Broithe

Having failed to attend in 2023, I found myself on the Big Island just in time this year. There will be a stash of pictures later, but my connection here, particularly for uploads, seems to be based on a native boy carrying individual message in a cleft stick. It was very quiet. Saturdays used to be very busy and I would normally opt for the slightly less intense Sunday, but two friends were having to go today. In the end, it was no bother. Some other things struck me - lighting is so much easier today that there was sometimes 'too much for me' - both in the models, buildings, vehicles, etc., and of the whole layout. Some were as bright as being in the Libyan desert, it seemed - and some layouts even interfered with viewing the layout behind them, as their general lighting was in the eyes of the viewer in the next aisle. Also, some people seemed to need to spend a lot of time negotiating with the digital control systems and the 'hand of God' was rather more in evidence that it used to be, I thought. Definitely worth going, though - although, it was seventeen quid to get in... It's on again tomorrow, if you're going past.

Somebody must have done this as Last Train to Charleville, but I can't find anything...

I've become aware that there is a derelict Danish Hunter in Co Meath. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moorepark,+Puddenhill,+Co.+Meath,+Ireland/@53.588953,-6.4304327,49m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x48673f8c370db041:0x203c5dca58264438!8m2!3d53.59041!4d-6.42855!16s%2Fg%2F119vh3qx4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkyNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

If they'd been a bit smaller, they would be in the British Museum...

Graffiti was a lot harder to accomplish sixty years ago. Marker pens and spray cans made it a lot easier than carrying round a tin of paint and a brush. And chalk soon washed off. Carving initials into a tree was about as much that was practical for for the uncommitted 'artist' to make a permanent mark.

Has anyone cut the roofs off yet?

There was a series of programmes a few years back on the BBC about the various forms of English from the old empire days One of them was about Nigerian English, which can often be more 'proper' than what the English believe to be the 'real thing'. One of the examples given was the overheard conversation between two women in the queue at Lagos airport - one was complaining to the other about her husband and how much he had annoyed her - "Do you know, my vexation was beyond accountability.." In 'real' English, that would just be "He really pissed me off!"

When I was 'managing' rented houses for people, a chap I knew very distantly was looking to rent one of them. When we met, he had his girlfriend with him and, after we'd clinched the deal, he asked me where I thought she was from. With a childhood in the RAF, I'd lived all over the Big Island and can generally place people into 50-mile squares. She sounded "posh north midlands" to me, so probably either Warwick or Chester areas - I plumped for Chester. She was from a town in the back end of beyond in Romania and had been in the UK for less than a year, having learnt English via You Tube and watching films. Even more amusingly, she was a civilian worker at the nearby RAF base. Thirty years before, she would have been a superb secret agent. The only word I ever had to explain to her was "rounders", which makes no sense, grammatically, unless you know what it is. I once heard her having two different arguments, with two different people, at the same time - one in English and one in Romanian. Conversely, the local boot sale in Stafford will have lots of foreign workers attending and I like to feel that I can recognise the languages, even if most are unintelligible to me. Occasionally, there can be ones that I can't place. There was once a chap who looked very southern European, but sounded very northern, that stumped me, until I asked him and it all made sense - he was speaking Afrikaans. Once, there were two blokes a good bit older than the general run of foreign worker, I eavesdropped on them for a while and decided that they might be Albanian. Later, I saw them again and, because of what I could see that they were obviously discussing at the time, I suddenly realised they were talking English, but in the thickest of Stoke on Trent accents, from just 15 miles away...

That lawn needs some aeration.

https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/corgi-dg226003-coles-crane-railfrieght.html

This kind of thing was popular in my day and they generally looked a bit rough.

Orange algal blooms are available, it should surely be possible to alternate it to promote civic inclusivity?

The staff need uniforms, like Tama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama_(cat)

A preserved fireboat in New York, in a dazzle-inspired scheme.

Mmm, I do like the clear coffee table thing. A good piece of design - single component forming the entire product. And easy to check if there's a rabbit stashed under there.

Back in the old days, 'they' had many ways of spotting things, they would record the phone numbers in newspaper small ads, to spot that 'amateur' car dealers and I remember one chap being asked how he had spent far more through just his Nectar card than was declared as his total annual earnings, etc...

Mmm, by the time I spotted what was going on, there wasn't a lot left* for a positive identification of species. I have made the entrance a bit smaller than standard, with the intention of making it a bit more difficult for larger items of shopping to be brought in - we'll see. * Really just a leg and one ear, and a (surprisingly small) neat pile of unwanted parts. The informant who saw her with it just assumed it was a large rabbit, without paying the attention she might have, if she had known that there would be follow-up enquiries.

As the cooler weather approaches, we have made a 'cat-flap panel' to fit the patio doors into the conservatory, to allow access but restrict heat loss. The development model was made under the close supervision of an experienced industry professional. It fits (fairly) nicely in the door and blocks the vast majority of the in/out airflow. The door part itself is a little heavier than a standard cat-flap and this caused some sideways glances by the intended user, but I suspect it will become acceptable. I have been careful to avoid mentioning a potential side-effect of this system. It may (I hope) be quite awkward to drag a rabbit in through door, as happened a couple of weeks ago. We were concerned that she seemed rather lethargic for a few days, with a little blood on her face, sleeping a lot and hardly touching the offered food at either house. This turned out to be because she had eaten three-quarters of a rabbit that was neatly hidden just inside the sliding doors there. If I'd eaten a fair-sized pig over three days, I might be a bit sleepy, too. To be fair, she had stashed the rabbit in a good place, fairly cool and on a tiled floor, so I couldn't complain too much. I now know the rabbit came from an electricity substation about 200 metres up the road - I presume she has a contract there also. Someone I know actually saw her dragging it down the road and just happened to mention it a few days after I discovered it. She will, occasionally, offer me a mouse for breakfast and then eat it, if I don't want it. I presume the rabbit was felt to be too good to waste on me.

Having had cause to pass by today, on the road to the south of the station, it gave me the opportunity to get some pictures from the location of the old cattle dock. This caused me to arrive at the station mere seconds too late to catch a non-stopping train passing through. The weathered finish on the new footbridge has been attended to and the whole thing is a bit brighter again. The bees are still active, but closing down operations for this year, I think. The expanded car park had an occupancy rate around 85%, at 2:15pm on a Thursday.

Are you and @banntry included in the sale?

To be fair to the religious crew, model railways is virtually a cult, with various sects considering each other as heretics... There are those who would burn others at the stake, if they could agree on the dimensions of the fire and get the smell of the smoke right.

From Viz...

Lartigue on Nationwide tonight - 7pm.

At the Midlands Park Hotel, Port Laoise.

Discussing that could lead us into a political area...