Ted Shackelford

Ted Shackelford is an American actor best known for his role as Gary Ewing on the CBS television series Knots Landing, in which he starred from 1979–93. Shackelford also appeared as Gary Ewing on several episodes of CBS's Dallas; this role had originally been played by actor David Ackroyd who was unable to return for future appearances. Prior to his role on Knots Landing, Shackelford played the role of Ray Gordon on Another World. He currently plays recurring character Jeffrey Bardwell on The Young and the Restless.

Shackelford's parents were Paul Olden Shackelford, a physician, and Mary Jane Shackleford. He attended Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and then transferred to the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, where he procured a bachelor's degree.

Shackelford has also played roles in Wonder Woman and most recently in The Division. He also starred in the British science fiction series, Space Precinct.

Junction closed

Anyone who has ever travelled by road between Manchester and Sheffield will have spent rather more of their life than they would wish to queueing up for the traffic lights in the centre of Mottram-in-Longdendale. No doubt on one corner of the crossroads they will have noticed a rather tired, shabby-looking Robinson’s pub called the Junction. I once went in over twenty years ago and it wasn’t very appealing then, having suffered Robinson’s typical tasteless 1970s modernisation. I doubt whether it has improved much since, and now it is reported that it is going to close and be turned into four terraced houses, with a further eight houses being built on the car park. The reasons cited were “the smoking ban, the credit crunch and changes in licensing law”.

You might have thought being situated in a Conservation Area at the centre of a prosperous commuter village, and on a major trunk road too, was an ideal situation for a pub. However, Mottram doesn’t seem to be a happy hunting ground for pubs, with the White Hart just up the road reported to be struggling too. While undoubtedly more of an effort could have been made with the Junction, I suspect in the final analysis a pub situated in the middle of a twelve-hours-a-day traffic jam is never going to be very appealing whatever you do with it.

Local residents fed up with the traffic will be further dismayed to learn that plans for the long-promised bypass once again seem to have been kicked into the long grass.

How much do you drink?

I recently ran a poll on “How many units of alcohol do you drink in a typical week?” which has now closed. There were 34 votes in total, and the results were as follows:

None: 0
1-10: 2 (5%)
11-30: 13 (38%)
31-50: 9 (26%)
51-75: 3 (8%)
76-100: 3 (8%)
101-125: 1 (2%)
Over 125: 3 (8%)

To be honest, I’m not sure what this tells us, and there has to be a question mark about how accurate the answers were anyway. 15 people, or 43%, said they drank 30 units or less a week, which is roughly within the government “guidelines”, but on the other hand, 3 hardy souls claimed to drink over 125 units a week, which certainly isn’t. One of these seems to have moved his vote from the 101-125 category within the final hour of polling!

It’s interesting that nobody claimed to drink nothing at all – don’t any anti-alcohol zealots read this blog? But apart from that it does seem to follow a fairly predictable ”normal” distribution with a peak in the 11-30 zone.

If we assume beer consumed is at an average of 4.5% ABV, 30 units a week equates to 12 pints, and you would only need to drink 20 pints a week, which in many people’s eyes really isn’t very much, to exceed the supposed “danger” level of 50 units a week.