WCMUT....what cheered me up today

andya700 said:
There is a little French flag at the top right, cick on the arrow and you get a choice of French, English and German. If you like French and German villages, then you would love the Alsace and Black Forest.

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View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andym42/9133855080/in/album-72157634313859673/


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View: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andym42/9214937118/in/album-72157634313859673/
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We love the Alsace, great food, great wine, outstanding scenery, and not many British people go there. Some great driving roads too, done it on a bike tour a few times, and I've taken the wife in the car a couple times too. We like to stay in Turckheim, at the Hotel Des Clefs. We thought about moving out there a number of years ago, wish we had....
 
WCMUT? Well yesterday but, these were just two of the dozen or so I had in a few hours yesterday morning.
 

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A friend of my wife's bought an online item..not sure what it was, from Dunelm and when it arrived it wasn't the colour she'd ordered so she contacted them. No problem, send it back and we'll replace it,they said. "No", said the lady, 'my contract with you was for the ..let's say... blue one so it's your responsibility to collect the wrong one. She got her replacement and has heard no more. The wrong item is still with her.

I had the same with an expensive Chanel skin-care product for my wife. They sent a gel instead of a spray. I spoke to customer-care and they said to return it and they'll send the spray and reimburse me the postage... £3.50. I returned it. After a week or so, I called a couple of times and was promised the refund but never got it. They've lost my future business. I think the key word the lady used was, 'contract'. Use language like that and you will not be ignored.
 
andya700 said:
There is a little French flag at the top right, cick on the arrow and you get a choice of French, English and German. If you like French and German villages, then you would love the Alsace and Black Forest.
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The Western Austrian Tyrol for us.

Go north and you're in Germany, South and you're in Italy and all on really comfortable trains...

DB regional train passing through Seefeld 1190668.jpg
 
Cockney said:
The difference between train travel in Germany and Italy against ours is staggering.
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Yes Switzerland is the same , can set your watch by the trains as well as it’s so easy to get about by train as well
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
The Western Austrian Tyrol for us.

Go north and you're in Germany, South and you're in Italy and all on really comfortable trains...

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In 2019, we drove to Vienna via Germany and stayed in Bad Ems for a couple of nights. We were given a rail pass by the hotel and went to Koblenz by train. Hugely impressed by their system, the efficiency and cleanliness of the trains and stations.
 
andya700 said:
In 2019, we drove to Vienna via Germany and stayed in Bad Ems for a couple of nights. We were given a rail pass by the hotel and went to Koblenz by train. Hugely impressed by their system, the efficiency and cleanliness of the trains and stations.
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Apparently punctuality on GB trains is better than Deutsche Bahn (and some of the Train operating companies in the UK are owned or part-owned by foreign train companies like DB and Nederlandse Spoorwegen)
 
WCMUT was a nice walk up the Otter for a good lunch, including a probably Great Egret sighting (there was a Little between us and the probably Great and the distant one looked bigger!) and a definite Spitfire flyby while were were eating our "reward" ice cream on the front at Budleigh. Finding a slot in the free car park before the walk was a nice bonus, even if it does add almost a mile to the walk!!!
 
This little snippet from an otherwise grim story re the dressage Olympic champion Charlotte Dujardin who will now not be competing in the Paris Olympics starting on Friday. It was the subject of a phone-in this morning and one lady who had her horse trained for dressage events stopped going because of the the way the trainer was telling her she had to 'really push' her horse beyong it's comfort zone. He also struck the horse on it's rear end with a whip...just as Dujardin did in training. It then turned on the trainer and bit him. :D

Dujardin video...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDYg34YnJFM
 
JohnC6 said:
This little snippet from an otherwise grim story re the dressage Olympic champion Charlotte Dujardin who will now not be competing in the Paris Olympics starting on Friday. It was the subject of a phone-in this morning and one lady who had her horse trained for dressage events stopped going because of the the way the trainer was telling her she had to 'really push' her horse beyong it's comfort zone. He also struck the horse on it's rear end with a whip...just as Dujardin did in training. It then turned on the trainer and bit him. :D

Dujardin video...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDYg34YnJFM
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I hope the bit about the guy getting bitten was WCYU because it's a bit hard to tell from your post.
 
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My wife was in M&S in town today and she was third in the queue at the till . At the till was a middle-aged lady who was becoming distressed as she tried to count out coins to pay for her shopping. The cashier was trying to help her. After a minute or so of this the customer behind her, also a middle-aged lady, stepped in and paid for the items which amounted to £9. An uplifting gesture to see.
 
Jannyfox said:
I hope the bit about the guy getting bitten was WCYU because it's a bit hard to tell from your post.
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You'll have to tell me what WCYU means, Jan. I Googled it to no avail. I had the same problem with another acronym AFAIK. Box Brown posted that he too had to Google one of these acronyms as he too, kept forgetting what one particular one meant. It's not really too hard to write, in full, for those of us who aren't familiar with long ones like that.

Anyway, if it wasn't clear. The horse was so annoyed, angry even, with the trainer, who kept hitting it with a whip, that it turned on him and bit him.
 
JohnC6 said:
You'll have to tell me what WCYU means, Jan. I Googled it to no avail. I had the same problem with another acronym AFAIK. Box Brown posted that he too had to Google one of these acronyms as he too, kept forgetting what one particular one meant. It's not really too hard to write, in full, for those of us who aren't familiar with long ones like that.

Anyway, if it wasn't clear. The horse was so annoyed, angry even, with the trainer, who kept hitting it with a whip, that it turned on him and bit him.
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You posted in WCMU ...
 
Jannyfox said:
I hope the bit about the guy getting bitten was WCYU because it's a bit hard to tell from your post.
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Yes,that's right ,Jan. .What cheered me up was the trainer being bitten. I just got a mental picture of the horse getting to a point where it thought, "I've had enough of that tosser hitting me" and bit him. :) I told my wife and she laughed, so felt the same as I did.

I really like horses, they are wonderful creatures. We've treated them so badly. Taken them into wars,.484,000 lost in WW1. That's two horses for each soldier. In a single day, during the Battle of Verdun in 1916, 7000 were killed by long-range shelling on both sides, including 97 killed by single shots from a French naval gun.The wars of the Moghul Empire. The Roman chariot races...Used in hunting. They are intelligent creature and I wonder what they think watching a fox or a deer being ripped to pieces ?

They are used as so-called, 'beasts of burden', bets placed on them in races. Around 2000 horses die on British racecourses every year and an unknown number are killed in training or because they fail to make the grade. In thirteen countries horse meat is eaten.
 
JohnC6 said:
In thirteen countries horse meat is eaten.
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I think you're channeling old Alfie Tennyson, who want on about this at great length, when he wrote "In Memorium".

The bit most people remember is...

Who trusted God was love indeed​
And love Creation's final law —​
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw​
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed —​

...but the whole thing is dreary and in my opinion, rather boring.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
I think you're channeling old Alfie Tennyson, who want on about this at great length, when he wrote "In Memorium".

The bit most people remember is...

Who trusted God was love indeed​
And love Creation's final law —​
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw​
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed —​

...but the whole thing is dreary and in my opinion, rather boring.
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I wasn't aware of that. Poetry is something that has never caught my atttention. Having said that, I do like John Masefield's "Sea Fever"

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking...etc
 
JohnC6 said:
"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking...etc
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Had to learn that in Primary School, when I was 8 or 9.

Someone once described Masefield as "a Victorian poet in the New Elizabethan Age". I'm not sure if that was intended as a compliment or otherwise,
 
Just got an email from a bank saying the interest rate is going up.

I had read somewhere that rates were going up and I was planning to do some googling so I'll have to get around to it and see if I can do even better.
 
JohnC6 said:
I wasn't aware of that. Poetry is something that has never caught my atttention. Having said that, I do like John Masefield's "Sea Fever"

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking...etc
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I recall an alternative start to the poem -

"I must go down to the sea again, the lonely sea and the sky.
I left my socks and vest there, I wonder if they're dry." Spike Milligan


Dave
 
Sky said:
Does that mean you're normally happy to drive it in an un-roadworthy condition? :oops: :$
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Absolutely not! Before I take my car for test, it is cleaned and valeted, inside, outside and underneath, so that the tester doesn't even get his/her hands dirty. Everything is regularly checked and serviced. Did I mention that I used to be a transport manager and have never had one of my (or my company) vehicles fail an MOT. One of my drivers was pulled in for the random roadside check and the MOT inspector waved him straight through, saying "I'm not going to waste my time checking one of their fleet!" The advisory on my previous 20+ year old Rover just said "Stunning"!
Just click where it says "MOT history". I sold it on and it has disappeared since (mothballed perhaps?)
 
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MHR, Marc! Hope there's at least one Marathon left!!!
 
At 13:52 yesterday, I placed an order and used the discount voucher that Edge found for me to get it delivered today (I want it for tomorrow but could have done without it.) It arrived at 10:12.
 
Not today but yesterday evening. I had a drive to the seaside just to enjoy the quiet evening and take some pictures and my car rated my driving at 99% on the way home. I've had 99% before but this time my MPG was up a bit too and I got 49.4mpg. It was at 50.2mpg but parking when I got home seemed to upset it and the mpg figure got knocked back a bit. Not bad for a short run back from the seaside including town type driving at 20 and 30mph and some up and down hill sections too.

Other people may have had economical cars and achieved better but this is the most economical car I've had and it easily beats anything else I've had.
 
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WCMUT was the weather being kind to the Exeter Classic Motorcycle Club for their Dartmoor run today. Close to 150 registered bikes of assorted vintages (and oiltightness!!!) on an eighty (or so) mile circuit over the moor, with stops at Okehampton for tea/coffee and a bacon bap (well, it was a long time since breakfast!) and Princetown for lunch (although the caff was so busy that there was at least a 1/2 hour wait for burgers... So I grabbed some chicken tikka balls from the shop - they'd run out of sarnies!)then back to the Quay via Hay Tor, Chudleigh and Ide. Just as we were coming through the city limits, my bike's hungry light came on, so I didn't need the emergency 1.25 litres I carry.
 
Marc said:
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It's been a long time since I've had a dram of Viking Honour, but I mind it's a nice whisky. I had a cheeky dram myself last night, 2010 Quarter Cask from the Arran Distillery in Lochranza. One of four "driver's drams" that they don't sell and you can only get if doing the tour. At 56.1% it was a little strong.

I've only got one left, a 1996 Bourbon barrel, the sample at the tour was super smooth so I'm looking forward to it. If you are ever in Arran and haven't done the tour I can thoroughly recommend it and from memory is all very accessible as well.
 
I took my MX5 out today for the first time in months. The battery was flat but a jump starter power pack got it going first time. Tyres needed inflating too. A rear brake seemed to be catching a bit but it soon freed up and I really enjoyed the ride.
 
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Probably worth investing in am Optimate (or similar) to keep the battery conditioned. There's even a solar option (by Oxford).
 
Nod said:
Probably worth investing in am Optimate (or similar) to keep the battery conditioned. There's even a solar option (by Oxford).
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Thanks.

I'd not heard of optimate so I'll look at that. I have tried solar with a panel that sits on the dash and plugs into the cigarette lighter but as the car is garaged it didn't get enough light. This problem could solve itself as Mrs WW, rather than drive one of my cars, wants her own when she returns from abroad so the MX5 will probably need to go as we have three cars at the moment and four would be too many.
 
The Oxford solar charger/conditioner has a reasonably long lead so, if the car's backed into the garage (assuming the battery's in the same place as it is in Mrs Nod's MX-5!), it'll probably reach. If not, it's easy enough to cut'n'shut the lead with an extra couple of metres if necessary. The Optimate conditioners are very handy and extra leads make it very easy to swap between vehicles as felt necessary.
 
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