Compo

The Hoover Keymatic washing machine. Anybody have one?

Not seen it, Ian - sounds horrendous though.

Lorne sausages, R.Red.... Beef sausage meat, barley and wheat flour. Quite nice in small doses.

I'm off to Northumberland for a few days on Thursday so I will be missing for a while. Have an errand to run for a 94yrs old Jewish lady whose family escaped from the Nazis to Scotland and stayed in Peebles (Borders) during WWII. I'm going to the house she lived in to try and get permission to take some photos for her.

I have a regular cycle riding route. One day I saw various stages of the route as camps and features from the north approach to Mt Chomolungma (Everest). It took me years to get out of the habit of mentally marking the stages as I passed them.

They are not allowed to start serving in Scotland until 11am, Bubblewrap .

That's a "Lorne Sausage" Brew. I quite like them. They contain a lot of barley along with beef sausage meat and wheat flour. For some reason the Jocks prefer beef to pork in sausages.

Just replied to post from another missing person: Ayupmeducks hasn't posted since 1st April - how foolish can you get?!

Undeterred by last year's failed cider batch, I shall be gathering apples once again next week. This time I will take Ayup's advice and campden tablet the lot before fermentation.

Picked a load of elderberries yesterday in an attempt to make elderberry wine. I have no experience of home wine making so we shall have to see how it turns out. Trouble is that, according to the book, it takes two years to mature

There is a commonly held myth that it is the seeds in chillies that makes them hot. The truth is that it is the pith that forms the internal ribs of the fruit that holds most of the capaisin, not the seeds.

They're looking great, Rog. I have a few on my plants but nowhere near as many as yours.

A number of former regulars seem to be disappearing of late. I notice that Littlebro hasn't posted since May.

£140 for a towel rail?! Are you having me on!

I always hang a large bunch of comfrey in the water butts around the garden.

Comfrey water is also very good for plants, Ian.

Thanks Rog!

Hardly any ladybirds in the far north this year, Ian. I saw one Great Yellow bumblebee which was duly registered with the bee conservation trust. The great yellow is Britain's rarest mainland bumblebee. Now found only on the Scottish Isles and a few pockets along the far north coast, this bee is a welcome sight in the garden. Saw none last year and four the year before. this is not much of a picture but it was the best I cold do, given that the bee was up in the roof of the polytunnel. I eventually managed to rescue it from its prison and set it free outside.

Despite it being late September, there are still some bees about. Here's one sitting on the centre of a sunflower, the other day:

With things so readily available in shops these days, one does not often see things built from scratch. For some time I have been hanging a hand towel on a hook at the back of the toilet door. I finally decided that it was time to have a proper towel rail by the sink so I set about searching my sheds for suitable building materials. I chanced upon a pair of window openers and a length of 15mm copper waterpipe. The pipe needed grinding down a little at the ends to make it a tight fit into the finger holes in each window opener; I then used a pipe flaring tool to splay out the ends to secure t

Some years ago I had a job working to supply a plan for a waste management project to suit a remote Scottish Strath. I had to get EU money for the project and went to a big meeting in Copenhagen to put my case. I had carefully costed everything out to the last penny and asked for £120k, thinking that I had better not ask for a silly amount. They looked at the proposal and said that they didn't deal in small projects but if I was to extend it to more dwellings they would authorise £250k! ..... You couldn't make it up!

To change the subject ever so slightly.....The Brexit negotiations began with the Tories using EU workers in Britain as hostages and bargaining tools. They have now progressed to presenting an unworkable proposition to the rest of the EU and are throwing their toys out of the pram and refusing to play anymore because the plan has been rejected. Their latest stance is "You will do what we want or we will leave without a deal and totally ruin our country - Rule Britannia! [stamp of foot]" Clearly, they are looking for scapegoats for their failed ability to negotiate. I blame their Public Scho

Steady on Ian.....Don't forget we have a member whose name is "Melton Stilton"

Here's summat as we might have still been seeing if Germany had won the war. Christmas decorations sent to the occupying forces in Norway during WWII:

Player's Gold Leaf: