• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

escargot said:
Aren't 3-wheelers banned form motorways? With good reason!

. :wink2:
Click to expand...
I'd have thought so, although I also once saw an ice cream van doing 20mph on the M6.
I had just started to overtake an artic when I saw, in the reflection of his wing mirror, a look of total panic on his face. I realised then that something was wrong so I eased off and gave him a flash of lights so he knew I was letting him in, which he gratefully did. I followed him until he got past Mr Whippy and he pulled back over to the left lane. He had come upon it so quickly I doubt he'd have stopped in time if I hadn't let him in. What 'Ice cream man' was thinking taking that on the motorway, I'll never know.
 
escargot said:
Older model cars had a disturbing tendency to blow up on long journeys when the motorways first opened. It still worries me to see them on any fast road.
Click to expand...
Which i think is partly why the most old cars you see are the prestige ones that are better equipped for modern speeds. Round here - 50 miles from the nearest motorway - Morris Minors and VW beetles are still fairly common.

You are exactly right about older cars blowing up. My first motorway journey in my father's Singer Hunter - quite modern looking but mechanically from the 30's - ended exactly that way somewhere around Watford Gap. Engine overheated and seized. It could reach 70 mph but was simply incapable of sustaining it - and of course it would never had to prior to motorways.
 
A lot of old type engines were long stroke and did not like sustained
high revs much, also the drains down from the rocker boxes would
get clogged and at sustained high revs the oil would end up in the
rocker box and starve the rest of the engine of oil.
:omr:
 
Cochise said:
Which i think is partly why the most old cars you see are the prestige ones that are better equipped for modern speeds. Round here - 50 miles from the nearest motorway - Morris Minors and VW beetles are still fairly common.

You are exactly right about older cars blowing up. My first motorway journey in my father's Singer Hunter - quite modern looking but mechanically from the 30's - ended exactly that way somewhere around Watford Gap. Engine overheated and seized. It could reach 70 mph but was simply incapable of sustaining it - and of course it would never had to prior to motorways.
Click to expand...
Yes, exactly. We saw a lovely TV documentary about the first motorways which described driving past families standing forlorn beside blown-up wrecks every few miles. :chuckle:

my father's Singer Hunter
Click to expand...
I have a nifty little paperback 'ere called The Book of the Singer.
Pcked it up from a car booty thinking it was about sewing vintage machines. :chuckle:
 
RaM said:
A lot of old type engines were long stroke and did not like sustained
high revs much, also the drains down from the rocker boxes would
get clogged and at sustained high revs the oil would end up in the
rocker box and starve the rest of the engine of oil.
:omr:
Click to expand...
I used - many years ago - to have a Triumph TR6. The motorbike, not the car. It was capable of over 100mph - yes been there - but you had to periodically slam shut the throttle to force oil round the engine. Otherwise it would seize. It became a sort of metronome thing - count to 120 and slam it shut.

Which is part of why I ride (or used to ride, up to a couple of years ago) Harleys and not British stuff.

The same was true of the BMC C series engine, although the A and B series seemed to be OK, my MGB (time of marriage No. 1, HYR 420C) was quite happy on motorways back in the 80's. I modified my Wolseley 6/110 Mk 1 (6616 VB - I miss you babe) to give it a better route from the sump back to the rocker cover and that seemed to work - my Dad's 6/110 Mk 2 several times pumped all its oil out the breather on long runs, but the engine, bless it, was tough enough to survive that.

We finally seemed to be able to make reliable mass market cars about 1990 and then in the late 2000's we've gone mad and hopelessly over-complicated them.
 
Last edited:
Floyd1 said:
I'd have thought so, although I also once saw an ice cream van doing 20mph on the M6.
I had just started to overtake an artic when I saw, in the reflection of his wing mirror, a look of total panic on his face. I realised then that something was wrong so I eased off and gave him a flash of lights so he knew I was letting him in, which he gratefully did. I followed him until he got past Mr Whippy and he pulled back over to the left lane. He had come upon it so quickly I doubt he'd have stopped in time if I hadn't let him in. What 'Ice cream man' was thinking taking that on the motorway, I'll never know.
Click to expand...

Speaking of ice cream vans -
Out in the sticks years ago I passed one approaching at speed and when I glanced in the mirror I saw one of these.

Uncle Sam on the Square.jpeg

It's the rear view of an Uncle Sam ice cream van, specially built to sell American ice cream.
When my father worked for the company he built the mould for the fibreglass face.

I noticed right away that it was a self-portrait. :chuckle:
So when I saw the van in my mirror I said 'Hello Dad!' :)

Front view -
Uncle Sam van front.jpeg
Not half as exciting.
 
Floyd1 said:
I'd have thought so, although I also once saw an ice cream van doing 20mph on the M6.
I had just started to overtake an artic when I saw, in the reflection of his wing mirror, a look of total panic on his face. I realised then that something was wrong so I eased off and gave him a flash of lights so he knew I was letting him in, which he gratefully did. I followed him until he got past Mr Whippy and he pulled back over to the left lane. He had come upon it so quickly I doubt he'd have stopped in time if I hadn't let him in. What 'Ice cream man' was thinking taking that on the motorway, I'll never know.
Click to expand...
Just after I passed my driving test (I was 18), I accidentally pulled onto a motorway slip road. I'd never driven on a motorway before and there was a lorry parked on the slip road so I pulled up behind that, put my hazards on and nervously approached the driver ..

"Excuse, me. I've just passed my driving test and I've never been on a motorway before. What do I do?" ..

He just pointed and said "Drive that way." :chuckle:
 
Trevp666 said:
When I worked at a school as a caretaker our common complaint about doing fire drills was that the teaching staff were advised beforehand that it would be happening, so (of course) they were all prepared with the kids already with their coats on, when the alarms went off.
Because yeah, of course, a fire would wait until everyone was ready wouldn't it.
Click to expand...
I worked in quite a few schools (teaching) and in those days anyway, it always worked like this in our LEA - we were told there would be a fire alarm at some point in the day but not when, not even which lesson or AM or PM - so you knew there'd be one, but not when it would be. I never had the kids ready with coats on and never let them collect coats (which more often than not were outside the classroom). Maybe this was done differently in different LEAs?
 
There was a fire alarm at the BBC t'other day during Today* which put the show off-air for half an hour.
The presenters could be heard discussing whether to leave the studio or not.

Are they mad? I'd be STRAIGHT out of there. You don't take chances with fires. It could have been a bomb or whatever.
People have died for not taking a fire alarm seriously.


*Prestigious BBC Radio 4 live 3-hour morning news programme
 
I remember being about 10 and going to Blackpool on the charabanc/
coach, it was announced we would travel via the just opened M6 Preston
bypass, there seemed to be a bit of apprehension about this and we all
peered out of the windows, it ended at Broughton, cant for the life of
me think how this would help on the way to Blackpool so maybe the
memory is slightly off and we were heading for Morecambe, now
that would work.
I suppose you could go via the A6 then A586 seems a long way round
but if traffic was bad could be faster.
:omr:
 
Last edited:
RaM said:
I remember being about 10 and going to Blackpool on the charabanc/
coach, it was announced we would travel via the just opened M6 Preston
bypass, there seemed to be a bit of apprehension about this and we all
peered out of the windows, it ended at Broughton, cant for the life of
me think how this would help on the way to Blackpool so maybe the
memory is slightly off and we were heading for Morecambe, now
that would work.
:omr:
Click to expand...
Yes, before the M55 was built for B/Pool (Junctions 0-1 1958 and 1-4 1975) back then you'd have got off at Preston and followed the A583 I would think. For Morcambe you'd have used the A6 from Broughton up.
 
They are building it now or at lest that's what it looks like it's at the Preston end.
 
RaM said:
They are building it now or at lest that's what it looks like it's at the Preston end.
Click to expand...
Really? I know the original plan was to have the M65 join it at 2, but they gave up on that idea a long time ago.
 
escargot said:
There was a fire alarm at the BBC t'other day during Today* which put the show off-air for half an hour.
The presenters could be heard discussing whether to leave the studio or not.

Are they mad? I'd be STRAIGHT out of there. You don't take chances with fires. It could have been a bomb or whatever.
People have died for not taking a fire alarm seriously.


*Prestigious BBC Radio 4 live 3-hour morning news programme
Click to expand...
I remember, donkey's years ago (probably about forty) staying in a hotel with my then-partner. We were awoken in the small hours by an alarm going off somewhere in the building. Massively noisy, really loud. We had no idea what to do. Stuck our heads out of our room, alarm going crazy in the corridor and NOBODY ABOUT.

We sat there for a bit, trying to decide what to do. We had an easy escape route out of the window as we were on the ground floor, so we decided to wait. And still NOBODY ABOUT.

Eventually the alarm stopped, we went back to bed. In the morning we mentioned it, and nobody else had heard a thing. We definitely weren't the only people in the hotel, or on the ground floor. So either everyone else slept the sleep of the dead, or the alarm was located somewhere in our room...
 
Some years back when I was young and single, I lived in a building that was quite old. I noticed people moving in, and then moving out the very next month; this went on for years (I lived there for 10 years). At one point, my brother no sooner moved in with me than he was moving out again. He told me there was something wandering through the building, a woman. Well so many friends who stayed over told me the same thing - she was tall with fair hair that was pulled up on top of her head and wearing a long white billowing dress, they all saw the same woman. An elderly woman living around the corner told me the history of the building, that a woman had hanged herself in the attic (which was right above my apartment!), and I asked the old landlord one day if that was true - he got very angry and told me if I didn't like it there, to move. So I didn't pursue it, but it turned out that another woman had drowned herself in the river which was right across the road from our building. I have to think that areas like this have unhappy spirits clinging on to them.
 
catseye said:
or the alarm was located somewhere in our room...
Click to expand...
Our smoke alarms once went off in the early hours and woke me up, to find the bedroom full of smoke. :omg:
I jumped up and went to wake Techy, shouting 'The place is on fire! We have to get out!'

However, there was no smoke anywhere except my own room. Techy'd stuck joss sticks round a big plant in my window and they'd burned down and set fire to the compost. :rolleyes:
 
Experienced a very minor oddity in the past few days. I was working on a craft project with polymer clay (a clay that hardens in the oven) and attempting to make a chocolate cake slice with the effect of a salted caramel filling.

I decided that a gold metallic clay would work best for the filling. However I had ran out of the latest packet I had and couldn't find any in my 'stock', and so I went to a local craft shop to buy some more. Unfortunately they were nearly all out of polymer clay (a bit bizarre in itself) so I placed an order online. When it came, I was disappointed to find it was a gold glitter, which is a very different effect to the gold metallic. At this point I couldn't be bothered with the faff and so I decided I'd use white then paint over with gold once baked. Going into my box of clay to find some brown clay to start making the cake, lo and behold I found an unopened packet of gold metallic. I knew I'd checked multiple times and there was no gold metallic in there so I was just like :omg:

I can't say I wasn't pleased, but I really don't understand where it came from or how it managed to elude me. Anyway, the cake slice turned out well, here it is alongside a chocolate crepe I also made.

20211202_210335.jpg
 
Cloudbusting said:
Experienced a very minor oddity in the past few days. I was working on a craft project with polymer clay (a clay that hardens in the oven) and attempting to make a chocolate cake slice with the effect of a salted caramel filling.

I decided that a gold metallic clay would work best for the filling. However I had ran out of the latest packet I had and couldn't find any in my 'stock', and so I went to a local craft shop to buy some more. Unfortunately they were nearly all out of polymer clay (a bit bizarre in itself) so I placed an order online. When it came, I was disappointed to find it was a gold glitter, which is a very different effect to the gold metallic. At this point I couldn't be bothered with the faff and so I decided I'd use white then paint over with gold once baked. Going into my box of clay to find some brown clay to start making the cake, lo and behold I found an unopened packet of gold metallic. I knew I'd checked multiple times and there was no gold metallic in there so I was just like :omg:

I can't say I wasn't pleased, but I really don't understand where it came from or how it managed to elude me. Anyway, the cake slice turned out well, here it is alongside a chocolate crepe I also made.

View attachment 48784
Click to expand...
Your polymer clay food is incredible!
 
Pulled out a weed in one of the raised garden beds and I found a coin. It was a bit dirty but I think it was an old 1cent coin.
As I'd come out to get the washing I thought I'd drop it into the raised wash basket and take it inside.
I did, but the washing wasn't quite dry so I went to take the coin out but it wasn't there.
I looked everywhere on the ground but it wasn't there. I'm just mystified.
 
Iris said:
Pulled out a weed in one of the raised garden beds and I found a coin. It was a bit dirty but I think it was an old 1cent coin.
As I'd come out to get the washing I thought I'd drop it into the raised wash basket and take it inside.
I did, but the washing wasn't quite dry so I went to take the coin out but it wasn't there.
I looked everywhere on the ground but it wasn't there. I'm just mystified.
Click to expand...
Two possibilities here:
1) The coin wasn't lost... it was on the run
2) Fairy currency, renowned for this kind of thing
 
Iris said:
Pulled out a weed in one of the raised garden beds and I found a coin. It was a bit dirty but I think it was an old 1cent coin.
As I'd come out to get the washing I thought I'd drop it into the raised wash basket and take it inside.
I did, but the washing wasn't quite dry so I went to take the coin out but it wasn't there.
I looked everywhere on the ground but it wasn't there. I'm just mystified.
Click to expand...

1. Check the pockets/folds of the washing.

2. Check your meds.

;)

maximus otter
 
I hadn't taken the washing off the line and I'm sure I didn't hallucinate the coin.
 
I had a very odd experience last night. I was very tired and was just trying to get to sleep, we are in the middle of a house move, so had done much more physical activity than usual and was lying on a mattress in an empty room, rather than in my bed.

I was thinking/starting to dream about an article I had recently read about the concept of time and starting to go down various rabbit holes in my brain, as I tend to do before I fall asleep. I was thinking about how we experience time and if the reason why we see varying paranormal phenomena in different places is that they experience time differently...it was a weird thought process.

All of a sudden I 'heard' a loud noise, sort of like something very heavy being dropped onto something very soft. The sound didn't seem external, so it was more that I heard it in my head...if that makes any sense, like a meaty thwack. Then in my mind's eye (so I am fairly certain I was at least half-dreaming at this point) I could hear a loud high pitched droning noise and I could see the coloured moving lines from the end of a VHS videotape. It was incredibly vivid. I couldn't speak whilst this was happening and sort of felt detached from myself and wondering what the heck was happening, as it was like I was watching the lines and hearing the noise of the static and all of a sudden I snapped back to my room with a loud crack.

Probably a dream, but a very odd experience likely brought on by just how tired I was.
 
Violets said:
I had a very odd experience last night. I was very tired and was just trying to get to sleep, we are in the middle of a house move, so had done much more physical activity than usual and was lying on a mattress in an empty room, rather than in my bed.

I was thinking/starting to dream about an article I had recently read about the concept of time and starting to go down various rabbit holes in my brain, as I tend to do before I fall asleep. I was thinking about how we experience time and if the reason why we see varying paranormal phenomena in different places is that they experience time differently...it was a weird thought process.

All of a sudden I 'heard' a loud noise, sort of like something very heavy being dropped onto something very soft. The sound didn't seem external, so it was more that I heard it in my head...if that makes any sense, like a meaty thwack. Then in my mind's eye (so I am fairly certain I was at least half-dreaming at this point) I could hear a loud high pitched droning noise and I could see the coloured moving lines from the end of a VHS videotape. It was incredibly vivid. I couldn't speak whilst this was happening and sort of felt detached from myself and wondering what the heck was happening, as it was like I was watching the lines and hearing the noise of the static and all of a sudden I snapped back to my room with a loud crack.

Probably a dream, but a very odd experience likely brought on by just how tired I was.
Click to expand...
In the past I have on occasion fallen asleep while wearing my footwear- (usually boots at the time) and it always made me have weird dreams and ones where I couldn't move my feet or legs even though I really wanted to wake up. I also couldn't speak which, while being semi conscious, is not a pleasant feeling.
 
Violets said:
I had a very odd experience last night. I was very tired and was just trying to get to sleep, we are in the middle of a house move, so had done much more physical activity than usual and was lying on a mattress in an empty room, rather than in my bed.

I was thinking/starting to dream about an article I had recently read about the concept of time and starting to go down various rabbit holes in my brain, as I tend to do before I fall asleep. I was thinking about how we experience time and if the reason why we see varying paranormal phenomena in different places is that they experience time differently...it was a weird thought process.

All of a sudden I 'heard' a loud noise, sort of like something very heavy being dropped onto something very soft. The sound didn't seem external, so it was more that I heard it in my head...if that makes any sense, like a meaty thwack. Then in my mind's eye (so I am fairly certain I was at least half-dreaming at this point) I could hear a loud high pitched droning noise and I could see the coloured moving lines from the end of a VHS videotape. It was incredibly vivid. I couldn't speak whilst this was happening and sort of felt detached from myself and wondering what the heck was happening, as it was like I was watching the lines and hearing the noise of the static and all of a sudden I snapped back to my room with a loud crack.

Probably a dream, but a very odd experience likely brought on by just how tired I was.
Click to expand...

I've probably mentioned it before on here, but I once woke from a dream with not only the sensation of landing back in my body, but a view of my bed rushing up to meet me in the process, as if I was astral projecting or something.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top