HEM

Took This? You youngsters! Whilst I was at school the (totally mad) music teacher used to play Moody Blues (Threshold of a Dream & Children's Children)..

Even that is not necessarily true. If you have access to a server with SMTP you can totally fake things. Many years ago as a UNIX admin I used to know how to do this (via telnet) but my memory fades... Most decent installations nowadays disable telnet anyway.

Its always wise to hover your cursor over the apparent sender and often you see something totally different behind. One curious thing is that often when I order from Amazon (here they usually deliver via DHL) a short time afterwards I get a mail purporting to come from DHL but with dubious hidden sender. Its as if these guys monitor traffic.

Its actually spelt Kassler (with double "s"). Since we are an Anglo-German family we combine both worlds: the German tradition is Christmas Eve evening (just the 3 of us) whilst on the 25th we do turkey UK-style for the enlarged family (9 people). What we will have this evening (Christmas Eve) is not finalised - daughter has stand-by duty from 8am to 8pm at the Tox lab of the forensic medicine department of UKE (Hamburg university hospital). Thus it could be 20:30 before we eat. Wife & I will go for final shopping: it will either be some sort of fish or a steak. Dessert is the same as for past few years: Mousse au Chocolat (I made it up last evening & its in the fridge).

Every Christmas this one gets trotted out here - those who did "O"-Level German at school should manage:

I should add that I'm not a chemist - my father was a crystalographer (Reader in Chemistry @ Manchester University) & my daughter works in the toxialogical lab of the forensic department of UKE (Hamburg University Hospital) so there is some family trait there. On the other hand myself, my (German) wife & son are computer scientists...

It was pretty good All one has to do is to follow the checklist err recipe.... Manchester - thats where I was before moving out here for one year (that was 36 years ago - still here). I worked then for Manchester University lived at my parent's place near Knustford.

Yesterday evenng I made Chicken, Leek and Cider Pie served with boiled potatoes. It was a LOT of work, the wife loved it & daughter ate hers so that means something. If anyone tries to make it do not underestimate the amount of work until the pie goes into the oven! I did use ready-made puff pastry from local supermarket.

I remember in the late 60s/early 70s staying in a cottage at Thurne & Basil Curtis of the then village shop said "we loikes to see the visitors feeding the ducks - because when they (the visitors) are gone - out come the guns". I was pals with Basil's son Ernie but have long since lost contact. Ernie worked for a number of years in Singapore & them moved to Ormesby (where I once visited him) but I have since lost all contact.

Reminds me of when I owned a Renault 5: I called it Perky - because it pinked...

Brings back memories - my father bought a (new) Ford Corsair automatic in 1966 to take with us when we spent a year in Germany (Munich). It got sold a few years later just before I got my driver's license.

There are enough people around our way who believe that flashing red lights (or even lowered barriers) do not apply to them. Some even do it with kids in the back seat & the local Polizei on hand to watch.

I thought that with BREXIT the UK would be rid of the shackles of EU law?

So do you now work from home? (I've not been reading all the threads). I worked from Home Office the final 15 years or so of my working life & for me it was positive. Whilst missing the "by chance" information from colleagues in the office I was not disturbed or distracted by said colleagues - and in my case my immediate team members plus managers were in a different country (e.g. USA) anyway. Saved the half-hour commute each way. In the end I went into local office about once per quarter.

My sailplane passed its annual inspection today so its good for another 12 months. Not really to celebrate, but we went to a nearby Italian restaurant for a far-too-good meal before our daughter has to be available on-call (she works in the toxicological lab of the forensic medicine department of a nearby major hospital). One more task left for the day: change the clocks in the house.

On a recent visit to NE England & Scotland I was able to buy two Christmas Puddings & a supply of good sweet mincemeat. Since one of the puds is good into early 2020 we are set up for the next two Christmases even if BREXIT prevents my visiting the UK or the import of Christmas puds (at one time rumoured to set off the explosive detectors at Manchester airport) into the EU next year. I can vouch for the explosive detector at MAN story . Some years ago I was in Manchester (where my then employer had the European training centre & I had been helping out) and had a Christmas pud in my hand luggage. Sure enuf a security lady came towards me with my bag to be opened - on seeing the pud & three Terrys chociolate oranges (hand genades?) she just laughed.

This is where it helps to run a computer which uses a deritive of UNIX rather than MS-Windows. Its quite good fun trying to execute DOS commands on a UNIX system.

A few years ago we stayed at a nice B & B in Keswick. The Bank Tavern is the place to eat in the evening (if you can get in there!)

Sad isn't it? I remember a few years back sat at Ibiza airport waiting for our luggage conveyor to start moving (we'd just arrived from Hamburg). There were masses of folk stood (well, staggering) around the neighbouring carousel fighting over their luggage & cursing their kids for just being there. That flight had come in from North of Hadrian's Wall and the adult passengers had been engaged in "mid-air refuelling". I felt really sorry for those poor kids at the start of their holiday.

I still have the complete set of AR's S&A series - most are original hardbacks (the copy of Secret Water shows "16s" (shillings) on the inside cover). The first book I read at age 9 or 10 was "Coot Club" which I found in a cupboard of the classroom at junior school. I believe I saw a few episodes of the 1963 TV series (we didn't own a TV back then) & (just as with the Hobbit & LoR) I have not & will not see modern filmings as it would spoil the vision I have from back then. Nowadays one has to read these books in their historical content - which youngster now would understand that half of Pigeon Post is taken up with the subject of carrier pigeons whereas today the reaction would be "why didn't they use their cell phone?"

If its any consolation its been +34C for large periods of the recent days where I live (West of Hamburg). Given our normal bad Summers this is a shock for the system - and the local agriculture where we have not had much useful rain for weeks or even months. Sleep is problematical. Yesterday a big BLACK could rolled up that emitted bright flashes & rumbling noises but it moves off to the East and dropped nothing on us. Apparently not far away there was torrential rain.

My day yesterday: 6 hours 48 minutes in the cramped cockpit of a glider (I'm too tall for this sport) flying a 511 km pre-declared task around Hamburg airspace. The last leg was into a head wind finding me South of the river Elbe short of 200m altitude to get home with a bunch of windmills threatening to put nasty cuts under my fuselage. After several tries under dying clouds (at time accompanied by a stork) I found a thermal to provide the necessary height gain as shown to be needed by the onboard Nav system plus a bit to spare.

I once sailed a Matham Boat half-decker up the channel to Martham Broad & back without needing to tack (its a bit narrow anyway for that!). Fishermen never heard us coming...