test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tea has been fish & chips

These came from a nearby chip shop which already had the reputation among many people of being the best in Leicester when I first came here over forty years ago. It's managed to retain that reputation, though I don't think I've been there for many years; I can't even remember the last time. But it's still really busy, even at nearly seven in the evening when most places' teatime rush has already died down, and the food is excellent. Big portions too

Indeed, so highly prized is this place that nobody ever mentions the owners being jailed for a rather simplistic VAT fraud in the mid-1980s

As far as I know, they submitted fake invoices for things like polystyrene trays, and all the exciseman had to do in court was point out that to use such items in that number would have meant serving about 10,000 portions of chips a day (open, as of course wrapped stuff doesn't use a tray), which in no way correlated with the volume of potatoes they bought, the capacity of the fryers, the till receipts, and so on

Anyway, the rest of the family kept the place running while the two brothers responsible did their time, and it's the same people still there to this day

[NickFitz]

One thing I observed from going to the chip shop was that, a couple of doors down, somebody today emerged from their drive in a van. I could tell this because the van is still there, lacking its front parts, which seem to have been piled up neatly on the road beside it. Quite impressive to have managed to emerge onto such a quiet road at just the right time for a passing car to take the front off, and I would imagine that the car must have been exceeding the 20mph limit by quite a bit to have achieved such a high level of damage

Not sure why they haven't at least pushed it back in to the drive, rather than leaving it there, but it isn't poking out any further than the width of parked cars so it isn't actually obstructing the negligible amount of traffic we get down here, and the road is pretty wide for a road to nowhere much. Might be blocking the pavement a bit at the back, I suppose.

[WTFH]

TFBSZ

[NickFitz]

The car tonight was a Volvo P1800, currently taxed until June. I note that in these older ones, they seem to do a lot more of sending bits off to be rebuilt by specialists, which might also explain why cars from then seem to last longer

And then some of the gold diggers did very nicely, while some haven't even started digging yet as they had to transport tons of equipment into the middle of nowhere.

Finally, the third and last part of Elizabeth I's Secret Agents which covers the period after her death, with a lot of detail about the Gunpowder Plot

Early night now, though I might read a few more pages about Octavia and her acolytes before lights out

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all
2 more mice overnight takes the scores to 22 mice, 7 shrews.
Yesterday’s bonfire has burned down well. In normal circumstances it would have been 3 fires, but the tarpaulins over the main pile meant it was dry and got hot quickly. Need to go out and rake through the ash later.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Rather an unsatisfactory night's sleep, with much waking up for no clear reason then having to get back to sleep again; dreams were mainly innocuous as far as I can recall, so it wasn't them. Feeling rather tired as a result

Outside, it's a sunny start with quite a heavy dew; currently 5°C, maybe getting to 13° later, and the barometers are distinctly down at 1009/1017mB

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Sunny with wispy fluff. Weather app says it's 'Hazy'. Currently 3 degrees with a high of 13 expected. Chance of rain early evening. Barometer down to 1023 mbar.

Another sub-optimal night's sleep, another wake up around 3am followed by dozing / waking. I seemed to be waking feeling either too hot or too cold, depending on the remedy chosen for the previous awakening.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Wednesday.

Grey.

Gloomy.

Sunless.

Currently dry but not for long.

Chilly in here at 11.7 deg, 11.5 deg in the kitchen, 10 deg in the leanto.

1018.5 mBar, 30.0763 in Hg, 763.9378 Torr, 14.772 psi, (down from 1022 last night), 70% RH (GDR hair), 61% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 26th of April 2019 NF observed some hail, MS continued Counting down, and it was World Patent Day with the PostIt Note (so beloved of the Orange Clown).

Walk (abbreviated due to inclemency of weather) walked in the increasingly grey gloom and increasingly drizzly drizzle.

Lunch: poached tomato and scrambled egg on Morrisons linseed & soya toasted crust, bramble jelly and marmalade on slices of toast, indeterminate corner yog, 0.91*1.55 pints of good Glengettie tea.

Entertainment: Y&Y waffling on about some bollox or other.

Freecell score: 100%, running average 85%.

Tea: chicken in white sauce with rice n peas, a yog, some pear halves, 0.91*1.57 pints of good Glengettie tea.

Entertainment: PM <click> PM <click> PM <click>

Wheeler Dealers S7 E10 Subaru Impreza WRX. Bought: £3250, Total: £5255, Sold: £5400. MOT ran out in 2012. Not taxed. I wonder what happened to it. Changing the clutch on that is a pig.

Joy of Painting: a country road leading to an old barn. 19:34. A record. One eyed viewing from 19:48 on.

The Repaire Shoppe: Not Wales: home made radio,actually a bitsa, bitsa this & bitsa that, like, banana trolley thingie, model fire engine, leather wallet. All of which I'd seen before.

Dunno wtf is wrong with the audio on BBC4HD at the moment. BBC4SD is ok.

Who do you think you are? Sharon Osbourne, Ozzie's wife. She was rather upset to find that her great^N grandmother was born in some Septic tulipehole in Mass, as one of 6 children to an Irish father & English mother, being the only one of the 6 who survived and returned to England with her father after the death of the 5 siblings and her mother, conditions in septicland in the cotton industry at the time being even worse than those over here. Who'd have thunk?

Followed by more bollox on Blaze about unexplained things that they proceed to explain.

The one about the chap who bursts into flames in a petrol station shop was interesting: those electric vape things are a little bomb waiting to go off.

[ladymuck]

As the weather is dry and sunny, today's laundry has been put out on the washing line.

[WTFH]

NickFitz have you been fiddling under the bonnet?

Got a few odd page loads there and a “server not responding”