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  1. Jim MacPherson

    Graphite Mining

    Being a bit pedantic, kyo was common in north Durham and Northumberland for cattle perhaps morphed a bit to coos and Anglo-Saxon was a shared language/dialect in the Borders by the 7/8thC and well up to NE Scotland as in Doric while Gaelic had been pushed to the west, but common in Galloway...
  2. Jim MacPherson

    Graphite Mining

    Ian Tyler's book Seathwaite Wad is a good read, getting quite expensive to buy so if you can borrow it so much the better. Jim
  3. Jim MacPherson

    Fluorescein dye

    Suppose a word of caution, about 3 years ago my pee went red and I explained to myself with having eaten red jelly or beetroot in something. It wasn't it turned out to be an enlarged prostate, uncomfortable but dealt with quite happily. Sometimes it's still too normal to think it'll be better...
  4. Jim MacPherson

    Do you wash your wet socks?

    I wonder if neoprene normally used to be pre-aged in 'ye olden days'. I got through 2 suits between 1968 and 1983/4, they were generally just washed in the nearest stream and apart from knees/elbows/crotch being regularly wrecked (with very average repairs ) and becoming a bit tighter on the zip...
  5. Jim MacPherson

    Cambrian Caving Council 2024 AGM

    I seem to recall BSC using punched card programing and knitting needle sorting when I got some computer-based auditing training about 1974/5. In all fairness BSC were quite advanced in using computing for finance and some aspects of manufacturing operations. Jim
  6. Jim MacPherson

    Mine shaft storage on news

    Many years ago (1976/7?) my girlfriend and I went to Machynlleth Alternative Technology site, it had quite recently started. I managed to utterly muck up the pronunciation so she was in hysterics anyway. One of their features at the time was an energy efficient modern-sized house, looked quite...
  7. Jim MacPherson

    Richard "Dickie" Bird videos on Youtube

    Excellent stuff, just enough annotations and wistfully thoughtful backing soundtrack and I rather like the occasional shutter clicks. Jim
  8. Jim MacPherson

    ....and the cave passage this represents is??

    I think 'poss' is reasonably common, there was a poss stick mill down by the river here until the 1920's (Durham Derwent). My Mum had a single tub Hoover with an agitator, mechanical poss stick a bit like a domestic version of those tubs on the dressing floor at Killhope, and a rather lethal...
  9. Jim MacPherson

    LOST: DINOSAUR IN PENYGHENT

    Suppose you need to say "was", I suspect most people are aware of the intervention of a few idiots so the tree was chain sawed a few weeks ago. The site's been sorted although some damage to The Wall happened and possibly the resultant timber will be used somewhere near by, maybe Housesteads...
  10. Jim MacPherson

    Dales pub for sale, now going cheap

    Did wander in a few times in the 1970/80's on the way back home from Sleets Gill etc, lovely pub but a bit remote even as a way back to Middlesbrough. As Speleofish points out most pubs are struggling, rural ones even more so. I'm not helping much as it's probably a year since I last went to...
  11. Jim MacPherson

    Suspension Trauma

    I've had a hypothermic event once and as a casualty I can happily (now) confirm it's utterly disorientating and deeply scary, I had no real idea what was happening beyond my vision suddenly got very blurry, apparently I was mumbling (even more) gibberish. I kept on trying to pull off the blanket...
  12. Jim MacPherson

    Yellow calcite

    Presumably these things are called zappatites or maybe frankmites?
  13. Jim MacPherson

    Scaleburn to Rampgill via Cross-Vein

    This would have been one example of where AditNow's archive was so handy as over the years people attached numerous articles and reports to mines, possibly John Lawson and/or Roy Fellows would know. There were links relating to aspects of their explorations in WCMRG journals but they may only...
  14. Jim MacPherson

    Aditnow.co.uk

    Not least for a record of the people involved for example Eric Richardson around Nenthead, he generally managed a benign smile, and the helpful contributions of people to put names to faces 20 years or so after the event and Legendrider's interest in older cars, which helped date a Beckermet...
  15. Jim MacPherson

    Aditnow.co.uk

    I'm a little edgy about the passive/aggressive tone of a few of the contributers on this thread. SimonRL set AditNow up and ran it for many years and clearly was confronted with a number of issues a few years ago which eventually required a major rebuild of the site. From a personal...
  16. Jim MacPherson

    AditNow vanished?

    That's rather encouraging news, I do look at the face book site occasionally but not for a week or two. Great work from Simon and all others involved. Meanwhile I'll just return to watching the rain. Jim
  17. Jim MacPherson

    Friday joke - WARNING - contains swearing.

    Semi-joke but quite true; My then girlfriend and I had been to Ironbridge for a meander and on the way back to her parent's house near Oswestry we passed by Buildwas Abbey at which point she told me, quite assertively, that it had been built by the Crustaceans. That was part of the reason...
  18. Jim MacPherson

    AditNow vanished?

    Another change; "Sorry Page Not Found" No idea if that's good or not. I hope Simon is progressing and more will emerge presently, I rather miss the esoteric posts that populated the site and the captivating photos never mind the fabulous range of erudite stuff various members provided...
  19. Jim MacPherson

    A positive history of coal?

    I'll have a delve over the next week or two but I suspect quite a lot of the more positives may link to the individuals who grasped quite early on what the latent power of coal had to offer. An example perhaps; https://www.ironbridge.org.uk/about-us/industrial-revolution-characters/ There are...
  20. Jim MacPherson

    What is this?

    Could have been part of a cooking canteen, I think we had a couple of similar things in the scouts, a couple of billies and a dixie that sat inside each other, for storage etc and I did have a solo camping set with a kettle, pan and lid that doubled as a plate/frying pan, somewhat smaller but...
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