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I don’t see any snuff taking these days. There was an old chap in my local who used to take it and hand the box around. I could never bring myself to try as I’ve never indulged in tobacco products. He was the church organist and I saw him taking snuff during our wedding service many years ago. Not just that but eating a bar of chocolate and swigging from his hip flask. I took him a bottle of Scotch as a ‘thank you’.

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Just got back from QMC again........the last eight days have been a bit Traumatic to say the least,,...blood tests,,X-rays,,and today a visit to a Consultant........cut a long story short......problem

Result........CT Scans all clear......just got letter..been sweating for a fortnight......

Two years ago today..........my life changed forever,,,about this time i was on my way down to the operating theatre for what turned out to be a ten hour operation...........its been life changing in

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2 hours ago, benjamin1945 said:

Makes me feel better and lessens the craving....also for some reason watching 'Talking Pictures where they all smoke helps as well.........lol

 

In Talking Pictures, when they all smoke (all the time) they also drink all the time. 

 

Does watching the telly do anything for your alcohol intake ?

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Strangely enough i dont miss Alcohol......loved a drink most nights....in my time ive had periods of drinking Beer..Whisky..Rum..Gin..Vodka...in fact most concoctions...keep saying i'll try a 'Baileys' one night...but not really fussed.........

          Now if i ever get back to Spain it could be a different story..............

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Ben, have you considered trying Baileys with your daily coffee?

It's a little bit like an Irish coffee (but cheaper). It's quite nice.

Or try a Baileys over ice, that's lovely. As they say,"Don't knock it 'till you've tried it".

I'll be interested in your opinion.  Bottoms Up !

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BK I Love a  Baileys and over the years have had it several ways...always nice with Coffee.....but only in the evening....

           Have it with ''Ice'' in Spain...and usually say ''LO MISMA'' after..........

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Sorry Ben, I misunderstood. I thought you meant that you'd yet to try a Baileys. I didn't realise you were an oficianado of the nectar.

My apologies sir !

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Today has started well. I just read that an American politician L Gohmert (Texas republican) has come up with a solution to global warming. Hooray!!

He has suggested, quite seriously, that the American Forestry Service or the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) change either the orbit of the Earth or the moon as it would "obviously have a profound effect on our climate".

He's the same guy who swears he caught Covid because he wore a mask

And we thought Trump was barking!

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Does the US actually have an education system?

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I am pleased to say my ciggie craving has abated today finally. It has been a tough couple of days fighting the inclination “if I buy a pack and just have one ...“ rather like when I first went onto the vapey thingy. I was cutting the strength of the liquid down so perhaps this triggered it, have gone back to mixing 2 strengths together again and will take it from there a bit slower until I hopefully quit altogether. 
I was thinking about when I first started smoking in the 60’s, everyone seemed to smoke then or at least it seemed like it. I can remember Keith Richards on stage with the Stones smoking, it just seemed so “cool” at the time and a bit rebellious. Dread to think how much money I spent on them over the years but I did enjoy it. Just wish stopping was as easy as starting.

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I'm now two years smoke free, still have the occasional craving, and one product that really, instantly kills the craving is the spray from the chemist. It's not pleasant and is really horrible spayed directly into the throat but against the inside of the cheek it's tolerable. The problem is it doesn't last long before you're  wall walking again and you're still ingesting nicotine into your system.

 

The most effective I've found were the course of tablets on prescription, try you GP.   

Good luck SG...

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I got up to smoking 60 a day, (when I could afford it). Started smoking properly when I was 11yrs. Decided to stop about 1974ish.

But that was the clue, I  DECIDED to stop, not cut down. It wasn't easy at first but I'd made me mind up. No tablets, sprays and vapes hadn't been invented. Kept a couple in me pocket, just in case but was able to throw them away after a couple of months. Consider myself a smoker who doesn't touch fags.

 

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My husband told my son, who was always complaining about him smoking, that he would stop when he became a grandfather. Came that day when the news came and he threw the pack away,which he'd just bought and hasn't touched one since. This was when my daughter in law became pregnant 18 yrs ago. 

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Thanks for clarifying for me Phil. It's only when you submit do you find your error. But this flaming tablet will insist on putting in what it thinks you meant to write.

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Not a lot different on my PC, the fingers take orders from the brain, totally ignore them and do exactly as they like...

Missing words, misspelled words, hilarious punctuation etc. but I tell everyone my age and they just say ah bless him he tries...

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And now the end of my day. How's it been? OK earlier, but just had a message to say my favourite Aunt passed away peacefully this afternoon. She were 94. Never realised she were only 17 years older than me. As a kid, she always looked grown up to me. R.I.P. Ethel.

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Interesting day yesterday..

When I moved into this new build house in 1976, there was still a trench where the pavement/sidewalk should be. The builders simply filled it in temporarily for us to be able to access the drive and move in.
A little while later they actually laid the pavement.

Later still, it transpired that some genius had arranged for every house to have its 'streetside' water stop valve positioned on the pavement exactly where it would get driven over daily by vehicles accessing house drives. In my case, for some reason, the stop valve was not positioned in a proper chamber beneath a cover, but inside a few bricks piled up to form a rough 'box'. Of course...it wasn't long before that crumbled, but since I had no cause to inspect it.. I was unaware. Nine years later, when the rising main inside my integral garage 'popped off' ..naturally below the 'house side' stop valve.... it took me some considerable time to access the street side valve and shut off the water...
Despite not being a plumber.. I soon worked out that whoever had attempted to fix a plastic 1" pipe, which had been terminated with a 45 degree cut, to a copper rising main...was on a hiding to nothing. Hence the catastrophic leak. I simply cut the end of the pipe correctly and using the original olive and fittings, put everything back together. That was 1985.

At some point after.. the water company came along and fitted a proper chamber under the streetside stop valve, and repaired the dip in the pavement.

Last year... during lockdown..I decided to fit an outside tap, plumbed directly off the rising main in the integral garage. Being forewarned and therefore forearmed, I made sure to clear the little streetside cover, make sure it was capable of being opened and check that the brass tap below was accessible and turnable.

It was well that I did so, because during subsequent plumbing operations in the garage, the water main parted company again.. below the house side stop valve. I was able to shut off the water in seconds and then completely renew the internal stop valve and coupling.

When I finally turned on the water at the street side valve I noticed that the chamber was filling with water. I assumed it was due to a leaky packing gland in the stop tap.. but decided to ignore it.. as I'd had enough of other people's plumbing cock ups.

However... none of the above is important right now....

Last Tuesday we returned from lunch with friends, and noticed bright blue spray paint around our street side water stop valve. I wasn't much concerned.

Yesterday.. two chaps turned up with a truck and a small digger type machine in tow. They parked across both mine and my neighbour's drives and started operations. Neighbour enquired as to how long they would be because he needed to go out in 10 minutes. They cheerfully agreed that they would move their vehicles whenever neighbour needed to move his car.
I enquired similarly and they informed me that I would be able to move my car, but that once they had finished their work, Mrs Mull's car would be trapped on our drive, because they were only there to dig a hole and change the stop valve.. The pavement would be made good 'in a couple of days'...by another crew. Mrs Mull took the opportunity to move her car onto the street.

I politely suggested to the workmen that it might have been a good idea for United Utilities to actually give me some form of warning of their intentions.. not least because I might well have been out when they arrived..with who knows what consequences..

The workmen agreed wholeheartedly and explained that United Utilities policy of not informing residents in advance, of inconvenience to which they were to be subjected...often resulted in them being subject to hostile reactions from residents.

Incidentally, it turned out that the water leak was in the join between the stop valve and the blue plastic 'supply side' water main.

Shortly afterwards...the workmen left. They had replaced the stop valve with what looked like an all plastic alternative, left the contents of the hole on the side of the pavement adjacent to the hole, surrounded the hole and its contents with an 8 foot by five foot arrangement of bright yellow plastic barriers and sited a total of four signs over an approx 100 metre stretch of pavement, indicating 'Footpath Closed'. All of this in a Cul De Sac with 6 houses.....

And yet somehow.. United Utilities had not provided said workmen with the means to backfill the hole and make a simple patch repair to the pavement.

As you can probably deduce from the above... I am lost for words... :rolleyes:

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Under the New Roads and Street Works Act (I was a qualified supervisor  :rolleyes:) the hole must be filled using MOT grade stone and materials as per the 'Blue Book'. The work is then guaranteed for a minimum 2 years, regardless of the where it is...  The local authority will at some point inspect the work, for which the contractor has to pay, and can order it to be excavated and redone if necessary. This  starts the 2 years warranty period again. The contractor can also be fined if the signs are not  set out correctly

That's why most utilities use contractors and not direct labour.

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Sorry to hear that BK. I've lost all my favourite aunts but have lovely memories of them as I'm sure you have.

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Not my day but my 4 weeks or more. My son who lives above us had a new shower fitted and a while later we noticed a damp patch on our ceiling. Ours is a very old cascina which has the original vaultered brick ceilings so it showed up like an ink blob.  The plumber duly called who said the syphon ( not sure what you call it but it was the plughole and waste pipe) was loose so he tightened it. The damp patch grew so he was duly called again. He changed it as he said it wasnt a good quality but was a part that came with the shower base.  Continuing, this patch wasn't going to dry out and was gradually getting worse. It started off covering 2 bricks but then spread to 6 bricks. We were all getting worried about it. The plumber lifted some of the tiles in my sons bathroom and fitted the new syphon, cleaned and dried up the water, stuffed paper into where it apparently was leaking and said he'd come back the following week to check. He came and examined the new syphon , everything bone dry but our ceiling. Then my son began to think it may be the grouting and sealant that wasn't done properly so once again the plumber was called. Everything resealed and this time hopefully our ceiling could dry out. But no it seemed to be getting wetter. On close examination my son found there was a tiny hole in the silicone under one of the wall tiles. Quickly sealed again and now we can see that the ceilling is starting to dry out, hopefully with no stain being old bricks we dont want to have to cover them with paint.

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9 hours ago, Brew said:

Under the New Roads and Street Works Act.. etc.

 

Yep, Im sure that's all the case, but two things occur...

 

1. Why did UU not trouble themselves to inform me in advance that they planned this work and give some clue as to the potential for inconvenience?  For e.g., what would have happened had we been out in my car?  We'd have returned to find Mrs Col's car trapped on our drive for an indeterminate period.  As I now understand it, they have 7 days to 'make good', which, depending whether weekends count.. could take us to Friday 18th.  My daughter is technically expecting a baby on the 17th and all cars will no doubt be needed.

2. Why can UU not make some effort to synchronise digging up operations with making good operations?

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I have just informed UU of my displeasure:

 

'On Tuesday 8th June I returned home and noted blue spray paint around the water stop valve cover over which I have to drive to access my driveway. I assumed that this meant that somebody had identified something untoward. However, in the absence of any communication from anyone, I was left guessing, until Thursday 10th June, when two gentlemen appeared with equipment and vehicles which blocked both my drive, and that of my neighbour.  My neighbour enquired as to the likely length of stay of the workmen as he was about to go out in his car. The workmen agreed to move their vehicles whenever required.
I too enquired as to the likely duration of the work in progress as I had received no prior warning from United Utilities as to your intentions. I was informed that the work to be done on 10th June only consisted of opening up a hole, making a repair to the water supply to my house and then leaving the site to be 'made good' at some unspecified later date. This would leave one of two cars 'trapped' on my driveway, unless it was moved before the excavation commenced.  I pointed out to the workmen that I had received no prior notification that this work was planned and that I could only speculate as to what inconvenience would have arisen had I not been at home when the work was done.  Both workmen agreed that I should have received prior warning and explained that United Utilities' failure to do this often resulted in them being subject to hostile reactions from residents.
We were obliged to move one car off the drive..while we wait for somebody else to turn up..no doubt also unannounced, to fill and make good the hole which is preventing us from properly accessing our own property. When this is likely to happen, is of course pure guesswork on my part because I have STILL not received a single word of information from United Utilities, as to your plans in this regard.  It seems that our needs and our convenience are very low upon, or even absent from your priority list, as too, seemingly, is common courtesy.
Do you think this constitutes good customer service? We most definitely do not.  We await your observations on this matter.'

 

I love a good rant.  Who knows?  It's that time of year and I might even be nominated for a 'Meldrew Award'

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