I'd better give my aunt in Aspatria a bell tonight. What tyres…?

Well, Pook's taken some of the obvious ones but I think this little number will be ideal.

Earthed series. Tipping Point was good too.

There are some v.bland dvds around: 'tasteful' soundtracks, 'tasteful' camerawork, 'tastefully' edited but soulless and far too clean for such mucky fun.

I'd be up for it but weekends are out for me. Have a good one.

Hawkwind Leeds Uni '74

I am envious!

The Cramps supported by The Stingrays at Newcastle Mayfair 1986.

Bevis Frond and Walkingseeds. The Dome, Tufnell Park? North London at any rate. errr. 1989? 1990? Not sure as I was doing a lot of acid roundabout then. It was awesome though.

Brain of Morbius. Deptford Free Festival. 1995ish. Very funnu

The sausages were just bangers and didn't warrant mustard; chilli? Worth considering but mint??!!! I can understand mentioning it for the ovine mountain biker connection but don't want to think it was a serious suggestion. Jeepers.

Went for brown (ooer). Glorious.

Yeah, what's being said about different kinds of journeys makes a lot of sene. So far I've commuted across town (in the dark) and taken various combinations of missus and 3 kids (2-7) either across town or for a walk which ended in (a) a coughing fit and (b) floods of tears. So maybe a nice, calm drive with just me and a bike would make a world of difference.

far too many people save energy while driving by not concentrating!

Yeah, I think I've been doing their concentrating for them 😉

Thanks all by the way

Repressed sexuality and vampires = teen $$$

True Blood, on the other hand, is pretty good.

a huge proportion of Sun readers have an extremely healthy cynical attitude towards their paper.

But not sufficiently cynical to stop buying it and I'm not even sure it's a "huge" proportion. I love your optimism but I think you're crediting people with far more smarts than is their due; have you seen the viewing figures for X Factor? I wouldn't wipe my arse with the Sun.

alot of reporters are freelance a

Never mind the freelancers – what about the editors who select this stuff? What makes me cringe about the Sun is that so many of its sub-eds and eds are *very* well educated and yet turn out a rag that is aimed at adults but uses vocabulary aimed at the under-10s. Shockingly poor rag.

'3 million for Thatcher's state funeral? You could use that to buy a shovel for everyone in Scotland and we'll dig a hole so deep you could hand her over to Satan personally'.

Lol. That'll have me lolling all morning 🙂

Well, it seems that the majority of people will be a having a Thatcher Death Party (I hope the crap-eyed ghost dies on a Bonfire Night so we can have flaming effigies every year). This is deeply reassuring, I sometimes think people have forgotten how vile the 80s were and that Thatcher's evil black heart beat at the centre of it all, supercharged by Mad Ron's nuclear powered pacemaker.

Drove my youngest to nursery and drove to and from work for the first time. Stressful and exhilarating in equal measure.

Renault Modus

We had one as our second choice but were a bit thrown by tales of electronic/electric faults that have just begun emerging.

I don't know how important this is to you, but it might be worth ringing a Mitsi dealer & asking how much a minor/major service is for a Colt.

£130 at a main and the one we bought yesterday (this one) was given a minor service by the dealer. Very nippy, nimble and versatile. Rear seats are foldable in multiple directions or removable making for a lot of bike space 🙂

Thanks to everyone for their help and advice (here and on the thread about the possibly dodgy motor – which turned out to be the dealers' innocent mistake. He'd sent off for reg plates with his garage name on, had two renaults and mixed up their reg plates)

OOOOH!… Andrewf/heathenwood seems annoyed about something I've said.

Not annoyed just all smileyfaced at your mighty and superior tone; hubris aint pretty 🙂

ny chance of a bit of detail on what it is that defines you as the uber elite of the adult world then?

I think it's this:

I had an 05 or 06 subway 8 (that came with a Nexus hub and Nexave drum brakes). […] It was a bit heavy when carrying it up and down six flights of stairs to my flat everyday, but made a great reliable commuter.

Pure warrior on the edge of time. DMT on toast every morning and hunts for tea with crossbow in park. Certainly not anything like someone, "detailling the tedious minutae of mediocre adulthood?"

Really, will some-one please explain to me why?

Cos it's metal.

And anyway, Orthodox (pace Sunn o))) ) don't:

Now, y'black metal is what you want for le tosseurs…

10 most ridiculous black metal pictures…

Or have you thought of something to do with woodsman's flaming toaster and a beegees cd?

At the cafe at GT a few weeks ago, sitting enjoying a coffee in the sun and a couple of GUYS at the table behind were discussing their wives' experiences with breastfeeding.

C'mon to f*ck guys, get a f*cking grip.

Why not? You seem really uncomfortable with teh subject B_B; why don't you lay down on the couch and tell us about your mother….

😉 btw.

Seriously, I think your friends are freaking out about the imminent arrival of their twins and are so worried that everything's going to go tits-up that they've decided to get high and mighty about everything and everyone else in order to cover up the fact that they're shitting themselves over what the next few years have in store.

Suggest that they come round and watch Cronenberg's Dead Ringers and have a chat.

I had a few pairs of tie-dye lycra leggings in the early 90s. I miss them. The rest of humanity seemed to object for some reason (might have been i chose to go commando when i wore them).

ANyway, back on topic: it's a bit depressing that there are so many contenders but I agree with whoever it was who that said most places have redeeming qualities (or somewhere nicer) in their immediate vicinity.

Have you tried VirtualDub? It does a lot more than splitting avi files and needs a bit of time to learn its ways but it can be v.useful for editing avi files.

Ta – 1.1 gets v.good write up from lots of places (honestjohn.co.uk and Top Gear bimonthly car guide mag off the top of my head) and happily that's the one for sale – only 18K on the clock too. Strong contender 🙂

Zafira was a thought but wouldn't fit on our mini-drive.

Cheers. At the moment a Mitsubishi Colt is looking fairly good..

dB Power Amp Music Converter; I think you get 21 days free full functionality before you need to register.

There is something better but I can't remember its name right now (not much use, I know!)

The trouble is that we have a v.short space in the front of the house but we still want to park on it rather than on the road. A Berlingo would give us 3cm clearance each side which, for a new driver (and my missus who should pass her test by Feb) is a bit tight.

I might double (treble) check the measurements tho.

Dumb question #2312

We're getting close to choosing something but one thing I can't get any agreement on from the people around me is what's an acceptable mileage for a used car.

All the cars we're looking at are 5yrs old or more and the figure I've come up with is less than 50k (ideally less than 40k) for a petrol but for a diesel I've no idea: everyone says something different. Any ideas?

Cheers Gary_C; that's all hugely useful.

Aah! It comes up as a Megane. Why would they put the plates from one on the other? Sorry if this sounds naive, it's our first car!

Here's a link (don't laugh too hard at our choice of motor 🙂

Heathen woods are u Hallmarks UK sales manager or just live in a rose tinted world? These things are designed to pray on peoples insecurities, guilt tripping them into buying stuff, all that emotional clap trap is just playing into the marketing guys hands.

Lol, no way man, I'm a dirty hippy who wouldn't want a *thing* that's been marketed. It's just sometimes nice to get together with friends, have a chat, and, if they have one of life's landmarks approaching, help them out with a few things. That's not so bad, huh? If you think you have to start buying cards and stuff, well, step out of that world and walk away from it….

If your life is measurably improved by the way your music collection is arranged, then I don't think we have the same concept of a life.

Fair enough. Music has always been an important part of my life. If it's not to you then iTuines will be fine 🙂

hahaha – exactly my point!! You spend time and money on an i-tunes replacement, for what improvement in your LIFE?

Money – there's a free version
Time – faster download than iTunes, easy install, sets itself faster than iTunes, far less resource hungry than iTunes – it'll actually save you time. The improvement in my life is that my music collection (c.20,000 plus files) is better organised and I experience none of the irritations and poor performance that I suffered with with iTunes. It's only a small improvement but they all add up, no?

I dont use it however as the device recognition is not reliable and its simply not as user friendly as Itunes unfortunately.

<shrugs> my mileage clearly varies 🙂 I find iTunes horrible to use. Plus, i use my phone as an mp3 player and MM works fine with that.

imho, iTunes is awful but at least it's not as bad at its job as Safari…

lol

No Its just that Itunes is the only thing that works with my [whispers]ipod

runs for cover

Try Media Monkey[/url]. It's far better than iTunes, especially for larger mp3 collections. Worth paying for but the free version is pretty good too.

And they will never lose their homework with time machine.

Heheheheh. Until it burns out after c.18months[/url]

I'm with Samuri here – PCs *can* be super reliable. Anyone who can read the instructions and bleed their brakes could do it.

Macs are fine for what they are – well designed computers with a tradition of use within media industries. For that they're the platform of choice for a number of reasons. For home use they're over priced with a narrower range of apps (and games, if that's your thing). Good for people who can't program DVDs etc tho'.

Your kids would probably love a laptop. Just take some time setting it up how you'd like them to use it (XP SP3, firewalls, antivirus, web blocking software, set them up with limited user rights etc) and forget about it.

nd everyone will remember who only gave the baby wipes too

Why? Who's going to know? Best way is to do it so no one know who gave what – open gifts after everyone has left. If people don't like everyone not knowing what they've given then tough shit, they've given for wrong reasons.

Or set a £5 cap on gifts. There's plenty of ways of doing it.
In my experience it seems as if baby showers are great for providing an emotional touchstone where the reality of the forthcoming birth can come to the fore, especially for first time mums and can overcome the sense of separation from friends/normality that can sometimes occur during pregnancy. Experiences shared, fears allayed, the whole birth thing given an arena for group discussion amongst friends etc – it can be really helpful. Like I said, only if the gift giving/opening is made the focus does it become a consumofest.

Like any 'occasion' it's all about what people make of it – if there's a bit of thought put into it can become whatever you want it to be not just what it 'should' be.

the problem is some people feel blackmailed into going and buying stuff they can't really afford

<shrugs> I guess that's up to the people having the baby shower – the basic rule to ours and any we've been involved in (well, that my missus has been to) is that everyone contributes what they can afford. Even a packet of baby wipes from the pound shop go a long way in an emergency. As long as it's made clear and the event isn't structured around the opening of gifts but swapping stories/experiences or whatever instead then no one needs to know what anyone's given except the recipients and the givers. And *everything* tends to be appreciated – except plastic pretend mobile phones that play the Crazy Frog theme. That's never going to be forgiven.

Jazz. Basically Roy Castle on Record Breakers but with extra twiddly bits. Honestly, they can keep it.

Lol, I'm looking forward to mine when it eventually gets to me on 25th Dec by way of my mother-in-law.

The concept of 'Rights' did originate with Paine but, not to take anything away from him, he did distil a lot of current ideas.

"It was the Russians who were messed up. I bet that gives all our American a warm feeling!"

Uuhh, I'm not sure where you got this idea from but without the Russians repelling and then defeating Germany on the Eastern front we'd all have been stuffed.

Oh, and 'Halloween' is a European celebration. The biggest debate is the extent to which it is rooted in pre-Christian/pagan practices. All America has done to it is to commodify it (as they do to most things they touch). I'm just sad we don't get to have proper bone-fires anymore – huge ritual fires at this time of year pre-date Mr Fawkes etc.

Baby showers? They can be a big help in offsetting a little of the expense of newborns whilst letting friends/rellies contribute without getting in the way for more than one night. What's the problem?