The Shipping Forecast Radio

Quite often at a car boot I'll come back with something with no idea why I bothered to buy it, and this was one of those things. I think I had a vague thought about stripping a couple of bits from it. A closer inspection the following day revealed it was a bit more complicated than that, as the saying goes...

That's a timer added to the end, with familiar time settings:

Yes, it's been modified to automatically record the daily cycle of shipping forecasts from Radio 4 long wave, and presumably was used on board ship, or at the very least a shore base in communication with sea traffic. Note, though, the very un-Radio 4 errant apostrophe. ;-)

Sofa so good...*

On Wednesday it was a sad day for saggy my old sofa, it got dismantled, yielding firewood, springs and some very nice firewood.

I spotted a date printed on the inside cheek.

Ah, 1975, it's forty years old, I thought.

Febuary, right, ok.

The 4th. What date is it today? It was the 4th.

Yep, my sofa last exactly forty years between construction and destruction. Kind of like a Logan's Run for furniture...

(* always happy to sacrifice meaning for the sake of a pun)