Sunday Variety

 Have You Ever Been To La Thuile?

The community is in Italy but only just. It is very close to the border with La Belle France and was probably once part of France at sometime in the dodgy political history of the area. It is within viewing distance of the summit of Mont Blanc.

When the snow has retreated from on high ...

... brisk walks and challenging cycle rides are the appropriate forms of physical torture. 

Correspondent Andrew's son works there, promoting cycling.

The Thuile area has an excellent web site with some glorious pictures and plenty of useful information. Andrew' thought that fbb might be interested in the rail connections detail.

There is no railway station at La Thuile, but bus links are available. Helpfully the web site includes a picture of the sort of train you will be catching.

Somebody should tell us that the UKs Southern railway is operating in France using spare trains from Sussex. Do the commuters from Brighton know where their peak hour capacity has gone? Or are they secret through trains via The Tunnel. There again they seem to have installed third rail electric.

Or is Adverse Information at work, yet again?

Another Rail Reopening

But where?

Sweet ...

... and worth a visit.

Open every day during school holiday.s

First Returns To Chiltern

No, not first bus

Mark 5 carriages (as used by Trans Pennine) will be deployed on the fast trains from Maylebone to Birmingham. But the bigger change is that these sets will be equipped with First Class seating areas.

The seating looks posh as befits the Mark 5, and especially swish is the First Class 3 plus 1 seating.

This is a bit 'back to the future' for Chiltern, a company which abandoned Firs Class some time ago.

Are You Watching "Destination X"?

fbb isn't, but they seem to drive around in a coach with blacked out windows - or we are meant to think thus.

Does true reality mirror the artificially created angst of an "unreality" TV show?

It is a brand new coach for the European market and it is besr described as "sleek and cuboid".

New Tech Arrives

Courtesy of |No 3 son who is clever like that, fbb's whole technology has been renewed. That includes all the graphics stuff used to much in these blogs.  To train himself, the old man has been trying our various bits of software. For the record, Windows has been replaced by Linux Fedora which, after just an hour o so of prodding and poking the keys, is proving much easier to use and much less prone to "strange happenings"!

Learning from a Leaflet?

Last weekend the fbb's fellowship meetings were based on the life and work of one of the Old Testament Kings, namely Hezekiah.

The leaflet was a broad brush guide to his life and work.

In simplistic terms, he destroyed pagan practices and turned the nation back to God; who, in turn, delivered an unexplained and unexplainable miracle when the Assyrians did NOT destroy Jerusalem and simply went home. The events are mirrored in Assyrian records; so it is not any fanciful biblical optimism!!

Maybe our nation would get on better if it turned back to God.

Click on the panels to enlarge them.

And here is the Lord's answer c/o Isaiah!

And here are word clues to the empty boxes!

And a conclusion ...

 Next Oranges and Lemons blog : Mon 11 Aug