Broithe

Some people have started on the cake here, already.

A friend's father had an old Zephyr - old, even in the late 1970s, but he loved it. It needed some new sills and it was going to be done by a mate of his, who ran a back-street garage behind his house in Stoke on Trent. The work was dragging on and he decided to call in when he was passing, to chivvy things along a bit. As he entered the back gate, he saw his car being worked on, just at the moment that the torch went through the fuel line, and the whole thing escalated quickly... Rather than enter into any pointless discussions, he ran to a phone box to summon the fire brigade, as the yard was full of 'potential fuel', other cars, acetylene cylinders, etc. This was in the early days of computerisation and, as he described the location of the fire as 'a garage', he was asked "Is this a domestic garage or a commercial one?" As he was going to pay for the work he said "Commercial" This caused the system to identify the location as a Texaco petrol station a hundred yards away and despatched every appliance in the city, plus a couple for back-up from Chester...

Cars on lifts always reminds me of a friend's Escort van. It was a bit 'rough' and, when it went for its MOT, the chap refused to even stand under it... He took advantage of the local paper's cheap small ads promotion, to try to sell it for £50. It was a four-week run of adverts, but he had not a single call after three weeks. Almost as a joke, I suggested putting it in at £300 for the last advert, to see if there was a "you get what you pay for" customer out there. On the day the final advert appeared, the phone was ringing as he got home. "Is the van still available?:" "Yes." "Great, I'll be round in half an hour!" He arrived, had a quick look at the van - it was driveable, but it was clear that its days were numbered. "That doesn't matter, I've taken on a six week contract and it only needs to last that long", he said, as he handed over £300 in cash. "I'm glad I got here in time, I've been looking for a month, but there's only been rubbish for fifty quid."

There is a clock in Belgium that will take 25,800 years for one of the dials to rotate once. http://discoveringbelgium.blogspot.com/2012/06/zimmer-tower-in-lier-worlds-slowest.html

And Meccano, of course, although I had the Trix system - similar enough, but presumably metric...

I bought my nephew a 'generic non-Lego building set' in the mid 80s. It was supposed to be suitable for creating various ship models, impressively featured in pictures on the top of the box. Realising that I was likely to be required to 'assist' in the construction, I decided to have a few practice runs beforehand, carefully perusing the instructions, so as to appear competent on the day. Upon opening the box, I discovered that the instructions were only in Spanish... Luckily, we had a chap in the factory who had arrived in England as a child refugee from the Spanish Civil War. I gave him a 'working number' for one of my projects and put up some 'danger' barriers, so that we could work unmolested on a more important project, hidden behind some cabinets. I often wonder what would have happened, if we'd been caught building Lego ships...

And there's this thread. This remains my all time favourite Guinness tanker picture, albeit a road vehicle. The chap with the washing-up bowl is just superb. To be fair, it is delivering water during a supply issue - allegedly.

We still have time to form a band... My sole excursion into the world of public performance involved playing a triangle. When the bit where I was required to 'play' it arrived, I struck it at exactly the right moment... ... and the string broke.

Not really what you're looking for, but there was this, too. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/irnirishrailwaynews/guinness-darts-t1227.html

Ah, I did have the Lego motor unit and the individual rails. Lego had the advantage of packing down with little airspace and not being very fragile. With traction tyres and ridged rails, it would ascend a fair slope and rather extreme bridges could be constructed. The batteries fitted in the larger box, above the motor housing. You could, of course, make all sorts of things with the motor as the basis, not just railway-related items.

I don't remember him ever smoking, but he managed an occasional pint...

If you look at the houses along the southern section of Cardiff Castle Road in Finglas, you will notice the similarity in style, but that doesn't give away the full history. They were built by a 'commune' of building workers, for themselves. My uncle was one, he was the carpenter of the multi-skilled group. The roofs still look OK. He died in 2021, aged 103.

I've tried raising one finger after they ask me for the money. That doesn't work. Neither does raising two fingers...

That's an 'example picture', not my actual stuff.

Moving regularly, I never had a real train set, but I did have some bits of the 'Lone Star' stuff - not motorised - all die-cast, even the track.

It's this. It's not as 'chaotic' as it first seems, the vowels run across the fingertips in order, for example. And some letters are 'shape-related'. It's been around for a long time, it would be twenty years ago that I was doing it. Practice makes (almost) perfect...

Apart from the in-house Murphy set of three, there was another "Coal Traders" set, with different numbers.

Someone once told me that, if a layout has more than one public clock on it, a church and a town hall, maybe, then he has to check that they show the same time.

They can aim at me all they like, if I stand sideways they have little chance of success. In my youth, I got apprehended at gunpoint a good few times, but only once did I feel in proper danger - that was an RAF Regiment chap, with a bayonet on his SLR and in danger of collapse from heat exhaustion - also, he was heavily Geordie and I really didn't know what he was demanding that I should do. Only once were actual shots fired, in a theatrical manner, for 'effect', and that was from a beautiful, museum quality Thompson gun. I did receive an accidental near miss from Canberra, when one fell off into the NAAFI car park - that was exciting, hiding in ditches until its 'safety' was confirmed.

I no longer have an identity. Someone in Nigeria has it now. But, I never used it much anyway.

I would prefer that you were watching the front, then you might at least get in the way of something...