Ronaldo47

Around 5 years ago, when the door catch on my son's washing machine snapped, I found a video on youtube which showed how to fit a replacement. It seems they are pretty standard parts , and I was able to get one from a local shop that does repairs for well under £5.

On the other hsnd, our twin tub could do a wash in 10 mins and you could re-use the soapy water for several washes.

Record companies took legal action against Amstrad over their twin cassette recorders, which they asserted were providing the public with the means to carry out illegal copying of copyrighted material. They lost, partly because Amstrad's recorders could also be used to carry out legal copying (such as recordings of lectures for students who were unable to attend in person), and also because Amstrad's ads specifically drew attention to the sections of the copyright act relating to copyright infringement and the need to get permission to copy copyrighted material. So I guess providing signs warning users not to speed could provide a good defence.

At the Central London law firm I worked for until I retired a decade ago, we used to write off charges of less than £30 that were outstanding at the end of an accounting period as it was reckoned to cost that much to raise and process the invoices and other paperwork. So I guess the handling charge amount is not unreasonable.

When visited Ireland in the early 1990's, they were in the process of going metric. The speed limit signs were still in English miles per hour, but the signposts gave distances in kilometers. As the original signposts had expressed distances in Irish miles rather than English miles, and as an Irish mile (I believe based on 10 furlongs rather than 8) was almost exactly 2 km, it had only been necessary to double the original numbers. In some rural areas, distances on the finger signposts had been simply amended using white paint, with the ghosts of the old numbers visible underneath.

In the 1980's, brake pads with leather inserts (the Rayleigh Raincheck) were on sale for a few years. A cycling msgazine rrview noted that, on steel wheels (but not aluminium ones) they were far more effective in the wet than rubber, and my own experience confirmed it. As a bonus, a light brake application produced a high-pitched squeal that was a far more effective at warning pedestrians of my approach than the bell, especially the modulated squeal produced on a wheel that was not completely true that I suppose could have given the impression my brakes were not working properly. They seemed to last for ever, and I still have a pair on my vintage Bickerton folding bike that I usually take with us on canal holidays. All our other bikes have aluminium alloy wheels: it appears that neither steel wheels nor leather brake blocks are still manufactured,

The medieval ridge and furrow field systems that the Oxford canal cuts through between Braunston and Fenny Compton.