Steve_M

I understand. My memory isn’t what it was either. I was an occasionally rail user, generally to go to London to see a show. London being the only large city readily accessible by train from Norwich. Bus fares were ridiculous in Norfolk. £2.60 single to travel two miles from the Newmarket Rd. to the city centre. When we moved to Dalston in Cumbria we found the rail service into Carlisle cheaper than driving, £3.20 return for the two of us. The connection to Birmingham International for the Bike show was a revelation, too, cheap and fast.

My former employer has allowed their staff to work from home occasionally for some years, something I took advantage of on many occasions. Around 2005 I was given the task of seeing how they could reduce dependency on having office based working some years ago (none of my recommendations were adopted ). As a result of the pandemic they have now “normalised” working from home as for those who are able to. Many of my former colleagues are working from home as a matter of course and it’s looking like that will be embedded into their working practices. I know many are more than happy with this arrangement as it’s saving commuting time, costs etc. The downside being that many are working silly hours. The impact on city businesses will be significant as many pop out to the shops at lunchtime.

The voice of motorsport has left gone. The world is much poorer for his passing.

Ah, yes, that’ll be the border reivers.

Or lime plastering up North?

Good morning. Greeted by a light covering of snow this morning. A good test of the refurbished boiler.

Good evening. It was a bright, sunny one briefly earlier.

I spent £40 in total. Given they live 250 miles from me, I can’t think of a better or more cost effective way of getting it to them.

Enjoy!

It could have been. Meccano themselves use Amazon. Whatever, it’s still bloody impressive.

We occasionally buy little surprise presents to be delivered to our grandkids. I decided to buy a couple of small Meccano items for my son’s kids and could only find them in Argos. Ordered at 4pm, delivered to a small town about 15 miles from Norwich at 6.45. Impressed? I am. I’ll be using them again.

There’s a website called Cameo where you can pay to get various “celebrities”, and I use the term very loosely, to read a short message. It’s interesting to look at the site to see how they rate their value.

Good morning. The weather seems to have settled into grey and overcast with only a light breeze here. Forecast is for hail and high winds later on. Should be fun for the guy sandblasting one of our walls.

It’s blowing a hooley up here. Luckily the house has a shelter belt of trees on three sides so we’re not too affected by it. I do wonder what it’s like for the people in the houses at the top of the hill, which is very exposed.

Very smart. Like others have said, I’d get spiders and various critters as well as lots of dirt and dust if I did that where I put my bike. Instead, I’ve put a large kitchen cupboard in the utility room, which is nice and clean and means I have warm kit to put on rather bringing it in from the cold.

Shame. I used to lead out test rides for a local dealer. We used to go out in groups of five or six and us volunteers used to get what was left of the fleet once the potential customers had their choice. The CTX1300 wasn’t a popular choice for test rides so I got to ride it quite a lot. I rather took a shine to it. It was smooth, easy to ride, and relaxed (ie. not fast, but it no-one complained about the pace of the test groups i led, so it must have been adequately quick). The only time it caused me a problem was at once of the stops where we offered to swap rides around, I ended up with a CBR600RR. Cramped and painful the luxurious feel of the CTX.

Good evening. Many, many moons ago I worked for HMSO, now the TSO. Their processes were cumbersome back then (for those of a technical mind, they were using SSADM and Jackson Structured Programming, unfettered by the real world practicalities of an actual working end product). They haven’t improved. They have outsourced much to a company called Williams-Lea. I’m very familiar with Williams-Lea. Many of my former colleagues were tupe’d over to them when printing was outsourced by my employer, and I had to work with them on various projects. Their processes haven’t improved in the intervening period, either. I am in the process of attempting to purchase one of their products. Painful is an understatement. Still, I will persevere. If only I still had my contacts in W-L ....

Now there’s an image I could well do without.

More a pre-emptive avoidance.

Yes, she lives on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides with no one to keep her company except her pack of highly trained attack Doberman’s.

They’re my witnesses...

At least one person on here, other than myself, knows my real name. It’s not an issue.

To reveal the photos would mean I’d have to pay for them, which would be an admission of guilt. Now, in law, one is not obliged to incriminate oneself.

All I can say is those photos of me in Chicago Rock Cafe in Norwich are photoshopped. Honest. I was nowhere near. I couldn’t have been there - I have witnesses who will confirm I was in Vodka Revolutions at the time.