http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/top-gear/why-top-gears-greatest-ever-car-was-a-1500-bmw-banger/Topical…[/url]

I loved my e39. Bought it at 60k, sold it at 170k. Still miss it sometimes.

Corrosion was the biggest thing starting to creep in, and there were a couple of electrical gremlins creeping in, but mechanically really sound.

I bought an e-class to replace it and, lovely as it is, it’s cost me a lot more in repairs in three years than the e39 did over 8…

Ha! Great call, Flasheart!

Thanks all, much appreciated. Look like a great spot!

Turns out it doesn’t matter as I’ll now be working at their central Manchester site!

There’s an S-Max in the Classifieds (not mine) which would tick all of your boxes for half that price.

Beaumaris is stunning as a projection of force, but Dunnottar beats it on location I think:

I’ve got a soft spot for Dunottar, too, coz it’s my family’s ancestral gaff!

I think you’re absolutely right – I’d normally double-check everything and have a test ride but just ran out of time this time.

The bike has been pretty well set up for a while and had some longish rides recently, and I guess if I had considered that there might have been a change to setup I would have made some time to do it.

Live and learn, I guess, but I will complain.

Okay, thanks for the thoughts so far – some good info there too!

So it sounds like the issue is not what I thought he was explaining – that the BB shell has been irreversibly changed, but that the splines on the BB are different, and that is why the cranks are now sitting out further. I guess there is a chance that the cranks may have been damaged in the process and that is what he was warning me about. He should have explained this further before the work was done, though.

Also, I hadn’t considered that they might have moved the seatpost for the job. Wish I had taken the bike out for a wee pre-ride checkup blast before the day. Will definitely do that in future.

It’s a chain shop – a very large chain shop, in fact. I’ll write a letter to management, but good to be fully informed before I do.

Any other thoughts very welcome, ta.

recently when I’ve been out for long rides I keep fantasizing about, weirdly, pitta bread with peanut butter…

No, sir. I didn’t like Frozen. My daughter blimmin loved it, though, which means that it will be a fixture in our house for the next month or so..

Brave and Tangled much, much better.

“I don’t like long distance flights, they are so monogamous”

:D

I just got some Hankook Ventus Prime 2s on the back on some reviews.

Seem fine so far, but I wish I’d seen the link below first…

Might be useful…

The idea that intelligence mitigates the need for specific attention is painfully shortsighted.

*Applauds*

Yep, it just comes out sometimes. Reading or maths or whatever is just easy for them. That’s the gift. Otherwise they’d just be “hard working…”

TBH Had they worked hard rather than just been gifted i would feel proud. its like being proud because your kid is the tallest in their class. they dont do much to achieve it. My kids try as hard as any other kid they are just genetically* lucky

Totally agree with this, btw…

EDIT: And, I should have written “can sometimes be like having a kid with Special Needs.” In our case, it is.

Maybe it’s a bit beyond you, Junky… :wink:

Used a couple or three times – great!

My lad was put on it in year 1 for his reading which was 3-4 years ahead.

Junkyard:
A pointless thing for middle class as if schools need to spend their precious resources on those who are not struggling

This rings true for me. Unfortunately our school had no head teacher for three years and everything got a bit rudderless and the school really went downhill. This was largely at the expense of the kids who sat outside the norm, one way or the other.

We had to move schools in the end, because it’s one thing when your kid isn’t being extended in their work, but it’s entirely another when they start going backwards because of it.

BTW, on that subject, kid’s development is not linear anyway, but in some cases it’s also normal for kids to come off the Gifted and Talented register too.

For more reading on Gifted and Talented, and stuff you can do to help out, we were given contacts here:

PotentialPlus[/url]

TomorrowsAchievers[/url]

Lastly, and from some tough experience, having gifted children isn’t always a picnic. In fact having a gifted or talented kid is also having a kid with Special Needs.

Quite often there will be asynchronous development of some aspects – heightened emotion and sensitivity and,in some documented cases, even a higher sensitivity to physical pain.

Excerpt here from Silverman, 1997 which really resonated in our case:

To be gifted is to be vulnerable. To have the mental maturity of a 14-year-old, and the physical maturity of an 8-year-old poses a unique set of challenges analogous to those faced by a child with a 14-year-old body and an 8-year-old mind. Parenting a child with large
discrepancies in either direction is equally challenging; even moderate discrepancies can be daunting

We found loads of good stuff in that paper for us:

Silverman, 1997 paper.

In my son’s case, his physical stuff lagged his mental, and though he’s had a decent catchup in the last year or so, his fine motor skills still lack some precision. Also, his emotional development is so far ahead of his schoolmates that he had real trouble finding (and keeping) friends. They didn’t “get” him for a long time – a bit of a weird kid, didn’t like footy or sport, always reading and making jokes they didn’t understand, and it’s only really been recently (and at the new school) that he’s made some proper mates.

Anyway, didn’t mean to ramble on. Not all gifted kids have the downside we had, and best of British to you and for your kids in their journey.

So as a cyclist, how do I make eye contact with a driverless car?
Do I stare at the human, who is busy looking at porn? Or will there be a camera that will recognise my gesticualtions?

And will a driverless car avoid me because it doesn’t want to go to jail?

You need to up your science-fiction reading!

The Three Laws of Robotics

NZCol, you are a complete reverse copy of me!

From Welly, now in our 14th year in the UK, and met and married a kiwi over here!

However, after many years of living with our heads in two hemispheres we’ve now bitten the bullet and decided on staying put in the UK. Kids are firmly in school and we have a great life here.

I guess there’s still not a week that goes by without wondering, just a wee bit, how life would be at home.

The weather’s pretty rubbish, but that’s not the reason we came to the UK in the first place.

I built it for my Dad! Lovely thing, and he’s very pleased with it. I’ll see if I can find any pictures of the final build.

I built a second-hand El Mar frame and rigid fork which I got off the classifieds here for my Dad – absolutely beautiful! Wish I didn’t have to give it away!

Mate, you asked, specifically, “Like what?”. I answered with my thoughts. I’m not upset, I am responding to what I still think was probably an ill-informed rant.

Racist? Maybe. We have a lot to thank our colonial history for.

Did I win the internet?

Actually, that’s all made me a wee bit homesick…

Easy tiger! That’s a fairly strong response to what was a pretty innocuous comment…

As a person who was born there, and lived, learned, loved and worked the first 28 years of my life there, I’d say I was reasonably well placed to understand what the “real New Zealand” was – the good bits and the bad.

I would suggest that, without knowing your full story of being there, it might be that you have a less complete picture than I do?

Auckland not without its’ problems, I agree. But it is a melting pot of Pacific nations (of which, I must point out, it is one) and the vibrant result of a youthful immigrant nation. It has culture, contrast, amazing fishing, diving, sailing, surfing, vinyards, museums, the world’s oldest no-take marine-reserve, land-based nature reserves, national parks, an incredible harbour and its’ islands, beaches, forests, 1.5hrs to the Coromandel, access to the far north, west coast beaches, 4 hours drive from some decent skiing.

I’d say that, without undermining the South Island’s incredible natural assets, Auckland has a pretty reasonable case as a decent chunk of what the “Real New Zealand” is, or certainly what it will be in the future. Christchurch was always filled up with expat Englanders, including my grandparents, and after living over here for 14 years now, I see that it’s quite the most English of New Zealand cities. Perhaps that’s the attraction for you.

I’m from Wellington, and I now by some accident of fate live in Kent, and Auckland’s not my favourite spot in EnZed by a long shot, but please give it some credit for the multifaceted and interesting place that it is…

10 Best Cities to live in…

I’m always surprised that people don’t find more to like about Auckland, there’s a huge amount going on around there.

Christchurch always struck me as a pleasant enough spot, a bit dull, and there were always a lot more skinheads about than I would expect. I guess it’s not the most cosmopolitan of places anyway.

If you’re not able to get a separate space then I would massively recommend Sennheiser Momentum over-ears (not the on-ears).

Review Here.

I got goosebumps when I listened to them, just such a massive step up from anything else I’d heard, and when I stop being such a poor bastard from buying a house I shall get some.

u need to ride with jekkyl’s mate – he sounds slow! your mate can then ride with jekkyl

*WOOOSH*…

E-Class.

EDIT: Having said that, Autoexpress makes an interesting case for an Insignia tourer:

If you’re after maximum car for your money, look no further than the Insignia. Thanks to the fleet sector’s hunger for spacious, comfortable and cheap-to-run family cars, the market is flooded with nearly new examples of the big Vauxhall. We found a one-year-old car for £14,056 less than its
original list price – it’s the sporty SRi, too, so you get 18-inch alloys, parking sensors and an upgraded sound system. While the 2.0 CDTi diesel will suit high-mileage drivers, the 138bhp 1.8 petrol has enough power for most.

Read more: http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/vauxhall/insignia/84691/best-used-car-2013-vauxhall-insignia

I was a marine biologist in a previous life, so plenty of diving around that.

Best dives were the Poor Knights in NZ and with Bull Sharks followed by a slow ascent up through a wreck festooned with morays in Cuba.

Ace. Don’t do much since I moved to the UK though.

@Northwind, I believe that, as an E-class, the boot is massive (690 litres or sommat), and also comes with a handy 7-seat option…

EDIT: Quite clearly – Want.

I had an e39 525i estate which I sold earlier in this year after 8 years of pretty much trouble-free motoring. Great car. If it had a teensy bit more poke (like, for example a 530i) I would probably still have it.

178k miles. Still drove beautifully.

Ahh, I see you have a child.

It’s either sleep deprivation or some sort of internal sop-switch that gets tweaked when the little blighters come into your life…

In fact, I reckon this fella’s even sitting on the same kind of coral…

I reckon a sharpnose goby – Elacatinus evelynae, as the Striped Dottyback is a Red Sea fish.

1) Schoolmaster snapper

2). some kind of Goby or blenny. Perhaps an engineer goby.

*Pluck*

Problem solved.

For a couple of months, anyway…

EDIT. Nothing.

I bloody love that song…