I’ve heard that Solovair took over the old DMs factory in Northhampton including the equipment and machinery, so you can get UK made quality versions. No idea what they are lined with, and undoubtedly not cheap. Still, that may give you what you want and still retain your sense of individuality/masculinity.

Edit, sorry, didn’t see tomparkin’s link above

Giri/Haji

Just spat out my coffee at Charlie Creed-Miles’ Cockley gangster. Yakuza have a 16 year old girl hostage, so you expect the rescuers to approach with a cautious sneaky plan. Instead, he bursts in with his gun and shouts “konichiwa, dickheads”

The perfect thread, as I’m holed up with Covid for the next five days at least.

Enjoyed so far:

Giri/Haji –   UK police try to work out why Yakuza shit is going down in London. Some good characters and script, well acted, well shot.

End of Watch – cop partners covering a very challenging patch in South Central LA. Not your clichéd cop buddy film – I found it immediate, visceral, disturbing in places and tense.

Not enjoyed:

The Councilor (sic) – This should be amazing; Rodley Scott directing Michael Fasbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Brad Pitt.

But it’s gash.

Wordle 234 4/6

⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩
🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
🟩⬜🟩🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Who?

You know, hippy. Sang Hole in my Shoe

Book group next choice is Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. Apparently it’s going to change my life.

Wordle 231 2/6

🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Lucked out on my first word

Done 3/6 on 3 days in a row. How do you show the grid on here?

After completion, click ‘share’ and ‘copy text’, then paste here.

Wordle 230 3/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟨🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle 229 4/6

Number 3 annoying but hey ho

🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Hit a tree at speed around 8 years ago (weekend of indyref)

I managed to walk the bike home (getting on was out of the question). When we managed to take my top off, my wife almost gagged seeing bones places they shouldn’t be. The hospital didn’t say what grade it was, just a sling and painkillers. It took about a month iirc. My clavicle now sit higher than it should at the left shoulder.

Boom!

Wordle 228 2/6

⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Wordle 227 3/6

🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

My surname is Brown. In a Northern Ireland accent. It has invariably* been heard as ‘Brian’ by English people for the last thirty years.

*well, four in five times

At Hemlock Trails for dawn. It’s been a while since I’ve been – lots of digging going on and the trails getting more gnar. I cleared a new gap only to be immediately confronted by a second smaller one: total forward tumble on my head. Great fun though.

If you supply the wood, a CNC company could programme and cut that in an hour. Probably less than £100. You’d just need to sand and finish.

If audiobooks count, The Beastie Boys book. Written by the surviving members and read by all sorts of celebs from LL Cool J to Ben Stiller and Jarvis Cocker.

The descriptions of NYC around 81 for music obsessed teens are superb. Lots of punk, then discovering Hiphop. Also stories of crazy antics, studio innovations and maturing from obnoxious ****.
Really enjoying it.

More Joseph Stiglitz, this time “People Power and Profits” -he speaks so much sense!

Also more Herman Melville, this time “Bartleby” – quite a mysterious and charming short story.

Last time I had my watch valued, I just took it into the AD and they looked up the model and gave me a mini certificate saying it’s replacement value RRP. That was a tenner.

We moved about 15 miles away a year ago from a three bedroom house. Three lovely men did two runs for around £650. It was slick, impressive and well worth the money.

Gorilla Tape Residue 😠

Have you looked at the Shand Leveret? Disc brakes though

MTB this morning messing about with jumps and berms. Small jumps, not the big ones in the pics, they just looked cooler.

I’ve had terrible combo pedals in the past, but now have Time Link and love them. They predictably always land cleat side up, which suits me as 99% of my riding is clipped in, and it’s just a quick flick to go into normal flat mode. Grip in flat mode is not great though (not a problem for me as I only tend to use that when nipping to the shops)

In general though, as some have said above, a ride is either clipped in or flat for me.

Spiteful buggers. I once had some scrotes piss on the bike after failing to break the D lock. I appreciate that’s an easy fix compared to you.

Make sure no brake oil has dripped onto the brakes themselves when you do the repair!

Just a tiny nugget – my uncle, who was shot down over Denmark, ended up in the same POW camp, Stalag Luft III. They arrived not long after ‘the great escape’ and he said that the guards were actually really gutted about the escapees who were lined up and shot.

Great, thanks all for the reassurance and advice. Wider tyres, noted. I’m planning to use this challenge as motivation to maintain a new year’s fitness plan, strength training included.

☝Nice shot. I love the sun’s rays and shadows.

A foggy walk in Lancs. last week

A gift box of different instant coffees.

LOL I would have difficulty hiding my disdain for that one. Like getting a tub of Bisto granules.

My ingrate rant is about a dressing gown. I hate dressing gowns. I have never had one, and certainly never given any indication that I would like one. It’s a soft but seemingly hydrophobic synthetic fiber <shudder>

The aficionado/snob will tell you that the paper filter absorbs more of the coffee’s bitter oils, resulting in a smoother cup. As above though, the main advantage is quick and easy disposal of the puck without losing a crucial part of the apparatus.

LOL at reusing filters!

My go to pads are my Dakine Slayer which I can’t fault. I also have some Ixis Flows which I panic bought when I thought I’d lost the Slayers, and found them far less comfortable.

Yeah, the visible chimney part is often just for show; internally, there will be a flexible flue which will go wherever you need it to go

Any serial modifiers here? I’m after a dive bezel insert 40mm diameter and flat, not sloped. All the flat ones seem to be too small, and the 40mm ones sloped :(

It’s all about the suet for our birds; they ignore the seeds. So far it’s  been blue tits, blackbirds, starlings, pigeons, crows and occasionally the mob of long tailed tits.

I’m 32 when I haven’t eaten too much. Thankfully the 32R I bought are great. Just right on the waist. The legs are quite a slim fit but they are pretty stretchy so not an issue. That’s a good thing for cycling too, especially with the adjustable ankle strap.

Perfect for my commute and work. I’ve ordered another pair. Thanks OP.

When I first saw a fieldfare, it was so big I though it was a sparrowhawk, except It was eating an apple.

My uncle John Lithgow McFarland, extract from a WW2 blog below:

TLDR: shot down over enemy territory and interned in (the Great escape) POW camp. He didn’t talk of his experiences for decades

John’s story began when he came to Belfast in 1940 to sit a Latin exam for a pharmacist’s apprenticeship he’d secured in Derry.  “I’d always found the Latin a chore and a friend had told me about the great time he was having in the RAF so when I was in Belfast I went to the RAF recruiting office and joined up,”.

In June 1941 John was formally called up and began training as a navigator. After graduating, he should have gone to an Operational Training Unit where the air crews were put together, though they were infamous for their 20% loss of life. “But then word came through that I was to by-pass this, I never knew why, and join a crew before going onto  75 New Zealand Squadron as a replacement navigator – and you never asked who you were replacing,” said John.

John and the rest of the Murray crew were posted to Mepal in late January of 1944, flying their first Op on the 11^th February, and after conversion to Lancasters took part in the first 75(NZ) Squadron Operation with Lancasters, bombing mashalling yards in Paris on 9^th April.  A series of aborted Ops perhaps had got the crew nervy about completing their tour and when an ‘easy’ Gardening Op came up in a now aged Stirling, the crew volunteered.

“We flew from a remote base near Ely in East Anglia and were engaged mainly in sea and French railway yard mining operations as well as drops to the French Resistance. It was during one of these we were shot down. The Germans had the capability to fire vertically upwards. We were over Denmark and it was around midnight when my navigator’s table shattered and I knew we’d been hit from below. Everything happened so fast. We had to bail out and use our parachutes. The parachute wrappers used to put little notes in with the silk saying things like ‘all the best’!  Only three of us survived that night – the rear gunner’s parachute failed to open. That could have been any one of us for you just grabbed a parachute on your way out to board the aircraft…”

Four of the crew were buried at Gram, Denmark – James Murray RNZAF (Pilot), Haymen Kahler RAFVR (Flight Engineer) Jack Mulligan RCAF and Peter Woolham RAFVR (Air Gunners).

Gordon Irwin RNZAF (Wireless Operator), John and Douglas Hill RNZAF (Air Bomber) became Prisoners or War.

John landed in a ploughed field and was rescued by the farmer’s son whose family sheltered him for three days before the Germans found him. “I was sent to the same prison camp which featured in The Great Escape,” he explained. “Life there wasn’t great but some of the lads had built a radio and brought us news every day so we heard about D-Day and thought we’d be home by Christmas. Of course we weren’t.”

In January 1945 with the Russians advancing the POWs were put to march, sleeping in barns along the roadside, despite the bitter winter. “I’ve never experienced cold like it. One POW found a rat and held onto it just to keep his hands warm!” recalled John.

“I remember one morning though, two British fighter planes were circling overhead, making to attack because they thought we were Germans. We tried to spell out ‘POWs’ with towels on the ground but they came in, all guns blazing. Twenty men died – friendly fire I think they would call it today. Just days later we were freed by the British…”

Despite his stoicism in recounting the story, the tragic irony of that loss of life still sat heavily on John McFarland’s heart. “Back in the UK we were de-loused, de-briefed and told we could go home – so home it was,” he said.  “That’s when I understood what it must’ve been like for our families. Our Commanding Officer, a wonderful man, had sent a personal letter to them when our plane hadn’t come back that night…”.

My friend’s parents were changing their kitchen, so I nabbed their old red oak cabinet doors and made a tool box:

We had to provide proof of funds, but all documents were uploaded directly via the mortgage provider’s portal, the solicitor wasn’t involved at all.

Yes, regularly ride with all three. Aftershox on first, then helmet, then Oakleys (EVZero) all work fine together.