Whitey Grandad

Heat? Underinflation? But in general, yes. It doesn't take much of a pothole to take a lump out of a tyre. Either way, a car at 125 mph has over three times the kinetic energy of one doing 70 mph.

The speed may have caused the tyre to fail.

No no no. He wasn't that good.

Many years ago we went to a wedding at Hinckley and stayed overnight in a hotel nearby. By strange coincidence that same weekend Leicester City were holding a preseason friendly against our Blue Friends from further down the coast. Coming back from a morning sightseeing as we approached the car park the whole of their squad was walking slowly back along the path towards us. One slip of my foot on my accelerator and I could have wiped out the whole lot of them. What a dilemma! We were all eating in the hotel restaurant that evening. 'Harry spent all his time on the phone. Joe Jordan sat quietly on his own reading a newspaper whilst he was eating. Most of the rest of the squad seemed to be in a side room staring blankly at their laptops. Someone suggested to me that they were studying gambling websites.

Stupid idea. Charging for luggage trolleys likewise. I recently came back through Gatwick and the trolleys at baggage reclaim all needed a coin to release them. You get your coin back afterwards but who the he'll has a pocket pull of coins these days when they come back from abroad? There were plenty of trolleys but only about two were being used.

I can't imagine ABK in any sort of race.

Stats? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thanks for the suggestion but not for me. Toffs is all the same. I know my place. 🫣

You Really Got Me The Kinks

Thanks, I'll have a look. I'm cramming in all the travel that I can these days whilst i can still get the insurance and a big problem is that I want a solo balcony cabin which is not too expensive.

Which P&O is that?

£150 per stateroom on P&O for 14 days or more. I'm on a Princess cruise to Galveston in October and I get $250. Nowadays you have to apply through an app called Stockperks. https://www.carnivalcorp.com/investors/shareholder-information/shareholder-benefit/ Somehow I've ended up buying a lot of future cruise credits on NCL and I looked at buying their shares but they only give you $100 for cruise up to 14 days so it wasn't worth it. To ge honest you wouldn’t want to spend that long on NCL anyway.

It brings a new meaning to "Play the ball and not the man".

Just the thought of it brings tears to your eyes.

The NHS is good at emergencies but rubbish at routine.

Ostensibly they've made the change so that they can hold weddings on board. I suspect there's a lot more to it than that.

Good point. Although to qualify for the on board credit that you get for holding these shares you need to have at least 100 of them so that is what you would need to spend. This perk is available on all Carnival Cruise brands.

I first met the young girl who was to become my wife and lifelong companion at a disco called the North20 in Barnet High Street although we didn't call them discos then. It was a Valentine's evening on 12th February 1966 and we were both still just sixteen years old. For the last dance of the evening they would always play "The Carnival is Over" by The Seekers. She always dreaded hearing this song because it meant that the evening was over and if you hadn't pulled by then you were going to go home alone. For the two of us, fifty-seven years later, the carnival is truly over. By all means get tickets for the fair on the Common but you won't see much of the wider world that's waiting out there for you.

I've done the Hurtigruten from Bergen to Kirkenes and back twice but it's a voyage and not really a cruise. You only get a couple of hours in the bigger ports but not necessarily at the best of times. NCL do a couple but they are mainly aimed at the Americans with 9 or 10 nighters. P&O still do some. Arcadia in August this year and Aurora in December. We went up to North Cape on Princess in 2022 the year before I lost my dear wife but the emphasis now is on shorter ones. The Norwegians are getting fussy over environmental issues. Geiranger Fjord will soon only accept zero emission ships. The problem is that the big lines are moving towards ever larger ships and many ports can't handle them.

We did that. I drove my dear wife up to the middle of Sweden so that she could buy a large Dalahäst (red painted wooden horse) in Mora in Dalarna. Ferries go from Hirtshals in Northern Denmark to Larvik and Kristiansand but the Bergen route is probably better for western Norway. Or you could go the long way round over the Øresund Bridge. We drove outbound via Harwich - Esbjerg just before that route closed and back via Øresund and Hook of Holland.

The locals are starting to get fussy about the type of ships that can use the Fjords. Geiranger in particular will eventually require visiting ships to be zero emissions.

That's they. I think that's about what I paid for them all those years ago. They are dual listed and AGMs alternate between London and Miami. I've been to a few. They're not the most dynamic bunch of executives that you might hope for.

He was overtaking at the time apparently.

The shorter cruises don't go that far up but anything over about ten nights definitely will.

No I didn't. I think they went over £50 at one point. In the past few years I bought another 100 shares at about £11 but as you say they dribbled down and when they had recovered to £13.50 I sold them. I still have my original holding which have probably given me a few thousand pounds of onboard credit initially with P&O but for the last few years with Princess. I jumped ship when P&O upset me. Coving was a big challenge. I think Carnival took out a $60bn dollar loan facility to see us through. The dividends were useful too but there has been no sign of those for several years.