I read an article a while ago about people complaining about PowerGen's website in italy - apparently the website is something like www.powergenitalia.it or something...

Microsoft exchange had similar problems as well, since it's at www.msexchange.com

Nice one, guys...

powergenitalia are in fact unrelated to PowerGen, and are quite bemused by the sudden tnedency of their server to crash under the weight of requests. It turns out they recharge radio batteries, or something. (source: Independent last week)



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

As we're currently _ albeit probably only very temporarily _ (more or less) on the subject of what businesses are called: Do any of you know whether the phone company called 'Orange' tries to do busines in (northern &/or southern) Ireland under that name and, if it does, with how much success?

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My favourite business name is the Chinese Restaurant in Shirley, West Midlands called "The Shirley Temple"

I also saw a potter in Harray, Orkney called...well, you can probably guess.

When I was visiting a friend who lives in the Rhondda valley a couple of years ago I noticed that his local fish-&-chips shop was "A Fish Called Rhondda".

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I heard that "Orange" tried driving a van down the Falls Road some years ago and it got pelted with missiles. I don't know exactly what they did about it, but they certainly got the message that it was a bad idea!

My all-time favourite commercial howler was when Electrolux tried to export one of their British advertising slogans to the States. It was for their vacuum cleaners, and the slogan read: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Heee.



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Sarah - I remember that ad quite well. We used it in one of my ad classes as a "how not to transfer your advertisement to another country".

Those were 3 of the funniest weeks I ever spent in a classroom.

Shock! Somewhere else has even worse trains!



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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I remember hearing about an incident somewhere in England, a few years ago: The driver of a passenger train whose locomotive a pheasant had just collided with quite close to a rural station left the vehicle parked by the platform for some time, while he went back to search for the (stunned or slain) bird so that he could take it home as an addition to his larder. IIRC he was disciplined for this...

Did you also look at the linked story about the "uncaged kitten"? And the one about the teddy-bear?

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Yes, strangely enough I looked at both of those. Personally I just wouldn't take a kitten out into a crowded place like that; I'd be afraid of it being frightened and running away, or getting stolen, or being stepped on, or all kinds of awful things. Seems terribly unfair to have a law saying you ought to keep the poor creature in a cage, though.



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

In my career in public transport I have worked with many people with long experience, going back to tramway days, and they told me many stories. Here are two concerning animals.

Once upon a time there was a man who used to travel regularly up and down Stockport Road in Manchester; he was a bit scruffy, but harmless and not smelly, and always paid his fare, both for him and the small brown dog he always took along. One day (after several years travelling with the dog) he got on a 92 bus with a new guard, who was a bit more clued up about natural history than most. He took one look at the dog, and told the man he could only bring the dog if it was in a secure basket or similar, not on a lead.

"What for?" says the chap, outraged. "You can take dogs on buses on a lead!"
"Yes, but that isn't a dog, is it. It's a baboon, and it goes in a basket or not at all!"

Well, he wasn't best pleased, was the man, and refused to get off, and kicked up a fuss. So an inspector and a policeman were fetched, and a furious discussion ensued, the man insisting his pet was a hound, and the guard equally insistent it was a baboon. The inspector and the copper were flummoxed, and didn't know what to do, when at that point the creature took a hand ... literally, as it picked up a cigarette butt of the floor, and began chewing it thoughtfully. This sort of settled the argument, as even Longsight policemen know that dogs don't usually do that sort of thing.

The man was charged with carrying a wild animal about to the danger of the public, and the baboon travelled by bus no more.

I'll put the next story in a new post.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

This story was told to me by an long-serving Inspector called Vic Gooch, who swore it was true.

One day Vic was duty inspector at Piccadilly Bus Station in Manchester, when he was approached by a lady, who was leading two animals behind her. She complained, in a cut-glass posh Cheshire set accent, that the guard on the Alderley Edge bus wouldn't let her take the animals on board.

Vic inspected them. To his untutored urban eye, they appeared to be a pair of nanny goats. The lady admitted this. Vic pointed out that goats, on the whole, tended to smell a bit, and the guard was quite within his rights to bar them from his bus. He suggested perhaps she went up to London Road station, and tried putting them in the guard's van of the train. So off she went, goats in tow.

Half an hour later she came back. Apparently British Railways were no more kindly disposed to the carriage of goats than Manchester Corporation Transport was, and pleaded with Vic to let her take them on the bus. Vic was implacable, however, at which the lady cried

"But how am I to get them home to Alderley, then?"
"You can saddle 'em up and ride 'em, lady, but they're not going on a bus!" Vic replied.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

H'mm. An example of the species that's sometimes called the 'Dog-faced' baboon, presumably... I wonder where the man had obtained it.

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A somewhat Nextian moment today. On the way back from visiting Cresswell caves with a friend, I looked up and saw a biplane flying near by at a rather leisurely pace. Neither of us knew enough to know what kind of biplane it was, unfortunately, so can't give any better information.

Plenty of single props over Windermere, generally just in front of or behind twin jet warplanes in a serious hurry. They all appeared to be doing laps from south to north. Why?

One of the locals reported a local monument on a mountain top called 'the pepper pot', which seemed to be part of an RAF game; get a wingtip as near to the pepper pot as possible.

There is an acetone factory in the valley below.

Briefing? What briefing? Out of valley error!

Twenty years ago I was overflown at about twenty feet (or so it seemed) by Jaguars (I think) whilst cycling in Wales. Riding uphill with both hands over ears, do my eardrums have rights?

Yes we have the RAF practising their precision flying over the valley we live in - one morning when we driving up the A3 very early (going to Orkney I think) we looked down and saw a fighter plane underneath us flying over one of the fields - and the road's only about 15 ft above the fields at that point... very scary. Lunatic actually, at the speed they go.



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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

I don't mind them really, I'm just a Nimby. They've got to practise somewhere, but if they do it near you, it doesn't half rattle you.

I heard a story of joint US/UK flying exercises where the UK pilot went down to thirty feet or so and confidently thought he had outmanouevred the yanks. Then a plane overtook him below, and it had a tailplane about twenty feet high. Retire with shaking hands to the bar, I suggest.

You sound seriously near to the Arctic Circle up there ---

Na pretty much the centre of Scotland. Lovely place. Not nearly as cold as Edinburgh either - or at least it doesn't have that bone-piercing east wind...



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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

Only went up there once, with parents as child. First impression, grown up version of Wales (tongue in cheek).

Wales, bigger brother of Derbyshire (from whence I hail --- and here it can from a cloudless sky). OK, so I moved to Sheffield, more of the best bits of Derbyshire are nearby now I'm in Yorkshire!

Lakes, always filling up (except last week at Coniston).

Where do Scots go on holiday?

I used to live under the major flight route for military aircraft heading through Warwickshire. We used to have warthogs at 100ft every day, rolling over the hill to remive the blindspot.

Now live in Evesham, and was rather surprised to see a stealth bomber fly over using my house as a turning marker yesterday.



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.