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Timbo

El Presidente
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Everything posted by Timbo

  1. I enjoy the varied weather conditions boating can throw at you. One of my most memorable voyages was racing a thunderstorm to find a mooring for the night. Watching the lightening flash across the marshes as the wind picked up and the rain began. Remember to put the fishing rods away when the lightening occurs and keep off the decks when it's overhead. Food and clothing are uppermost in my mind when it comes to 'foul weather'. The means to make plenty of hot soups and stews in the galley. A good supply of tea and coffee and the essential rum to lace it with. Appropriate clothing that is easy to dry in the boat and a supply of coins for the launderette at Wroxham should we get caught in a deluge. There's a reason you see quite a few of the 'old hands' wearing shorts or lightweight trousers in the rain...they don't take as much drying as jeans and other heavyweight materials. Same goes for 'jumpers' or 'tops', I favour fleeces and fleece 'hoodies'. I also take waterproof over trousers and a kagool with me and a change of footwear. Boots for walking the dogs and two paits of deck shoes for onboard the boat. One pair for on deck and one pair for in the cabin. For me, the most essential preparation for foul weather...make sure my tobacco, papers and filter tips are safe and dry in a waterproof tin. Storms, volcanic eruption and other freak weather and geological anomalies pale into insignificance to a Force Eight Timbo sans smoke and a coffee!
  2. I had cable TV installed just before Christmas. The first time I've had TV in the house for fifteen years. I watched the TV the day after it was installed. Celebrity this, celebrity that (no one with any talent or skill), Police Intercept this and Police Intercept that. Comedy shows twenty years past their sell by date that were never all that funny in the first place, including reruns of 'topical news comedy' that would have been funny five years ago but topicality has a shelf life. Factually incorrect documentaries and reality shows featuring a parade of half wits and numpties glorying in their own ineptitude, stupidity and mediocrity, the shows presented in makeshift studios ranging from tents to sheds and store cupboards, fronted by former alternative comedians now turned mainstream enjoying the money but with a look of 'kill me now' on their faces. I flicked forward through the programme planner to see what the thousand plus channels had scheduled for the coming months. The same. More of same. I turned off the television and cable TV box. Rang the cable company and arranged to have the TV package cancelled. Who knows, I might try it again in another fifteen years...but I doubt it.
  3. It should be written as "got me down to a 't'" (lower case 't'). The 't' is short for 'tittle', a tittle being an orthographic instrument such as the dot above the letter 'i' or indeed the stroke on the letter 't'. The phrase is first recorded in regular use in the 1690s.
  4. Didn't the Japanese invade Singers around then?
  5. I thought in the 1950s all the pubs outside of London were only allowed to open for eight hours a day mid week starting no earlier than eleven in the morning, with an enforced two hour close before the evening session which ended at ten o'clock prompt...pursuant to the 1921 Licensing Act...of course...lock in's excluded! But...I'm way too young to remember the 1950's!
  6. Can swim and do swim better than most and I still wear a lifejacket. Griff may confirm the training method and pool locations but I learned to swim using the Royal Navy method, as taught by Uncle Albert. My first 'swimming' experience was in the pool at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. I would have been just months old. I'm told that I discovered that if I rolled from the mat b y the poolside that I was laying on three things would happen. I would get cool instantly. Mum would shriek Lots of Royal Navy officers would dive into the pool after me. Skip ahead a few years and I'm about eight years old. I'm mad keen on the Saturday Anime 'Marine Boy' with Bolton Piper and Klee Klee. My swimming lessons were conducted by Uncle Albert at the old Grey Friars Pool in Doncaster. An old Edwardian single hall public baths with changing cubicles around the edge of the pool and purple pickling vinegar baths for your feet before entering the water. Uncle Albert's Royal Navy Swimming Lesson Plan Lesson One Dress child in swimming trunks too large for him. Dip his feet in the purple pickling vinegar. Walk him to the deep end. Throw child in water a couple of strokes away from the edge. When child thrashes his way to the edge of the pool in panic...step on his fingers to stop him hanging on. When child thrashes further away towards the deep end and makes another grab for the side...step on his fingers again. When child works out that he can walk on the bottom of the pool to the shallow end, reward him by saying 'well done just like Marine Boy' and offering him a cup of hot sweet milky tea from the thermos flask you brought. When child has climbed out of the water and walks towards the cubicle at the deep end of the pool...throw him in the water again telling child to fetch his swimming trunks back from the bottom of the pool. Lesson Two As lesson one, but throw child further into the pool. Lesson Three (Same Day) Tell child it's time to go home and allow him to get dressed. When child is dressed...throw him in the pool. Make sure child realizes it's harder to swim with your clothes on. Keep child treading water and show him how to trap air in his clothing to stay afloat Lesson Four (Next Day) Repeat lessons one and two but increase distance child is hurled into pool Teach child how to float on back Teach child how to float on front Child will swim four widths before allowed out of pool Lesson Five (Same Day) Repeat lesson Three Uncle Albert's leave was abruptly cancelled. Before he left he gave me one of his white cloth uniform badges with a dagger on it. When he got back...swimming lessons resumed. Was I terrified? At first. Did I learn to swim? You bet! Did it put me off swimming? No way...I was Marine Boy! I've found that even now, when I'm in the water I'm far happier and capable than I am out of it. I still wear a life jacket though.
  7. Firkle interruptus! With my other half quite ill, I've had to take over her duties of kid wrangling with the addition of much errand running backwards and forwards between GP surgery and Chemist, food shopping, shopping delivery and general Timbo taxiing. I've also got additional compootering advice and fixation to do for family members who claim on their CV to be 'computer literate' and yet...I can't see an end to these additional duties until at least Sunday. I spent Saturday negotiating the interminable roadworks that inflict Lincolnshire at present. UK Border patrol could do themselves a power of good by employing the half wit from Lincolnshire Council that plans roadworks in the county. This numb-nuts has instigated roadworks on every entrance and exit to Gainsborough and Lincoln, effectively sealing off the population between now and late December. To reach Watson's house in the southern villages of Lincoln I was sent on a route of endless detours. At one point I was closer to Norfolk than I've been all year. Plywood! I watched an interesting film by the Victoria and Albert Museum comparing the production of plywood in the 1950's and production techniques at the turn of this century. In the fifties production was centred in Canada with timber from the Douglas Fir. The best quality plywood now comes from Scandinavia, health and safety and fewer workers more evident. The production techniques however, were still the same. Soaking the logs, removing the bark, rolling the log against sharp knives to produce veneers which are then laid in alternate directions, glued and pressed into plywood sheets and then trimmed. In the twenty first century that technique has changed, judging by what passes for plywood sold by B&Q. I bought some sheets of plywood for projects I will be making soon. Large labels applied to the sheets declared them to be FSC certified and guaranteed that the area under the large label would immediately be recycled. I removed the labels and the surface of the ply came away with the glue. Modern plywood it seems is constructed by recycling the tree bark into chaff which is fed to flatulent Far Eastern beaver and moose. Chaff laden moose farts are then directed at poor quality compressed laminates covered in tomato soup coloured glue where a microscopic layer of fart dust coats the board. These boards are unfit for purpose. Even using them as a substrate to hold a veneer would not work as the layer of fart dust will not hold the veneer and glue. It looks as though I will have to source some birch wood ply for my projects, but then there are only a few pennies between the good stuff and B&Q FSC (Fart Slurried Crap) plywood! Axle pins! Until such time as I can build myself a mini lathe or Santa delivers one (fat chance) I have to resort to buying axle pins for the toys and gifts I have planned. I ordered these from a wood turner in Welsh Wales. Good quality beech pins but expensive at around seven quid for fifty of them. Still, it will mean cars, trucks and trains will be easier to construct. I do have an old Bosch drill in good working condition that I scrounged from Ben Gunn that is destined to be the base of my home-made lathe, but I can't let myself get distracted from the Christmas projects. You never know, Santa just might come through for me? Door! My upstairs neighbour borrowed two planes from me to plane down the bottom of a door that no longer fitted after having new carpets laid. Although he is a self proclaimed expert in all things DIY his wife tells me this morning that he was unable to do the job as the 'planes were too heavy' and were 'too big to fit between the bottom of the door and the carpet'. I'm off to walk the dogs in the woods to have a good laugh where they can't hear me. Oh to hell with it, MuHahahahhahha!!!!! (Five exclamation marks!)
  8. When I first started fishing my Dad would give my little brother a handful of maggots to play with to keep him occupied. "Gone!" John declared and Uncle Albert would reach down without taking his eyes off his float and hand him another four or five maggots. "Gone!" more maggots issued. "Gone!" Uncle Albert gave him some more but this time watched what he was doing with them. He was eating them!
  9. Shop staff do not have to wear a mask within the store in which they work. However, many stores have taken the standpoint that 'if our customers are expected to wear a mask then it is not only fair but sensible for our staff to do so too'. It also depends on the type of store and the products that they sell. For example in the realm of make up, the girls on counter have only just been allowed to colour match a customer but only on their forehead. The counter staff must be wearing a visor and a mask as well as gloves to do this. All brushes and tools must be sterilized and all stations sanitized between customers.
  10. Having had discussions with Ian, I'm told the best we are prepared to run to is a thirty second glance at a photocopy of a fifty pence coin. Along with our undying gratitude, of course!
  11. New restrictions in North West, Midlands and West Yorkshire just flashed on the news. Measures to come into force on Tuesday.
  12. This is currently just in the north east of England, Andrew and not in Norfolk.
  13. Many many congratulations Griff, he's a Bobby Dazzler! I have to admit this is the second time I've read the original post. On the first occasion I was suffering from lack of sleep and lack of spectacles and now used as I am to your RN precision I returned to bed wondering who this lieutenant Wagstaff was and why he was sending post natal women shopping? Congratulations again Griff!
  14. Oooh arr! Them's not dustbins, them's hagricultural. Them's essential to the fishing for and capture of prime Tench...being worm farms ooh arr! One is fine English Red Worm and the other is the larger Dutch Dendrobaena worms.
  15. Christmas is coming and She Who Must Be Obeyed has decided we are having a 'traditional Christmas'. My jubilation at her initial pronouncement was short lived. I was under the impression that a 'traditional Christmas' meant the grand kids would get an orange and a stick each and Christmas would last just two days. Apparently, what a traditional Christmas really means is Timbo becoming an 'elf ensconced in his workshop' making wooden toys and gifts from his carefully hoarded fine timber between now and December. Please note, I am carefully trying to hide my glee at being given something to do that I'm going to enjoy immensely! I fully appreciate that the wooden gifts I've made for people are very much...appreciated by those people or so I'm lead to believe. At first I thought people were just being kind in much the same way they stick the kids pictures to the fridge door. But I have a backlog of requests for things like chopping boards, jewellery and toy boxes, pieces of campaign furniture, toy train sets and the like. As much as I am going to enjoy making Christmas gifts, it is going to create problems of time, space and cost. My workshop might be a little blue box and I am a doctor familiar with the twists and turns of history ancient and modern, but as for the rest...that's where the similarity ends. My 'blue box' has internal dimensions dependent upon the external dimensions. “Could you make me a ten foot long sideboard to match our dining table?” The answer is 'yes I could' but 'no I can't' followed by an explanation I need a workshop at least twice as long as the longest dimension of the object I'm making. And then there's the issue of storing materials and finished products. “Can you make me one of these incredibly complicated things by Friday?” Again the answer is 'yes I could' but 'no I can't as I have other things to do'. Finally there's the cost part of the equation. The couple of quid some people want to spend will not cover the materials and will definitely not cover the hours spent in the making. I have to admit, I do suffer from a similar attitude when I visit craft fairs as a customer. I tend to view costs against how much I could make the product for without calculating the time and production costs involved. There are also the jokers exhibiting at craft fairs that buy wooden products manufactured in factories in Asia for a few pence which are held together with a few pins and a lot of glue. The 'crafter' then writes a slogan on them in marker pen and try charging top dollar for them. In the past I've had an inherent dislike of 'batching' products. I thoroughly enjoy making one item but I don't want to work in factory. I've had that experience and was utterly miserable. While I was working in the factory, terminal depressives would go out of their way to tell me to 'cheer up you miserable pillock!'. But as a 'Junior Christmas Elf' I'm going to have to consider making small batches of things just to catch up on back orders. So, today, I have mostly been making dickey's lugholes! For those not familiar with this wonderful piece of apparatus, the dickey's lugholes is a jig to help refine the forty-five degree angle on one half of a forty-five degree mitre joint with a bench plane. The mitre joint is allegedly one of the simplest box making joints, but one I consistently mess up. I think the problem is seated in my 'one handedness' and the hand that works is my 'kack' hand. No matter how hard I try or how accurately I set the angles on my saw, nine times out of ten I will end up with gaps in my mitre joints. With the aid of the dickey's lugholes I can cut the mitre joints roughly to forty-five degrees and then allegedly sneak up on the final measurement. That is the theory, but as I'm finding with all things woodworking it ain't necessarily so! The dickey's lugholes turned out well with all of the joints accurately set. I ran the plane through to set the bed angle and all was well. As a test piece I made myself a box out of some cedar to keep my pencils in. I ran the timber through the table saw to rip it to thickness and then I canted the saw blade to forty-five degrees using my digital angle box. I used my mitre sled and stop blocks to cut the mitre joints and trimmed to final length using the dickey's lugholes. Gaps! Not as big as I usually get, but still gaps. I turned to a woodworking friend for guidance. “What's the problem?” he asked. I pointed to the gaps I could see. “Nope, still can't see the problem!” I sighed with frustration. “The only problem is that you are a perfectionist!” said my friend. “Remember it's wood and a natural material!” 'Practise' they say 'makes perfect'. So the first project out of the Christmas Elf's Workshop will be some smaller pencil boxes. Let's see how we get on?
  16. So...a boat to tour the Norfolk Broads with as small a carbon footprint as possible, composed from biodegradable or recyclable materials that could offset part of the carbon bill of it's construction...er...why are we trying to reinvent the wheel?
  17. I came across this fascinating documentary of an archaeological discovery and event in Norwich the other day. A very moving story that has personal, familial connotations for me and mine. Mention is made of my direct ancestors in York during the middle ages and what happened to them in similar circumstances.
  18. I'm afraid that where boats are concerned, any pro-environmental points scored with electric propulsion would be eradicated unless your boat is made of biodegradable materials. Every time I see that pink painted plastic yacht they keep dragging to eco-demonstrations in London, I can't help but wonder at the damage that thing is doing to the environment in being towed to and from, not to mention the paint flaking off the thing when it eventually goes to landfill.
  19. Timbo

    My Day

    In my time I've received and returned handshakes, salutes, the thumbs...up and down, air kisses, the occasional bow and the middle and two fingers but today I was confronted with something absolutely ridiculous. A grown man, advancing towards me waggling his elbow at me. "What's your game sonny?" I asked him. "It's the new handshake since covid, you bump elbows." Apparently my reply of 'go stand over there you clown before I knock you out' is not the response he was anticipating.
  20. I'm starting to see some progress! Well, I can see the top of a bench. I managed to finish sorting out all of my drill bits, forstner bits, countersinks, buffing bits and sanding drums. I even named my two drill presses after some dear friends of mine. Vaughan rattles on a bit but is accurate, while Andrew is smoother but doesn't get enough excercise! I suffered a plague of engineers this afternoon when a friend asked if he could borrow one of my chisels as his wasn't very sharp. I took one look at the chisel he was using and offered to sharpen his tool rather than loan him one of mine. It took me a couple of hours to sharpen the chisel and when I gave it him back he ran his thumb over the edge and duly sliced it open. "I didn't know chisels could be that sharp!" he said with a gob full of thumb. "They are supposed to be that sharp!" "Could you sharpen my other chisel please?" he asked passing me another chisel while he hunted for an Elastoplast. The chisel he handed across was...look, I've dug up two thousand year old metal artefacts that were in better nick than the lump of uselessness he had the temerity to call a 'chisel'. The cutting edge of this thing must have been almost two millimetres thick. It took me quite a it of time just getting rid of some of the rust. 'Andrew' got a good workout with a wire brush (when I next speak to his Mrs on the phone I can truthfully say Andrew is getting excercise!). I had to resort to a file to try and flatten and square the business end of the chisel before running through the grits on the diamond and wet stones up to eight thousand. I did my best but I couldn't quite get the edge perfectly square. The neighbourhood cats are all looking a bit nervous as space is created in the shed, all wondering who will be the test pilot when I check the space available for the Christmas projects!
  21. I awoke laying on the floor in an unfamiliar house. A small black and white television playing in the background. I tried to cast my mind back to the previous evening. I'd moved into the new house. Nipped out to grab a couple of cans of beer and a curry. I could remember pulling the tab on the first can...and then nothing. I had a hell of a headache, but I was comfortable and grabbed a cushion from the sofa for a pillow to watch TV. It seemed to be one of those special BBC dramas like 'Threads' where they had recruited real newscasters to make the plot more plausible. Although it was a good movie, after a couple of hours it got boring. Besides which, I was hungry and my head was really hurting. I needed some paracetamol, coffee and something to eat. I limped into the town that was my new home. I'd only been out of hospital for a week after a major operation on my spine. People were starring, but I put this down to being a stranger in a small town. I walked into Weatherspoons in search of some food. I got to the bar and tried to make my order, but they refused to serve me. Worse still, they asked me to leave and then barred me. By now my head was really hurting and I was really hungry, I was sure I could smell curry. The only other place open was WH Smiths. They might have sandwiches. I asked at the till if they did...and they threw me out for being drunk. My head was now banging, I was really, really hungry and I needed a coffee badly. I made my way home to find my Dad, Uncle Albert, waiting for me outside of terrace house I had recently rented. "Look at the state of you!" he exclaimed pushing me into his car after putting some plastic on the seat. He drove me the ten miles to his house, pulled me from the car and into the house where I was pushed into the bathroom and my shirt pulled off. Somehow my shirt was covered in curry. "Has he been drinking?" Uncle Albert's wife asked. "There was a can on the floor but three full ones on his desk" said Uncle Albert before exclaiming "Jesus Christ...have you seen his arm?". All this time I had stood confounded while my shirt was ripped off and I was turned around in front of the mirror. My arm, neck, back of my head, shoulder, side and back were black. "What's he covered in?" "Nowt, it's a bruise!" said Uncle Albert. NHS Direct was called and I was asked to come to the phone and talk to them. After a few questions Uncle Albert took the receiver back and quickly I was taken outside to the car and driven to hospital. Straight through casualty waiting room, straight onto a gurney and in what seemed like minutes I was being prodded and poked while blood samples were taken. In the corner of the room a television was showing the same drama from that morning. "Is this rubbish still on? I mean it's a good concept but it's dragging on a bit!" I thought I'd asked my eyes feeling suddenly heavy. "See? He's talking rubbish!" I can remember Uncle Albert's Mrs saying. "Nowt new there then." said Uncle Albert. A doctor loomed at my side and slipped an oxygen mask over my head. "Dr Johnson? Dr Johnson? Try to stay awake, look at me!" said the doctor. A nurse loomed from the other side and cradled my head. "I'd rather stay with her!" I'm fairly sure I said. "It's a date." said the nurse "Just keep talking to us." The doctor loomed back into vision. "Dr Johnson, you've had a hemorrhagic stroke and..." And...it all went black. Life ended or dramatically changed for so many people on that day and would never be the same again, I was thirty five years old and had just had my first stroke. It turned out that I had sat down the evening before to eat my curry. I'd just cracked open the first beer without taking a sip and I'd stroked out, collapsing on the floor covering myself in curry, beer and blood where I'd opened up the wound from my spine operation. I'd walked into Weatherspoons slurring and incoherent (you'd think of all places they would be used to that) because of the stroke. Eight months later and I went on that date with the nurse from casualty.
  22. Timbo

    Hooked Cygnet..

    To avoid swans around your tackle...don't wear underwear made by Warburtons! Learning to fish 101...never wind in your line when ducks or swans appear. You still find numpties winding in which flicks the terminal tackle up through the water to tangle around the feet of the bird or to present a tasty morsel higher in the water to peck at. Guaranteed to increase the chances of 'hook a duck'. Learning to fish 101a...learn to make the swan threat call while simultaneously pulling line from your reel and lifting your rod tip. The birds are conditioned to move away when an angler lifts the rod, you will see them dart away from the shadow of the rod. The terminal tackle will stay in place and not rise in the water. Swans will move away from the threat noise...think the K and c sounds in a Liverpudlian accent, saying 'accent'. Learning to fish 101b...keep throwing some bread in so it drifts into the swim of the angler who wound their tackle in. Gives him a chance to watch the swans and ducks.
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