There may be a flaw in your scheme.
Over the last couple of years, Network Rail has shut half the lines in the UK completely over the Xmas period, for engineering works.

You may find that the services you need, will not exist during that week. Check before you buy your pass.

EDIT: a search on the Networkrail.co.uk site for Christmas brought up this and more:
The West Coast main line will be closed between London Euston and Hemel Hempstead after the last trains on Christmas Eve until Monday 29 December 2014. It will also be closed between Stafford and Crewe after the last trains on Christmas Eve until Sunday 28 December 2014.

Between Christmas Day and 2 January 2014, three upgrades at London Victoria, Gatwick Airport and a major junction between Redhill and Purley will take place which will impact Southern, First Capital Connect and First Great Western services in the area.

Scientific or engineering.

Engineering – probably the steam engine.

Scientific, understanding the principles of evolution.

Don’t fret too much about your 1st move here, but get somewhere within the city. That way the commute to work won’t be too long wherever it is, and you’ll have time to sort out your preferred location for later.
Lots of peeps from here live in Bedminster / Southville for the easy access to Aston COurt (10 mins) and the centre (also 10 mins) plus open roads to the south / Mendips etc.

I wouldn’t say Ashley Down is perfect, but certainly near the prison is pretty good, since it’s close to Horfield Common, with allotments to the north.

What’s the Gloucester Road (A38) like for cycling/commuting, north of the city? Is it relatively safe?

Yes, it’s relatively safe. Cycling is faster than buses & cars, & weaving sort-of accepted. QUite a lot of enforced bus/cycle lane to make life easier.

See Julian’s comment – I’ve eaten Steak Tartare in both Belgium & NL in the last year or so – this is Britbollox, nothing to do with Europe.

It may be cheaper, but the parking might set you back £20 anyway if you try to drive in. And it will take forever & you’ll be a right grumpy git. Take the train or tube from the outskirts.

I see you’re from Oldham.
Take the locals’ advice, since you asked for it. I’ve taken 2 hours to get out of London on a Friday night. It’s horrid.

As above, if the deposit is not held by the DPS or similar, the landlord is in deep poo, and you could be awarded (I think) 3x the value of the deposit.
Check out the relevant law, it’s all online somewhere.

What sleeping bag did you use? It looks pretty compact.

Very nice. I’m jealous.
We need some pics of your bivvy set-up,though and how you pitched your tarp / tent / whatever.

And no-one ever has this problem in the US when cooking.

Similarly, no-one in the rest of the world has a problem cooking with metric measurements.

No-one’s mentioned temperature yet. What the f is Gas mark 5 ?
And isn’t Celsius just a tad more useful than Fahrenheit ?
Apropos:
I had major problems with my liquid helium plant, but it’s nearly OK now.

I’m now over 60, so I was taught first in Imperial then in Metric.
Why revert to an awkward confusing system, when most of us have no idea about its ramifications.
Gallons (Imperial or US ?) & fl.oz, different from troy oz.
Furlongs & roods, anyone?
Gills / pints / bushels / god knows what.

That system was a mess, and not half as international as we’d like to think.
The other country shown on the map is Burma, and they use different units again.

Does anyone remember buying dope in Tola ? The weight of an silver Imperial Indian rupee. Happy daze.

Carbon 14 ?
It only works around a certain scale of years.

The On-One Fatty’s made of ally.
People seem to likr it

I’m over 60 so I have to wear 5-10s for the extra grip, or I’d totter over.

They still have to remember to indicate, or does the system read minds too?
Or does it only operate when the vehicle is actually turning rather than in advance?

Saddam was a shitbag, but he killed thousands rather than hundreds of thousands.
That was left to us and the Americans.
And we armed Saddam, don’t forget.

Iraq was a secular state, with the best infrastructure in the ME, until the was of 93. It’s in a worse position now than it was then.

The Triangle & Park St are only a 15-minute totter from Corn Street anyway. I’d recommend the King St / Apple / Thekla area; it’s also very central.

Stoner loved his Pompino, he toured it through France a few years ago.

I have a Kona Major One, a SS cross bike which suits me perfectly. I would recommmend it.

By the way, I have 52cm Langster F + carbon F which could be for sale. Never built, untouched.

I’ve eaten them. They tasted OK and I didn’t die.

Have you recently been forced to install facebook messenger?
I’ve heard that it kills batteries for some people.

We are in the EC, so he has free access. Our convicted violent drunks seem to whizz off to Prague & Barca often enough.
He killed someone in Latvia a long time ago, for which the sentence was not harsh by our standards, so it’s reasonable to assume that in this country it would have been manslaughter – not a premeditated killing.

5 years ago he was arrested BUT NOT CHARGED about an alleged offence.
Since then, a blameless life.

I can’t see grounds for excluding him from the UK.

That reminds me, time to put the Kaffenback frame back on.
And the other stuff.

This is dead right:

[/quote]I’ve got stuff I’ve been making vague effort to sell for a long time.

Post it up every now and again when I remember or trip over it in the garage.

Problem is I have a price where I think ‘well I might as well keep it for that’ and sometimes that seems higher than people are prepared to pay at any given time.

Bag of worms

Try getting your child to walk to school. I bet it’s not that far.

Yes.
It was infatuation, & she wasn’t a nice person inside.
However, now I’m relieved that we didn’t get together properly since she’s properly gone to seed, & my home life is fine.

You gotta move on.

My most fearsome experience was in Nepal, fairly high up in the rhododendron forests. Starting to squat, I saw that the damp leaf-litter on the forest floor was starting to move. It was a small army of leeches alerted to the presence of food by my first gassy releases. They were looping towards my arse at speed, so I had to develop a sideways hop while squatting.
Push, dump, hop. Push, dump, hop. And repeat.

That’s ‘cos you hovered, instead of going into a deep squat. And you were trying to balance as well. If you were on solid ground, it would be better

We squatted, like a good proportion of the world still does.
Have you not used an asian-style loo, nor pooed in the woods? It’s much better for your bowels, they empty more fully.

Furry

Coursera.com
Hundreds of very structured online courses on all manner of subjects.
All for free unless you want a certificate of completion.

But telecoms ( I think) is a special case, as it’s the domain in which the technology has changed most. BT was copper landlines only, now they are competing with fibre cable, satellite, and other digital communications.
Yes, we get better service on the whole, but look how sporadic mobile reception is in rural areas: there is no mandate for total coverage so those providers are delivering worse coverage than BT did.

What great pictures of the two garden spiders. Thanks for posting. We call them Autumn spiders because they seem to appear in the early autumn, & they’re fascinating. I watched one catch and truss then drain a wasp yesterday, that’s why they’re on earth. Today, the wasp’s carapace had disappeared

The Ibis chain isn’t too bad, nor expensive. There’s one really close to the station. Clue: Amsterdam ain’t cheap.

I work at Sloterdijk, 10 mins by train from the centraal station and there’s a Holiday Inn Express there, basic but comfortable, much cheaper than central hotels. Lots of tour companies use it.

It’s just pie in the sky.

Are you a medicinal chemist by any chance?

Where will you be staying?
I’d choose my entertainment venue depending on my location

The famous iDave of the diet, used to live there. He may still do so, for all I know.
And you have a canal path too.

Who will you be working for ?

If you put down pee shingle, expect pee shingle.

https://bubbl.us/

Is also free and very easy to use/

The best cookery website I know has lotsa curries in it, with very simple to follow instructions:

http://5zlotychef.blogspot.co.uk/

Written by a bloke from Bury living in Poland.

A brief one:
I’d just moved into a student house, which was otherwise empty during the holidays. It was an old house which creaked by itself. I had re-sits so I was studying late, well after midnight and slightly bricking it anyway.

So, for some reason I was convinced that there was someone outside my bedroom door. I tiptoed over to the door, with a screwdriver in my hand in case there was someone /something there. Then I opened the door, and all the lights in the house went out immediately. Yes, I was scared. I shut the door softly and tried to get to sleep. I didn’t much.