It's Murder, On The Orient Express ....

[Ally]

What gorgeous place names they have down there.

Your incinerated pasty reminds me of the (one and only time!) I had a McDonald's apple pie - I lost the entire roof of my mouth's skin due to the scalding apple filling. Very odd as the outer pastry part was ok to the touch. Heaven help a child if they'd tried one. :

Very entertaining read again Ossie...thank you.

[Kaz]

They're like napalm Ally They do have some fabulous place names in the SW

Another great read, Os

[Kaz]

Becky looked after baby skunks, when she went to Canada The spray is horrific, but apparently tomato juice gets it out of clothing They were sweet and playful, although one escaped and climbed up on the roof

[TheOstrich]

30/03 – A PR visit on Thursday to Master O and DiL’s London abode – DiL is 37 weeks advanced and as the baby is breech and, like a certain former Prime Minister, “is not for turning” , there will be an elective caesarean this coming Monday.

In the old days, you could just go to the station, buy a ticket, hop on board a train, and go to your destination. These days, however, you have to game-plan your journey. A Day Return to London means either a “travel anytime” ticket which costs a King’s Ransom , or a cheaper affair which heavily restricts when you can travel back. I wanted to retain flexibility whilst not bankrupting myself, so after much studying of the runes (also known as the National Rail Journey Planner website ), a cunning wheeze surfaced – change at Woking onto a suburban train and travel to Wimbledon, thus avoiding Clapham Junction and Waterloo, the two key “restricted stations”. That only cost £33.35 with a Senior Railcard, with no restrictions on return time, and I completed the journey to Mitcham via the Croydon tram (Oystercard) and a 118 London Transport bus (free with my Dorset Old Codgers Bus Pass ). This actually worked very well, despite the fact that the trams turned out to be on strike - thankfully they were running a limited shuttle service from Wimbledon to East Croydon which luckily covered my journey.

The trams have an external loudspeaker system, so that the driver can presumably bellow at any recalcitrant pedestrians, cyclists or other livestock which might wander onto the line . This was put to good effect in Wimbledon Station. Watching punters ambling leisurely down the platform towards the vehicle, the lady driver broadcast: “This tram’s doors will be closing in 30 seconds! ” Cue mayhem and mad panic!

One slight bone of contention between Master O and DiL appears to be the name to be given to the newborn. It’s going to be a boy, and they want something vaguely Scottish (her roots) but they haven't so far agree anything between them. I have therefore been referring to it, by default, as “McBaby”. This has not gone down too well, so to be helpful, as the baby will initially be a “small wizened person”, I have suggested “Tyrion”. For those of you who might not immediately know where that derives from, well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSlNDy5Ex18
The excellent Peter Dinklage, with Iain Glen.

I also managed to scare the Bejaysus out of their cat! I don’t think it had ever encountered an Ostrich before …..
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view ... edIndex=26

For today’s game, I opted for a visit to Corfe Castle, down on the Isle of Purbeck. Corfe Castle FC play at The Fortress, but the ground (which takes a bit of finding) is nothing special, just a playing field on the eastern side of the village with a single wooden-clad clubhouse called The Millennium Pavilion, but it does have a spectacular vista of the castle ruins, about a half mile away. “Cromwell woz ‘ere, 1646!” With time to kill, I wandered into the centre of the village; it’s a pretty place with many attractive old stone cottages, and there were plenty of tourists around and about, enjoying the warm sunshine – shirt sleeves weather today!

Corfe Castle were promoted into the Dorset Premier at the end of last season, and have struggled to adapt – they are third from bottom but with some games in hand, and have probably just about done enough to avoid relegation. Their opposition today was my home town team, Gillingham Town, who were 5th in the league but some way off the leaders.

Corfe’s initial game plan appeared to be to nobble Gillingham’s gargantuan goalie , but after five minutes or so of ineffectually bouncing off him, they went for Plan B, which was to play a bit of football. The Tangos (Gillingham play in an orange strip ) were getting the ball down both wings and crossing it into the box, but they weren’t getting players forward to capitalise on those chances. Reasonably entertaining end-to-end stuff before Gillingham took the lead on 33m, a simple cross to the far post being neatly headed back across goal, and a close-range diving header by Gillingham’s no.10 completed the job. The home keeper was incensed with his defence for allowing the chance, but it was a well-worked goal.

In the second half, Gillingham’s centre-forward scored twice in three minutes, his second being a lovely 20 yard chip from wide over the keeper into the far corner of the net. Although they had their moments, Corfe Castle were never going to come back from that, and Gillingham ran out deserved winners on the day.

Dorset Premier League (Step 7): Corfe Castle 0 Gillingham Town 3
Admission: £2
Refreshments: A rather nice wholemeal vegetarian pasty from the bakery in the village centre, £2
Attendance: 34

[cromwell]

Best wishes for your daughter in law Os.
I honestly don't know how you have the patience to work out the train / tram journeys. For an impatient sod like me it would be too much.
The Isle of Purbeck is such a beautiful part of the country. I never knew that Corfe had a football team! Yes, old Oliver was well into the demolition business wasn't he? If there was a royalist castle left with two stones on top of the other it must have been an oversight.
"Corfe’s initial game plan appeared to be to nobble Gillingham’s gargantuan goalie" - coarse football!
It sounds like a good game, a good day and with reasonable admission and food - can't be bad.

[Kaz]

The train ticket thing drives me batty! You should just be able to tip up on the day, and get a reasonab!y prices ticket

Ossie that's so exciting, you'll be a Grandostrich tomorrow!! Wishing your DiL a safe and happt delivery

[Ally]

Train prices....you all need to come to Spain. Totally different concept!!!!

Good luck to son and d-i-l Ossie....love the fact April 1st is fine by them.

All that aside.....great read as per and thank you!

[JoM]

Hope all went well Ossie!

Remember my ticket thread the other week? We travelled from Cannock to Birmingham International and then International to New St (where we popped up into Grand Central for food) and then onto Cannock and not once did our tickets get checked or did we have to go through a ticket barrier (all were open!). We could've done the whole journey, there and back, for free!

We loved the public transport system in Prague. To get from the airport to the hotel we had to take a bus to an underground station, we took a train to a tram stop where we caught a tram which then took us near to our hotel. We each bought a transport ticket which lasted for 90 minutes once validated on the first form of transport and that covered us for the entire journey and cost a grand total of the equivalent of £1.06 each.

[Kaz]

That sounds brilliant Jo

[TheOstrich]

06/04 – Firstly, many thanks to all for your kind wishes for Master O and DiL. I’m pleased to say the caesarean went smoothly and we now have our first grandson, 6 lbs 9 at birth. Babe and Mom are doing fine; both are back home, and we’re hoping to visit them shortly. After a number of inconclusive indicative votes, they eventually decided to call him Henry – which has absolutely no connection to anything as far as I can see!

On Tuesday last, a Wessex Water van hared into our road, did a quick circuit and disappeared – but not before laying a series of road cones outside our house. Considering we’re at the far end of a cul-de-sac, this did seem slightly odd. Researching their website, I found an airy comment that there would be Unspecified Work between Wednesday and Friday, sorry for any disruption and all that. Well at the moment, we have Richard the Painter doing his thing in our garage, and as we can only get one vehicle on the drive, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday was spent playing ducks and drakes with our respective cars. And needless to say, neither hide nor hair of anybody from Wessex Water.

The cones are still there today. Come Monday, I may have to take a leaf out of Tom’s book. Tom was a very pleasant and unassuming young lad I worked with back in the 1970’s in Birmingham. Legend has it that one evening, following an extended pub crawl in his home town of Aldridge, wandering round the town centre, he espied a line of 6 yellow police road cones. Being of tidy but slightly befuzzled mind, he decided this couldn’t be right that they were just sitting there, so he collected them up, took them into the local police station, and handed them in to the desk sergeant saying “I think you must have lost these …..”

They did let him out. Eventually.

So to Saturday, and the moral is never leave home without an Alternative Plan – or three! Staying fairly local, I meandered through the Blackmore Vale to Stalbridge FC for some Dorset League action, and on arrival found the ground curiously deserted apart from a couple of guys working on the adjacent cricket pitch.

“Football match on today?” I enquired.
“There should be …. It’s on the website.”
“I know,” I said, “and it was still showing as on when I looked a couple of hours ago.”
“But there’s no-one here yet – a bit strange”
It was still an hour before kick-off, but faint alarm bells started sounding, which got louder when I noticed the nets hadn’t been raised on the goals. One of the cricket guys knew the soccer club’s manager and texted him.
“It’s off,” came the verdict, “the opposition couldn’t raise a team”

I thanked him, and raced back in the direction of Marnhull.

Marnhull is a rather strange place. It lies half-way between Gillingham and Sturminster Newton, and originally was a collection of small hamlets that, over time, have been joined together by ribbon development to form the straggliest village imaginable. I’ve never been able to find a centre to the village, but on the main road, it does have an excellent pub (Sunday Carvery recommended) called “The Crown Inn”. Now every other pub in Dorset (for marketing purposes!) makes some claim or other of a connection to Thomas Hardy , but the Crown has a good provenance. The village of Marlott in the classic tale “Tess of the D’Urbavilles” is definitely thought to be based on Marnhull, and the Crown, which is a very old coaching inn, is reputed to be the original “Pure Drop Inn” in that book. There’s at least two other Dorset pubs I know of claiming to be the Pure Drop Inn, mind you ….

Turning off the main road just past the pub, I dropped down to the Recreation Ground, passing on my right Sodom Lane, one of the more desirable streets but with probably the least desirable name. Glowering over the entrance is the Primitive Methodist Church (dated 1893) and you do wonder what those Methodists got up to in those days! The Recreation Ground has a children’s play area, the traditional two hard tennis courts, cricket and soccer pitches, and the village hall cum changing rooms. The soccer pitch has a somewhat pronounced side-to-side slope.

Because North Dorset District Council failed to meet its Government-imposed New Housing targets, builders are currently able to propose just about any new green-belt development scheme and get it nodded through planning despite what the locals think. Marnhull currently has a population of around 2,000, and the new estates already in the pipeline look set to increase this by 40-50%, very rapidly – to say the residents are unhappy would be putting it mildly. But – as we have also found out in Gillingham – there’s virtually nothing that can be done about it. Judging from social media, expect an interesting backlash in the May local elections ….

The game was a classic relegation battle, and the result did neither side any favours. End to end stuff, but neither keeper was particularly tested. Marnhull did get the ball in the net in a goalless first half but it was disallowed. The Marnhull attacker was fouled outside the area, appealed to the referee, but then got up and somehow in the confusion put the ball in the net.
“Foul back there,” intoned the referee.
“WHAT? I scored! What about advantage?”
“You asked for the foul. I blew for it. You then put the ball in the net. No goal. Foul back there!”
By gum that produced a fair old amount of chuntering …

Just when things looked like meandering down to a –0-0 draw, Marnhull’s no.12 launched a frantic long range cross into the area, and no.10 met it with a glorious diving header – 1-0 on 74m! That really woke Corfe Mullen up, and the lead only lasted 3 minutes, Marnhull’s no.2 inadvertently heading a corner into his own net for the equaliser.

Quite a decent game in hindsight, played at an attractive venue with open views across to Hunger Hill and the Shaftesbury ridge, but there was also a cold south-easterly wind blowing today, and I was grateful to scurry back to the car and get the heater on ……

Dorset League Division 3 (Step 11): Marnhull 1 Corfe Mullen United Reserves 1
Admission: free, no programme
Refreshments: A delicious wedge of Cornish Yarg with Nettles* from the village deli, for which I was stung £3.65.
Attendance: 8

* Ever inquisitive, Ossie did some Wiki research on this:
Cornish Yarg is a semi-hard cow's milk cheese made in Cornwall, United Kingdom. Before being left to mature, this cheese is wrapped in nettle leaves to form an edible, though mouldy, rind. The texture varies from creamy and soft immediately under the nettle coating to a Caerphilly cheese-like crumbly texture in the middle.
Despite its historic connotations, Cornish Yarg is actually the product of the British cheesemaking renaissance in the 1980s, while its roots are inspired by traditional British Territorial cheeses.
The cheese is produced at Lynher Dairies Cheese Company on Pengreep Farm near Truro, by Catherine Mead, Dane Hopkins, and team. "Yarg" is simply "Gray" spelt backwards. It is named after Alan and Jenny Gray, enterprising farmers who found a 1615 recipe by Gervase Markham for a nettle-wrapped semi-hard cheese in their attic. The original recipe is thought to date back to the 13th century.

So now you know! It does have a rather subtle flavour ….