Islander

The most reliable rechargeable battery I've found would be a Sanyo Eneloop. I've used them in all sorts of things and never had a problem with them.

Same for me. I loved the band but as soon as Morrisey started whining that was it for me. The Rick Astley set was a revelation - The Blossoms were impressive as well.

I was rather impressed with Rick Astley and the Blossoms covering the Smiths numbers. Now there's a sentence I never thought would be said...

Bona to vada your dolly old eek... They're rerunning some episodes of Round the Horne on Radio 4 Extra (and some other old classics as well) 😊

I was 13 or 14, playing trumpet and at the Royal Festival Hall (I played Mozart's Alleluia as soloist). This was a Newham Academy of Music thing and one of a series of annual concerts called "Newham Goes to Town". I remember being very nervous before the solo, but as soon as I started playing I was fine and the music took over. What an experience!

Son of my father Molded, I was folded, I was preform-packed Son of my father Commanded, I was branded in a plastic vac Surrounded and confounded by statistic facts

If you go down to Willow Farm...

It's a Shergold modulator. The tone/volume module was an interchangeable unit - quite an advanced concept for the time. A mate of mine had one in the 70s.

Crimson. https://www.crimsonguitars.com/collections/guitar-maintenance-tools?page=1 https://www.crimsonguitars.com/collections/fretting Very high quality and UK manufactured. Not the cheapest but buy cheap, buy twice.

That one was used in Iain Banks' Crow Road.

It's just embarrassing.

I know, and quite rightly so. I was using it as an example of something really dreadful

Actually, returning to this, they didn't need permission to cover the song. All they had to do was to pass on any publishing it generated. Simon wasn't aware they were covering it until they performed it on TV. His response was spontaneous rather than planned.

Erm, he would have been paid anyway. Try again.

And yet the highly talented and successful songwriter and performer Paul Simon, reacted this way: "Simon sent Draiman an e-mail praising the cover. “Really powerful performance on Conan the other day,” Simon wrote. “First time I’d seen you do it live. Nice, Thanks.” He also posted this on Facebook: “In case you missed it, Disturbed did a wonderful rendition of The Sound of Silence on Conan this week. The S&G cover also appears on Disturbed’s latest album, Immortalized.” Everyone's entitled to their opinion of course but I think I'll take Simon's over yours any day.

I can't agree with this at all. This is one of those rare covers that is as good as the original - Draiman's vocal range and performance is sublime. Paul Simon himself gave it his seal of approval. Now if you'd chosen Alexandra Burke's ghastly mangling of Allelujah...

O' Keeffe's for maintenance - use it regularly during the day and use it even when your hands are fine. You can repair cracks and splits with superglue after cleaning them with antiseptic and drying thoroughly. It was developed as a wound closure adhesive and works really well.

Here's another beauty for you: Featherstonehaugh pronounced Fanshaw. 😄 And while we're on about old characters, another use of the yogh: Culzean (as in Culzean castle) pronounced Kul AYN

Yep, thats a thorn and it's still in use in Icelandic. The modern version looks a bit like a capital D with the upright extended above and below the semicircle - sometimes there's a small horizontal line that intersects the semicircle halfway down. The (Ye?) old English version looks like a Y with a slightly shallower 'v' and a forward hooked tail, hence the mix up. Fascinating stuff isn't it?

The Z in Menzies is a corruption of the Yogh character which is derived from G. Scots printers often used a tailed Z when they didn't have Yogh and the mixup remains.

Try Trottiscliffe, pronounced Trozlee Or one from Orkney: Rothiesholm, pronounced Rowshum (the first syllable is row as in argument). Beauchamp pronounced Beecham, Belvoir pronounced Beever...

Not to mention that the whole thing was tracked internationally with independent observatories working to help NASA maintain communications and monitoring (Parkes in Australia springs to mind), and by some radio amateurs as well. It would have been impossible to keep a lid on any shenanigans. Most notably, at the time the biggest propaganda coup that the USSR could have had would have been to show the world that the moonshots they were tracking were faked. None of this happened simply because they weren't. Conspiracy theorists, as annoying as they are, can be thought of as brainwashed members of a cult.

If you know about clangers then I'm afraid you are...

There have been successful experiments with heating on the inner wrist to keep hands warm. You can buy small handwarmers that would work if taped/strapped in place and would be a cheap way of finding out whether it would work for you.

Don't have a meltdown folks