a couple of has-beens

Have to take issue with these comments

I’m not a fan of the band, but they are still hugely popular as a band as has been shown by the demand.for tickets, and their solo work seems to be very popular. Liam can certainly still sell out a stadium tour nowadays on his own. Noel’s high flying birds project seem to be very popular.

It’s too easy for people to conflate music they don’t like with stuff they think isn’t/ shouldn’t be popular.

I detest Ed Sheeran. I think his bland banal dirge is some of the worst music ever created, but I’ll fully acknowledge his mass popularity.

I think ABBA are the worst popular group of all time. But I’ll still admit I’m in the absolute minority with that view and recognise the cultural impact they have

Who’s actually at fault for the dynamic pricing thing? Everyone’s bemoaning oasis for it, like it’s directly Noel and Liam responsible, but surely it’s actually Ticketmaster, or which ever promotions company is involved?

Acts have to agree to the dynamic pricing, or at least their management do. The Cures management agreed to it without their knowledge and then cracked up when they became aware of it. They can opt out

Not on a road bike, but I melted standard SRAM rotors in the alps descending down the road from Avoriaz to Morzine on my DH bike. The rotors looked like quavers. All distorted and wavy. Upgraded to floating rotors and never had the problem again

Where can you pay 8 quid for a pint outside of London (I’m guessing)?

Paid £7.40 for a Guinness in an old fashioned Glasgow pub just before Xmas last year

A pint of anything from Beavertown is £7+ in Glasgow

What are the odds on them doing Saturday night on the Pyramid Stage

Zero apparently. Official ruled out on the BBC news this morning

2 Edinburgh gigs in August while the festival is on is a bit of an error to be honest

When you were 16 to 25, were you listening to 30+ year old bands?

Absolutely. I was born in 78 and grew up with my dad’s huge vinyl collection. Music featured highly in our house growing up, There was never silence. Always something on the turntable. I was obsessed with the stones, the who, yes, neil young, hendrix, clapton, led zep etc from a very young age, and that love for them never left me even when I got into much more modern stuff in my 16 to 25 years

In defence of the crowds, having lived near Hampden Stadium for a while and seeing the different crowds, by far the worst for drunkenness, violence and anti social behaviour were the middle aged women attending Take That or Pink concerts. Absolutely horrific.

These gigs are going to be the oddest middle-aged cosplay ever.

I remember seeing the crowds from the stone roses reunion years ago, and that was pretty grim

A couple of recent excellent chats with Noel that flew under the radar because they were on guitar channels

Saw them plenty in the 90s despite not really being a fan. It was just such a part of the culture that you had to be there. I have grown to really like Noel over the years though.

I’ll be on a plane when the tickets go on sale so will miss out but I anticipate the crowds on the day being horrendous so I’m not hugely bothered at missing out.

If you fancy a nostalgic evening watching Beverley Hills Cop: Axel Foley, don’t bother.

Eddie Murphy clearly can’t be bothered. Absolutely phones it in with now where near the energy of the original films. Terrible script and acting. Judge Reinhold makes Mickey Rourke look normal, which is probably why he’s only in it for 15 minutes. John Ashton’s hair and moustache dye job would make Rudy Guliani wince. There’s also an utterly bizarre and pointless scenes with Luis Guzman. Kevin Bacon’s henchmen looked like the cast off love children of Siegfried and Roy. The plot is absolute garbage and it’s just a series of really bad set pieces.

WBD put £6 million in ESOs bank account. He’ll sing whatever tune they tell him

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC437697/filing-history/MzM1MjQwNjM4NGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

I’d not be able to sleep at night paying that much

£40 a month here. 2 adults in a 4 bed house with 8 solar panels on the roof

Annoyingly my social media feed keeps pushing Morvelo ads into my feed, despite them not existing anymore

professional crew taking it into a storm

It was moored just off the shore. Wasn’t going anywhere

Pics on R&R

https://www.rootsandrain.com/event12386/2024-aug-18-hope-pmba-enduro-2-ae-forest/photos/

Apparently I was a pretty bad toddler. Once I got past that I was fine and a very good kid.

Unfortunately that didn’t stop my parents holding those initial years against me since and constantly bringing it up, criticising me for it and punishing me for it.

Please don’t do that to your kids

Just a wee 25 miles on the gravel bike. Only pic I took was sheltering from the headwind ?

What’s the soonhope climb? Start at the hydro and up past the wooden huts?

For those lucky enough to lead a sheltered existence and have no idea how easy it is to obtain whatever you want, whenever you want, a random profile started following me on Instagram last year. They then messaged me a link to this page with a menu of what they’re selling and a number to text for your order. This is standard nowadays.

You can’t have super supple wet grip and durability sadly

Bog standard soles on the pair that have worn out super quick. No mention of any fancy materials or the sole grip being a key feature

Another vote for Adidas

One less vote for Adidas

I bought a pair of their Goretex Terrex boots for walking the dog. Fell apart after 3 months. Holes appeared in the top and the waterproofing failed. Got a refund and bought some Scarpa’s which have been faultless after almost 2 years.

Earlier this year I saw another pair of Terrex waterproof shoes very cheap so bought them. After a few months use, all tread is gone from the sole and the same hole has appeared on the top as the previous pair. They’re due to go in the bin this week.

For reference, I’ve never had this with any other shoes, boots or trainers, and any others I’ve bought last me years without experiencing the level of wear and tear the Adidas Terrex stuff suffers in a few months of use.

I do wonder what eventuality he’s planning for that would necessitate three chopsticks

I’m more concerned and curious about the need to store several sizes of hole saws in the cutlery drawer

As a singlespeeder i consider janets brae to suck the hairiest of balls.

As a 52t cassette rider, it still sucks baws.

perhaps there is still some interest in the current “market”?

I could rhyme off multiple strains of weed. Never touched it in my life.

Just out of interest, what perfectly legal, entirely non essential, recreational commodity am I likely to be buying that causes anywhere near, cocaine levels of misery

Apple products?

Somewhere in the dolomites at easter is the only thing penciled in at the moment. I ripped the arse out it with 4 trips last winter across Europe but I’ll be scaling it back this season. Supposed to have a surprise 50th  ski weekend somewhere for a mate but his wife is supposed to be organising but we’ve heard nothing. This has reminded me to give her a nudge!

Prices are definitely up on last season though by about 20% although could certainly drop nearer the time

Oh, I remembered another.

Carrier bags. She can’t throw them out. Our cupboard under the stairs is full of them.

Back when we met, she had a flat and in her bedroom was an absolutely enormous wardrobe. At least 3 x the size of a normal double wardrobe. Behind the wardrobe is where she kept plastic carrier bags. She’d jam them in the gap between the wardrobe and the wall.

Eventually she was selling her flat so we decided to decorate it and that involved moving the huge wardrobe. I started pulling out the plastic bags. Got all that I could reach but there were clearly more pushed way deeper behind the wardrobe. I  managed to get the wardrobe moved and able to get properly in behind it where I discover that for the entire 10 years she’s lived there, she’s been constantly stuffing plastic carrier bags behind it. The entire back of this triple wardrobe is filled with plastic bags. The deepest stuffed ones have been in there so long they’ve actually started to decompose. How long does a plastic bag have to be in existence before it decomposes!?!? I must’ve filled 20+ black bin bags with smaller plastic bags.

Nowadays the plastic bags are gone but she hordes reusable bags under the stairs. The loft is also full of them.

I’m not allowed to throw them out.

Audio cassettes. She refuses to throw them out. We have no device for playing them. We haven’t had one in all the time we’ve been together. We’ll never own a device that can play them.  Regardless, I’m forbidden from throwing them out so they live in the kitchen junk drawer. I live with the vain hope that some day in the future Erotica by Madonna, Circle In The Sand by Belinda Carlisle and the Philadelphia movie soundtrack suddenly become hugely valuable and we can retire early off the proceeds

app launch time and laginess in general is bad

Hmm. With the exception of the Discovery Plus app, which is brutally slow and clunky, every other app loads instantly for me and runs quickly once open. Shockingly quick actually. Either using the voice control or navigating to it in the menus

Do not go near the Sky Stream/Puck – it’s useless. Good picture though when it works.

I moved a few months ago from Sky Q to Sky Stream and the pucks are better in every way. Much quicker to navigate, better user experience, quicker to boot up and most importantly, I’m paying a fraction of what I was with Sky Q and packages are available on a rolling basis with Stream which they weren’t with Q, so if I want to add movies at xmas, or sport for a particular month, I can do that and not be tied into a 12 month+ contract, with the price for those packages going up during that 12 month period. 3 pucks around the house and they’ve been faultless and they can all do UHD and Atmos, whereas only the main Sky Q boxes have that capability, whereas the mini boxes they use for multi room dont have that functionality

cowardly and pathetic

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The $248 will be excluding sales tax so for a UK equivalent you’d need to add 20% VAT so it would be $297 but still a dirt cheap bargain.

Decathlon was my immediate thought, and they have some great stuff but nowhere near close to that

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/comfortable-light-carbon-fork-and-disc-brake-rc-120-road-bike-blue/_/R-p-308064?mc=8554265&c=silver%20grey

https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/gravel-bike-grvl-120/_/R-p-312397?mc=8575940&c=moss%20green

I’m not sure when this crept into my life. It certainly wasn’t a thing when I was a kid

I had it as a kid in the 70s and 80s. It does tend to have different names though. Growing up it was “millionaire shortbread”. As an adult when I moved 20 miles north to Glasgow, it was called “caramel shortcake” and people looked at me like I was a communist if I asked for “millionaire shortbread”

Woke me up about 6am here in Glasgow but it passed and was a lovely day afterwards

But lifting even my own weight would be a challenge

Really? What kind of lift? Squat or deadlift? I think you’d be surprised at what you can do with a bit of training around technique. I’m not strong on the bike at all fitness wise, but I can deadlift 2X my bodyweight with ease and my squat is 1.6X BW. My experience suggests the leg strength cyclists have automatically puts them well above most normal folk when it comes to lifting

I raced at Rostrevor years ago and it was excellent

I’ve never talked to a seller on Amazon.

Go straight to Amazon. They’ll refund it with no issue

Slightly off topic, but I’m surprised there’s still been no news of what’s happened to Vitus/Nukeproof/Ragley.

Of the three Nukeproof seemed the best brand to be acquired, but not heard anything

There’s no mystery. Mike Ashley bought the IP as part of the CRC deal.

Nukeproof stuff is beginning to trickle back out on CRC with a mix of old stock and small new bits