Broithe

Stradbally photo on the front page of today's Irish Times.

I have seen this elsewhere on the grapevine. "I am very sorry to have to tell you that Russan Limited, trading as Eileens Emporium has ceased trading and appointed liquidators. We have done our best to send out all the stock we have for pre-paid orders. I am sorry that we were not able to complete all of them. Any claims against the business should be sent to: Christine Vaines, Begbies Traynor, Suite C 11 Kingsmead Square, Bath, BA1 2AB | T: 01225 316 040 | Email Christine.Vaines@btguk.com"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodson_baronets The mention of 'Houghton' should, almost certainly, be 'Haughton'.

Possibly both? For many years into the 1980s, the UK's Yellow Pages had a 'Boring' section, which was empty, but had a handy suggestion of where else you might look for boring people. Somewhere, I may still have the framed cutting that I had above my desk. Oh, how we mechanical engineers used to laugh about it, whenever there were any stone age chaps to hear us...

This has the potential to be annoying - a high-speed sleeper? It'll probably stop half-way through an episode and continue on a bus, with no heating...

Dare we hope..?

I would have marked them down for blowing the window in when the door was open...

Nobody expects the ERU - or the Spanish Inquisition...

Or a crane.

If it's going to be a coal-powered thing (or even oil - or turf!), then they'll need to get it into production quickly - before it gets banned.

I was once hugely mystified by Currys* - I used to run a few rented houses for people and one day I got a text out of the blue. "This is Knowhow** - we're delivering your fridge at 1:30pm, please ensure somebody will be there" I had no idea who 'Knowhow' might be and had not ordered a fridge from anybody. Eventually, the internet revealed that it was Currys and I assumed that one of the owners had ordered a fridge and given them my mobile number. Simple. No! I still didn't know who had ordered this fridge and, thus, which house 'somebody' was supposed to be at - and Knowhow weren't inclined to answer me, either. Eventually, it turned up at one of the houses and the tenant happened to be in at the time, so they rang and asked me if it was meant to be there - I took a wild guess and said "Yes". * "Currys" really annoys me - it should either be Curry's or Curries, surely? ** In my days of dealing with Currys, they had an offshoot called Mastercare, that dealt with their aftersales 'service' They had a slogan "We make it work". I bought a CD player in the mid 80s, but it developed a difficult fault, only after being on for a few hours. They insisted they could fix it, rather than replacing it, but they only got one go at it every working day and it dragged on for weeks, into months. They stopped even answering the phone to me and our communications ended up as weekly letters - I got so fed up that I started using a modified copy of their notepaper for my letters Bastardcare - we make it worse. I eventually got it back from them and fixed it myself.

There have been test-runs through Ballybrophy, they're just waiting for the speed limit to be dropped from 90 to 88mph.

'Landlord' often seems an odd term to me, particularly in the current state of the UK 'pub industry', where the landlord is usually a tenant.

I believe that there was only ever one grease nipple for the models, and it is in China.

In the UK, some years ago now, 'Royal' Mail charged me £8 to collect the £3 that a Japanese item that they assessed as being £15.05 on the day was liable to, when £15.00 was the threshold. Turning £15 into £26.

I went on a stag do in Tamworth, not far away, but just not a place anybody ever went to - the victim of the wedding came from there and we were staying overnight at his parents, who I had never met before. They were out when we arrived, and not back before we set out on the evening's events. Considerable imbibement later, we set off back to the house. Somehow, I got separated suddenly and found myself utterly lost. I had a vague idea of where I was and what direction the house should be in. I was helped in setting my course by the fact that I could see the lights of the Sutton Coldfield TV mast, so I set off, using that as my guiding star. After a while, finding myself in open countryside and with my way blocked by a sizable river, I came to the revelation that the mast I was navigating by was actually the Hopwas mast, and I had been going about 180 degrees out. By now it was about 4am and I could see the lights of a decent sized town, which I took to be Lichfield - it looked plausible to proceed towards it, and the riverbank was useful for a large part of the journey. Eventually, I found myself in a large town, but it had a castle, which meant it wasn't Lichfield. Investigations of some shopfronts indicated that I was actually back in Tamworth. I decided to look in the phone book in a phone box, which happened to be across from the police station. It was not going to be easy to find a number for the house, as the surname was Clarke and I didn't know his father's first name. By this time, a copper was interrogating me with a view to detaining me for a public order offence - I had to find the right number - now. The marriage victim always used his second name, but I knew what the first one was and guessed that that was also his father's, which it was - and he answered, driving out to pick me up, much to the chagrin of the copper, who had hung around to 'collect' me, if my story turned out to be a con trick. By this stage, it was about 4:30am and this was the first time that I had ever met the father, who was a headmaster - he did seem to think that it was all bit bit of a hoot, though.

Before Beeching, one of my aunts got a train from Bristol, intending to go to Wellington in Somerset, not a huge journey. It seemed to take a good bit longer than she was expecting. But, in the end, she got off at Wellington. In Shropshire.

Or Bachmann Turner Overdrive...? Bruce? And his Range, as well? You're getting them mixed up with Hornsby. Bruce is a one-hit wonder, I'd say that at his concerts he sings the same song over and over again for about two hours. That's just the way it is...... I remember a chap I worked with once describing a task as being "as tedious and futile as being Bruce Hornsby's drummer" - once you're aware of it, it's all you can hear.

Bruce? And his Range, as well?