My black smock arrived about an hour ago, got it on now, and it’s excellent! I ordered an XL, I’m wearing a basic tank top underneath and it’s just the right size, I reckon a Helly Lifa would be ideal. The fleece is like a Polartec, smooth finish but thicker than the olive green one I have, the outer shell is ripstop, quite soft but more substantial than the green one, and all the zips have windproof outers.

There’s a hood tucked into the collar, and the collar comes up higher than the green one. It’s sold as SAS issue, and it has desert brown Union flags on the sleeves, I have no idea whether it’s actually army issue, and I’ll probably take the flags off, but it’s a superb jacket for the money, and I’m chuffed to bits with it. Considering how much Buffalo jackets cost, this has all the same features for a fraction of the price. I might even get another, larger XXL so I could wear it over a thicker under layer, but tbh, I reckon it’s good for pretty much anything we get through an average British year, even summer, if this year’s anything to go by.

Probably a dumb question but … if you wear a Buffalo or Buffalo-alike next to your skin, how do you regulate your temperature? Seems like if you open a zip you will get very cold skin in that immediate area and the rest will stay hot ??
One of the reasons I moved away from Buffalo. That and the poor cut, rubbish colours, lack of zip covers so you got drafts, silly collar designs etc…

I much prefer a few layers with pit zips or venting pockets.

Buffalo jackets have full length side zips, as does the one I’m wearing, with zip-pulls at both ends, and a Velcro tab across the bottom, so all you need to do is pull the top zip down a bit to get some ventilation if you’re a bit warm, and you could also unzip the kangaroo pocket zips either side, and pull the neck zip down a bit – there’s plenty of ways to vent them. I was wearing my Special 6 jacket for 10 hours a day, and I never got too hot, unlike the sweatbox high-viz jacket I was issued with, horrible thing that it was. I just put a high-viz vest over the top of my Buffalo.

I started watching something else and forgot about it, but it’s easy enough to download it, which I’ll do a bit later. I love Coxies programmes, for exactly the reason you’ve said – I could never have got into working in anything like astronomy, astrophysics, or anything like that, I don’t have the ability with maths, but I can grasp the principles when they’re explained the way he does.

The man’s a national treasure!

I’ll be chuffed either way. It got to the point where I only used to buy MBUK for Mint Sauce which was a little ridiculous.

Mint Sauce takes me right back to when I first fell in love with mountain biking in the early 90’s. Minty is hard wired into a very happy time in my life, I’ll probably get a bit emotional reading through the book when it arrives.

Yes, I’m going there. I said that! :-D

Yeah, same here. JoB has an uncanny ability to encapsulate a state of mind and an entire period of people’s lives along with the emotions that go with them, which is remarkable.
I have a feeling it’s going to get dusty when the package arrives…

Feel like the postage costs are taking the piss a little bit but don’t mind supporting smaller publishers like this (and Jo of course).

Just be glad it isn’t published in America – the postage would double the cover cost… so roughly £100, £50 postage instead of £7.50.
That’s if they’d even be prepared to post to addresses outside CONUS*, which a great many merchants refuse to do these days.

People are far too used to Amazon free postage, when it now costs £1.20 to send a birthday card.

*Contiguous United States

I’ve got the Qark, great little light, it’s mostly used for when I go out to feed the ‘pets’ once it starts getting darker earlier, I like the fact it throws a nice clean white circle of light with no ‘rings’ or artefacts. Mine doesn’t seem to have direct access to the supplementary red light, which may be just the way I switch it on, but I seldom use the red light anyway, so it’s no biggie.

Wells, which gives you Glastonbury, Burrow Mump and the whole of the Avalon Marshes, Somerset Levels area. Wells Cathedral is wonderful, there’s the Bishop’s Palace, Glastonbury Abbey…

Pretty flat, by its very nature, so pretty easy to cycle around.

This photo I took about half an hour or so ago shows how much attention I pay to all these…dry …sober …whatever

I honestly don’t drink that much, on a regular basis, to think there’s any point in them, they’re largely meaningless, frankly.

but this isn’t every Minty cartoon ever featured in MBUK I assume?

I wondered that, maybe it’s the first tranch to determine the amount of interest it’s going to generate…

…first of an ongoing series…?

Mrs B has already broken about 3 of my copitas doing the washing up so this thing is seriously vulnerable.

Honestly! If they’re so precious, then why are they going in with all the regular washing up, and ending up broken? After the first one, why  didn’t you take on the task of washing them individually and treating them with the care they deserve? Mine get rinsed under the tap when I’ve finished with them and dried properly.

Speaking of which, here’s my four favourite shot glasses, I can’t be arsed with expensive swanky whiskey glasses, and as a one-time mountain biker, it’s only right and proper that at least a couple of them are industry swag!

Woodfords Reserve, that is! Saves me having to reach for a refill too often.

While I’m sure Amazon are pretty shit as an employer, much the same can be said of the majority of courier and multi-drop delivery companies – certainly when I found myself out of a job for a while I considered it for all of 30 seconds before deciding that I was way too old for that shit!
Fact is that many things I often want or need to buy are just not possible to get from local shops – the calci worms I buy for the birds and hedgehogs I would buy in plastic tubs from Wilco’s, but they don’t exist anymore, nobody else sells them locally, so Amazon it is, and I buy 5kg bags for around £20, which would have got me 2Kg in town.

A quick search turned up someone called onlyarmysurplus.co.uk, who do those Pertex fleece-lined tops in black, for £45, so I’ve ordered one – won’t show mucky marks as much as the olive one.

Army surplus softie/thermal smock is the budget choice.  Available in fetching olive green or desert beige.

Yeah, I’ve got one of those, actually gave it a wash the other day – very practical lightweight pullover smock top for general purpose wear. I’ve got one of the original Buffalo MTB windshirts, a bit short now, I had the crotch strap taken off and properly hemmed round, it was too uncomfortable with a buckle right where all your weight sits on your saddle!
Still useable as an ultralight wind top though, plus it’s got bright yellow and reflective cloth strips sewn on.
I’ve also got a Buffalo Special 6, which I lived in through the winter for several years while I was working outdoors for ten hours a day, I had a HH Lifa underneath, and a £20 Peter Storm ‘waterproof’ over the top to keep the worst of the weather off, worked perfectly for me,  but I can see it being much too thick and hot for anything energetic!
I’d like a proper Buffalo equivalent of the army surplus top – thicker Pertex, and a similar lightweight micro-fleece inner layer, like Pertex 100; I’ve got a Jack Wolfskin Pertex 100 tee shirt, it’s brilliant, light and comfortable with just enough ‘fluffiness’ for a bit extra warmth, and I wish I’d bought several more, but they’re impossible to find, all that’s available are smooth synthetic materials like a slick cotton, which is fine in warm weather, but sod-all use in cold weather.

The mil-surplus ‘Buffalo’ works really well with the Wolfskin Polartec 100 tee underneath, although there’s a slight ‘clingy’ quality with the two fleeces, but thinking about it, it might work well with the Polartec tee under a HH Lifa then the faux Buffalo on top, lots of breathability, and fairly warm when moving around a lot.
Now it’s getting cooler, I’ll give it a try, see how it feels.

Reminds me, I’ve been meaning to get another of the Mil-surplus tops to spread the wearing and washing load out.

Been waiting for this to turn up on tv sometime, so I’ll have to check where I can see it on a repeat. Just checked, it’s on demand until mid-November, so that’s a must watch then.
I love the fact that the cast are all First Nations, and all the dialogue is as well.

Worst. Swap. Ever.

You can’t rely on an 8 year old to keep good time.

It’s a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a picture book and some stickers.

Not if you consider how much you’d spent on all the copies of the magazine in order to get all of the Mint pages…

As soon as I saw the thread heading, which was about ten minutes before going to pick up my mate to go to the pub, I was on the site ordering my signed copy with the stickers! I mentioned it to my mate, who immediately asked me to send him a link, so he can get a copy, and he’s never been a mountain biker, he’s just loved Mint! He’s actually got one of the big Mint posters on his study wall, that I gave him years ago.

My copy will join the two keyrings, and the personalised drawings JoB did for me at the Bike Show…

Cheers, Jo, if you happen to read this; I’ve yet to put these into the frames I bought years ago, but they are very much treasured and appreciated.

The others used decent earplugs No1 Son had spare although Mrs A couldn’t get them to stay put.

There’s a knack to it, if they’re the silicon triple-flange ones – moisten them between your lips, while holding the appropriate earlobe out away from your head, start to push them in with the opposite hand. Sounds awkward, but once you get the idea they fit in neatly and stay in place; the trick is to open up the ear canal so the eartips fit snugly inside. Same with IEM’s with similar eartips or custom tips.

Steve Hackett doing highlights from Genesis’ “Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”, and other Genesis stuff, along with his own solo material on Saturday night. Never did get to see them, missed the “Lamb…” tour because of a ticket mixup, and it’s Hackett’s guitar work that does it for me, his singer sounds like Gabriel and Collins, so it’s a win all round.

I have a little book collection, and it’s worth remembering that the only books that may hold 2nd hand value are the popular first edition early Harry Potter type titles in fine condition and book sleeve (if issued with one of course), or early titles again first editions.

I don’t think you know much about books or book collecting. I have a copy of a book by Tanith Lee, called “When The Lights Go Out”, published in 1997, IIRC. I read it when it was first published, and bought a softcover straight away. The hardcover I got from Canada, paid C$18 for it, in perfect, unmarked condition. Good softcover copies fetch over $100. Last time I saw a perfect hardcover copy for sale it was over $600

I used to work for a publishing company, I used to design and put books together, one I worked on in 1986 was called “Operation Paraquet – The Battle for South Georgia” a copy of that is going for $48 on Amazon.

If a book is scarce, and if it’s a subject that people are interested in, or the history of a subject, collectors will pay good money for old books.
If they’re first editions, especially hardcover copies and signed, collectors will pay good money, like my Terry Pratchett books, many of which I have signed. Copies of that are fetching £1600 – £2000.

Cricket fans can be quite obsessive about the game.

the original Goodyear OEM tyres on the rear failed the MOT earlier this year, after nearly five years, so the CC2’s went on the back, and I’ve got Continental all-seasons on the front
Why? You want the better tyres on the back, understeer > oversteer.

Source: Honda Civic with a waggly arse with lift off oversteer.

Yeah, useful source of information, that. Like, I’m gonna pay any attention to that as a reference point.

FWIW,  the Michelin’s I’ve got on the back now are at most 2, 2.5 years old, with approximately 4, 4.5mm of tread, and the Contis a few months old.
Anyone seriously imagining that tyre performance is going to be the slightest bit compromised? Honestly?

I still use Fb to keep in touch with friends and what little family I have left, I can’t say I’ve noticed any AI crap, but then I spend so little time there anyway, and I pay little to no attention to anything other than posts by people I know.

I tried the link to Xitter on page 1, but it had been deleted. Pity, about the only time I use it is to troll idiots.

I did once when I was in LA, been down to Sunset Bvd and heading back up to North Hollywood, heading onto the Hollywood Fwy, I completely forgot which lane I should be on, turned onto the right lane as another car came down the ramp directly towards me – cue horn blowing and lights flashing, as one might expect.

It was fairly late at night, I’d only been there a couple of days, and the way the lanes go underneath the freeway are somewhat confusing, in my mitigation.

Buck the trend, get a proper car and don’t follow the SUV lemmings

Dunno if you’ve noticed, but many of the major car manufacturers have stopped making saloon cars; Ford only sell the Mustang as a World car, the Fiesta, Focus and Mondeo are no longer available, even the EcoSport has been discontinued. There’s a reason why – nobody’s buying them.

My experience as a cyclist of Qashquai drivers having no idea where they are on the road and struggling to follow a predictable driving line is reflected well in this thread.

This seems to be a general SUV issue, Rangerovers, Tiguans, Kadjars, etc etc always seem to be barreling along the middle of the road

Might be partly due to the woeful condition of most of the nation’s roads, drivers are trying to avoid destroying wheels and tyres through hitting huge craters around road furniture like drains and manhole covers.
Also, many have fairly short front-ends, with a sharp drop-off, making it difficult to actually see where the front corners actually are – my EcoSport is like that, it’s really hard to tell where the corners are on narrow roads and lanes, there might as well be nothing further forward than the bottom edge of the ‘screen.
Having destroyed two alloys and tyres on my Octavia through hitting deep water-filled holes no more than 18”- 2’ away from the kerb on main roads, and just missed similar many other times, I’m not sodding surprised, it’s what I do!
Now, if I owned a big 4×4 with big, high-volume off-road tyres, I wouldn’t give a toss, but I’ve got Cross Climates on each corner, and I can’t afford to trash them on HM Governments shitty roads.

The hatred for umbrellas is news to me. I always walk out with mine in the rain rather than – well – not.

I don’t any more, because I got thoroughly fed up with fighting the bastard thing for supremacy when it’s raining and there’s a 50knt wind, it’s impossible to see anyone walking towards me because they’re all fighting with their brollies, and there’s overgrown hedges and cars parked on the pavement making it impossible to squeeze through the minuscule gap thoughtfully left by the car drivers.

Easier to stuff a cheap £20 Peter Storm packable jacket in a bag just in case, and more stays dry anyway. Doesn’t drip all over the floor when you get home, either.

I always used 10A scalpel blades, with the No 7 handle – easier to use, and I used the end of the handle for rubbing down Letraset.

I did once slice right down the side of my thumbnail with an Opinel, nice clean cut, very thin blade, didn’t even leave a scar once it healed – ran it under the tap in the hedge where I was camping, stuck it together with superglue and loo paper, didn’t have a first aid kit handy. Maybe that’s what the surgeon did…

*shrugs*

When I got hit by another driver on my way home several years ago, the other driver admitted to me, and to my insurance company that she had indicated she was turning right on the roundabout, then changed her mind and swerved in front of me, between me and the oncoming line of traffic entering the roundabout.

I’d had a hire car, my car examined but decided it wasn’t worth repairing, so I kept it and had a small payment from the insurance company. At the same time her insurance company were continually arguing the toss about it, and occasionally my insurance company would get in touch to say it still hadn’t been settled.

I gave the car away a couple of years afterwards, and never heard anything back about it. AFAIK, they’re still arguing about it!

That’s what insurance companies are supposed to do.

Just caught up with this thread – Porky’s looking fantastic, and absolutely in its element! Exactly what Porsche designed it for; for £500, and in the hands of someone with an engineering passion, and the space, what a wonderful project.

I drove lots of Berlingos and Partners, I hate them with a burning passion! Horribly uncomfortable driving position, faced with a three hour drive in one, after thirty minutes, I’d be almost in tears, and nothing I could do about how miserable and uncomfortable I felt.

I had an Insignia as an insurance loan car for a month or thereabouts. It was the SDi version, IIRC, it was delivered with a full tank, I drove it to work and back, and a little local driving. Very quick, I had to put £72 of fuel in when it went back, and I’d done just shy of 1000 miles, actually 900, I think. If that had been steady motorway or dual carriageway miles, I could have seen that up around 1100miles out of a tank. Very nice to drive, lots of room, and a nice looking car and very pleasant to drive.

My 52’plate Octavia I gave away with 182k miles on it, all I spent was on fuel and necessities to see it through MOT’s, I think the turbo was on its way out, it had never had a service in the 15 years I owned it. Chap at work had it for his son, back in Poland, last I heard it was somewhere like Romania or Lithuania. Plenty of spares out there to keep it running. I paid £5k for it, with 82k miles on the clock.

I had CrossClimates fitted to the front of my EcoSport about two years ago, the original Goodyear OEM tyres on the rear failed the MOT earlier this year, after nearly five years, so the CC2’s went on the back, and I’ve got Continental all-seasons on the front – reviews rate them higher, and they were cheaper.
They seem slightly noisier on certain surfaces, but considering how rough the roads are, barely noticeable. As I’m doing at least half the miles I was doing, it might be another three years before I’ll need to check them.

I know it was a bit windy today, but the Clifton bridge looks like that one in America that twisted itself into pieces!

Just ping back into the house earlier, after putting out fresh supper for the hedgehogs, and found this one right by the back door; I think they’re checking up on me!

Exchange of bodily fluids with someone who is doping is enough to cause you to fail a drugs test. You’ve been warned and I will give no details but don’t swallow anyone else’s bodily fluids. Any of them.

Thankfully, it’s been some considerable time since I’d be at risk of that happening – not that it’s likely to have made any difference from a performance-enhancing point of view…

I wonder how much Dementia Don’s outstanding bill for Juliani’s services stands at these days…?

It’s for things like this that I love this place so much! A fount of knowledge, and all to happy to help!

Shag?
Dinner first?

Never seen one around here before (river wandle in Merton) . Not a pretty bird.

Cormorants will go anywhere there’s fish to be had, doesn’t have to be salt water. For a while there’d be nearly a dozen perching on the high voltage pylons alongside the Batheaston bypass going into Bath on the A4 – right next to the River Avon, and nobody to bother them along there. I’ve seen them around here, Chippenham, and some of the smaller rivers, about 70 miles inland, bugger-all to a cormorant, and they just follow the rivers inland anyway, just like gulls.
They’re adaptable birds, like quite a few aquatic birds, Kittiwakes nest on the big warehouses and some bridges in Liverpool, because they resemble their natural habitats, like cliff faces, same with Peregrine falcons, which are now common in big city centres, lots of pigeons, starlings, etc

There’s a bunch of Canada geese on the river in the centre of town at the moment as well.

One might imagine that inhabitants of Florida and Georgia might be getting a bit of a wake-up call around now, but with DeSatanist as State Governor, I’m inclined to think they’re literally up shit-creek without a paddle. Or a hope.

but also don’t find him in any way entertaining.

Which coincidentally is what I tend to think of Lauren Laverne.

I, on the other hand, do. Having seen LaLa with Kenickie at least three times, she and the rest of the band were one of the funniest, and most fun bands I have ever seen, and Lauren is a very sharp, intelligent presenter.
I guess some people just can’t cope with intelligent people on the radio…

I use a Remington, looks like a cross between a computer mouse and a SF space ship thing. Got it at the beginning of lockdown, been using it ever since with a 1.5mm comb on it. Does the whole of my head in about 5 minutes or so.

I know, but as a  native of Wales who doesn’t speak Welsh, it would be a bit embarrassing to meet a Patagonian who could.

My late partner was born over a pub on the King’s Road, Chelsea, and she could speak Welsh! She kept trying to teach me, bless her.

Her family moved to Barmouth when she was 8 or so, so she had to learn it, up to ‘O’-Level. Letting the side down, you are! ?

It’s possible to get tickets through See Tickets and Gigantic, as well as Ticketmaster, for quite a few venues. It’s not always possible to print your own now, though – to try to cut out the touts and scalpers, you have to use an app that has a dynamic ticket; the QR Code changes all the time, so a screenshot or printed version won’t be recognised by the scanners at the entrance to the event.

Home-brown raspberries with lemon sorbet – mmmmm!

My repeated answer to this, arrived at through personal experience of spending repeated 10-12 hour days outside right through the year, is a pair of Portwest overtrousers, with a Buffalo Super 6 jacket and a £20 Peter Storm ‘waterproof’ zip up over that, and a standard Helly Lifa as a base layer.

The cheapo Millets jacket sheds the worst of the wet, the Buffalo just gets slightly damp on the surface, and the wearer stays nice and dry and warm as a result. No turning into a boil-in-the-bag human, and no worrying about a multiple hundred pounds jacket needing fancy treatments to shed the water that a £20 nylon jacket does just as well, without the worry of scuffs, snags, tears, etc, which can be sorted with a few inches of duct tape. As a nod to company safety policy, I’d wear my hiviz vest over the top of everything else.

That was my standard winter wear for five years, ‘cos the issued jacket was crap, by lunchtime I’d be almost as wet inside it as the outside was, with half the day still to go.

The Buffalo is hanging up upstairs, and with the weather being what it is, it won’t be long before I’m wearing it again.