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Good point. It has struck me that getting a mortgage which is well within my affordability means I can overpay and be mortgage-free in 10 years 🙂

I use commuting as a way to get the miles in. have to take it easy through traffic (from SE London to Paddington) but on the clear sections and hills I will push to get the heart rate up.
Carrying kit and a lock adds about 4-6kg which helps from a strength POV too.
Getting to work by bike is a much better start to the day too. Considering it everyday if we get a summer 🙂

I don’t see cycling on there. Will keep on riding then. Despite your average driver’s efforts 🙂

Is there a local shop for local people?

Yesterday just grabbed my waterproofs and went anyway. Certainly not as nice as a sunny spring day but better than not being out at all.
I’ve taken to mainly road riding, at least you can still ride – Surrey Hills are getting trashed, even the fire roads, with the numbers of riders combined with rain…

To the OP: I’d struggle with the deceit myself, but only you can decide on that one. I was screwed over by a gf many years ago and the truth was a lot more than she first admitted to…

I’d get professional advice, both on your marriage and on the finances. If she racked up the debt I would have thought it’s only fair for her to sort it out (esp if she has her own source of income from the business) so not sure of the rationale for it to be loaded onto the (shared) mortgage.

Good luck…

too many took the Lance thing far too serious .

😯

US government don’t agree with you on that one!

You say the event has impacted the whole family…

So I don’t think it’s fair for you to expect yourself to act as the therapist to your son… it’s clearly left it’s mark on you too.

I would speak to your GP and consider family therapy. It will help you deal with your own memories as well as give your son the support he needs…

Good luck

An ex-girlfriend worked with a Scottish guy in Reading who was so anti-English he was almost out of control – as in didn’t seem to realise that anti-English rants wouldn’t go down too well with a bunch of English people. 😯

His colleagues did query why he’d moved here if he hated us so much…

If a Scot hates an Englishman because of where he was born, it’s just clear xenophobia surely? When Andy Murray made his ‘anyone but the English comment’ he just made himself look immature IMO… there’s no excuse for it really…

I was at my happiest in work when I worked for an owner-managed company of 25 people. It was hard work and intense but I made quite a few friendships from that place – you work much more closely together in a small co.

IME it’s not as simple as large vs small, it’s how well run the company is, and what suits you.
A badly-managed company will fail, whatever size it is…

If you like autonomy, like working towards a common goal and like a big family atmosphere then small co may well work for you.

People who just play at management games, who only care about their own status and job title, don’t last in a small co so they tend not to be there.

In short you have to do your job, there’s nowhere to hide – which is enormously satisfying IME. But hard work.

But not all small co.s are the same, I’ve worked in other small companies which were nothing like as well-run or fun… Feeling valued comes down to your manager and the culture IME, not the size of the business

This thread shows London’s ace for eating out 🙂

I wrote an address for a parcel today… i’ll be impressed if it gets there.

I hope that wasn’t an STW classifieds sale or the pitchforks’ll be out!

I’ve always been a fan of Smiths of Smithfield – so long as you’re not vegetarian! Top floor is most pricey, 2nd floor better value.
And Gaucho’s good for steak.
Also worth trying Skylon on South Bank. The views are tremendous.
I think there’s restaurant in Centrepoint too. Not glamorous but superb views.
Oh and the original Neal St Carluccio…

My carbon roadbike has press fit BB30 on it. Whether it’s the frame design overall, or the BB or the carbon cranks, I don’t know, but it puts any power I’ve got through to the back end like no other bike I’ve ridden.
I suspect it’s a combination of a number of factors TBH. It does tend to need more TLC tho – annual removal and re-greasing

I’m surprised this was permitted to be made legal. There’s a serious moral hazard here. Allows drivers to stop looking properly and driving with due care and attention.
Since I got a car with reversing sensors I hardly look behind me when reversing, I just expect the computer to do this for me…
Either fully 100% self-driving cars (best way forward IMO) or none at all, this kind of half-way house is philosophically and practically a very bad idea.
Be interesting to keep a measure on the number of collisions between Volvo drivers and cyclists in the years before this came in, and after and let the evidence speak for itself.

Actually, I’d like to see a sensor which detects mood and personality and if it senses an aggressive, angry idiot has just got into the driving seat, the car won’t start 🙂

Hijacking a charity event to make a political statement just because you don’t like Tories.

Nice one 😯

How about doing some voluntary work instead?

Tfl journey planner is your friend

Heathrow Express into Paddington = £15. Heathrow Connect is cheaper. Piccadilly line is cheapest
Then it’s Circle Line along to Marylebone
And from there to Gerrard’s Cross.
May not be a lot cheaper than the cab when you add it all up…

Nothing much but my Dad told me recently about getting blown out of bed from the impact of the bombs falling in the Blitz – he grew up in East London. Was evacuated not long after, which he hated.
It was weird hearing this from my own father, who must’ve been about 4 at the time. WW2 seems like a story to our generation.

Harder to hear was in WW1, my great grandfather (who was German but had emigrated to London) was conscripted back to the German army and had to fight the English. The family saw this as treachery and refused to talk to him ever again… and he died in the 60’s having never spoken to his family again. I think the impact of this on my Gran was significant – feeling abandoned by her father. She also had to go through the pain of racial abuse (being half-German). An unglamorous and unheard impact of war…

Nova Events[/url]

AFAIK there’s no charity or grassroots benefit to the Bupa runs at all.

Nova Events run them on Bupa’s behalf. For Bupa it is purely a sponsorship exercise.

Put your money to a locally organised race where the money goes to a local promoter and grass roots rather than the shareholders of a private organisation for whom running is simply a source of profit…

Honestly, that price is a total rip off…

<Disclosure: I used to work for Bupa – they don’t care a jot about anyone’s health – it’s just an insurance business>

First ride today 3 weeks after breaking my index finger. Not a full break, but a chip next to top knuckle.
It was ok but I still can’t put too much pressure on it – still bruised.

The nurse said it would take 4 weeks to fix and told me not to splint it. Have you been to your walk-in clinic to get it x-rayed and get proper advice? Surely that’s the best thing to do?

Personally I don’t think it’s worth risking permanent injury or inconvenience for the sake of a few weeks riding… you don’t know what the long term implications will be if you don’t let it recover properly.

Edit: realised you posted while I was typing. I would take doc’s advice personally

That’s silly money, they’re ripping you off. Most 10ks are c £15.
Go onto Runner’s World and find a more local race run by a club and you won’t be lining the pockets of a commercial organiser.
Salford 10k run by Salford Harriers is in the next month or so IIRC

Better still, abolish political parties, they emphasise ideology and power dynamics over managing the country for the benefit of the people. Just an apolitical management committee, voted in for a fixed term.

Having a ‘manager’ instead of politicians in charge of Italy seems to have brought some much-needed stability.

The thing that worries me about UK at the moment is that Tories are supposed to be good at managing economic matters, but they don’t seem to be delivering right now (although I don’t know how we’re benchmarking their performance tbh – and in any case France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy are in a worse state than us).

IMO we’ve just come to a point in the cycle where our historic advantages of early industrialisation, rule of law and strong, stable institutions are no longer giving us relative advantage so we need to find new advantages if we want continued economic growth. It’s nothing to do with Labour or Tory policies really, more likely globalisation…

Globalisation also makes the idea of the geographically-limited nation-state less relevant. I have more in common with my Finnish, German, Italian colleagues than I do with most British people… maybe the nation-state is no longer relevant?

Cycle Surgery generally know everything Evans never knew about customer service…

I vote for any section east of Amberley. Where it opens up to chalk downs and a view of the Weald and the sea.
On a sunny spring day or summer it’s beautiful up there.
If you can get an overnight at the YHA at Truleigh Hill it saves you time dropping off the ridge.
Chanctonbury Ring is a cool place too. Moody.

Noticed that Booths in Keswick has ‘ten items or fewer’ on their signs

You can imagine the frothing from the middle-classes who shop there if they hadn’t done that 🙂

My Dad was a professional pedant, and he loves Booths (in Knutsford)

Similar story here as a domestic customer. If was an SME I’d go mental if it was costing me…
I paid for but never received t’internet for 3 months – had to use an O2 dongle. Refused to pay the bill and said I wanted out of the contract as they were effectively in breach, having not actually delivered any broadband access.
Ended up in some mad email exchange with a customer services type who told me there was no-one more senior than her who could deal with my complaint.
Ian Livingstone wasn’t too impressed when I sent that email exchange to him! To his credit he responded on a Saturday morning along the lines of ‘this does not make good reading’…
One of his exec team got onto it sharpish but I still ended up having to negotiate myself out of the contract.. they were trying to make me pay for the full year I signed up to. I think I ended up paying for 2 months and we agreed to disagree on whether that was fair…

I will NEVER buy anything from them again. They don’t deliver, and then fail to fix their failure to deliver. I’d expect to be sacked if I was that ineffective at work.

OP, good luck. If your business depends on them, I would find an alternative supplier, sharpish

that they are held in such high esteem… I dont mind them and am a bit of a metalhead but they’ve never done it for me.

It’s more the fact they created heavy metal than their execution of it, for which they’re held in such esteem

Um, globalisation.

Maybe we’ve just had our time at being the richest and the rest of the world is catching up?

Maybe lack of growth is the new normal?

1916 by Motorhead – an unflinching tale of the horrors of WW1

Those lines in the pebbles aren’t straight.
Tut

#1. Keep going till you learn how to do it. Learning to brief properly, letting go and trusting your direct reports is the fundamental skill of a good manager. Makes your life so much easier too. It’s a very rare skill in UK plc IME.
#2. Develop a high trust relationship between you and your direct reports
#3. Delegation is about you and your behaviour, not them
#4. Forgive their mistakes and make ALL feedback constructive
#5. Think of how the best manager you’ve had treated you. Do that
#6. Think of how the worst manager you’ve had treated you. Avoid doing that
#7. Praise in public, criticise in private
#8. Give them an expectation to live up to.
#9. You can do a lot worse than buying ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’ and Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People’ and doing what they suggest.

Good luck, few managers IME even bother trying…<and wonder why their team leave them>

Rule of thumb: always ask yourself what the other party’s motivation might be for telling you what they’re telling you…
Certainly the media (tabloid, BBC, broadsheets) have no interest in telling you the truth… Organised religion too…
Social media is possibly one of the greatest things to happen to us. Ever. Very very hard now to control the message and mis-inform. Why do you think China and N Korea restrict internet access?

A fool and his money are easily parted! That’s nostalgia for you…

The right running shoes don’t have to be expensive – some people fall into that trap but they basically have too much ££!
The running shop will help you get the shoes that will stop you getting injured, that’s all… if anything’s going to stop you losing the flab it’ll be not being able to get out because you’ve got shin splints.
Just tell the shop you’re working to a budget of £50. Any decent shop can do that…

I would go to a running shop and get yourself properly checked out re your running style. Shoes that fit bowie278 may not be right for you at all…

I had sex once with a girl who had been to a convent school. She was quite posh. Does that count?

Buy cheap, buy twice…

I’ll penny pinch by not going on holiday and my car’s 8 years old but I have a road bike costing close on £4k… it’s all about spending in the right places IMO

The spare bedroom fettling whilst waiting for my broken finger to mend 🙂

Perhaps I have too high expectations but….in an ideal world I’d like to feel 100% fantastic/top of my game/invincible each and every day.

tbh I think you’re being unrealistic here.
I got signed off with stress from work a few years ago, in part because work was crap, but also I wanted the same buzz from work that I get from a great day’s biking, or at the end of a flowy bit of singletrack… which was clearly never going to happen! Kind of brought it on myself really…

I remember a few years ago (mid-noughties at the height of Ecstacy craze) hearing a study into depression around the impact of people spending their weekend having an amazing time clubbing and doped up and not being able to cope with the relative ‘flatness’ of normal life…

If you’re having difficulty managing then Moodscope is a great tool for tracking your ups and downs and spotting the contributing effects. For me, exercise is a great upper, lack of sleep (especially when combined with alcohol) sends me crashing…

Give them to a schoolboy? They have shorter legs.
Then it will be schoolboy win rather than schoolboy error.