jonab
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Posts posted by jonab
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Just thought about something re the robot pet feeders - what about the waste disposal? Is there a partner robot to deal with that?
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I think the Nazi's making soap from the fate of Jews is an urban myth. The offenders wanted as little contact with their prisoners as possible. To wash in them would, in my mind, be unthinkable.
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I was disturbed a few weeks ago when I saw an advert for an automatic pet feeder - a device that you load up with food and water and place it where your pet can reach it. At predetermined times an electronically controlled mechanism operates and dispenses a serving of food/water. OK, that's bad enough but there is a CCTV camera attached which connects with your WiFi to allow you to see your pet feeding. The device operates for a week without requiring a refill or any attention.
For heaven's sake, if you have a pet, you MUST take responsibility for its welfare, not farm it out to some robot.
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Less of that bad language if you don't mind!
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Ian, the fat in those silos was tallow - beef fat of grades other than edible (read into that what you wish!). Some of the silos contained coconut oil - Gerard toilet soap base was made from a fat blend of 80% tallow and 20% coconut oil.
Shortly after I left Gerard's there was an 'incident' in which a 500-tonne tallow tank (located near to the small laboratory block where I worked) which was thought to be empty was opened via the lower manhole. 500 tonnes of hot beef fat poured on to the yard. It was said to have set in a six-inch deep layer over most of the yard and completely fouled up the weighbridge.
The fat farm supervisor/manager was quickly dismissed!
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Brew, hopefully, all my dealings with lawyers and their ilk will end very soon when the money's in the bank!
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Completely relaxing day today. Canadians are on an independent sightseeing tour before their flight back this afternoon.
Have a busy few days next week when I'm being visited by lawyers from Canada and my IP attorney from the UK to negotiate the finer points of my business interests being bought out.
If everything goes according to plan, I will forfeit all of my rights to the intellectual property I currently own in exchange for a quite nice cash lump sum.
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Excellent result carni!!!!! That's how things should be.
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I'd want a huge size dish to pay £5 for mushy peas (with or without mint sauce) - or am I out of touch with UK prices?
Is there an anti-flatulence shop in the vicinity?
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Not ever having eaten baby sick, I know exactly what you mean - it's the same here.
I do have good soft toilet paper and some nice pillows - they're square, not rectangular like British ones.
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I am reminded of an occasion when very young (5 or 6) when my mother bought some cakes/tarts including her favourites, blackcurrant cream (I can't remember the colloquial name for them but they were an individual deep pastry case filled with blackcurrant and topped with 'cream'). Mother bit into the tart and found she had bitten into a blood-soaked finger bandage. She obviously took it back to the shop and their first reaction was that she had placed the bandage in the tart herself and then when they finally accepted what she was saying was true, they offered another tart (not gazillions, just one) as recompense. Thank goodness things have changed since 1950!
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I can't imagine any circumstances where I would pay to park in a restaurant car park when using the said restaurant. Aren't they fleecing you for enough money for the victuals served inside the place without any charges for parking?
There is a phrase 'Rip off Britain' I believe. This seems to be an example.
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If you find things not of the quality expected or demanded then you should consider it your duty to make the people responsible aware of the problem - in your case, the shop where you bought the product.
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The fire in the mid-'70s was at a small paint factory located at the back of Gerard's and not Gerard's itself. I have written about that fire in another thread: https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/2312-cussons-soap-factory-outside-views/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-548689 post dated January 18.
Regarding the water ponds, those were cooling pools for water released from the soap manufacture (a very hot process) before it was cleaned and returned to the soapmaking. The water wasn't deep but it was smelly because of the stale fat residues it contained.
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2 hours ago, philmayfield said:
Do you frighten children?
Not usually. They find me quite benign - which I am.
More like Santa Claus.
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Without his stage makeup and wig - look at his website on the biog page. https://www.roywood.co.uk/biog.html
Note that he now has white hair - like me but the resemblance is there and I have been mistaken for him.
Note also that the picture of me which I referred to earlier is the one near Littlewoods.
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What did you think I looked like?
There is a picture of me on these pages https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/16672-a-few-random-photos-6/?page=5&tab=comments#comment-576346
It has been remarked that I now have a resemblance to Roy Wood of Wizzard.
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I still have a full head of hair and a prolific beard. Wouldn't be without either. All gone a Whiter Shade of Pale now, though!
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Talking of Hair, this has just appeared on the BBC website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-45625785
'Hair: The musical that 'changed theatre for ever'
It certainly changed me!!
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I think the most modern furniture in my house (and it's not really furniture) is the piano which is dated1980 - that came with the property though. All the other stuff apart from utilitarian items is old French 'Belle Époch' some of which was here when I bought the place, the rest I have acquired over the years.
The myriad of so-called antique and junk TV shows in the UK would have a field day at my villa.
Before any vultures read this and descend (not Nottstalgia members, of course) none of it, apart from the piano, is of particular value - there is an awful lot of that type of furnishings around here and it's still being made in the traditional way even if they now use electric equipment for construction.
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I remember at the top of Drury Hill there was always a smell - always the same and quite pleasant. I was told years later it came from an electroplating shop located above one of the shops on the left (going down to Broad Marsh). The smell was probably cyanide from the plating baths.
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The Canadians are still here. We all dined in Cannes yesterday at my friend's seafood restaurant. They want to go to a real Provençal restaurant for lunch so we're going to a little place in Mougins where Picasso used to live and eat. The restaurant is little known to outsiders and it is said that Picasso never paid for his food there, he just did a drawing or sketch instead.
Tonight I'm taking them to Restaurant Alain Llorca in Colle-sur-Loup just outside St Paul de Vence - in my view the best restaurant in the region - and it's Provençal cuisine.
I hired a 7 seat SUV to fit us all in during their visit and whilst I'm by no means a petrolhead, I'm very impressed with it. It's roomy and my wheelchair fits in very easily. Seriously thinking about getting one
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There is an error of fact in the article:
" Many of the city’s market traders also brought their businesses to the undercover Victoria Centre market, moving from the original Old Market Square pitch"
The market traders actually moved from the (also undercover) Central Market, Huntingdon Street. It was a good number of years since there had been a full-time market on old Market Square.
Otherwise, very interesting article.
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We had a Hoovermatic twin tub. It worked for a couple of years (until it was out of guarantee) then the 'impeller' stopped moving although the motor could be heard working.
I looked at the workings and found that the tub of the machine had dropped down so that there was no tension on the drive belt. It looked as if the tub had been attached with something akin to Evostik which had just given up its adhesive properties. We contacted Hoover who said that the machine was irreparable. I said that was b*ll*cks and I repositioned the tub and reattached it using bolts - as should have been done in the first place. The machine lasted another six years.
EDIT: Nothing marked Hoover was allowed in the house after that - those machines weren't cheap and the attitude to our complaint was completely unacceptable.
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Gerards Soap Works, Basford
in General Chat about Nottingham
Posted
Re the revolting subject of Jewish PoWs being made into soap, I doubt this was a practical proposition as all concentration camp inmates were on the point of starvation and there would have been very little fat in them to provide the necessary ingredient to make soap.
I'm still of the opinion that the story is more of a myth than fact. Using the corpses of their own soldiers, on the other hand, seems slightly more feasible as they would have been very well fed, thus providing plenty of raw material. Even so, how many bars of Imperial Leather do you think could be made from one SS officer (that is a rhetorical question, I don't expect an answer). Cows and/or coconuts are much more likely to be used for the purpose.
It should be also borne in mind that the big German chemical companies such as BASF and Henkel were working on developing synthetic detergents during this period to remove the reliance on the traditional raw materials of soap.