Now, Now Vicar… 
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Winter 1973, bitterly cold like tonight with a vicious easterly, and The Johnster was working on the railway as a goods train guard. I’d worked a coal train up to Swindon where I was due to be relieved by a guard from Old Oak Common, London, and could see him walking along the train to get to my van.
So I walked up to meet him, and reassure him that the van was a good ‘un and the stove was going well, it was toasty in there… As we met, he comes out with ‘Fat Nell, mate, Fat Nell’. I assumed Fat Nell to be some sort of cockney folk heroine or something; ‘Fat Nell, mate, that wind, s’perishin’ mate, strite orf the Urinals it is, strite orf the Urinals’.
‘Straight off the what?’ ‘The Urinals, mate, you know, them mahntins in Russia, the Urinals. I lives in a fackin’ cahnsil flat in fackin’ Acton, 23rd floor, and there ain’t nuffin’ between me an’ them Urinals, an’ it’s all Siberia after that. Fat Nell’.
Brilliant; you can’t make this stuff up! When I got home I checked it out in my Reader’s Digest World Atlas and he was right, no hills in between and the flat nature of the Northern European Plain meant that there was, in fact, nothing in a straight Great Circle line between him and the Urinals, I mean Urals…
Fat Nell, mate.
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Incoming!!! … Storm Bert
Saturday …
Sunday …
I can hear @clinkadink charging the batteries for a new speed record … 
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Are those from the met office, Dave?
I was hoping to get some flight time in this afternoon before Bert arrives. But I’m battling to get this aftermarket exhaust to fit the bloody car.
Straight pipe it 
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I guess this flyer didn’t take Storm Bert into account. Currently gusting 60mph at the Needles Battery!! 
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Cripes! On the news - just seen the mayhem from flooding in Ireland.
And in West Yorkshire (Hebden Bridge).
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@clinkadink has been quiet - must have been charging batteries to leap into this, tomorrow …
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It’s already had me!
Been around 17 here
But not so on the reel feel!
Rain until 7pm - flood alert numbers might increase 
It’s been 17 here, too (well, 16.8C) for a while - but that 15.9 was 5:30am. That’s rare on what’s otherwise a hot day in the summer!
Bloody weather - ripped the outer skin of the Carcoon in the back yard which is now one flat Carcoon with a built-in swimming pool 
One old Jag inside - and I can hear it rusting away already 
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