So. You get up every 2 hours in the middle of the night to eat? It’s sort of a bit pathetic to think that you “need” to eat every 2 hours.

If it’s not harming anybody, what’s it to you?

Change your exercise. More interval training, sprints, short bursts, and bodyweight exercises or weights, if you want to lose fat.

Lose the bread and cereal, more protein and fat, and watch sugar intake (including fruit) so perhaps switch fruit yogurts (sugary) for natural yogurt. If you are like me a fruit addict, go for lower carb ones like citrus, berries, or kiwi fruit, and add a few nuts or a piece of cheese to slow the absorption of the energy. And obviously, don’t snack unless you’re hungry, but if you’re hungry, you should eat, IMO. I don’t subscribe to deprivation diet mentality, willpower will get you so far but eventually most people crack and binge and that becomes an unhealthy cycle.

I also got a fitbit which helps me track how many steps I take a day and has encouraged me to do more incidental daily activity (more walking, using stairs etc).

I really didn’t like BB. Mr Panda loved it, however, and is hooked. I just thought all the characters were horrible, for the most part, and I didn’t care what happened to any of them. I have to put up with enough horrible people in real life, I don’t want them on my tv screen.

Australia for 3.5 years. I lived mostly in Melbourne.

Pros: Near the beach, hot summers, Melbourne had a great culture scene if you like art/theatre/music, lower cost of living.

Cons: Racism, droughts, summers could be far too hot (45 degrees for days on end), working culture wasn’t nice in most places I worked in.

I moved there with my then partner, but returned to the UK when we split up as my visa wasn’t going to be renewed. I decided not to return to Oz, even though the company I worked for had offered to sponsor me. Had been there and done it and encountered many of the same issues as I’d had in the UK, there were lots of nice things about it but not enough to keep me there forever.

I’m not a fan of speeding (mainly because it’s expensive and speed awareness courses are the dullest 5 hours you will ever pass) but I am also not a fan of the uber-careful driver that goes 25 in a 30 and brakes every time they see a speed camera sign. Or people that deliberately like to hold other people up on the road. They incite road rage, and therefore accidents. Nothing wrong with driving according to the speed limits, but deliberately driving in such a way as to p somebody off is just as dangerous as speeding or being an idiot in other ways, IMO, because it is aggressive driving, and generally aggressive drivers are poor drivers, because they are not motivated by safety, they are motivated by irritating or getting back at other road users.

Take a chill pill, let the tailgating idiot pass if you’re not in a hurry and leave speed enforcement to the cops.

We have traffic calming on the roads round near where I live. The speed bumps are horrendous, they haven’t maintained them properly, they are all worn away on one side and still very high on the other. They are all different heights and it’s difficult to judge. They are all the way across the road which makes it annoying on a bike too.

I’ve been finding commuting irritating lately due to what seems like an increase in the number of cyclist-hating bell-ends on the roads.

My own theory on it is that the number of cyclists in Leeds has increased, there are more cycle paths/lanes than there used to be, and drivers resent cyclists sailing past them when they are stuck in traffic. Whilst my cycle commute can be stressful, it’s still nowhere near as stressful as sitting in a traffic jam, dealing with taxis cutting you up/pushing in, and an ever-burgeoning number of temporary traffic lights, so I just try and pity the drivers, thinking they are probably more miserable than I am.

I use a dog walking service for my 6 year old Rottie cross.

They provide services Monday-Friday daytimes only, plus holiday pet boarding. My dog is usually picked up around 11am and returned somewhere between 12-1pm. That’s when they do their group walks, but around that, they also do individual walks, for dogs that can’t be walked in groups for any reason. Those might be earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon. My dog walker also walks a dog for a nurse on shifts, and she will walk her dog in the evening if she’s on nights.

it was like someone had dropped a bomb in the middle of everything.

Yep, that’s exactly how it feels.

Thankfully, I am a self employed contractor/consultant, and it’s easy enough for me to flex my work arrangements to help with things at home. I was hoping to retrain later this year and enter a mental health nursing course, but that might now have to be deferred, if I am lucky enough to be offered a place that is.

Done, very interesting stuff! Good luck.

It’s going to be a tough ride. Lost my Mum yesterday

I’m sorry to hear that Capt K. My best wishes to you and yours, and to all of you going through this with a relative. It really isn’t easy at all.

Roundhay? I used to live just off Park Avenue for a number of years before moving back to Glasgow in 2011. Lovely part of the world.

My GP surgery is in Moortown so not far away. I live in a neighbouring suburb.

Previously I lived in Harehills, and before that, Holbeck and Armley, all poorer suburbs. Where I was in Harehills, they built a nice new medical centre a few years ago and it was quite easy to get appointments, they opened 7am-7pm Tues, Weds, Thurs and had Sat am surgery once a month. In Holbeck and Armley, appointments were like hens teeth, and the GPs were never very nice. I think it also depends on the level of investment/regeneration in these areas. These medical “supercentres” that are popping up now tend to cater better to the needs of working people.

I think I’m fairly lucky with my GP. You can phone up and get a phone appointment – GP will decide on the phone if they need you to come in, if so, they will see you that day. It’s usually possible to get a non-urgent appointment within a week, if you’re fairly flexible on times. They do two late surgeries – Tuesday until 7pm and Thursday until 8pm so if it’s non urgent and you don’t mind which GP you see, getting an appointment after work is possible as well.

My GP is in an affluent, Jewish area of Leeds though. My friend who lives in a less affluent area with a mix of students and migrants has more trouble getting appointments and they don’t do any late surgeries.

Well done st_colin. Keep going with the good work, fitness really will help, mentally and physically.

According to my accounting company (IT contracting) it does have to be declared, it is a taxable benefit same as a hotel cost.

At least Britain had a more benign attitude towards her former colonies than did Portugal for example

Oh, ok, then that makes it all alright.

We must be really hated then in all the ex-colonies. Nothing positive from the experience at all?

We did “civilize” the natives of course, and bring them Jeebus….and cricket.

I don’t think we are better than anyone.
I think ‘we’, the English are probably the most hated and the most horrible country after the yanks.
I can understand why too.

I think it was probably the whole colonialism thing, you know, where we took over entire countries, and made their ways of life and religions in some places illegal, made slaves of their populations and all….

I pay my gym fees so the pool is available to me when I want to swim.

Its annoys me that they are using the lessons to get extra money at the expense of fee paying members. Would expect it at a municipal pool and I think you would be right. At a private gym/pool I expect it to be available to me.

I left a gym for this reason. When I joined, they didn’t mention kids’ swimming lessons at all. Then I found that every night after work the pool was unavailable from 4-6pm because of swimming lessons. My contract said “anytime access” and the gym was open 7am to 10pm. I wanted to swim after work, and I couldn’t. Even if I had wanted to say, swim at 6pm after the last lessons finished, the changing room was full of shrieking kids running around and pointing at other people’s “boobies” and “front bottoms” while you try and change. That’s why I didn’t join a municipal gym ffs.

My gym now does do lessons, but the very little ones have a kiddie pool, and they don’t close the whole pool off for the older ones’ lessons. There is adult only swimming time after 7pm and a families/kids session on a Saturday afternoon, which is made very clear to members that this session is only for children and their parents/carers.

All the best for your treatment MM, really hope you do pull through it.

Depends if you’re a 7 year old more concerned with aiming a beach ball at your sisters head?

Said 7 year old has no more “right” to be there and horse around than a person swimming lanes does, unless it is a specifically designated kids’ session. See below.

If there are no lanes, then it is just up to everyone to to try and find their own space and use a bit of common sense in avoiding each other.

“My computer isn’t working”

Edit- if she was swimming lane styley in the main pool at peak family time, then yeah she’s a knob

Probably not the wisest decision on her part.

But maybe she’s a medic who works shifts, maybe she can’t always time her swimming with the lane sessions. Meh. If I see someone swimming laps and it’s not a lane session, I just try and keep out of their way. Is it that hard?

Glad it’s cheap oop north!

My ex used to mispronounce things all the time and then absolutely insist his way was right even if shown the correct pronunciation in a dictionary!

Seeing the words “contains milk” on a pack of butter

People changing their kids’ nappies on cafe/restaurant tables even when a baby changing room available – totally grim and offputting.

We have a 4 person tent for us and the dog – big enough to stand up in and sit in comfortably if it’s raining, and we can fit the dog’s travel bed in it so he settles for the night. We have a van so easy to transport our gear.

We take camping chairs and blankets, a camping table (easy to prep food on) our gas stove or a portable BBQ. In summer we will wild camp, but other times of the year we usually go to campsites where there is at least the option of a hot shower and somewhere warm to sit and have a cuppa or a pint.

A decent tent lamp or two is a godsend! Means we can snuggle down and read, or play a game inside the tent if the weather is foul.

I had an annoying ebayer recently. Was selling something, buyer demanded to come and see the item before purchasing, asked for a discount on the Buy It Now price, and asked me to take the ad off until they’d seen the item and decided if they wanted it or not!

WTF is up with eBayers these days!!

‘why the hell would you have kids and not look after them’

an awful lot of people do!

I feel better off, because I chose to want less. But that’s a mindset that developed over time, and only after several years in a not very happy kinda place, that would take up far more space to talk about than STW has to offer!

You could also say that by not breaking your career for looking after kids, or giving up work entirely, you might be keeping more skills and contributing to a more skilled workforce which could help your whole country compete in the global market.

That’s assuming people are that civic-minded. Most people are not. They only care about what’s best for them and their family, because that’s what Thatcher taught us to do.

I’m being slightly tongue-in-cheek here, but I think most people when they make their decisions about whether to stay home or not will make the decision based on what’s best for them and theirs and hang the effect on the economy or the country’s competitiveness in the global market.

Hell, if I could afford not to work, I wouldn’t, and screw the economy. It’s screwed and unsustainable anyway

/dystopian rant

Despite my plea to make choices you can afford, I’m not against the idea of universal free childcare. I do think there are problems with it though (and my problems with it are nothing to do with my taxes funding other people’s kids – of all the things my taxes fund, like swindling bankers and expense-fiddling politicians, other people’s kids seem like a fairly benign cause really)

The feminist in me says it’s about choice. Women shouldn’t have to feel forced into giving up work because they can’t afford child care. Women who take long career breaks may find it difficult to get back into work when they want to go back. And I don’t think women should have to lose their independence – it’s nearly always the woman who has to make that choice.

But then, what about the women (or men) who DO want to stay home with their kids? Already there’s a stigma attached to it – for women, it’s that whole “mombie” sterotype you get lumped with, that somehow, staying home with your kids makes you a dull, kid-obsessed Stepford wife. For men, it’s the “what, you’re not a breadwinner?” thing. And there’s kind of a theory out there, that it may not be such a bad thing for kids to have their parents at home with them when they’re little. My dad stayed home until I was six, although he did teach night school, and I know he wouldn’t have missed it for the world, despite the odd looks at the school gates. And we both have great memories of it.

Fast forward 13 years and the arrival of my half-siblings, both parents were working, and they went to daycare, because they couldn’t afford not to have two salaries. Different times – housing costs became more expensive, so to have a home that housed three kids, even though I was a part time addition, they needed two salaries. When I was little, with just my mum’s new teacher income and dad’s night school classes, we weren’t well off, and sacrifices were made, including not having more children – they chose to stick with one child so that one could continue to stay at home as they felt that was what was best.

Where we have a problem with universal free childcare is that it could make lower income parents feel forced into working. There would be “no excuse” for staying home with your kids, and it will be a choice only the middle and upper classes who have one parent’s income that’s enough to survive off. I think I’ve said before on here, me and Mr Panda are lucky, because we can be a one income household, and we have made the choice to tailor our life so that we can survive on one income, should one of us be out of work, or decide to make different choices (study, change career etc) but we are content with a simple lifestyle, which I know isn’t for everyone.

I don’t know what the answer is – free childcare seems like a great thing, but I’m not sure if it won’t come at a price for some people, i.e. the less fortunate and well off.

To quote littlemisspanda (i think) from ages ago…make lifestyle choices you can afford

8)

As a Quaker you will still, I assume, believe that there is still a God in all these “tw**s” and “a**pipes”?

It is much easier to believe that now I no longer have to work with this particular breed of them. I’m a Quaker, but human too, and the way I was treated in my last work place because I didn’t fit in with those people made it rather difficult to feel very Quakerly about them. We all have our Achilles heels. Snobbery and elitism make me pretty angry – an unfortunate by-product of a Quaker background, and quite a lot of us struggle with it.

Unfortunately, many private schools encourage elitism and superiority complexes, and this is borne out by people who are educated by them and swallow it all hook line and sinker, going through life thinking they are better than others who didn’t have their privileges.

Comprehensive schools, despite their free entitlement to education, don’t seem to be able to prevent producing large numbers of complete and utter tw**s with entitlement complexes, no idea how “working” people live, and a tendency to hate anyone with an superior background or level of education.

So you are admitting that you think that a private education is superior to a comprehensive one then – no wonder you don’t seem to get on with people who come from comprehensives.

Goodness me, how dare people think they are on a par with their superiors and betters.

It seems it’s ok to stereotype all ex public school pupils, and their parents as very unpleasant people.

A fairly large proportion of them do seem to be, and that’s unfortunate.

Why not make me just do the test first so it can reject me before I wasted my time filling in a tedious form nobody will read.

Would be logical,. Place I currently work at as a contractor has one of these dreadful tests in place, they make contractors do them as well as permanent employees. Mr Panda, funnily enough, went for a job in here a while back, and he went through the online application form, and stupid group interview before they gave him the test and he failed it. I passed it, simply because the agency that got me this gig told me how to pass it. It’s ridiculous.

Why not interview/sift people based on their CV/actual experience like they did when I was given the job in the first place?

Because HR departments have to justify their existence.

If the tests are so good then how the hell are 6 of us successfully doing the job when the test says we will be crap at it?

Computer says NO :roll:

Private schools, despite their material and educational advantages, don’t seem to be able to prevent producing large numbers of complete and utter tw**s with entitlement complexes, no idea how “normal” people live, and a tendency to look down on anyone with an inferior background or level of education. And that appears to continue throughout life it seems, even long after they leave those places. I found it rather amusing to be asked by a clique of these idiots upon starting a new job in IT consulting where I went to school, and I asked “why, does that make a difference as to how you treat me?” by the looks on their faces, the answer was a resounding yes.

The only private schools I’ve known who don’t turn out these a**pipes in spades seem to be the Quaker ones (OK, I’m a Quaker, probably I’m a bit biased) which seem to focus as much on social and emotional education as much as they focus on achievement. And they tend to discourage elitism and being a total wazzock.

Ahh yes. Customer is always right, and always an a-hole!

Wow what a prick, hope they do throw the book at him. Most of all, glad you are unharmed OP.

I once had a kid grab my handlebars when I was cycling past a car in Melbourne, scary and unpleasant experience. I don’t understand why cyclist abuse is considered fair game.

‘They’ are the people eating the cake, biscuits and chocolates.

I eat cake, biscuits and chocolates too when I feel like it. Yet I am not overweight. So do a lot of skinny/”normal size” people. It’s not just “them” eating them.

It seems to be ok to say ‘Ooooh, it’s complex, Ooh, it’s really hard not to eat sweet things, Ooh, you’re not helping by telling us to eat less and move more, and you’re calling us chubby’, while the biscuits and the cake and the chocolate get eaten by people who would like to lose weight.

It is complex. It is quite hard not to eat sweet things at all, when we have a culture (like most cultures) where social activities frequently involve food. If you don’t think social activities do revolve around food and drink, try being coeliac and not being able to join in most of them even if you wanted to.

Personal responsibility will have to kick in, and as with smoking, drink driving, Class A drug use, a little social stigmatising might push people along a little…

ROFL. Because personal responsibility, and “Just Say No” has worked so well with those things, hasn’t it. Pushing abstinence from sex works so well with horny teenagers to avoid pregnancy. Social stigma worked really well to stop people being gay, getting pregnant outside wedlock, marrying someone of a different race….catch my drift? What do rebellious teenagers do when Mummy and Daddy say no? Go off behind their back and go do it of course and stick two fingers up.

So, I think that’s that strategy debunked. Next.

I am self employed so everything is backed up on an external HD, as well as my accountant having scans of everything.

Having worked in a place that used Amazon cloud and it was hacked, I don’t have a lot of faith in that.

If you asked them to bleed the brakes then you can’t complain that they did it, however, they should have phoned you as requested about the other stuff. But if you have no written record of what you requested and there is no recording on the phones (if you requested by phone) then there probably won’t be much you can do about it legally. However, I would definitely be complaining to the store manager about the poor service and not using them again.