Living long is over rated Rik... After losing both my patents in the last few year at ripe old ages of 85 and 86 and watching them suffer the last 5 to 10 years, I've realised that all these rock stars that have died this year at 69-70 have lived life to the full and died before suffering the worst years of life, have judged it right. The worst year are the last so better to burn out than fade away. This isn't a gloomy look at life but an excuse to do what the hell you want while you can. Being healthy is only the longest you can live before dying, the end is the same for all of us, so live life while you can. Like you say, When I was 20 I was never expecting to live this long so every day is a bonus now

email (option): horror@blueyonder.co.uk

We are getting a bit off topic however there is a substantial difference between extending life and prolonging death.

Being a founding member of the "previously deceased motorcyclist club" I really appreciate the past 40 years of life that was granted to me however removing everything from life that may forshorten it, has already done just that.
And banning everything that can cause injury or death is counter productive as very few of the replacement products actually do the job of the "toxic" item they have replaced and in time will be found to be equally toxic in due course.

I had to stand by and watch modern medicne torture my mother for 15 years, the final 3 leaving her totally insne yet evey time she died some well wisher revived her to continue the torture.
Dad very cleverly opted for a surgury that had a 10% chance of success so was able to die with dignity with full control over his body & mind.

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

Interesting points of view, off topic or not.

Bearing in mind all the advice from the medical profession concerning food that is bad for us, plus even more more advice from the health and safety brigade, its a wonder that the real cause of concern for the world is overpopulation followed by predicted food shortage?

My chidhood playground was south London bombsites, later it was demolition sites, I remember one massive prefab site where the burnable stuff was piled in a heap and set light to, asbestos and all; then at weekends the actual new buildings became another playground which involved jumping off scaffolding into great piles of sand.
Followed by 50years of motorcycling without a serious accident.
As I am already 10 yrs older than my father ever got to be, to say nowt about the other rrelatives still in the Desert or Italy I have decided I shall live till I die.

"life is karma cafe, there is no menu, you'll get served what you deserve"

Lovely day here, I'll tempt fate and get the bike out later, even if it is only the twist and go scooter.

There's a few memes here for me..... I was an apprentice gas fitter but nobody told us about wetting asbestos flue pipe or fire back boards, I also grew up in South London playing on bombsites and new houses (Brixton). I was born in Bermondsey, though I was not a Cockney Diamond Geezer as I did not grow up there.....

email (option): stinkypete80@hotmail.com

Which gas board?
NTGB, Vincent street, I was.

Yes I have a bit of a theory about human life.
Make no bones about it I enjoy living however at every stage of life people get snatched from the jaws of death by modern medecine, in particular during the first year when any other animal that could not cope with their enviroment dies.
My workshop is on a farm and what appeard to be a perfectly good health animal will die for no apparent reason, but the farmer is a vet so each & every death gets an autopsy.
Because of the system of recording meat stock, the owner can go back through the animals "medical history" and genetic history.
More than once they have sold on a cow because it has become apparent that it can not successfully breed with the current bull although it may have breed successfully several times with a different bull and thoes offspring have also successfully breed with the same bull that their mother can not . They do not line breed but rotate the bull whenever they decide to increase the breeding stock.

We on the other hand work on the assumption that every combination of "bull & cow" must be able to produce offspring and should that offspring latter circum to something in the enviroment that has no effect on 99% of the "heard" we decide to modify the "farm".

Back in my uni days I worked on my off day in a factory that made gaskets & insulating material.
Their big product was muffler bags for ships.
These were made from asbestos coated canvas with brass insert threads.
These were stitched together and packed tight with cracked asbestos fiber, usually hot strait out of the oven.
There were better then 100 people working there.
I now have silicosis of my lungs, probably courtsey of this factory and no doubt aided by 30 years riding a motorcycle in Sydney CBD 12 hours a day.
AFAIK the only person who came down with asbestosis and died was one of the office workers who sat in an air conditioned office all day and rarely entered the factory

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

Asbestos, there is a town in Quebec called Asbestos, where they mined asbestos. The roads were white with it, and when it rained they got slippery. Most of the inhabitants died from or are suffering from mesothelioma. Including some of Jim Custeau's (AKA full choke Jim) family.

As a young gas fitter I was also exposed to that bad aspestos. my father was a station engineer and platform foreman on the rigs in the north sea. He always told my brother the welder and I to always soak the stuff and try not to make any dust he should have taken his own advice. he spent the last 10 years in bed on oxygen thanks to aspestosis

cheers Steven in Ottawa

email (option): goodbell@ripnet.com

On a brighter note Sam are you going to be around home the first week of August? Time to make the yearly trip to Nova Scotia

cheers Steven

email (option): goodbell@ripnet.com

I was on the other side of the river with the SEGB (South Eastern Gas Board) in Streatham.

My late brothers wife had a boyfriend after he went and the guy worked in the shipyards around Greenock and fitted ships with the asbestos lagging on the pipes, he succumbed to the same disease that got my Dad, Pancreatic cancer. What really appals me is that the government and suppliers new the dangers for over a hundred years and they just let all those deaths occur....

email (option): stinkypete80@hotmail.com

Blue asbestos is easily the most dangerous form of a dangerous material...

Despite that fact it was selected for many applications by the Navy because of the pretty blue colour...Under the flight deck of HMS Eagle for example....

Not as bad as getting over exposed to a Nuclear explosion though I suppose which many were in the interests of experimentation..

Then there were the serving troops they got to volunteer for chemical weapons testing without giving them a realistic assessment of the risks...

Best not to mention depleted uranium warheads or untested antidotes to chemical warfare agents given to troops during the gulf war either...

So it goes on...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

I've just seen there is a part 2 to this old film.

https://youtu.be/PiN61a4KaKc

I didn't know they measured the bore and stroke after a race.

email (option): horror@blueyonder.co.uk

Yes I've spoken to Eric Patterson several times (who runs the Kempton jumbles) about his record breaking runs at Bonneville on his JAP engined feather-bed, and he told me he had to have the heads off after his record for measuring. Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

Is that Joe Graig among the people ?

I saw Bob Foster, and when I was a teenager, we were always in his motorcycle shop here in Parkstone. Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com