For 16 years Mars were a client of my employers and I broached the idea of some recompense from them...I was told that it didn't have anything to do with the main company but one of the many advertising agencies they had used...........

geoff

It rained last night !!! … Clearly somebody up there threw the wrong switch … :eek:

Rained here too..grey this morning but not cold.

geoff

Yes! we had a drop last evening. Nothing to shout about.

Erimus - hope you clear the clouds away by Tuesday week as we heading for the Dales.

Neville

Last evening local TV forecast overnight scattered heavy, slow-moving, thunderstorms and rain up to 500mm.


Nothing happened.

Well , I did not need to water the garden this morning, first time for weeks.

I just had to run a squeegee over my car to prevent it drying with a load of grey dust spots.

Still cloudy but warm here...we had quite a bit of rain yesterday,as did much of North East,saved watering but little else....forecast warm to hot here next week.

geoff

Actually mowed the lawns today. Not so much the grass (which is brown) but raised the blades to cut the Triffids that seem to thrive on dry conditions. It looks neater now and there's less rattling noises at night. :eek:

I find challenging them to croquet is quite effective. Guaranteed to end in incestuous bloodshed. Salt water would not be good for the turf mowing them just spreads their spoors - grab those mallets.

Ahhhhh Varley, that salt water thing was the film which was diabolically bad :eek: …. John Wyndham must have spewed up when he saw that foolishness. :sweat:

Help! I am now surrounded by angry croquet losing come-over vegetables. Variants of the domesticated Manx Triffid. They all thought the sea journey was an insurmountable obstacle until Bob put them right.

[QUOTE=Varley;16360] Variants of the domesticated Manx Triffid. QUOTE]



We live and learn, domesticatedness has arrived on Shady Mona. Is it contagious? Are we safe here in the Emerald Isle ( Brown Isle)? Inoculations all around.

I will get a report from two recent visitors shortly. I have no doubt the native will have a pharmacological treatment should she have detected any problem (and no doubt it will be based on either poteen or one's own urine. Perhaps even both together - no wool of bat yet prescribed but that is only a matter of time!).

I am ashamed the inoculation controversy that seems poised to be reignited here (by a lunch friend of mine, too) should have jumped over the water. You may yet prove Hibernia the saner place. (If you've a mind to, the Government site is providing a 'bill board' for this. I am sure googling IoM, Gov and Dialogue will get you there or https://iomgov.dialogue-app.com)

The sea was a barrier to those lovely little Triffids, although not to their spores.

I may have misread you. I thought you were referring to that awful film of the book made in 1963. In which the problem was solved in the end when it was found that seawater dissolved Triffids and the human race won out in the end.

Not quite like the book … which I recently read is still in print, more than half a century on, and is still looked on as one of the great post apocalyptic stories.

A boot in the guts for author John Wyndham who I imagine was still recovering from another of his classic books 'The Midwich Cuckoos' which they renamed insanely for the film 'The Village of the Damned.' That was a pity because the film was quite faithful to the book, and didn't resort to a silly Hollywood style ending (not John Wyndham's style at all.)

No, Bob. You were right. I can remember the film but not the book although I did read it as a boy.

I read it as a kid also. I found the most frightening thing about it was not so much the Triffids (bunch of pansies in my opinion … arf arf :sweat:) but the thought of a world where nearly everybody has suddenly become blind overnight. Pretty scary stuff for its day.

Hands on socks Bob hands on socks and you'll have no worry about going blind.
Tugger

Comet 46P/Wirtanen will pass within 12 million km of the Earth on December 16th. Astronomically speaking that's getting close to a near miss. Current thinking is that is should be a fairly easy naked eye comet, but these things are unpredictable.

It's about 1 kilometre across and currently out near the orbit of Mars.

Comets used to be seen as harbingers of doom, so best leave yer Xmas shopping to the last minute to save a few bob. :big_tongue:

No, not a comet ... the planet Mercury. Mercury is a small planet, but one thing we don't need is comets the size of Mercury ... (although this is the year 2020, I'm starting to think anything can happen. :eek: )

The tail is made of Sodium which sputters out of the ground under the relentless blast of a Sun filled sky.

Some decades ago I dropped a small piece of Sodium into an ink well in the physics lab at Dartmouth St, Secondary Modern School as a joke. It did a passable imitation of Mount Vesuvius on heat ... and got me the long walk for the cane and punishment book. :shock:

https://spaceweathergallery.com/indi...load_id=169723

Final moments of the Stellar Banner caught on camera. Given the size of the that ship, she's going down pretty quickly. I guess a cargo of iron ore is unforgiving. Not sure why that fellah is cheering, doesn't seem like much to cheer about to me. :eek:

https://youtu.be/eoHD3VfhYxo

Maybe it was his way of expressing astonishment at the funnel re-emerging after the hull had gone.

I suppose the speed of sinking could depend on how well the preparation for scuttling was carried out - which seems to have been quite efficient.

The radar scanner is turning as she dives. Perhaps that was requested by the outfit that took the video - just for enhanced effect?
Another new reef for the crustaceans and polyps.

Yes I noticed the scanner was rotating. Presumably on emergency power .... :eek:

That was well spotted. Must have been the Emergency generator, I wonder if by accident or if not-to-be-skeleton crew needed it. Imagine the radar was connected only because it had been left 'on' not because it was intended for use.

I was musing recently; they can't touch you for it you know, as Ken Dodd would say; and wondered how many skeleton crew and contract Sparkys could dance on the head of a rotating radar scanner.

Are you sure that those are proper usages of the semi-colon?

I suggest that it is more likely that at 0705 you had 'lost' any long words you might have once had and your edit was a disingenuous subterfuge.

Ah come on Mr V. Spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax, semi-anything's are all so last century. We are the texting generation. I'll bet you invite Lady Cynthia to a rubber of croquet, tea and a sticky bun by text, Stiffies are all but forgotten, a little bit sad but MS moves onwards.
Congrats on paying attention to the Edit, Thursday evening can be quiet in Douglas.

There is a year, one month and one week missing between posts 58 and 59.

I think Bob's time warping machine does actually work after all, contrary to popular opinion.

Could it report back next week's Euromillions winning number?

Can't recall who said it - but it was some famous author of yester-year. As he was dying, a friend asked if he had any regrets.
He replied: "Yes! I may have used too many semi-colons".

Even so, the semi-colon is sometimes claimed to be a way of acknowledging your reader's intelligence.

There's seems to be no Morse for the character; what can this mean?

for ; some may use -.-.-. but i don't think that it is 'official'

It's not in the Handbook. (Yes I know it's sad but I have a copy, comes in handy when 'show off' Hams use oddball Q codes.)

So anybody using the above should be taken out back and shot. :big_tongue:

"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit.

Someone had raw meat for his dinner last night.

It's the only way to be sure:

https://youtu.be/nnHmUk_J6xQ

I just love submarine films.

Just for you then. Spot the badly adjusted valve. :smoking:

But in the war movies, when water comes spurting out of some hidden orifice the crew know exactly which valve will stop it, instantly and without hesitation.

Do you remember a submarine series on the TV years ago called: 'Voyage to Sea the Bottom' (or something like that. :p ) It featured a sub with glass windows in the nose. When they collided with something, which they did with monotonous regularity, the glass never cracked, but water would spurt in from the deckhead.

They spun the wheel on a convenient valve and the water stopped. I too thought at the time that was one very handy valve.

Also when the sub surfaced it literally leapt out of the water and slammed down in a big splash. I thought to myself: I bet that's pleased the lads in the galley !!

:jump:

A wheel key and an 8 inch shifter. After 2 hours the Tailwallah will bring a big mug of tea and a chapatti. These pneupress systems are ever so simple to work on.
Wullie, will you bring us down a hammer and a big stillsons, for f u c k sake.
Jeez me knuckles are all skint. Frig this for a game of cowboys.

Good men! They have done, with due diligence, the "below plates survey"! Every Eng.Officer worth his wage will do it on a new vessel!

As the old adage goes, when things go wrong, you don't have time to trace pipes and mark valves.

I was once passing over oily waste to the "slop tank", prior to arrival in port and safe discharge. The bluddy level never went down! I asked the 2/E and Chief for advice. They suggested that maybe the pig tail pump was knackered. Okay, pump out, strip down, all okay. Replaced the bearings and seals while I was at it "std. Blue Flue procedure". Pump back in, started pumping over the tank, same same!

I decided to go under the plates - Known as "bilge diving", although we had spotless, clean bilges (painted white). There, buried behind a mass of pipes, was a diverter circuit and the "smoking gun" valve. Turns out it was returning the oily waste directly back, instead of over to the slop tank! The C/E was worried that the previous trip 4/E was dumping over the wall and he didn't want problems. Duly marked for posterity and noted in the log. We got down to checking the oily waste logbook just to make sure, while the tank pumped over.

Seeing how I had wasted my entire watch, I decided to stay on and get the job done before we arrived to port. The oily water was at it's limit. I did get a free beer off the 2/E though.........

Rgds.
Dave

Yes Dave, but on a Hollywood (or Twickenham) submarine the water always bursts out of a gap somewhere above where the actors are stood, not from under the plates...

just saying like:wink: