[Phil) Your comment re wipers: Some many years ago I owned a A.H.Sprite. It was modified. It had a habit of breaking half-shafts every now and then. Fortunately a fellow car club member alerted me to the fact that the half-shaft for the Sprite was the same as that for the A30 (well, I think it was the A30 - memory is a tenuous thing). Anyway, I rang the local supplier and checked the price and obtained the BMC part number for the A30 item. A day or two later I attended the parts place and asked for the price of a Sprite half-shaft and, for future reference, its part number. The two part numbers were identical. The Sprite part was nigh on twice that of that for the A30. Caveat Emptor.
[Stevie] That's it.Trowse. And stayed for a couple of months during the week in a lovely ivy-covered and tiny hotel somewhere near Loddon that I can't find on Google Earth. Monsieur le Patron was a Cypriot who used to bring me tea in bed in the mornings.
(pen) We should be flattered that you have considered deriving inspiration from our musings. Er, what's a standfirst? Is it the head of the queue at a bus-stop or sunnink?
Standfirst = the meaty chunk of text at the top of the page that gets you salivating to read the whole article. It's a magazine for all the alumnuses/alumnas/alumni (I try very hard to stop people calling them 'alums') that I hoik together twice a year. Some very clever freelancers write the three or four tricky articles, under the direction of our managing editor, but I write one or two, and pull together all the news pages, and the message from the Dean (in my guise of professorial ventriloquist). It takes bloody ages.
This week, I am mostly writing parts of a booklet to accompany a new professor's inaugural lecture in June. It helps that I find the subject interesting.
Going to view a house this afternoon. I'd buy it if only for the delphiniums in the garden and the uninterupted view out of the kitchen window across fields, rows of aspens, willows and alders, countryside and rivers to Europoort and the Pernis oil refinery and its flare stacks on the south bank of the Maas/Rijn (Meuse/Rhine), but the windy miller might take a bit more persuading. As many of you know, every time I moved jobs, I moved house (and usually at least 150 miles). He has never moved. Ever. This might be an interesting experience.
I am distressing un-British in my concept of the perfect breakfast. Coffee, really good bread, cold meat/dry sausage, cheese/cream cheese. Optional glass of red wine if it's a late breakfast. Almost needless to say, I haven't had that breakfast for about 18 years now.
[Phil] Counter with Eggs, Sausage and cheddar on a croissant. Alternatively, four link sausages on a buttered bagel with HP sauce. Dammit, now I'm drooling all down me shirt.
[penelope] Your description of the view cued (unfairly) the following in Mr Brain: Oh I often take these night-shift walks when the foreman's not around Turn my back on the cooling stacks and make for open ground Way out beyond the tank farm fence where the gas flare makes no sound I forget the stink and I often think back to that eastern town.
[Stevie] Ah. As it happened, the estate agency used a very talented photographer, and the house was disappointing on many levels, not least the many levels (steps up and down into EVERY room, despite being re-built ten years ago or so). And the spiral staircase was wound so tight it could have fitted into a submarine. Imagine carrying laundry baskets up and down that! So we're re-thinking. And looking at another one in similar location (sans view of the refinery), a better aspect to the garden, but which is the current owners' unfinished project. We were hoping not to have to take on a project, but as the windy miller is a construction project manager by trade and we can't find the ready-to-move-into house that we were hoping for, it seems daft not to take advantage of his talents. In other news, it's raining.