“A mate rides in £15 safety specs off Amazinn. They are bifocal with near field correction at the bottom. So that would be a good starting point” – this but I’m also “a pair in every conceivable place” guy and it drives me mad! Interested in the contact lens solution, are they disposables?

Using a blunt 30 year old bread knife for ALL cutting tasks in the kitchen! How we haven’t had a major severing, blood spurt type injury is beyond me (we do have several very sharp knives of sizes and shape that are appropriate to each task). Oh and ripping open bags of frozen veg and extracting the contents through a tiny hole and complaining when they are spilt all over the floor.

Cheers all – password changed and 2FA is active :-)

STW, Saturday Guardian and occasionally Private Eye, Mrs buys a Puzzle Book occasionally and we both buy more books than we should in addition to an Audible subscription for her (I don’t get on with things in my ears….)

If you want to use Camping Gaz but have a Calor Butane set up use an adaptor easily available from that large on-line retailer – Camping Gaz Adapter For Motorhome & Caravan Regulators Fits 907,904 & 901 : Amazon.co.uk: Automotive

Apparently despite reintroducing the 3.9 propane and 4.5 butane cylinders, Calor still have huge supply issues so don’t hold your breath….

Apologies, the linky doesn’t work….

Just thank your stars you don’t have a motorhome – circa £4k for an A Class screen!

I think I have – I’ll check tomorrow when I’m home.

We cracked yesterday afternoon – Madame has been unwell and with rain yesterday it really got to her – can’t see it going off until March now!

It’s all over Europe! 4.5 in the Dordogne this am. Currently toasting gently at 20.0 just outside Tours.

Cheers all – now to scan in the V5!

I don’t think I had to specifically tell them about the address for the DD – just changed the address on the V5 and all was well.

Sent mine off on the 25th, Passport delivered 26th (but not out of the Passport Office postroom yet) – I’ll let you know when the new one arrives :-)

There’s no shortage of Camping Gaz cylinders

Well, here on the South Coast anyway! They are the only gas delivery we get complete at the moment.

As an FYI – the rrp of a new 907 cylinder is £50 plus the gas at about £34. There’s no shortage of Camping Gaz cylinders – Calor on the other hand……

HTH

Sounds to me like you both have issues. One extreme to another on this thread.

I’m under no illusions that this is finished – think ceasefire not peace treaty.

Aaaaaand breathe! Turns out its not actually me she hates, its my job which tbf entails some long anti social hours particularly in the summer. We’ve had a year of living in a house she hated, in a crap (for us) area and that coupled with the enforced isolation of COVID has impacted her mental health probably to borderline depression. We have had a long chat, we moved a month ago closer to work so no commute and a much better area – hopefully things are on the up (fingers crossed) and we a re planning a holiday which should help :-) thanks everyone.

The interfering with her food thing has been going on for a while – I’ve generally laughed it off. The hate message is new – having said that life hasn’t been a bed of roses and we have our differences but I didn’t expect this outburst. I don’t think it’s a mental health issue but you never know. Thanks for the replies. I’ll keep the thread going.

FWIW I got an 11 year mortgage at 64 for 6x the amount you want with a combination of earnings and pension. A good broker should see you right although lending criteria has been tightened since the beginning of last year. Platform, the intermediary branch of the Co-Op bank is where we ended up.

Working this morning – wife is furious but she’s bringing me lunch in later and we’ll have dinner tonight – it doesn’t feel right for some reason and hasn’t all December despite seeing the MIL on Tuesday and having Mrs Chaz’s daughters to stay a couple of weeks ago. Family is scattered far & wide and we rarely get together in normal times let alone days like these. Still, as they say “things can only get better….”

And what’s your budget – there must be somewhere else!

£215k for 2 beds a garden and access to decent dog walks…..and preferably not mid-terrace for bike access

Thanks all. The Calder Valley was really a bit of a stalking horse! Job wise I’m pretty flexible and I’ll have to keep the existing one on for at least three months. Currently we are on the Western edge of Southampton – we really aren’t town folk nd the New Forest doesn’t cut it for the bike or much else, it’s too flat! No kids to worry about just the dog. Cockermouth and environs pops up repeatedly as do some of the outskirts of the Leeds/Bradford/Huddersfield connurbations. Next step is a roadtrip….

Why did you sell?

‘cos we can,t stand the area – we bought where we are because it was the only place on the South Coast we could afford! I’ll have to find a nw job in due course so that’s another consideration.

Also Jersey – ahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahha

If either of you are Southampton way, I have a HUMAX recorder going spare – free to a good home! It’s a few years old now and not 4K

It is. Work in progress – she wants to run a little competition to “win” a piggy bank and hoover up some more followers/likes etc. Thanks for looking.

“LOOM” the buggiest, slowest piece of malware I’ve had the misfortune to encounter. How anyone uses it I really don’t know. Off to find an alternative that doesn’t require a supercomputer to run.

It very much depends on what you want to know and what you instruct the surveyor to examine – Homebuyers Reports are done to a template to make them affordable. A “full structural survey” is meaningless as they are bespoke products. A Building Surveyor doesn’t have the expertise to comment on electrics, gas, plumbing and the like but should be able to address damp, build quality and pick up any issues. But it will be spendy and not quick.

As a life long hater of organised “things” we went on a cruise (Queen Victoria – Med) solely because Mrs Chaz’s daughter was a dancer on board and it was her penultimate trip. We got it relatively cheap as an almost last minute booking. Helped by brilliant weather in November/December we did a string of port calls in Spain and did our own thing – hired a scooter in Valencia, train to Jerez, bus tour of Barcelona. The dinner tables thing is hideous but the buffet dining is brilliant. Only down side is Cunard bill in USD and we got a stiff charge from the Credit Card for the conversion (upside, we got staff rates on drinks….). Would I do it again? 95% probably not. But, pick your cruise and company and it could be great. FWIW I want to do a Hurtigruten cruise up the coast of Norway.

I didn’t;t need to look but good to see my very own MP Desmond Swayne comes out as super prick with a full house of red thumbs down.

I didn’t need to look either – he’s an ocean going, nuclear powered asshat – effectively a COVID denier and even Gove can’t get him to apologise!

Site is absolutely terrible for me on all devices again today. No actual Gateway Timeout message but it just hangs forever when trying to do anything.

Windows and Chrome.

This!

Ah ha – We’ve never had a problem until now though….must be something we’ve done! Thanks.

We are buying a house we dont really want in an area we dont particularly want to live in – because its the only way we can get out of renting and keep my job! Plodding along slowly, the vendors solicitors took nearly a month to get the draft contract to our solicitor after we’d agreed the deal! Christmas got in the way so or Solicitor has only just applied for the searches! It needs to be done by the 31st March but I’m not packing boxes just yet!

11 year Mortgage here with Platform – part of Co-Op Bank available via a broker. 25% deposit on a modest property and we are both 63. Downside is working until I’m 75, upside is rent & mortgage free for the remainder of our time…..

I’ve had it a couple of times. The issue seems to be that the records are so bad that solicitors can’t definitively rule out the possibility and the church are chancers who if they think there’s a possibility of passing on repair costs will do (and they can be significant!) and your chances of fending them off are slim and expensive. Consequently there’s a nice little earner for someone flogging you a worthless insurance policy (read the exclusions, particularly the one where it says they won’t pay out if you have made any enquiries of the church with regard to chancel liability….). I’d be minded to tell the church to do one if they ever came knocking.

All that might happen is that prices stagnate and incomes slowly rise so that the income multiple reduces. But, it would be over a long period of time.

There was something in the local press (New Milton & Lymington) about this – apparently it is site staff and some people who have been there semi-permanently! Still, a gathering of 20 or so does seem to stretch the family group concept a bit far….

Unneutered Chocolate here – he’s 9 now and still full of beans, undisciplined and a complete charmer. Despite much training I’ve never got him to walk to heel and he pulls like the proverbial if he wants to. He tolerated our cats, hasn’t chewed anything. We don’t leave him regularly and at most about 4 hours on any one occasion. He’s come sailing and away for long trips in the motorhome to Europe without complaint. I should counter this with a cautionary note that my first Lab did chew skirting boards, parquet floor and chairs – they are lovely dogs, the Chocolate (Finn) is extremely soft natured and reliable with kids and farm animals BUT they need attention and regular exercise or they pile on the kilos.

Roberts Stream 93i here, does DAB, regular and wifi. It just works :-)

Marina/Boatyard industry – the yard is shut and access to the \marina discouraged. All the trades are off on full pay – the 6 marina staff are working as glorified security staff! I just hope the customers don’t expect their usual fulsome welcome if they come within 50 metres of us!

Spoke too soon! Back to dropping out this morning but it does seem to reconnect more quickly….deffo something going on between the wifi adapter and the EE Brightbox. Interrogating the Brighbox doesn’t seem to give me many obvious options for fiddling about!

It seems to be the power management in the wifi adapter – allows the laptop to turn off the wifi adapter. I’ve disabled that function and so far so good….just have to contend with our dismally slow broadband now. I’m still to work out why there wasn’t a problem when I connected to the EE 4g hub that I have.