roughly a straight line through Stoke is where the North starts, between there and The Watford Gap is the Midlands, below that is the South. Cue lots of enraged people arguing that they are not bloody Northeners/Midlanders/Southerners

you said it is an adjoining wall to neighbour’s property – have you had a proper look from their side?

I’ve got the 4 bike 29er Asgard, the shelves are worth getting and you will probably end up getting them for free like me and many others did as they are quite renowned for cocking up deliveries and compensating customers by refunding them for accessories.

I  am another subscriber who would love Through the Grinder to return to the printed magazine. A major reason that I buy other bike magazines is when one catches my eye on the newsagent shelf when it is reviewing something I am contemplating buying. Since What MTB ceased to be I think there has been a gap in the market for a magazine which places more focus on reviews than on ride guides and foreign travel. I would be happy to see either full reviews in the printed magazine and online or just summary reviews in the printed magazine and wouldn’t be offended if the more indepth version appeared online. I suggest you do a survey of your printed magazine subscribers to see what they actually want to see rather than what you perceive they want or works as I would hazard a guess that most of your readers do not have the time, money or lack of family commitments to go on a 2 week mountain biking holiday somewhere exotic but do want reliable reviews on what components would be good value for money on their local trails.

I thought Christ would ride a Cross bike, whereas his Dad prefers a more old skool Genesis.

sad news – Him and his brother also featured in one of the funniest optical illusions on the internet

https://metro.co.uk/2015/11/21/woman-from-the-penis-cup-picture-with-the-chuckle-brothers-speaks-out-5516537/

someone got a bargain on a large ex-demo Cannondale Beast of the East 2 for £795, it should have  been mine but I dithered for several hours and someone bought it in the interim.

“Best Bitch” for the hardest working domestique

in recent years I have taken these on camping trips – great for cooling down  especially after waking up in a sweaty tent and for washing.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transparent-Bottles-Travel-Bottle-Pieces/dp/B074333WNZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_46?ie=UTF8&qid=1531768294&sr=8-46-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=cool+mist+spray&psc=1

not sick but a genuine excuse for work for being late I used about 20 years ago

My alarm clock went off during a very vivid dream that I had been diagnosed with cancer and had not been given long to live. I turned it off and thought to myself “no f**king way am I going to work when I’ll be dead in 6 months”  and rolled over and went back to sleep.  Woke up 3 hours later in a blind panic when I saw the time and had to ring my boss and tell this and then rush in as had an important meeting that day. He took the p*ss out of me for many years afterwards over this.

Glan Y Mor, Blackrock sands near Porthmadog- great location and right next to nice beach,

I was trying to give away a flat pack bookcase for FREE on Gumtree as wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible. I included several photos, the dimensions of it when built and dimensions of each of the pieces and mentioned that it could be easily taken apart using an allen key and should fit in most cars when disassembled.

I got hit by a deluge of emails from idiots .. these are genuine quotes from some of them

“y iz it free – wat da **** is wrong wiv it”

“I am interested in your bookcase but what is an allen key?”

“will it fit in back of a 1998 Peugeot 205?” – also got asked same question about 4 other cars

“can you deliver to Sevenoaks?”. (about a 2hr round trip for me)

“I will take it off your hands but only if you deliver and assemble it for me”. (about an hour round trip for me)

“how many books does it hold?”

“moving house at some point in next year, would it be possible for you to keep it aside for me until then?”

Also had several people who said they would pick it up and never did or even apologised, had it in car ready to take to dump on saturday morning and finally got someone genuine to take it .

wife and 2 kids’ bikes all in decent working order (probably because they rarely get used)

4/5 of mine are rideable, however only 1/5 in perfect working order.
1 needs rear brake bleeding
2 have gear related issues

The only one not safely rideable has no brake cables.

Midget Bar Fight

take some Joy Division oven gloves too – apparently they are very useful for checking out the Quantocks

Tainted love – Soft Cell
Don’t you want me – The Human League

Cheers all, will aim to have a similar circumference between the different wheelsizes and tyre choices then, sounds far simpler than I anticipated.

Currently deciding on a spec – S3L looking favourite so far,are the Shimano hub dynamo lights any good?

stayed at this one in August for 10 days with wife and kids and would certainly recommend it.

http://www.eurocamp.co.uk/campsites/italianlakes/il036-serenella/ataglance.html

We didn’t have a car so just got a cab from Verona airport (about £50 each way) Glad we didn’t have car as so many got badly damaged by a freak hailstorm one evening. There was a little supermarket on site which wasn’t horrendously over-priced and a Spar and either a Lidl or Aldi in nearby Bardolino. Didn’t do any mtbing there but hired a dutch bike which was handy for a pootle around the lake and for popping to supermarkets.

It is a great location, right on lake and walking distance from Bardolino and Garda, both nice towns in their own right and you can get boats to other places around the lake. We stayed in a static but about half the site is tents and motor homes, very few English people there, probably about 70% Dutch and 28% Germans, which was fine. Was very hot whilst we were there so air conditioning was a blessing.

Not sure but agree that around 7 dials is likely, or maybe Carnaby Street as that has always had a number of Mod clothes shops.

looks fun, might get one, suppose all of the bikes I can see in the Thames when at low tide will be too corroded to even turn into pub bikes? expect they are all utterly knackered or nicked anyway.

Now got this lyric as an ear worm now ..

“We all knew someone at primary school who had a very powerful magnet”

someone in Westeros needs to invent the mountain bike (preferably in Valyrian steel), looks like there is an abundance of great bridleways and mountains to ride

no idea on prices these days but me and a mate went over to France with a transit van and filled it up with booze from hypermarkets near Calais

Edit – just noticed you live in Yorkshire so probably far too much of a trek unless you make a weekend of it too

Peppa Pig movie – especially the “live action” parts.

The only positive is it made my youngest daughter realise what everyone had been telling her was true and she should have grown out of Peppa Pig before she was 6, and it has largely killed off her addiction to all
things related to that f***ing piglet

Meths – also can be used as cooking fuel

Was looking at getting a Genesis longitude then got my head turned by the Pinnacle Ramin 3+ but they bumped prices up so dithered, now trying to justify spending approx £400 more on a Ramin3+ than what a Pine Mountain can now be acquired for -any thoughts?

I sold my FS frame and shock and got LBS to move rest of parts onto a new HT frame and fortunately only needed to buy a new front mech as everything else was compatible. I’d suggest you do similar (lots of people on this forum and/or a good LBS will be able to assist you with which frame to buy to reduce compatibility issues).

You will take a significant hit selling your bike, but if you are willing to buy a 2nd hand HT as a replacement this will offset some of the losses.

Life is too short to persist riding a bike you don’t enjoy.

Pinnacle Ramin 3+ from Evans has had some glowing reviews

http://bearbonesbikepacking.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/ramin-3-review.html

There are some enterprising young men around Anfield and Goodison Park who will “mind yer car for a quid”

selling it would probably be a lot of hassle for little money… any local bike charities you could donate to? alternatively Evans are doing a trade-in deal

Had my daughter’s birthday party recently at a recently opened venue, they asked if they could take photos and use them on their website and facebook page to promote the venue, which we agreed to. It was still necessary to get the parents of all the children present to sign a consent form, one parent refused so photographer didn’t use her on any of publicity shots. I later found out it was because the child’s father was a wrong un, and they were in a witness protection type scheme so didn’t want kid’s photo on public websites.

Not saying this was what happened on OPs situation, but could be they had a more valid reason they didn’t want kids being photographed.

recommend flying over the Gran Canyon – done it twice – small plane first time and helicopter second time, the latter was more expensive but far better.

Don’t bother doing the Skywalk (glass platform over the Grand Canyon) – it’s really expensive for what it is and they won’t let you take your own photos and charge you extra if you want the photos they take.

Bought a Berghaus Air 6 when they were on offer – not used it yet but the bag is massive and weighs a ton, fine for car camping, but not one I would fancy schlepping from festival carpark to campsite with

I had a gold bike with white tyres and a sparkly silver seat which looked like a Chopper. Pretty sure it was a Raleigh – anybody know what model it would have been?

also had a Raleigh Winner that my Dad bought off someone for £10, and served me well as a commuter for a few years.

Battlestar Galactica
This is England

Both of which are brilliant

quite enjoyed but still left the cinema disappointed like most people who have read Irvine Welsh’s books, as this really should have been done about 10 years ago to fit in better with the book “Porno” – it should have also introduced Juice Terry, who is by far the best character Irvine Welsh has created (see also “Glue” and “A decent ride” which are both better books than “Porno” and deserve to be made into tv series)

fork doesn’t need to have lots of eyelets etc -standard fork is fine, not keen on idea of carbon forks on a loaded bike with a big lump like me on it and am not a fan of aluminium forks

Fascinating stuff – I regularly ride between Greenwich and Dartford and keep meaning to do a tour inside the Thames barrier.

Hopefully when the day comes when a tsunami or suchlike sweeps down the Thames and the barrier is closed to protect those the west, I live sufficient!y far enough from the river not to get flooded.

this all sounds made up, like a very unconvincing Hollyoaks storyline to me