SteveO

If you ever have the chance, visit the Ludham Open Gardens event, which is held every 2 years (Cov-19 notwithstanding). You would see that many of the houses down Staithe Rd have extensive gardens, which back onto Womack, When you are moored on the parish staithe, you have no idea that you are looking at these, many of which have little landing stages and/or boat docks, often half-concealed by the undergrowth.

A blowlamp would shift it

Sorry to hear about your tribulations, but at least you are on the mend. Some things are just not meant to be.

Even the Archers has gone "pants" recently. Endless right-on "political" storylines, token ethnic minorities and lately, under the smokescreen of Cov-19 it seems to have lapsed into a series of boring monologues. This is what happens when you have a captive audience. I've given up on it - better things to do with my time. Still paying though, which I resent.

It is about time the idea of a "TV Tax" was abolished. There are so many ways to consume TV content nowadays that don't involve the BBC that it is wrong for consumers to have to pay for a service that is increasingly promoting its own political agenda, is out of touch with it's actual customer base and which, by virtue of a captive source of funding, has no commercial accountability whatsoever. I would far rather we had a subscription service which allowed you access to BBC content by choice, not compulsion and which would ensure that the Beeb produced material that their customers want to watch/listen to. For too long we have seen BBC programming dumbed down and loaded with left-liberal political messaging in pursuit of their target demographic, which seems to be the under 35's and who in all actuality consume most of their TV via their phones from sources other than the BBC. A move to subscription would also encourage the BBC to live within its means and not pay huge amounts of money to its "talent" and I use the word advisedly.

The winner of this evening's quiz was Tigerhawk on 11 points, with NikO on 9 and Polly in 3rd place on 7.5. Tigerhawk will be QM next Friday - Congratulations Dave!

So I will be your QM tomorrow, when the topics will be as follows: HIDDEN PLACES FASTEST FINGER FIRST LINK WORDS Half-time break MOVIE TAGLINES DOUBLE MAYHEM As usual, we will start at around 8.30. To join in, go to: https://www.nbnquiz.co.uk/chat/ Enter your forum username but no password needed. Hope you can join us.

I suspect that with people at home due to lockdown, the scammers will have had not just a field day, but a golden year. I have had so many via e-mail and phone that it is hard to remember them all. The usual suspects (Talk-Talk, Microsoft, "your ISP" etc) but also a number of e-mail scammers alleging payment problems with Amazon and PayPal. Fortunately I have a background in cyber-security and they are very easy to spot.

As an experiment I dried some cayenne chillis and then blitzed them in my coffee grinder to make powder. The result was a revelation. The powder was around 5x hotter than the commercial stuff and had a beautiful fruity aroma and taste. Three years on it has lost the fruity overtones but is still very hot.

The shortages here strangely seemed to coincide with a cooking programme that Jamie Oliver was running on TV in the early stages of lockdown. For a week after he cooked broccoli, there was no broccoli to be had and the same thing happened with pasta and other ingredients. I think I had over-estimated the cooking skills and imagination of the nation.

If this rears its head again, you could always do what I did: Back in April, I bought a 10Kg bag of chapatti flour from Tesco for the princely sum of £3.50, I think it was a "Ramadan special" or something. Now it is £5. Obviously, it makes excellent chappatis, which we eat a fair number of anyway, but it also makes very good bread. It says on the bag that it is wholemeal wheat flour and it must be pretty strong, judging by the way the bread rises.

We in the south of England have seen increasingly obnoxious, rude, aggressive and even violent behaviour among (largely) youngsters at the bigger seaside resorts over the last 2-3 weeks. Strange how lockdown was supposed to make us a more caring society and more respectful of the planet. In reality it seems to have had exactly the opposite effect.

Funny how you can name it after a small bear and no-one seems offended but you can't call it sh*te, which is what it is.

You'll be scoring won't you?

Used to do that but the pay was rubbish.

31 degrees and no air-conditioning. What do you do? In our case yesterday we went to our local beach. We eventually found a parking spot in a nearby side road and set off beachwards with our picnic, towels and beach mats. We arrived to find that the place was busy but not ridiculously so and it was easy to find a spot to pitch our camp 4-5 yds from anyone else. Now for a swim. The water was absolutely freezing. No, I mean Winterton on Sea with extra ice cubes. I eventually got used to it after the cold had killed off my nerve endings and had a very pleasant dip. The tide was coming in fast so we had our picnic lunch and then moved our pitch up the beach. Then a rest to let the food go down, another swim, dry off again, pack up and the 10 minute drive home. Everyone we saw observed social distancing, there was no bad behaviour, except for a group of kids extravagantly smoking marajuana on the beach. No abuse, no riots and no littering that we observed. No TV cameras and no drama. Interestingly our local council was doing regular bin emptying on the seafront.

If you don't feel comfortable on the beach, in a pub or in any other situation, then stay away. No-one is forcing anyone to go there. The fact is that for anyone under 45 and in normal health, the risk from Cov-19 is minimal. The youngsters should be getting on with life, spending their cash and getting the economy going again. If they don't, the risk to society as a whole from the resulting deep recession and the austerity which will follow will be far greater. Older folks are at greater risk and therefore need to be slightly more circumspect. Those with serious health issues obviously need to be very much more careful.

The pipe to the tank rises up in a large loop before falling back into the tank. When you remove the joker valve, (usually when the pump needs servicing and is not working well) whatever was in the rising section of pipe ends up on the floor.

Daft question, but have you thought about eating more fruit?

We've had "stay out of the sunshine" warnings, "no swimming in rivers" warnings and "water shortage" warnings already today, to say nothing of the usual Covid social distancing bleats and tweets. They'll be wheeling Greta out any day now, just to cheer us up a little bit more.

So can I, then another 25 minutes to clear up and disinfect the whole area because of all the crap that pours out when you remove the rubber valve.

Must admit, I worked in a busy food shop when I was much younger. By my reckoning then, 90% of the public were fantastic, 8% were stupid and the remaining 2% were probably insane. I suspect the proportions haven't changed much as the world has grown more crowded, but the numbers certainly have.

Seems to me that there is a very thin veneer of civilization in some people and this crisis has removed a lot of it. We seem to have an epidemic of rudeness, racism and abuse. I can't believe that people in this day and age would take down 5G masts and abuse BT Openreach employees in the belief that these things spread Coronavirus. Neither can I believe the wholesale dumping of rubbish on our roadsides and beaches. What have schools and parents been teaching their kids for the last 30 years, I wonder?

As a slight aside, I believe that the British Standard for lavatory pans included a "flushability" test which involved attempting to dispose of a 1lb Dundee cake. I have never looked at fruit cake in the same light since I heard this. Probably now superseded by a European Norm which involves a quantity of chocolate eclairs.

I don't know why they call it a joker valve. Changing it is no laughing matter.