For those that don't live with any of the popular addictions/bad habits such as Smoking/vaping/weed/gambling/casual sex/alcohol etc:, Firstly, well done on your self restraint. However, how do you blow off steam and manage stress and anxiety? Also, how are you not utterly bored shitless?'
As someone who loves good food and variety, I follow quite a few food threads. I live in the southeast of England and read with some envy about the wealth of regional dishes and local tastes that still prevail across most of the rest of the UK and Ireland. I feel like in this part of the country and certainly here in Surrey that there are virtually zero local specialities, with largely just either generic British food or international food. If anyone knows of anything to the contrary or of anywhere in Surrey or SW London where I can find someone doing something a bit different with food, I'd be interested to hear. I'm talking about the kind of things you'd find in decent real ale pubs, cafes, takeaways, etc. Fine dining and gastropubs are not my thing. Thanks.
I can't be the only person who thinks all scheduled services should be staffed with proper contracted hours, rather than the practice across all operators of having a heavy reliance on overtime to staff Sundays.
I have to use a branch line, which is considered a back road, so if there's a lack of staff on Sundays, it's the first thing to be sacrificed with cancelled trains par for the course. I would have thought overtime should be there to cater for things like bank holidays, national events, staff leave or sickness, not week in week out Sunday ops!
It's an unreliable and disreputable system, subject to a lack of volunteers, short notice change, people pulling out, and having to prioritise one route over another.
It makes it incredibly difficult for both operations managers and travellers to plan and mitigate for.I can't think of any other type of business where this would be considered adequate. Imagine running a pub or a shop, without a clue who's gonna be working on a Sunday from one week to the next.
Why should rail workers God given right to overtime be at the expense of passengers?
From about 1924 to 32/33 it was common for most British and American dance records to end with the strike of a high hat, sometimes cymbal or triangle. Was it purely the style of the time? I had wondered whether it was to give the engineers operating the recording lathe a moment of certainty to pick up the cutting arm?
Excuse the lack of a photo, really need to dig out some old ones at home!
This is a bit of a long shot, but is there still anyone around from the Epsom area, with any memories of my late Dad, Dave Sandall? He was born in May '52 and his family home was 114 Hook Road. He lived in Epsom till around 1980, a few years before I was born when my parents moved to Ashtead. After my parents parted company, he moved around a bit, Chichester briefly, then back to Epsom for a time, then around the Croydon area for a while, though he kept up connections with Epsom. He moved to West Sussex around late nineties, where he lived until his death in 2020. After moving to Sussex, he largely lost touch with his Epsom links. I just had the thought that I know literally no one from his past that's still alive. If anyone knew my Dad or has any recollections of him, it'd be great to hear! Sandall being a pretty unusual name, this might jog a few memories. Cheers, Leigh.
My friend was shocked that I eat the fat off bacon raw; is this weird? My mum first gave me the bacon rind to chew as a toddler, still doing it in middle age and it's never made me ill! Incidentally, I'm talking about high quality, smoked butcher's bacon, not watery, processed garbage out of a packet!
How cool would it be to get Jean Slater (Gillian Wright, really) on celebrity masterchef doing an elevated version of "sausage surprise", and "fishy basket"!?
Quick question here. Those little bayonet plugs of yesteryear are generally considered a complete hazard these days but are they really that bad?
I suspect they were discouraged in the end because so many idiots were plugging in totally inappropriate things and drawing too much current from 5amp lighting circuits. I've also seen some crazy old photos of multiple 2 way splitters plugged into each other; Christmas tree of wires off one light socket!
I've got a couple of plugs I'd like to use for spots where I don't have a handy power point, and an extension lead would be an eyesore/trip hazard. For clarity, all I want to plug in is a string of mains fairy lights in one, and a radio in the other. Also, there will be no pulling around or tension on the fitting, any more than the action of changing a light bulb. Can I assume I'm quite safe to use them?
No offence intended, but what's it like being a gay lad in the Gypsy culture? It comes across as being pretty hard and unreformed. I can imagine life being made pretty unbearable for gay Gypsy men and being effectively pushed out.
I don't think anyone's gonna deny that over the last decade or two, people have become a lot more selfish and inconsiderate. I'm not talking high impact stuff, but just little acts of selfishness where people are either doing or not doing small acts that then create an additional job/mess/anxiety/stress that someone else has to deal with. All avoidable with basic consideration.
it's fully possible I'm over thinking this, but it feels like too much of a coincidence that people have got so much more thoughtless in the same window of time in which smartphones have become ubiquitous! I reckon people spend so much of their time on their phones, with their minds anywhere else other than where they are, that we're just gradually losing the ability to fully engage with our surroundings in the here and now and consider how our actions impact upon it and others.
What do other people think about this?