.
I said I would post a link to the Junior Doctor article about the rudeness of some NHS nurses. Please click here if you would like to read it. Bungus however makes some good points (see his comments).
The paragraph below shows the temperature at 5am this morning, and appears courtesy of my Clipmarks system. Basically it allows you to 'clip' a bit of a web-page and post it onto your own website or blog. Very handy, and if anyone is interested I'll send a link to it.
clipped from: 
28°F
Current:Clear
Wind: W at 6 mph
Humidity: 86%
Wind: W at 6 mph
Humidity: 86%
Today
37° | 32°
Thu
39° | 35°
Fri
42° | 33°
Sat
42° | 26°
We were supposed to be having a relaxing day, but technological problems beset us. McAfee kept telling Y that her laptop was not properly protected. We fixed it in the end by an amalgam of system-restore and repeated clicking of whatever buttons seemed like a good idea. Then National Trust made it extremely difficult to achieve something which should have been straightforward. This was definitely their fault, not ours. They need to hire a good IT person from Amazon to sort their website out. The Nat Trst website is clunky and unpredictable. It asks stupid questions and doesn't make itself clear etc... Rant over !
Y is doing so well with her laptop. She is learning fast that 'shut down and re-boot' cures many ills and if it doesn't, just keep searching pages and clicking things till you get it right.
Just had an update from Peter. Joan's 'op' was successful and although she has a bad pain in her back she is doing fine. At least post-op pains eventually go away, whereas untreated pains just get worse.
Andrew Graham Dixon was super again with the second half of his 'Travels with Vasari' please click here. The link is to Part 1 I'm afraid, Part 2 isn't there yet.
Comments
bungus ..... Jessica's revision of Little Red Riding Hood sounds typical of her, and good fun too.
You are quite right to remind me of 'abit' and 'alot' even though too considerate to utter them out loud.
Re 'irreligious'. I stick by my usage. There are several definitions -
- hostile or indifferent to religion
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
- hostile to, or disregarding of religion
Shorter Oxford
Jill ...... Your fresh pasta which enjoins you to eat it within 48hrs sounds much more realistic. But as Bungus says, in Italy, they go for the dried sort anyway.
I think we are all of the same mind re 'dear' or 'sweetheart' etc., in Hospitals, or anywhere else for that matter. And Christian names before being invited so to do. It seems much the same here as for you further south.
And if, additionally, there is a language difficulty things become dangerous. Last time I had to visit the Hospital, I tried an experiment. When asked for the third time to confirm my 'date of birth' I replied 28.10.53 instead of 28.10.35. It was accepted without demur !
My 'mittens' are proving invaluable in this cold weather. I can hold the steering wheel firmly and my hands remain as warm as toast. Great ! Thanks again.
anonymousRob ...... My blood pressure varied not a single bar. Even if my synapses were firmly twanged. But thank you for asking.
You do well with the Sports Desk. Keep it going - our readers expect a little local colour.
Y and I seldom go to pubs other than at lunchtime - and usually only to meet someone socially. It seems as if the drinks price/food quality are linked together in some sort of equation. If the food is cheap the booze is expensive and vice versa. And if out, to eat a meal of home-cooked quality, is unbelievably expensive. Incy Wincy is persuasive on the serried banks of microwave ovens he has seen in alleged restaurants. The pub closures are not surprising.
I prefer the title 'desk' to 'chair'.
anonymousJBW ...... lovely explanation for the twist in the spire at Chesterfield and I believe it completely. All this rubbish about green timber is clearly misleading. It was obviously the devil's work all along.
..........................................
Quotation time ......... I think I believe this anyway .....
"We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong"
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I didn’t know you had had your front wall knocked down. Surely that was blogworthy?
ReplyDeleteMost young people are nice. So are some old people.
Thank you for telling me I have been cold!
I don’t know Macaffee but if he is like some of the Scots in call centres I wouldn’t understand him anyway.
I had considerable difficulty getting an internet connection tonight – perhaps it’s the weather?
I find more websites are impossible to understand than are not.
And thank you, Doctor Graham.
’Hostile’ seems to be the essential component of irreligiosity in the definitions quoted and, apart from certain aspects, that is not my feeling. So long as they don’t carry out human sacrifices etc, or try to insist on me doing what they do, or believing what they believe, I’ll let them get on with it.
What beats me is how 3 of the ‘great’ religions, which all stem from the same source, cannot live in peace with each other.
As you will see from my comment to Jill, I do NOT feel the same way as you about affectionate forms of address (although I reckon ‘darling’ is a bit much, and seldom sincere) or the use of forenames.
There is a good reason for the ‘date of birth’ question. It prevents you being given someone else’s drugs. As for your minor amendment, they probably thought, ‘Poor old soul; he’s getting mixed up'.
I have to say that I find most pub meals acceptable at worst and more than satisfactory in most cases.
Jill:
I don’t think you were at all out of order. There are always several different ways of looking at anything, most of them usually valid. And us wot has academic pretensions can often be a right pain in the arse.
I suppose I am lucky in having no objection to being called ‘love’ or ‘duck’ (or even ‘pet’ since we wre infested with Geordies although I dislike 'mucker' and 'mate' and 'young man').
Such forms of address are parts of the norm in the north and, since the welcome death of deference, usually considered friendly rather than too familiar. (my mother would not have agreed about that, her sister even less so but she, although I loved her dearly, WAS a snob).
My perception is that we are now in the sge of Forename Familiarity and those who do not care for it are stuck with it. Only political correctness bars it in, for instance, some council offices.
I have been fortunate that, apart from National Service, and my very first job when the Guv’nor was called Mr W***** and his chief assistant Mr W*****, and a brief spell in Local Authority where a modest degree of formality prevailed, I have only worked in situations where everyone has been on first name terms with everyone else. Therefore I have been fitted for the modern age.
I am 21st Century Man!
I don’t think our nurses are superior but most of them I have found pleasant and as helpful as they can be. A few are less perfect or perhaps they have been having a bad day when I have judged them.
We do sometimes have language difficulties (some Glaswegians, for instance, are not easily understood) but this problem, in my limited experience, occurs more frequently with the doctors and surgeons than with the nurses.
Looked at from the other side, sometimes there are uppity patients who try to control those immediately responsible for their care but, again from what I have seen, even they are treated no less kindly and considerately than any other patient. In fact, it sometimes appears that by being demanding, they receive more than their fair share of attention. And I have no doubts that there are severe staff shortages which do cause some problems, occasionally severe.
It is true that in a series of clinic attendances one only sees the consultant occasionally but that does mean that you get several different opinions!
The problem with chronic complaints is that very often nothing can be done beyond pain relief; and doing nothing may often be the best solution, which is not very comforting. I am just pleased that in an emergency, as a general rule, things move quickly and, more often than not, effectively.
But perhaps things are better up here.
Sorry If I have ‘gone on’ but I thought your comments deserved full consideration.
Anonymousrob:
I think your deliberate mispunctuation was perfectly justified. Keeps us on our toes.
Sports Desk:
Yes, I picked up that the Panthers had managed a good win.
And a draw for Stags seems like success after a series of losses. The consolation, if there is any, is that reports suggest that they are playing well enough to win while losing and drawing. But it was the same last season (remember Middlesborough?) and look what happened then!
What many people don’t realise, and I speak as one who has been a licensee unable to make a living, is that all the money that passes over the bar does not go into the landlord’s pocket or the landlady’s ‘running away’ fund. And it is not just a matter of buying stock. Overheads can be crippling and the breweries no longer ‘look after’ their tenants as they used to up until the 60s when accountants took over from brewers. Fuel prices as well as rents have gone up faster than turnover. Add cheap Supermarket booze and the Smoking Ban … Bingo! The profit on a bottle of wine at £4.99 wouldn’t pay the cost of corkage.
I understand, but it could be apocryphal, that the licensee of the Plough at Ollerton was instructed by the Brewery to put up the price of his bitter to £2.35to which he replied that as very few people were willing to pay £1.95 (some even preferred to drink Sam Smith’s at £1.35) they would be very unlikely to accept an increase. He left and the pub closed.
Village pubs have been even worse affected, not only by the drink-driving laws (which I reluctantly feel obliged to support on humanitarian grounds) but by increased petrol prices.
I came across the following from The Observer of 7 July 08:
According to market analysts AC Nielson, pubs have sold 175,000,000fewer pints in the past year as a direct result of the smoking ban,
... (beer) sales fell 9% through November to January.
... Cigarette sales dropped 6% since 1 July 07.
As a seadog, ooh ah, I am delighted to explain the technicalities; the middle of a ship or boat is halfway between the pointy end and the blunt end.
AnonymousJBW:
The story which I have been assured is true is that Chesterfield spire twisted the last time that a virgin married in the church. And it will untwist the next time.
For a weather forecast have you tried looking at www.metcheck.com ?
ReplyDeleteYou can select your local town so that your forecast is more accurate as well as looking at all sorts of other aspects of weather on crags, hills, seaside or your holiday destination etc.
I find it very accurate as it gives the forecast in 3 hour steps.
JBW
To add to what Bugas said reference the decline of the public house which Is very acurate.
ReplyDeleteThe traditional pubs relied on the 7 day a week crowd to support them during the less popular times, My Hardcore regulars accounted for 50 of my takings yet was 10 percent of customers.
This is the section who is in decline and what filled the pub during the week.Its very doubtful that anyone can aford to drink like that anymore but to them that was the Tv ect.
its a circle as less peaple then come in as your pub is empty.
I had to make 1600 hundred pounds a week before I even saw a penny, that was to pay the long list of peaple wanting there share first.
Heating, electricity are a massive expence and the recent increases will send many to the wall.
even playing music/radio,tv is charged.
1k a year to hear music or have a tv running is hard to find and justify.
Whats Hurt was that most pubs are charged per sq ft irespective of trade, I had to pay for a room that was never used
Kevin
Who knocked your wall down, G? or was it a car? Looks good now though.
ReplyDeleteI like Bungus's explanation of the church's crooked spire best.....
I rarely go into a pub, occasionally for a meal at lunch-time, that's all, being married to a teetotaller. My oldest daughter works in the restaurant part of one though - a small old-fashioned one on Ham Common (near Richmond in Surrey) known for its home-cooked food, and with a regular clientele. No music or slot machines - a large garden much used by families in the summer, with a children's area. Apart from the week-ends, it is definitely an older person's pub - they let us have children's portions of main meals half price!She has noticed no reduction in trade during the week - a slight reduction on Sundays (when they just do a roast lunch and cater for families) which pleases them, as they no longer have to turn people away.....(no reservations taken, first come first served).