Seven episodes in to Locke and Key right now. It could have been so good, but as it is it’s shit.

Yes. I’m tempted to do it myself after having a couple of HT2 left cranks work loose…

Blue Pig every time. I built a Piglet last year and it’s ace. Started with 2.3s but now it’s on 2.8s, which has dulled it a little. I’ll probably go 2.4s and madden it up a bit again!

We’re looking at a pair of ebikes for missusalz’s folks to use when they’re over, as they rent every time and it’ll probably work out cheaper just to have a pair. Can honestly say after this thread that Giant are absolutely out of the running.

I still haven’t seen Goncharov.

Bought one of each size. Been needing for a while but was living with the skipping in the odd gear…

Merrell used to be ace but my last couple of pairs have seen a massive decline in quality. Been massively impressed with my Adidas Gazelles, though.

Yeah, so was I. And yeah, it followed much the same pattern. It was my first ‘proper’ relationship so I didn’t know any better. Which is the situation here, too. Which is why I’m worried about my best pal, y’know?
C’est la vie.

Yep Onzadog, that’s precisely what I’m expecting.

Maybe I could have worded it better? More like, can we ever be friends again when this toxic cow is still in the picture? From the tone of his voice and messages since I’m guessing not…

Take the legal advice they’re legally bound to pay for, and don’t take their first offer. I ended up with a shorter notice period and more money.

I’ve got the Fulli one and it’s fab. Think it was free but 10€ delivery, and I get charged 1,70€ for every calendar month I use it. It means I can let my passenger sleep and not get anxious about losing the ticket between one barrier and the next, or dropping her card and struggling to get out the car to pick it up again. 1,70€ for convenience is effectively nothing. I can’t believe we went for so long without one.

That’s Giant joining Mondraker on my list of brands to avoid now.

Fire blanket in the kitchen, and a dry powder extinguisher or two in all the cars. Had to use them early on when I started driving and wouldn’t ever not have one in the car now. But that’s probably another thread.

Interesting thread. I’m autistic, and some of the things written here are really hitting home. Most of the things, really. Like me trying banter and suddenly I’ve ‘taken that too far’, or yes, working in engineering and being fine on site but finding offices to be exhausting hellscapes.
Diagnosis is an interesting one. Just yesterday I popped the inlaws on the ferry home and could actually relax for the first time in almost a week. Now the Christmas period represents a massive upheaval in routine anyway, but having other folk in my space was harder than normal as the weather was so shitty we hardly left the house. Now, my inlaws know that my eldest and I are both autistic, and have little routines and systems for EVERYTHING in order to make sense of the world. Them trying to be helpful made everything worse, especially in the kitchen. ‘Oh, we emptied and reloaded the dishwasher for you!’ Yeah, thanks. And you’ve put the knives back on the magnetic block in entirely the wrong order. Those glasses do not go in that cupboard, and FFS you can see that every single glass is upside down so as to not get dust inside it, and yet you’ve put them in the ‘right way up’? Right. Now I need to go and rereload the dishwasher, I guess? *opens dishwasher * . Yes. Yes I do need to rereload this. Now.
It was constant, and it was exhausting. And they know I’m autistic and struggle with this stuff, but they kept doing it? I guess neurotypical folks would come out with ‘oh, they’re just trying to be helpful, be grateful!’, but it feels more like they were being constantly vindictive. Even if they weren’t.
So yes, be aware of that…

Gerardamere a really good shout. But possibly too hilly for the kids?
How about train from Amsterdam to Den Helder, then the ferry to Texel? Amazing cyclepath network, lots of dunes and nature, and you can take boats to the next few islands easily and cheaply.

Currently listening to Ms. Dynamite’s A Little Deeper. It’s twenty years old now. And this is probably the first time I’ve listened to it since 2005. It still holds up.

This is one of the very few things that the US does well – right to repair is one of the things they’re very strong on, and as such anyone selling vehicles in the US has to make all the repair manuals available to anyone. Bentley publishing are the guys that seem to sell all the manuals. Just be aware all the writing and measurements will be in third world English and will require a bit of maths to get them into civilised.
You’re unlikely to get one over here in time now, although I have had stuff from LA arrive at my door two days later before now, so you never know…

Got gotted last night at the school’s Christmas social for the parents. Arse.

Katzenjammer’s cover of Genesis’s Land of Confusion is probably my favourite. This week.

Undoubtedly my favourite book, read it after the tv series was first aired. I must’ve been about 12. I’ve reread it, along with loads of other Iain Banks books, at least twenty times in the intervening years. Always find something new, and find my attitude towards some of the characters changes every time.
Tried rewatching the series a few years ago and thought it felt dated but still good. I got it from Fopp! for a fiver as well. Going to have to rewatch it again now.

Complicity was an excellent book and a terrible film. We don’t talk about the film.

The Adam Project on Netflix. Fair warning, if you’ve a troubled relationship with or a just plain absent father, it’ll destroy you. Segueing into the start of Archer series 13 was needed and appreciated!

How can I (preferably legally 😁) buy one of these in France (Spain, Netherlands, delete as appropriate) and get it to Manchester, without losing the difference on transport and import VAT?

Get the train (or fly) to Amsterdam, tram and bus to Decathlon in Amsterdam Zuidoost, or just the train to Alkmaar, buy cargo bike, enjoy some stroopwafels and frites met stoofvlees, then cycle to IJmuiden and the overnight ferry to Newcastle where you’ll have a rented Transit waiting for you.

That’s ace. It’s like a Yuba Spicy Curry at half the price, and they’re brilliant fun when you have two excitable kids out back and you’re attacking French trails. Love it. Want it.

B52s as The Sugababes. Interesting.

That’s worth something to the right person, and it’s obvious that the right person is not you. I’d be the same, especially after a mk2 Golf. I’ve had one of those for eighteen years now!
Sell it to someone who’ll appreciate it, and pick up a tatty Boxster.

Yeah, FWD bits play well enough together, certainly from mk1 Fiesta era up to the last of the Escorts and the first gen Focus. You could bolt a Mondeo Zetec to a mk3 Escort gearbox if you really wanted, and I think you’d need a mk1 XR2 driver’s side engine mount. I spent so much time playing with all the combos near enough twenty years ago when I had a mk1 Fiesta.
I’d do it differently now, but then it would be a toy and not a daily.

A few years ago the answer would’ve been drop a 1600 CVH in it, which was the wrong answer even then. The correct answer is dropping a 1300 Kent crossflow in, the one from the 1300S mk1 Fiesta. Then boring it out to 1380. It still won’t be fast, but it’ll be usefully quicker. Good luck finding one, though.

Official start is 0000hrs on the 1st of December, so before today you were safe. Woke up to a text from my better half at 0652 my time bemoaning that she’d made it to the 23rd last year but was out on the first day this year. Gutted for her.

Wera’s Santa Tools here. Day 1’s a bit holder.

Oh, and we don’t regret for a moment putting the kids in the local school. It immediately makes us more ‘local’ than expat. There is an expat ‘community’ where we are and frankly it’s embarrassing. From the limited contact I’ve had with it it’s coffee mornings and pub evenings and exclusively english-language, even at the barstaff.

Lots of excellent advice here. We did something similar six years ago when the NL arm of the company my wife worked for asked if she could lead a project here for two years. Our boys were four and six at the time, B****t had not long happened, and we’d already been looking at other options since the 19th of September 2014. Like you, we lived rurally, with land, livestock, and prime mtbing on the doorstep. We could have easily bottled it. But nah, it was only a two year placement. Sod it, we thought. The boys will adapt, a decent tenant will cover most of our mortgage and look after the place, and we’ll be back before we know it, all Europeaner and worldly and everything will be fine.

The first two weeks were great, just felt like a holiday. Weeks three and four were when the meltdowns and tears came, every night after school. Probably only half an hour a night, but it felt like longer and it was heartbreaking. Six weeks in we agreed we’d give it six months but more likely four and if evenings were still awful then we’d go back. Three months in the meltdowns stopped and all of a sudden the boys were fluent in Dutch. It was like a switch was flipped! Not long after, maybe six months(?) my wife was offered a permanent contract which she jumped at, and all of a sudden we were here for life. Which meant buying a house, because renting here is typically two years and you’re out, and we couldn’t face moving every two years. This was probably the point where we should have properly taken stock of what we had and what we wanted, but with the boys settled in school we didn’t want to disturb that again so soon after the last disturbance. We’re in a pleasant enough village, and we have good neighbours which is an absolute blessing. But we’d love to be more rural, and if we knew then what we know now, we would be.
But that’s by the by, and in six years we’ve made friends and put down roots and whilst not fluent or completely integrated, we can hold a conversation in a pub, in Dutch, without floundering too much.

That part of France? I’d be there in a shot. Friends of ours worked at ITER and we spent a summer down there at her place. The quality and pace of life is fantastic, especially if hybrid working is possible.

Going there knowing that it’s permanent is a luxury we never had. I’m envious. It’s tough at first but so rewarding, and you’ve got the opportunity to ‘get it right’ in terms of location straight from the off. Did I mention that I’m envious?

5 days? Not a chance I’d be moving there.

Piglet frames are 350 at CRC right now. I paid 600 for mine this time last year. It’s absolutely 600’s worth of frame, so 350 is an absolute steal.

Was chatting about this with a pal this morning. Until he mentioned it I’d completely forgotten it was on, and despite not being a compulsive facebooker or whatever, I was aware of the 2018 one. I live in a fairly tolerant country, and as such I don’t even know if they’ve sent a team over…

Sardinia.

Wouldn’t it be better to ask you to pay the daily fee after the event, and then charge you £60 if you fail to pay within a certain amount of time?

That’s the norm in most of Europe. Was in Sweden a while back, drove through Göteborg a few times. A week or so later got a letter stating I owed a few Kroner for the privilege, and would owe a few hundred Kroner if I didn’t pay within 60 days IIRC. Paid the few Kroner direct to their bank. Simple.

For a while I thought about buying two identical cars (for me and the OH) and just putting the same plates on them. Saves on tax/insurance etc.

I know of at least two tractors and several Landies in Aberdeenshire doing this.

Like whoever it was that said it up there, I’m a keeper rather than a hoarder. I will get rid of stuff, but that point is probably a good bit further than others’ points.
I really don’t doubt that it’s a combination of growing up poor, autism, trauma, and probably umpteen other factors as well. Atrocious short-term memory is a relatively new thing for me, but trinkets and posters and what have you really seem to help me keep those memories.
Currently in a cleaning, clearing, and tidying phase. Don’t like living in a tip, but no way could I live like some folk whose houses look like Roblox. I had a friend who put his kettle in a cupboard after use because he wanted empty worktops, and he didn’t have a single book in his house. I don’t have a single room in my house without a book in it, FFS!

Had it eleven years ago, and Jesus was it horrible! Took me a LONG time to recover, three to four months. Like others have said, the anti-nausea drugs are worse than the nausea. Walking was what helped me more than anything else, and one day I was just fine.

Have had a few recurrences in the past few years, but never really for longer than a day or two. There are some things that I just cannot do now, though. Any VR stuff is instant pukeyness, for instance! And if I’m sitting on a train and the one next to me pulls away, that sets me off as well.

28H, ‘normal’ spokes on my Scandal. 29er Shimano wheels, and I’ve snapped at least five rear spokes in the past three years, and although I kick the shit out of it, I don’t really do gnarr, if that makes sense?
28H straight pull spokes on my Piglet. 27½ Fulcrum wheels, and it does get gnarred. Only had it built a year now, but still straight and true and not a single spoke breakage.
I’m 6’3″ and probably on or near the upper weight limit for both sets. And I have never had a spoke snap with 32H wheels.

Not sure that’s helped either.