Ayupmeducks

@ Arnold...... Gas and diesel prices are high here too, remember the average American doesn't earn as much as the average Brit. You usually don't drive as far as the average American too, public transport is poor to none existent. My wife's office is over 30 miles away from home. When we lived in California it was over 50 miles to where she worked. So you need a comfortable vehicle to get to work and shopping etc. I've driven many miles over here in a day, some as much as 650! Fatigue sets in very quickly in uncomfortable vehicles, but the last long drive was from California to here

You should see the prices of brand new pickups this side of the pond!! With cars getting smaller, more and more people are buying full sized pickups, safer in accidents, as comfortable as expensive cars with the added feature of a cargo bed. Some of todays cars I call sewing machines on wheels, no protection at all in a crash. When I first came to the states, tiny cars wouldn't sell, people wanted large comfy "Yank Tanks" Now you see little old ladies driving Dodge Ram trucks with 6L V8 engines, crew cabs with all the bells and whistles.

@ Arnold, meanwhile used vehicles are fetching double the Blue Book prices for their age. I paid $17,000 for my truck four years back, used, 90,000+ miles and I can get $25,000 for it today, it's a 2011 Chevy full size truck, no rust, clean, 4wd, auto, everything works, well maintained. Closest that has happened like that is when I traded my Ford Cortina, basic model, brand new when I bought it for $4000, brand new around 1982, and traded it in for a new Suburu four years later, Lots of miles on it from doing 100 mile trips from home to work and back and loads of touring holidays.

Nowt wrong with keeping an older car running for years, as long as it's well maintained. I place emphasis on tyres, brakes, steering and lights. I change my tyres well before they get to the unusable stage, I do like to be able to control the truck in foul weather. Brakes? I do my own, always have done. I keep an eye on all the rubber boots, cheaper to replace one thats getting hard, than a CV joint failing, shocks are important too, weak ones can cause handling problems. Most things on cars and pickups are easy to do, like taking up wear on front wheel bearings, it's not hard to r

No probs, I loved the smell of soluble oil, beat the crap of the smell of hydraulic oil. One of the faces we had used hydraulic oil for the Dowty Roofmasters face support, made a mess when a hose burst, was glad when oil was banned as the fluid in the face supports because of the fire hazard. I left Cotgrave shortly after completing my apprenticeship. Worked in outside industry for a few years, then went back underground at BG's gypsum at East Leake, that was it then until we moved state side. No way you'd get me in a US coal mine, regs are too lacking for the likes of me. Australi

Maybe my memories getting cloudy with age, But I could have swore the M&Q Act only allowed us U/G at 17 after the twenty days training. A long time back and a lot of training. I know, once I'd done the first year and was back at Clifton full time, baring days release and training centre every few weeks, I hardly ever saw surface work. Then after my face training, was always assigned with a face elec, very rare for me to be outbye.

16???? M&Q Act if I remember rightly didn't allow you underground until 17, Other than under Close Personal supervision, ie training that's also the age when you went on shifts. That's under the 1954 Act which came into being in 1956. I did my U/G training at the tender age of 17, that was around 1964. You weren't allowed to go on faces until you'd reached the age of 18, except for training and visits, again close personal supervision. We were coddled...LOL

60 years ago I'd just started working for GT Ranby, was August, but don't recall the date.

I found that out when I was looking for one, Mines a refurbished HP, which has their different architecture Mother Boards and P/s. Mine has an i5 Intel 3.2 Gig Ghz chip..

Shell of an electric or diesel powered personnel carrier all from the company I worked for, Australian Iron and Steel Pty Ltd.. We also had the more up to date ones at Angus Place, electric only speed control via electronics. Don't know how many times I've taken one of those from the face to check a conveyor out. Memories!!

What's so special about Macs?? I do hear if you're a graphic artist they produce better pictures and deeper colours, Year back when we first got involved with PC's Macs were two to three times the cost of PC's. Then as newer higher speed CPU's came on the market, yearly at first!! I started building my own, I could buy the parts I needed easily and build a computer at a third the cost of Branded products. Now it's cheaper to buy refurbished computers, 1 year warranty, almost the latest CPU's, even with one conventional HD and the newer solid state HD's for backup. This one I'm o

Looks like I was right, we spent a few days in Sydney, as the ship was running late, shipping company paid our hotel fees while we were waiting to board the ship so spent hours as tourists.

Yep, he made some great Cornish Pasties!! A G/F I had in the Gong took me to that one one day when we were out and about. Not far from "The Rocks" in Sydney, used to be like a mall only it sold fast foods at every stall. We went in for a feed when were were staying in Sydney waiting for our ship to the states, was it Darling Harbour?? Takes a bloke hours to decide what he wants with his beer. No sauce of any kind on the bakery pies, factory ones yes

I miss the pie shops, there was one in Wollongong.....My God they were delicious. washed down with two cold tinnies from the bottle shop a few doors down. We had a small bakery in Bathurst, at lunchtime he had a queue that stretched a couple of blocks for his fresh bread roll sandwiches and hot fresh pies.

Gravy on your meat pie, chippies got more adventurous in the mid to late 60's.

There used to be a chippy on Arkwright street near Trent Bridge, I think there was a Boots Chemist in the same block, I used to love his curried chicken and chips with loads of curry sauce after a few pints.

I can't recall when I made chips using fat as the medium, must be when I was in my early 20's, used all sorts of oil, these days peanut oil. Makes a difference too with the types and age of the tators, as tators age, they start to produce sugars, which doesn't help making good chips.

Chips have to be one of the hardest foods to cook, I've only been able to cook the perfect chip a couple of times, and I love them. I believe the perfect chip is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I've tried par boiling the chips, then deep fry, part fry them and let them stand a short time followed by a quick deep fry, that seems to be the best way, just like the chippy of old used to cook them.

I love Elgar, I can close my eyes listening to his music, it takes me to rolling green English hills, wit a steam train in the distance like it used to be in the 50's, no hustle and bustle, with rolling clouds casting their shadows over sheep and cows grazing, the sound of insects buzzing around.

That loud screeching was "packets" being sent either way, and that's what you'd still hear if you heard the packets of info going back and forwards. Amateur radio uses the same idea in digital modes like Packet and RTTY, thats what we hear if we turn the volume up on a radio operating in Packet mode.

When the internet first started it was direct dial up 28Kbs!!! Most certainly not Broadband by any means, went through that in the early 90's. Then DD at 55Kbs, boy did we think that was fast, then one to what we have now DSL at 1.5Mbs, yes still on it, the US led the world at one time, but we have large rural areas where cheap internet service means low broadband speed. If I want 12Mbs I have to have satellite. Rural areas are poorly covered. A new trunk fibreoptic cable was buried along the main roads in my area by a company to service high speed broadband, but not by our phon

DJ, my first fridge was an electric one that worked on the same principle, no compressor at all. Father In Law gave it to us when I married the first wife. Made it last for a long time, then retired it for an Italian make in the mid 70's. It had a small freezer at the top. I used to freeze orange juice for work, I worked at Boulby Mine then and the mine was very hot, so a quart of orange juice lasted all shift in the insulated food boxes the company provided in all the snap cabins.

I got into computers around 1984 ish, Commadore 64. Back then they were expensive, we bought a dot matrix printer with it, colour monitor. My wife had done computer's and computer languages at university while studying for her BS in business. I was coming along way with program debugging, wished I'd kept it up, I'd have been fluent in program writing. At work, we had a group of us who swapped programs, damned things cost a fair bit back then too, and the stores photocopier did a roaring trade in copying the programs paperwork. We had a couple of guys who knew many at the local power

They had the nickname "Bricks" TOO!! The first mobile phones were even bigger, My wife was working for a builder developer as an Accountant in Oz, he had one of the big phones, but it was no use in Bathurst, but when he had to go down to Sydney he took it with him, we've come along way since then. Not forgetting, there were satellite phones back then, cost a fortune and expensive phone calls from them back in the mid 70's.

I still have my first digital watch, mine was a ruby red face and press a button lit leds up with the time date etc. Cost me about 30 quid too. I still have my first liquid crystal, it also had a small solar cell built into it, I don't recall the cost, but bought it in Sydney in 1980, lasted a few years until a piace of woof fell while I was working on our first house in Kelso, suburb of Bathurst NSW, cracking the face.. My present watch has a standard face with hands. An el cheapo as I'm pretty heavy on watches.