That is a real shame because I like your stuff (I’m wearing an item right now and several on the go) and i really prefer to feel the fabric and check the fit when buying clothes. So hopefully you will reopen somewhere cheaper, around Bloomsbury (Condor etc), Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Islington, Hackney would seem logical.

Carnaby St has been an amazing success in recent years with new bits being added and pedestrianised etc and there are few voids so i guess rents wiull go up.

Were your customers people that knew the brand and hunted you down (like me) or was there much passing traffic?

Good luck either way.

I enjoyed the Round 1 course better but todays was Ok – Homeward Bound and Flint Pit are pretty good. I got a better result today so that was gratifying. Was close to vomiting on the last two laps but now Ive had 5 pints and a kebab and feel much better!

It is a great winter series and justly seels out every year but I thinks its a shme that more prople don’t do the 4 hours rather than the 2 hours that is hardly worth the drive up there I think.

I’ve always disliked consumerism (other than bikes) and always thought we were in an unsustainable boom throughout 2003-2007 so saved as much as i could. I just dont get designer labels, fancy restaurants, flash cars, new kitchens, white hgoods, consumer electricals etc etc.

I still fear my job imploding but so far its gone fine over the last 4 years since recession / credit crunch started and if it does implode i will be debt free, house owner so should be able to survive.

I have loads of clients who are worth tens of millions and its a myth that such people all flash it about. Most of them drive old cars, wear M&S clothes, eat out in Harvesters (really amazing I know) and holiday in Spain or Cornwall etc, not Necker Island!

I hate his comments on cyclists but when I heard this quoted on the news it made me laugh out loud as it was so completely over the top. Its so wrong where do you start? Shoot Clarkson I guess.

That said he does tend to articulate what alot of people think. Publicity just encourages some people to be awful and hateful.

It will work OK. And with no rough ground you will be able to see how much of your bobbing is caused by your ropey peddling style!!

Drunk? She had her kid with her didn’t she?

I wonder how the poor black girl behind her felt. Amazing but don’t forget, plenty of people do share her views. Not on this forum obviously.

8.15 to 6.45 plus say a few hours at home in evenings and one day every other weekend. Its a time consuming job and you cant earn the fees without doing the hours. its a very direct relationship and fees means wages. I do have a fair bit of flexibility as to when I start and finish, work from home etc. But never miss a deadline or let down a client.

The Jam. I’m 43 and only bought the albums two years ago. Loved the singles back in the day but limited childhood budget never stretched to the albums. So I’d never heard Saturdays kids until 2009!! Mad.

Wouldn’t Swirve jeans do the job just as well? £80 and available skinny or normal / wider fit. All the features (I think) and not made by some corporate giant.

I’m not sure I want to ride in jeans though, terrible in wet or heat and will wear out so quickly you will still look compromised in the pub or dress down friday etc.

as everyone says you must take it further to prevent others being ripped off. Go to the registered manager and if no result (unimaginable but you never know) then the owner and Care Quality Commission (CQC website is fairly good) and the local authority, even if you uncle is a self funder / private payer. LAs can be more strict than the CQC IME and will come down on the home like a ton of bricks.

Feeling a bit run down this week so liver, bacon, onions, purple sprouting and lots of orange juice.

Half a mile is far enough that you may not hear it depending on whats between it and you and wind direction. If the route is not set in stone (no punintended) then I would stay well clear of anywhere near it. The aggravation of choosing a route, disturbance and general upheaval is pretty awful. I think you only get compensated if you actually have something compulsorily purchased. For noise etc or spoilt view you get zilch. I think. You probably stand to gain nothing and possibly lose alot.

I must say I find it strange that its always dressed up as ‘pensions’. I always thought the reason the public sector got a pension was to compensate for a lousy wage but noone ever seems to mention that. IME loads of people are able to quite public sector after 10-20 years experience and double or triple income by going private at which point the reduced pension is less relevant. Planning officers, DPP, research establishments etc etc. A mate of mine quit the DTi after 20 years and went to a bank and tripled his wage overnight. The only well paid people in public service IMO are doctors and they have always had governments under their thumb going back to 1940s.

Agreed foot flaps…Motorists are the same to pedestrians. If you are slow crossing a road in central London, and the lights change lorries and cars will drive at you. There is an unwritten heirachy. Motors good ….get out of my way the rest of you! Where I used to work on many occasion I saw cars lorries and even motorbikes bullying elderly and slower people as they crossed the main road..

I don’t agree at all. Riding in London is fairly safe (Zones 1 and 2) due to weight of traffic, tightness of roads, speed limits, critical mass of cyclists and sheer number of lights and pedestrian crossings.

Why would a motorist want to hurt a cyclist? It makes no sense to me. I’m oftem amazed at the tolerance of motorists as I cut them up, overtake, sail to the front of the queue and generally leave them for dead. And I don’t jump lights or do anything really wrong, just that bikes are so much nimbler. Riders with a bad attitude seem to attract abusive motorists and vice versa.

Yep, Toshiba 26″ CRT c. 2002. I only have a telly at all because a friend gave it to me (I would have preferred the cash obviously). Hate telly apart from 10 O Clock news and Newsnight. Cash on a new telly is nothing like a priority for me.

I have an 800 that came with UK wide OS 1:50,000 (as recommend by ST a few issues back). Its OK but you need a paper map as back up. Although screen is necessarily small so as to fit on bars the OS maps are what we are used to (right?). Whether it records distance and height gain accurately is another matter and the hrm is hopeless. I doubt I will buy another but for now its a fun gadget.

If you have bought the biggest house you will need in this life, and paid off the mortgage, and got £500,000 in your pension fund, and all the cash you may need for Uni fees, and £100,000 in cash for a rainy day, then, and ONLY then can you justify pi$$ing away money on a tin box that can only depreciate. We’re in a recession, you could lose your job. The mid life crisis / insecurity will pass.

My commute is only 5-6 miles depending upon route but by say 6 or 6:30 I am starving and so often eat a sarnie or flapjack before riding home. As for putting on weight that surely comes down to your overall daily calorie intake rather than one extra snackette. If i finished luch at 1:15 ! think I need a snack about 6PM whatever I am doing.

Its more about grazing than pigging out.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – easily 8 or 9 out of 10. my fave book and also loved the 1979 BBC TV adaptation. Latest film is also very good albeit they have revised a few parts and characters but still good and beautifully directed.

Surrey Hills and Swinley are not too bad if a few dry days beforehand but really everyone needs to consider the damage they do in extended wet spells. I dont want to wind peole up but really wet spells are why some of us have road bikes. And for longer sessions go to Wales.

I’m all for variety and personal choice but my personal choice is for session beers, Adnams Best, Youngs Ordinary, Black Sheep Ale etc. Partly I like gulping it down and partly I find the taste of beer that is over 5% becomes a bit over bearing.

The Flashman books by George MacDonald Frazer are all hilarious and well written.

Ditto Tim Moore not being very funny. Quite good but hardly (meant to be) funny.

You have to feel for the Greek on the street. They could lose all their savings and be impoverished for decades and because of some $hitty government. I know they exist on cash and are not renown foir hard work but even so. Mainly they will be victims.

I always move over when queuing and I see a bike behind. Often get a thank you wave that shows that what goes around etc. If someone knocked my door mirror i would be pretty annoyed as the last one (2002 Golf) cost £150!

there are some good Korean places on St Giles Hi St – basically the back of Centre Point by Tott Court Rd station.

there are great Lebanese places along Edgeware Road.

I know a great Ethiopian 1/2 mile north of Kings Cross if you can bear to go north….

After all the misery caused by the Catholic church over the centuries I would quite happily burn an effigy of the Pope. Contraception, hording wealth and child abuse denial are three very obvious reasons to not be a fan of Roman Catholics. Hardly contraversial as I explained to a very observant Catholic friend a few weeks ago. Even she had to admit to the second and third points.

Badger really is not very good at all and I come from Dorset. IMO The Black Sheep Brewery in Masham is the best. If you had desert island beers then their Black sheep would be the one.

we get 3% – 5.5% depending upon seniority with the firm matching whatever you put in. Some people are too hard up to pay anything so miss out of the ‘free’ contribution that always seems hard.

You dont need a six pack – you need a barrel.

I’m not into gadgets but we get iphones through work and had my iphone 4 about 11 months. personally I thinks its quite nifty, maps, weather, internet and very intuitive systems but the O2 service is terrible and the phone itself clearly has a pi$$ poor aerial. As a phone you really have to question its viability but for the other stuff it is OK. For me the best thing is the seamless linking into my Outlook account for diary and emails. The rest is so so.

BTW I’ve never downloaded an app.

Greece will default and our savings via our Banks will take a massive bath but its happened before in Russia (1998??), Argentina in the 1990s and they all survive. I think the issue is the banks and their guarantors; i.e. their governments not wanting to take the bath but it seems fairly obvious that Greece cant trade its way out of this debt.

No one should have any doubt that this is as much the Greeks’ fault for borrowing too much (and fiddling their accounts to help them do so)as it is the banks for lending too much. Both as bad as each other and whilst the Greeks will suffer the most we will all suffer too.

what do you eat??

my diet is so fibrous and spicey that I am the pebbledash king and whilst they need brushing they dont cause a blockage.

How do you work out overpaid and underdelivering?

Easy. Paid say £25,000 when £20,000 would be enough (hence ‘overpaid’) and then to add insult to injury not even be very good at the job, (hence to ‘under deliver’).

That’s what the Bullingdon Boys like to hear ……. don’t demand a better deal for private sector workers – demand a worse deal for public sector workers ! And ffs don’t blame the bankers if life is getting a little difficult.

You are right, bankers did alot to get us into this $hitty position and may they rot in hell for it but the point here is that LA staff were overpaid for under delivering for years and it was only New Labour largesse (that was up there with bankers for deserving blame) that allowed this to continue for so long. And now its catching up with them.

I hate to see people suffer employment wise but when ever I deal with a local authority person they are typically slow to respond, not very helpful, work short hours, take no ownership for what they are saying or doing and generally are pi$$ poor. Plenty of similiar in private sector but at least they don’t get a full fat pension, shed loads of holiday, extra sick pay and a cushy job for life. All in all LA staff have had it coming to them for years. Sorry but its true.

I agree with the OP. A resident should have more say in what happens there than an outsider who is probably in it only for profit (developers etc) and who doesnt (in all probability) live near enough to suffer the consequences himself. Why should someone have to take some $hitty development on their doorstep for someone else’s benefit?

More society wide things like power stations and perhaps airports are more of a grey area but housing / commercial development is a no brainer IMO.

Good for Giant. Most yanks really are beneath contempt. Anyway, their century (well 60 odd years) is over now and how i shall enjoy watching their relative decline.

Mice and rats will tend to like that sort of habitat. A cat would solve it probably but alternatively you could just relax and not worry about a few mice. They have to live somewhere and cause no real harm. Rats would justify a cat IMO.

I find RR are hard to beat or NN if a bit more rufty tufty such as Trans Wales or gloopy such as Thetford in the wet.

I had an Ignitor for a year on the rear and it was truly awful. Fast and light but even a fast and light tyre should offer some control!

JRA recommend highly the 2.1 HR but I had one on the front and found that fairly useless (but better than the Ignitor). In 2.35 guise its a good trail tyre.

Schwalbes always look weak and vulnerable but amazingly I’ve never had a puncture or rip. Always run on Stans rims.

I prefer the old tried and tested route of scooping it up with a plastic spade and throwing it in their faces.
I fooking hate dogs and even more so owners who dont pick up the %hite, worse is in the park where my kids play. I need to stop typing as i am getting angry about this whole issue.

If there had been a cute fluffy dog (say, a poodle) nearby I would have used it to clean it off. Or used the owner’s hair. Or face.

Guys, you need to get a grip of yourselves. its only $hit and there is too much aggression and unpleasantness about already without people going psycho over dog poo. Its not nice but it aint the end of the world either. Dangerous driving, cancer, war, poverty are stuff to get angry about, not dog poo. I feel sorry for you and not because you trod in a poo.