Mundane facts about your day...

Just received a delivery of sweeties, that we didn't order. No-one is owning up to sending them....

 

Worried now that we've received someone else's sweetie delivery, we've used this company* before to send sweets to our 2 adult children as lockdown treats, but neither of them is admitting to sending them...

*little indulgence https://www.littleindulgenceonline.com/s/order

10 out of 10 every time.

 

Mystery solved, my medium sized child sent them as an anniversary present.

 

More odd than mundane. I found this in my now redundant brown bin today.

It looks like tarmac but I have no idea what it is or who’s dumped it. It wasn’t there the last time I looked in the bin about 4 weeks ago.

 

I've told son that if he decides to surprise us with a delivery , to make sure we know about it. Otherwise I'll be sending them on their way insisting we haven't ordered anything.

The barman in in a pub when we were on holiday last year was most insistent that we had order drinks via the app. We accepted them thinking son had ordered them again (He'd previously ordered some as a surprise after asking our table number ) . Luckily we hadn't knocked them back, as turns out the previous occupants of our table had decided to move tables and waiting for that order a few tables away .

 

Today I went 10 miles as my car was in for MOT. On the way to pick it up I went on the back of the Triumph, which was far nicer than the sports bike I've previously been subjected to.

 

I used to go on the back of a 750 Triumph Bonneville many years ago , but dont think I'd be so relaxed in today's traffic / potholes

 

I normally hate going on the back, I don't think I have been since we moved here almost 8 years ago. The tourer makes it a completely different experience though.

 

In 1998 I rode from Cornwall up to Scotland, in fact to mount Suilven which is way up north of Ullapool. I did this on a Yamaha Virago, a sort of Harley Clone with a sit up and beg riding position. I have to say that much as I love the old Suzuki GSXR1100 sport bike (the ultimate cure for constipation) I very much doubt I could have lived with that riding position for a run to Scotland.
So I know what you mean.

 

On my way to work today, I've just seen what looked like a Sinclair c5, green, white & red in colour...

 

To my knowledge there are three working C5s in Stafford. I've had one in bits in the garage for a few years and have been steadily acquiring the necessary to get it fully functional again. It will be p Jr's project for Lockdown 4 when that happens.

 

I've only ever seen one C5*.

It was during the initial burst of interest and was being driven down a road in Derby by an elderly Sikh.




* "C5" as in "Sinclair" - not Citroen or Lockheed, that is.

 

I remember taking a Sinclair ZX80 (or 81) computer kit to sea with me in the early 80's. Put it together aboard ship but found the vibration didn't sit well with the 16 Kbyte RAM pack that plugged into the back of it. Became a Duck tape job.
I eventually bought it home and as I remember gave it away to Chris Peat, who later went on to form a techno group called 'Altern 8' who had a few hits and got onto Top of the Pops !! (I doubt the Sinclair computer had anything to do with that though.)

 

You sure he's not made an early start on it..... It was heading north out of town, on the A34 by Halfords

 

Well it's possible that someone could have stolen it over night, fixed the cracked bodywork, resprayed it, fixed the bent steering, replaced the rusted up chain, fitted an electric motor and battery, fitted a control module and ridden it up the A34.

Won't be laddo though as he's been helping me chop two very large trees down in the garden and remove the stumps and some of the roots from the ground this morning as well as taking a load to the tip.

I'll have a look in the garage later to check it's still there...

 

If your luck is running really badly ...... it will be.

 

Nah, it's all really easy stuff to sort. All the electric components come as a kit from China, the body will be fixed with fibreglass. He can get the sprayer at work to give it a nice paint job. The only bit he'll struggle with is sorting the drive out from the motor to the wheels. He'll have to measure things up precisely, design the necessary and then get one of the 3D printers at work to produce it.

When he's finished, it should make a novel promotional tool for me and be a good learning experience for him.

 

On one of my Masters degree summer schools at Bath Uni for a design course we were asked to test a variety of products such as electric kettles, fire extinguishers, sofa seats, etc AND a working C5.

We discovered that it handled these steps and the grass heading towards the pond ok but it wasn’t very good as a boat.



We actually got extra points for doing a proper usability test on it whereas everyone else just tried tests to see if things did what they were supposed to do

 

It's still there.

 

Commiserations.