Ha ha – feel the need to point out I’m not a fan of football but my 8&9 year old boys are. They have been given 4 free tickets and that is the only reason we are going

I will be spending most of my time trying to lalala over the rude bits of the songs

Slightly torn in who to support – sheffield has been my home for 16 years but I am originally from Wiltshire, but when I said to the boys id be cheering on Swindon they weren’t impressed.

I am trying to keep them focused on the game rather than the gang mentality that goes with fanatically supporting one team.

Naked toast

ha ha ha – really not me!

truck bike rack
how about this?

a good friend of mine was caught amusing herself at home by the window cleaner, that would have been bad enough but it was made worse as he was someone we knew and he worked for another close friends window cleaning company – word travels fast about such things apparently

He has also started listening to Cold Play

Oh no! poor you, i’m sure you can get him help for that 😀

Just showed the photos to my daughter for a laugh – and she’d already seen them, and couldn’t tell me if there was a knitting pattern either 🙄

Also if you ride a lot you have to consider you hold your neck in an extended position, which isn’t eaxctly natural

I find keeping mine warm, using a fleece buff scarf thing when i ride when its cold, ibuprofen gel when its sore and sleeping with no pillow when its particulary bad – all help keep neck ache at bay.

i had a kawasaki gpz 600 – lovely bike and the main reason for getting such and old bike was insurance. my ex was 10 years younger than me and insuring him on it doubled the cost of the insurance

Then we split and i can’t justify the expense as i wouldn’t ride it enough

Such good rides and always such fun, i miss it (the bike obviously!)

I think I can be a bit of all three depending on my mood

who me?! I don’t know what you mean :-p

I got a stairlift ad in the targeted adverts on facebook – was quite shocked (being a mere 41), but then read it and realised it was suggesting I buy on for my mum. As she was riding a motorbike over the himalayas ay the time I thought she probably wasn’t interested . .

Think I’ll stick to knitting my tea cosy – not any kind of euphemism btw!

Argh just seen what the young girl is holding – knitted or not that’s wrong!!!

Ha ha ha ha – where on earth did you find that?!

Perfect suit for the naked bikerides if you’re a bit shy ..

I don’t think I have the requisite sqeaky clean background for blue peter – shame as I must have earned a degree in cutting and sticking after all my brood.

Mind you dont think your suit will be appearing on there anytime soon either!

Can’t you use the rubber ones like you get on kids arm bands – then you can have the option to leave them proud or push them in a bit

Ok I can’t do that bit

I am often naked at home and sometimes even at work

Ooh err how have I managed that

Typr the actually url in and it should work – sorry

I would love to – the case i was working on has been archived and i have had a very quick look to find the original article – but my quick look hasn’t found it

It was a paper by AZT – referred to in this article.

Will try and look again later when i have a bit more time 🙂

My eldest two were carried on rear seats but for my younger two I got a trailer as there is less that 2 years between them so I needed to carry both. I got one with a solid aluminium base as I used it all year round for my commute.

Much preferred the trailer to the seats, far more practical and they were happier in it so I could even take them with me when I was doing longer rides – great training around sheffield with the extra weight.

I had to do some research for work in to the relative safety of both, found lota of useful stuff from germany showing the trailers to be much safer too. People consider them to be less safe as a rule so I was happy to see they did so well in tests

Not if you like chilli and lime (and chocolate!) 🙂

Montezumas chilli and lime chocolate – got some from waitrose in leeds at the weekend – so nice I had a look for it in sheffield waitrose today but couldn’t see any sign of it at all

I know I had a good time in leeds but not enough to imagine a whole new sort if chocolate bar surely …. anyone else had it?

I dont have any desire to be whisked off to holland – a because there would be no one left to look after the boys, and b because there arent enough hills and id soon get bored of riding on level ground!

I appreciate they arent slaves but see there are limits to how much time they can help out in a week – just wondered how that worked out.

Could you get a particularly lazy one that didn’t fancy helping at all when asked nicely?

I did consider the idea too, mainly for the summer. Has anyone done this for holidays? The main stumbling block I found was the number of hours they could officially work, not ejough to do full time childcare.

And has anyone had any experience with male au pairs? Would obviously be beneficial for the boys – not that I need some fit young man about my house 😉

The kids? They just have to the arms they came with

Or the crisp packets? No arms yet so we havent managed to alter their DNA that much . . . Yet

Out there

Crisp packets never get ripped here after my eldest bought my younger two a book called crisp packet fireworks and other cool experiments they get saved..

And the nuked in the microwave for a couple of seconds – its the nearest you get to performing magic to shrink things – complete with blue flashing weird science type special effects

And as the kids have been doing it for some time now and out microwave still works I guess it doesn’t donit any harm

Go on … try it ….. you know you want to ….

Ha ha slowoldgit – you aren’t called alan are you?

Had a very nicely written message from a guy called alan put under my windscreen wiper went I went into waitrose one day.

I was flattered but didnt think it wise to ring the number – waitrose or not

As for the tracksuit I’m guessing asda?

for the bondage im sure there’s plenty of online suppliers – but just a guess obviously

Go shopping dressed as Jimmy saville or maybe something more acceptable like wearing bondage gear with a gimp mask on – im sure people would move their kids out of your way . . .

Emma, I take it that means you have found happiness with a balding bloke with a large waist – very sweet

Either that or you are flirting with hora :-O

(Only joking hora – we are all lovable)

A friend of mine was nearly taken out by a bag of porn. He was cycling under a road bridge on the trans pennine way a car went over the bridge and someone hurled out a bag. It narrowly missed him and when he stopped to investigate he found it was full of videos

Could have made for a puzzling crime scene if it had knocked him out

All I say to my friends who have young children is to think long and hard making decisions like that when so much of your time and energy is spent with your children as the main focus. Relationships with your partner can suffer and may improve when the kids are more independent and you can put some more energy back into it.

That said I am happy now, and the children get the best of both of us. And selfishly maybe – I get to do what I want every other weekend and ride my bike as much as I like without being accused of having an affair. If and when I ever decide to settle down again it will be with someone who rides!

Pic n mix – sad to hear, I hope you find a way to forgive her. My recent ex turned on my son from my previous relationship when were splitting up. It was horrible I have never felt so guilty as I felt I had let my son down – in turn he resented me for my choice of partner. Teenage parenting is hard enough without that thrown into the mix, luckily we have worked through that but it was far from easy.

They are brilliant, really make me look forward to trips to london. Now make sure I dont wear my normal work tailored dresses when I go down so I can use them – doubt you’ll have that problem!

It is a mine field and I think you have to make the judgement call as and when you see fit. My eldest was nearly four when i had her brother she was very interested in the pregnancy bit but in her own words ‘didnt want to know how the bit from daddy got there yet’

She did find out later on and decided to tell her then 5 year old brother everything she knew on the subject – the poor lad was distraught. He did get over it though

Generally I have tried to be open with them as they’ve grown up, encouraging discussion of situations and relationships – acknowledging the fun that can be had but really trying to get them to consider respect for themselves and others.

Its a very different world our children are growing up in – availabilty of information, social media and the changes in relationships (more single parents, openly gay people and different lifestyle choices), and the portrayal of sexuality in things such as music videos – all add up and can be a lot for kids to get their heads around.

I find discussing things as they come up without overloading them with information (as he probably did to himself hence the tears) is best.

Internet filters are good – but also keep an eye in the music channels they pick, full of bikinis and big bootys . . . Im sure he’ll find them soon enough 😀

It definitely works molgrips also said, quickest steam pudding ever.

And the variations are endless one of my favourites is to chuck in some mixed spice and a handful of raisins and put in syrup instead of jam.

By far the quickest way to obesity – thankfully we have bicycles to work it all off

A bake off would be good – and you can do alsorts of sponges in a microwave – as long as you dont mind them being anaemic, fairy cakes are very fast too.

So mixing flour, sugar, butter, eggs and a bit of milk putting it in a buttered basin with jam in the bottom then microwaving it for a few mins to make a sponge pudding isnt cooking?

Wow learn something new every day on here.

I will admit its dangerous though – do you know how fat you can get having puddings available so quickly 😀