A friend did this, I think they got off on the idea of sending their families an up yours, but looking back it was just a petty, delayed teenage rebellion on both their parts. Now divorced!

I’ve been told about different ratios over the years, I think the main thing is that it just makes you focus on your breathing, so you aren’t focusing on other anxious thoughts.
Anxiety is all about negative thoughts getting out of control.

And buy some snake oil when you visit Ipswich too

Re mental recovery, just the fact that you are in a good deal of pain for the first week apparently, and also your sleeping patterns can be affected, so to include a week of just being off and recalibrating before jumping back into phone calls with clients.
I’m thinking it has to be three weeks.
@anagellis, it’s to do with a similar condition, due to dislocations and growing pain. They basically cut the bone connected to the tendon connected to the patella and screw it in a cm downloads so the patella tracks better.

Pub prices have shot up in the home counties. There also a big trend towards food, so they are happy to lose the regular drinkers and replace them with families and noisy kids.

Supermarkets too cheap, pubs too expensive.
When I walk to the train station on garbage collection day I’m amazed at how much booze, especially wine, people are knocking back at home. Middle-class area.
But then I go into the local pub and am asked to pay £4.30 for a pint of Fosters and wonder why I bother in the first place.

I’m due for a big operation over the summer, and I’ve written in my diary on every entry – PRIORITY IS SURGERY.
To that extent, I’m trying to minimise getting worked up about the day-to-day slog of work and
the stress that goes with it (which makes me eat more and hence will make the surgery recovery harder).
The TV presenter Simon Reeve has given some insightful interviews about mental health recently, the phrase he uses a lot is “Step-by-Step” – I’ve been using that as my mantra for the last few months.

Break through the skin! Must look like something out of Alien. Ouch.

what would happen if you came off there and injured it again – would the travel insurance company pay out if they found out about the previous injury?
It’s the kind of decision faced by the contestants of bullseye, do you take the money and go home, or stay on and try and hit the jackpot?
In my 20s I’d have gone, not so sure now late 30s.

For work stress. It didnt’ work, I would be relaxed for about an hour after the session, but then the stress would kick back in.
I think as above it depends if you can be truly “put under” or not; I couldn’t, but worth a try to see if you can be.
Instead I’ve been a therapist and much of my reaction to stress comes from using the wrong kind of internal language – saying to myself “its a disaster”, rather than just “Its annoying”. Much of it came from having a strict upbringing.

It depends on a lot more detailed circumstances, like how secure are your jobs; is property over-valued or under-valued in your area; but I don’t see interest rates going up as there are so many deflationary forces in the global economy. The only real risk is a Corbyn government in which rates will have to jump up to protect the currency, or a war with Iran which spikes oil prices…at the moment both seem possible not unlikely.

Looking back at why the UK is in such a mess, I think it has a lot to do with the succession of shoddy Chancellors as with the PMs. Brown, Osborne, Hammond – this is such an important position that it should be as scrutinised as that of leader.
There is a good argument that Theresa May would have survived and won a GE outright if she’d got rid of Hammond and austerity as soon as she took over the reigns.

My cousin used to play for a well known professional football club, sometimes I’d sit in the players family area, and I was amazed at the arrogance of the majority of the players. It seems endemic in football now – but I think pro sports have always attracted very competitive sorts and that lends itself easily to arrogance.
I don’t have much time for Michael Vaughn – a good batsman, an ok captain, but ultimately someone who is trading on his luck (Glenn McGrath doing his ankle) and who no rivals Boycott in know-it-all-ism on the radio.
As a child I was once told off by Ray Reardon for dropping litter at a snooker exhibition, even though it accidentally fell out of my pocket, so he’s on the list too, along with Robbie Savage, Ryan Giggs, Gareth Bale, Mark Williams, Dai Greene, Iwan Thomas, Ian Woosnam, and Vinnie Jones (well at least a quarter of him).

@ta11paul I’m in a similar position.
Throughout my adult life my parents have told me house prices will come down, so I kept on renting, but the exact opposite has happened. If I’d have known of course I would have got on the ladder earlier. Even if they do come down, with my age it is doubtful I will have much time to wait it out.
Now the only option I have is to move to a cheaper area and do more remote working and a longer commute. I think that is a realistic ambition – but having a family ontop of that, unfortunately, is not.
I should mention I’m not a low earner, I earn ok money, but that’s how crazy house prices have got – I blame Bill Clinton, who worked out he could get re-elected by engineering house price inflation – that was since copied by Blair and Cameron, and now the bubble is too big to burst without collapsing the economy.

I don’t want children but it’s not because I want to spend more time and money on myself. It’s because raising a family is not just incredibly hard work, it’s ridiculously expensive.
Unless you have accommodating parents to babysit their grandkids, or have tons of money, I think it’s become unbelievably expensive, especially with both parents having to work to pay stupidly high house prices. And no government has pursued family friendly policies since the 60s.

Agree with Binners – I’d spend way too much time in too good a local.
I used to live one minute walk form the fat cat in norwich, but I wasn’t really into my real ale back then.
My local is being gradually turned into a restaurant unfortunately. The best ones are up north or in the south-west. Too much greed down south.

Would have been nice if he hadn’t sold our gold at rock bottom prices.

Brown and Blair were in bed with the banks (and the consequent house price inflation which got them re-elected), but then again, so would have been the Tories.
The issue really goes back to the Big Bang and deregulation of the financial sector, and how this related to engineered house price inflation to secure re-election; Cameron and Osbourne pulled the same trick with Help to Buy.
There is a debate as to whether John Smith (had he lived) would have taken on the financial sector which labour traditionally is suspicious of…instead we had Gordon End of Boom and Bust Brown.

You can generally dislike humanity without having met every person that’s ever lived too.

Chris Sutton like Robbie Savage have been bought in by FiveLive to feed the ratings – the Jeremy Kyle idea that you need conflict to garner interest in a information overload world.
It’s a great shame as I used to love FiveLive, now it is like listening to a group of obnoxious idiots in a pub spending more time point scoring than developing an interesting discussion. The same goes increasingly for Waddle I’m afraid, who was a very under-rated player, but seems to have developed an anger problem.

The Perons have left a number of boobytraps for the relatively new Argentine president, a dodgy power system could be one of them.

I don’t particularly like/trust ultra-competitive people, so I suppose most athletes would fall into that bracket. I think cheating is endemic across professional sports.
The same goes for most of the people we are told to admire – “great” entrepreneurs, great politicians etc – I prefer the little people, the last shall be first etc.
But I retain a particular animus for bully boys like Boycott, and flash harrys like Lewis Hamilton.
I’d share a beer with Valentino Rossi and Freddie Flintoff.

My local pub restaurant’s chef has gone ill – 100 fathers day meal cancellations, the local mcdonalds will be busy!

I can’t say I’ve really noticed it other than last week. Only a few years ago we had some really bad summers with all the flooding, I don’t think we are any where near that.
The big change I’ve noted is how warm it is staying into the evenings/nighttime.

I try to work out whether I can walk up it.

A friend of mine had it done and says it is the biggest regret of his life. He had the operation two years ago and still suffers from awful pain.

The relationship with the new bloke will last two years max.
Sorry to hear you are going through this, sounds ultra-crap, vent on here if need be and best of luck.

In interviews afterwards she said it was a small pothole. Amazing how quickly the front of the bike folded in.

I managed two half pints of fosters, absolutely shattered today!

If we are judging PMs on their moral histories, then frankly you know nothing about the intimate details of the ruling political classes since…the beginning of time.
Power doesn’t corrupt – those who seek power are already corrupt.
If you are looking for innocence then go to your local coffee shop barista or NHS frontline worker – those who serve, etc., shall hopefully inherit the kingdom of god. They deserve to.

You can detect a small shadow on the road, it looks like a tiny pothole – which is more dangerous than a big one which would have been obvious.
She’s my favourite rider so I hope she gets well soon.

Re rear disk in gusty conditions, I’d say it’s a bit of an open question – and I’ve no idea what happened with Froome’s crash. I’d say overall they offer more stability – you wouldn’t want one on the front wheel in those conditions because of the steering pivot – but Froome does shift his body weight to the front on descents, so conceivably a gust of wind could have caught his rear disk and taken the back out. But this is complete speculation, and generally rear disks are very safe.

Terry Smith should be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Impressive no-nonsense fund manager.

Yeah the disk rear was probably a factor, basically works as a sail when a cross-wind blows out of nowhere, he may have lost the backwheel rather than the front.

Some confusing reports, one said he’d fractured his pelvis, but the recent updates suggest not.
6 month rehab. He will be 35 by the next Tour de France. Would be a rocky-like comeback but entirely possible.

Not sure if he will be back. Maybe if he was 24, but 34 is no spring chicken. Depends on the complexity of the injuries. But he is mentally tough so anything is possible.

On the chilly side this morning and have caught a cold!

I’ve been in two (thankfully short) relationships with two very unbalanced narcissistic people. Luckily they showed their colours early on, and they already had troubled relationship histories, so I got out as soon as I could. One pulled a knife on me – major red flag!
I’m not sure if I’ve really recovered, I’ve been single for about 11 years now.
A real eye opener is the mumsnet relationships forum – it seems there are a lot of troubled relationships out there behind closed doors.

Yep Im all for better quality beer, but with the associated price rises it means the dives now feel entitled to charge £4 plus for a pint of fosters which rots your guts.

Yep agree with all the above.
Not a single yellow card is indicative of what a strange game it was – almost like a friendly.
Surreal. No quality from either side, Kane unfortunately went missing for another big game as he did with England in the World Cup.
I think there is a lot to be said that Spurs don’t have the fundamental self-belief, and suffered paralysis/stage fright.