Little Storping-in-the-Swuff: Life in General

I’m guessing they’re not short of bottles or tipples in the Ocado office…

It’s the season of plenty, so take advantage of the fact we’re open between Christmas and New Year to stock up on any festive essentials.

Friday 25th December 2009	No Deliveries
Saturday 26th December 2009	No Deliveries
Sunday 27th December 2009	No Deliveries
Monday 28th December 2009	Deliveries as usual
Tuesday 29th December 2009	Deliveries as usual
Wednesday 30th December 2009	Deliveries as usual
Thursday 31th December 2009	AM deliveries only
Friday 1st December 2009	No Deliveries
Saturday 2nd January 2009	PM deliveries only
Thursday  3rd January 2009	Deliveries as usual

Whether you’re running low on buffets, bottles, nibbles or tipples, we’ll get everything right to your kitchen table before you can say “…a partridge in a—”

You’ve got to admire the crescendo of mistakes, though. Genius.

It’s not a rocket. They’re building a post mill a couple of miles from my house. It appears to be a traditional design, and it’s on the site of an old mill (with six sweeps) but with steels instead of wood and it will, apparently, generate electricity when it’s finished next year.

mebeli sofia

It’s probably paranoia, but I thought I saw a mouse watching The Unit with me last night.

There have definitely been mice at Pen-Y-Bryn Quarry.  Giant mice, since Pen-Y-Bryn is a model by Michael Campbell.  It hadn’t occurred to me that their droppings might pass for those of 7mm scale sheep, but then Mr Campbell seems to have a fairly philosophical take on the rodents’ rampage:

The polystyrene forming the hills had been excavated (quarried?) and carried along the track all over the model, and small black droppings littered the hillside (in O gauge they might have passed for scale sheep droppings!). The little blighters had nibbled the rock-face (cork bark), and even tried some of the people and animals (tell-tale flashes of whitemetal!), plus other people, animals, and details were strewn about, flattened by the giant rodents.

I’d recommend running a Relco track cleaner; those things used always to give me a shock, with any luck they might fry a mouse.

Apologies if you visited the site this morning and found it not here.

A Yahoo Slurp spider ate all my bandwidth overnight.  Naughty spider (though in fairness, this was partly because of a malfunctioning plugin on one of my blogs).

A bit thank you to the nice folk at 5quidhost for being so quick to respond to emails.

…of The Guardian’s Top 200 Pubs and Those I’ve Been To Is 5.

Each of those I’ve been to is thoroughly deserving of its place, though I’d suggest there are a few omissions (even though I can’t authoritatively say the 195 pubs I haven’t been to aren’t better). Scotland and Wales seem a little under-represented, too.

I’ve been reading about this all week, but before I got round to blogging it the Guardian’s been and visited it .  A friend told me they’d linked up the Welsh Highland Railway and the Ffestiniog, as it used to be, crossing the mainline on the level and running through the streets of Porthmadog.  It’s true: 

 
Though that bit isn’t officially opened yet.

Ffestiniog trains can run from Blaenau Ffestiniog right through to Caernarfon (Welsh Highland trains can’t run through to the Ffestiniog though! The loading gauge is bigger on the WHR). That’s a run of 40 miles.

This history of the project is extraordinary, and actually encompasses two railway companies. The relaying of the line was bizarrely driven by the Ffestiniog’s attempts to block it. The politics and business arrangements are so complex I think I’m going to have to read several books on it.

The section from Dinas to Caernarfon, which has been open for 12 years, wasn’t actually part of the WHR. It used to be standard gauge, though originally Parliament approved a WHR extension on the route that was never built. There’s a nice symmetry to this, because the full length route is truncated at the Ffestiniog end, where the old Ffestiniog and Blaenau Railway route is now standard gauge (standard gauge transporters used to convey the narrow gauge wagons until the closure of the quarries).

Oh yeah, and I’ve realised what’s wrong with my job: unlike Partrick Barkham I don’t get paid for riding narrow gauge trains.

Wary though I am after the controversy stirred up last time I had to post a picture of these shetland blacks also from the potato man at the farmers’ market.

I was surpised, when I cut into them, that the blue is just a seam near the surface. Clever camoflage to hide the yellow within… and they are not any where near as tasty as the salad blues.