Broithe

Irish Rail have just retweeted this timely advice - ,

Don't really need radar for a Tu-95 - just open the window and turn the radio down....

Out for another spin- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32740942 .

"Ah, that's been here for ages". Most unlikely that she's noting the numbers down.

And, of course, just to annoy people here further, the inch was actually standardised to be exactly 25.4mm in as late as 1959.

I'm fairly bilingual in these things, though I think in Fahrenheit in the summer and Celsius in the winter... If they aren't still doing it, it wasn't long ago that horses and artworks were still auctioned in guineas (1 Guinea = £1.05). I needed a clock face measuring for a replacement glass, but I forgot to do it whilst I was there. So I rang the retired teacher and asked her to do it for me - "It needs to be accurate", I told her - "Six and half inches" - "Is that exact?" - "I suppose so" - "Mmm, can you do it in millimetres? It needs to be a close fit" - "I can do it in centimetres, if you can convert it". That happened just before Christmas - she was teaching primary school pupils only a few years ago....

And nobody had even complained. It's even madder than it looks, wines and spirits must be sold in metric measures, but draught beers and ciders must be in pints or half-pints. Bottled beers and ciders can be either. I have seen milk in pints and litres on the same shelf in supermarkets. A council on the south coast put up a sign saying "Public Convenience 400 metres" - they got a solicitor's letter telling them to change it to yards or they would be taken to court - and they would have lost, the law is very specific - road signs must be in imperial units, even for pedestrians. This sort of thing - http://www.bwmaonline.com/Road%20Signs%20Muddle.htm .

Only out of bottles here, I hope - selling draught beer in litres is a "serious" offence - well, serious enough for you to be prosecuted. Bloke here done for selling Polish beer to Poles in half-litres - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1042009/Pub-threatened-hefty-fine-serving-lager-litre-glasses-instead-pints.html . And people still talk of MPG, when it's around thirty years since anybody bought a gallon of petrol here.

People here are mad on Imperial, but they often have no idea how it all works. Whenever anybody goes on about 'foreign' measurements, I always ask them "how many feet in a mile?" - very few have any idea. An old boy was moaning to me about kilograms once - "Why don't they wait until all the old people are dead? I don't know what a kilogram is." I asked him when he last bought a two-pound bag of sugar (having just made a cup of tea and seen a new bag in the cupboard). "Last week" was the answer. "No it wasn't" I told him, "you last bought a two-pound bag of sugar in 1968, you have been buying kilogram bags ever since then, and you still don't know what a kilogram is...?" It sort of made sense 300 years ago - he thought 100 was blood temperature, but he might have had a touch of 'flu at the time, and he thought that zero was as cold as it would ever get. There's always Réaumur, if you really want to confuse people

Guinness is €4 for me in Laois or £3.30/£3.70 here in the English Midlands. I recall it hitting 30p here in about 1975. I remember thinking American tourists were thick when they just held out handfuls of £sd coins in shops and said "just take whatever it is". Then, a few years ago, I tried to explain the old money to a Serbian, and when I got to the half-crown, which was half of something that you never saw, and didn't really say on it how much it was worth, I realised that they just hadn't got time to learn it all before they went back home.. I also tried to explain Fahrenheit to him and he really thought I was making it up.

Just say that you were looking at it on the phone and it was too small to read - nobody'll notice...

It's an A-320 - it says it just above the registration, behind the back door.

I'm still regretting the loss of the starting handle and the kick-start. I saw a car with a motorised boot-lid the other day, the world has gone mad.

I have a 5p note - they were used for some years in the '70s, in various UK offshore territories.. ..and I do still enjoy bamboozling the youths with talk of thirty bob, etc...

£sd - them was the days.

For God's sake, don't bring religion into it...

In Cork this time - https://www.corkchamber.ie/events/2015/05/20/Networking-Event-on-an-Irish-Rail-Train/register - but, you have to be 'in' to go on it.

Not sure if this should be here or in "Dazzle Ships"...?

It could be blowin' through the jasmine in your mind... [video=youtube;wG-nLotrSlY] Seals and Crofts...? Sounds like the basis for a narrow gauge layout in a sparsely populated coastal area of Scotland. Possibly with Cú na Mara coaches...

A Class / Class A - it's a fine line, that many will cross... And I'm not sure about the cement, getting 'em on the hard stuff straight away..?

Sounds like you've had enough for tonight.....

I believe that is a cocktail known as a Cement Bubble.

Any time.

Substances are not the solutions for your troubles, necessarily.

Stay on track, that's the whole point.