Brilliant. We've a healthy list now and may well come across like CSI with the encouragement you've all given 🙂 Cheers.

All very useful, ta. We've driven past a couple of times but this is the first proper look round.

I'd never have thought of half of what's been said. We were going to take a notebook; now we have something to write inside it lol 🙂

It's a pernicious evil. The other day I even found myself contemplating a Kona Humu through ours. I mean, that can't be right?!

I like mine. A befuddled diamond.

Just read the Magna Via piece and, with one exception (the phrase, "enough of the nerdy amateur archæology guff," shit man, don't knock down your knowledge) and really enjoyed it.

It's pieces like that which still make ST stand out from the crowd – a slightly different angle on things which makes riding about more than how many inches suspension is the new standard and takes notice of the actual places that riding happens. Acers.

China Mieville – Perdido Street Station (not bad, bit baggy but I guess that's the price of the Geneva Convention relative to the Publishing of Fantasy Fiction and Minimum Page Numbers)

Nick Goodrick-Clarke – The Western Esoteric Traditions (well researched, nicely written but then his stuff usually is)

next:
David Mitchell – Ghost Writer
Alan Dundes – Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist.

Cool! Once time has freed up a bit and the move has been sorted it'd be good to get some rides sorted. That's if I'm not too unfit to ride in company by then!

Is th picture different for the occasional purchasers of the magazine from the subscribers?

Well, I can comment on the subscribers' edition but do you mean the one of Fearne Cotton and the 'missing saddle'. I don't normally enjoy the inherent sexism in such photograpnhy but, man, that's an awesome shot.

hi justa, you still in allestree? oh and hi tim btw!

(it's derby_andrew or whatever my forum name used to be) as was. I may well be moving up the amber valley over the summer – kilburn/belper are favourites at the moment but we're looking from allestree northwards..

Well, i've enjoyed it so far. A bit indifferent to interviews with clothing manufacturers, amused by the tragedy of middle age middle earth beards, hate jazz, loved the improv article, looking forward to the route guides. Seemed to be a bit light on reviews but, well, winter's always lean.

As to Mark getting shouty, well, sfw? I'df rather see someone get passionate about their product than uptight neurotic middle managers preserving 'the dignity of the company' or whatever. Dignity should not mean soullessness; there is no dignity in beige.

More hours in the day.

Sad news. Wen I wert lad, I was a big Cramps fan and so followed up on his production on 'Songs the Lord Taught Us' and from there I discovered a whole new world of magic.

just using the middle chain ring and rear block and occasionally venturing to the rest of the chainset.

Heh. After 30+ yrs of cycling, it sounds like me.

Cheers for the encouragement Smuzzy – that's a nice bike to learn on!

yeah, it's dificult balancing my enthusiasm and not getting so carried away that she gets put off…

unless she has thighs like geoff capes

heh. Thankfully not.

In my opinion she will only ride it if she likes it and her criteria will be very different to yours.
My Mrs loves her bike, not because of the technology or quality, but because she thinks it looks nice.

Yep, very true – which is why she's been part of the decision making process all the way through. And why it has a pink headset, pink grips and will have pink pedals to contrast with the black frame. heh.

you mean she can't ride a bike at the moment?

That's precisely what i mean. Basically she felt left out of the fun that me and the kids have so wanted to learn to join in.

(at least based on teaching my 6 year old, which I do understand, is different from teaching an adult).

I'm expecting a lot more tantrums and tears. And that's just me.

That's a fair point. I was planning pretty flat stuff to begin with and a 34×18 to make life *really* easy for her.

Great pics – very inspiring.

I do but use MediaMonkey – for a large collection of audio files I've found it to be more flexible than iTunes and better for organising them and so on. It depends on how you want to use it – if you want the software to eake the lead then iTunes will be better but if you want to prioritise customisation then MediaMonkey kicks its ass.

Weird – are you sure – it has my road (an unadopted, very bumpy old road), and seems to have loads of little places like Shottle, Carsington, Blackbrook etc. done pretty thoroughly. Where is it that you can't find?

Joe

Crich and a couple of others on that side of the A6. Nice flagstone road by the way 🙂

Heh, but not half the locations in Derbyshire that we're looking to move to (Belper area)

Jeffrey Lewis covering CRASS

And because everything's been bordering on good taste, Armitage Shanks doing a Friday night favourite (admittedly it's a cover of a phrase, not a song)

had a 30min chat at the end with the guy about coffee.

If cycling's the new golf I guess coffee must be the new weather.

Haven't a didgeridoo

Hmm, it all depends. Is sir going to singlespeed it? Bottle opener dropouts are de rigeur and remember to praise the importer of over-priced handcrafted coggery for being so wonderfully charitable as to make these glories of Creation available for sale. Or perhaps sir would prefer a Rohloff? If we dig far enough I suspect we may discover new depths of nichery and perceived exclusivity. Or that, possibly, there is no limit to it at all….

borrowed time if the bike aesthetes catch wind of the abomination that he's selling.

Cycling alone in the wilderness is great fun. It's probably* safer than crossing the road. Knock yerselves out.

*According to best guesstimate data available.

Overtaking on the motorway is okay at a steady state – it doesn't really have any top end grunt. It doesn't feel uncomfortable at higher speeds but I've never really found it to surge ahead at speed particularly well. That might be my technique as I've only been driving since November ('mature' driver rather than boy racer, heh.)

My missus finds the front roomy but then she's only 5'3" so she would do 🙂 I've tried out the passenger seat and found it fine (6'0) but have never sat in it for a journey so couldn't comment there.

If it was for a run-around i'd say snap it up but for mixed driving i'd say try and get a dual-c/way test drive like you said. The noise isn't a problem with a Cd in the player….

Easy to park in limited space.

that's exactly why we got one – no other **** would fit in front of our house lol!

I looked at the Fiesta but went for the Colt because of the space inside – tghe Colt has more room for kids in the back *and* you can take the rear seats out eitehr completely or on a 60/40 split so there's lots of room in the back for bikes etc.

It's nippy around town, usually turns around 40+mpg for the petrol version. On dual carriageways/motorways it's ok but not very exciting, sits at 70ish reasonably happy but a bit noisily. Very reliable.

I got a 06 one sub 20k for four grand. It was a total bargain – the one you mention for five grand sounds a good price too, I'd maybe try and get a couple hundred tho.

when you think of artists like little Richard, fats domino and chuck berry who were real artists not some record company created pop idol.

I'm not a fan – i was a big Cramps fan years ago and got to know a lot of early rockabilly through them and Kicks magazine – I never really took to Elvis but his multicultural hybrid sound transformed music in the early 50s. He was doing what he was doing prior to the Colonel's involvement and the colonel's management of him. He also repeatedly pointed to people like Fats Domino whenever the 'king of rock'n'roll' thing came up – don't blame musicians for promotors mismanagement of them. He didn't steal anything: he combined sounds that he liked – that he was able to like because he was *not* a redneck racist. Someone repeating tired clichés on the Grauniad's Comment pages won't change that.

EDIT – saying that, I am pretty unemotional so Maybe MrNutt is right.

Or maybe it's generally the way that a lot of males are brought up (socially as well as in families) and that you both *happened* to take drugs too?

Heathern.
Get a grip.

humans *have* … always used drugs of some form

Coffee is a stimulant not a drug.
Do you mean caffeine?
Many cultures do not use alcohol.

No, you're wrong. Stimulants *are* drugs. And, no, not all cultures have drunk alocohol but humans have drunk it for all of known history. Those that have featured no form of psychoactive use have usually done so under prohibition from a religious source – spiritual insight through denial and control etc

To throw our hands up in horror and say that drugs are an evil destroying our society and should be stamped out is hopelessly naive. It hasn't worked and fails to work. The world would probably be a better place with affluent egomaniacs coked up and high on themselves or pissed up lads pushing up against each other like disabled stags but sadly it is a better world that will not come to pass.

They're not going to go away just because you want them to. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, "Go away!" doesn't really work. Accepting that people do, in fact, do drugs might be a useful first step in working out how best to manage drugs and drug users so that they cause fewer problems, where they do cause any problems.

How did Public Enemy put it……?

Except Public Enemy were about as wrong as it is possible to be wrong….

As it points out, if he was racist he would never have been Elvis….

drugs, in whichever form, to be the norm. They are NOT. Never have been,

Uhh, we have had brewing alcohol for every day consumption for a *very* long time as well as the sacralization of other substances in various rites.

I'm not an advocate for drug use at all – i only drink coffee semi regularly and drink very occasionally now – but denying the fact that humans *have*, according to the best evidence available, always used drugs of some form then the best way of coping with widespread abuse of them isn't a 'string 'em up, hang 'em high' (well, maybe high's not the best word) approach but working out how to manage them so that they have the least harmful consequences.

all drugs the same ? Isn't that rather far fetched ?

Exactly. The counsellor is making sweeping generalisations. I had a colourful youth and sampled many natural and synthetic psychoactive substances including all the well known ones and can honestly say that it is ridiculous to suggest that there will be a uniform impact. (Think of the famous spider web experiments.)

I'm seen by those close to me as being particularly empathic – my missus tells me it's one of the things that she loves about me (and I, in turn, value that love) and I had my experiences, especially with LSD and a variety of mushrooms. If any thing I would say they heightened my emotional awareness as they (or, the circumstances in which I took them) revealed aspects of my 'self' to me and o helped me know myself better. They also took me to outer space, hooked me up to a global psychic underground dedicated to underthrowing the overground, turned walls into windows, and in later years helped me understand French post-structuralist thought etc etc. Everyone's mileage will vary.

Purely subjective experience, of course, but the point is that it's a little worrying that your counsellor is speaking dogmatically about something that is contextually – and chemically – dependent upon individual circumstances. It's good that you find some truth in what she's saying and if it's helping you then great but that doesn't mean that everything that comes from her will be true. I'm all for counselling but counselling individuals as opposed to counselling from a rigid and dogmatic position.

Too late to edit previous post. But:

I guess the one thing that'd hold me back from JC is how deeply ingrained his Christianity is in his music. I admire him for his bravery in making it so evident in an industry in which it is so deeply unfashionable but if I want to hear sermons on sin, redemption and judgement I'll listen to Jerry Lee's cousin.

…but then you hear tales of Elvis the benzedrine-fuelled truck driver strutting around in a pink suit and mascara sending the women crazy and then think about how the way he covers 'That's All Right' sits in things sounded at the time and you can hear how he turned music upside down.

How did The Cramps put it?

Well the devil gave us Elvis
Drugs, sex and rock'n'roll
Greenbacks, fuzz and feedback
Demonseed and banshee hole
Frogs fallin' down from Heaven
Thunder under Hell
Troglodynamite times seven
Cold titty witchin' spell

Hank Williams Snr.

or maybe, Charlie Feathers. And then, when the moon is full… Hasil Adkins!!

And, thinking about it, let's not forget Junior Thompson…and thankfully not a U2 cover in sight 😉

But ya gotta love JC.

21st century vegan diet.

15th century piety? No thanks. Get thee to a nunnery!

this handy criterion also allows you to eat babies and non English speakers

Thank goodness for farming; it'd be an awful decision to make. Babies tend to be plumper. With the obvious exceptions of Americans and Germans, clearly.

eat babies

Actually, that reminds me of one of my favourite films, Dumplings – more a rumination on femininity and beauty but grand stuff nonetheless.