Don’t rip people off by guessing the postage and then adding some. Too many do that, it looks lazy and money grabbing and is a real piss-off.

Get secondhand bubble wrap or used jiffy bags. Weigh the stuff, look it up on Post Office and charge exactly that.

Joint account. I earn the lion’s share, It’s money for the household. Neither does silly things with it.

Yesterday I got:
“We have proper winter at our house, because when it’s winter outside it’s winter inside as well”

Yep.. origin is all that really counts. – And avoid everything with added “stuff”.

It’s well worth extending the joists. I’d consider just edge on plywood or Sterling board screwed to the joists. Would be a bit wobbly but if you add a few diagonals also, then a loft floor wouldn’t be out of the question.

Insulate the hatch as well. Cellotex or a polythene “pillow” filled with glass to stuff up before you close it. And seal every gap to the house.

A very good reason why the world should stop using halogen lamps.
And another very good reason not to fit them in the first place.

As soon as it became trendy, it became irritating because it’s so obviously contrived.

Advertisers don’t seem to have realized yet though.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Peak oil. The only way is up..
But it will need to get a LOT more expensive before it gets folks off their bums to reduce their carbon footprints. Bring it on I say..

I once had a brussel sprout pizza in Slovakia.

Hi T666DOM.
I have read that this subject raises some hackles.

Well I don’t do any looking down my chin, but since starting the exercises my near vision has improved about 30%. So some muscles somewhere have benefitted, and I can’t see how looking hard off to the sides (which has been my main exercise) could have done much for ciliary muscles.
My optician didn’t tell me that, she just gave me stronger glasses.

A dog put it’s leg through my rear wheel last year. Sure hurt the dog more than me. I was oddly pleased because it was attacking me at the time..

Hi TurnerGuy.
I have been feeling the same sort of effects over the last few weeks. yes we have strip lighting, and I do use LCD, but not much improvement IMO over CRT.

I too have been doing that corner/edge lookig for stretches. When i began I could hardly see properly at the very edge, eyes were kind of jumping about. i have been making myself ride to work with my head sideways and lookig, out the side. (probably why my neck now aches 😡 ). Pretty weird to begin with and a bit scary because I could look but not “see” especially while going downhill. After a couple of weeks it comes much more easily, and I now force myself to read right at the edge of vision with my eyes right round.
It seems to have been improving the rectus/obliques because I can now focus much closer than I could before I began. – Opticians don’t tell us any of this stuff.
I’m right now not not using my specs which had been giving be eyestrain and headaches for the last 3 years.

I’ve just been looking at Bate’s original animal experiments here:
http://improveeyesightnaturally.com/bates-book/truth-about-accommodation-demonstrated-experiments-eye-muscles-fish-cats-dogs-rabbits
Rather gruesome, but he did seem to have a good point. I have more to read on this one!

Hi TD, yes I know all that stuff. Conventional H&S assesments etc never get to the root cause. I’ve been sufferig for years and have found that no ammount of optician visits, new spectacles, posture, lighting does anything very much. I’ve tried exact pecs, +1, +2, astigmatism corrections, anti-reflective stuff etc etc. It’s ONLY VDU’s that wreck my eyes. I don’t wear them for anythi g muc else ulsess it’s teeny and close. In fact after wearing specs for VDU use for the last 3..4 years, have come to the conclusion that if I can manage without them I might be better off.

A friend has lent me a load of books on Bates who was (and still is) a bit of a conrversial oddball when it came to optometry. He maintained that the oblique and rectus muscles were mostly responsible for acommodation, whereas opticians treat it as a lens thing. I’m beginning to believe it.

Over the last two weeks I’ve been doing all sorts of eye excersises, and am feeling better. So far have eliminated the awful migrane – type headaches even though I’ve been trying to not wear the specs.

Other bits of me (eg my neck) are slightly feeling the strain instead though.

Not a plumber, but I also thought those fangled flanges would take the shower from the side so the bubbles bypassed the shower feed.

I installed mine with a 45 deg sloping 22mm top feed and the shower taken from the underneath, that seems to work well.

Probably wouldn’t affect the switch though. Usual problem is insufficient head. Does it start reliably when you drop the shower head down low? (Or perhaps it’s fixed..)

Hub gear, 10 second wipe & squirt most mornings, but live with most of the grit, and circulate three cheap chains.

When I go round pulling used jiffy bags out of people’s bins, thus saving them from landfill…Do I use them for Ebay or return them to the stationary cupboard?

My Father is convinced the Glocosamine does very little for him, but MSM is the stuff that works wonders on his knees.

He is 79, and two years ago he could scarcely walk about. Having experimented with both, he is happy on the MSM now, and taking 5 mile walks these days.

If I eek it out, I can do a regular trip Surrey to Suffolk (300miles round), nearly 100% dual carriegeway, and average 68MPG in TDCI 1.9 Focus. I have once managed 76MPG for the 300mile round trip, but that required some lorry-tailing. I also run fuel-saving Michelin which I’m sure do help.

Salt is dug out of the ground, and costs next to nothing at source. It’s also conveniently impregnated with lots of grippy grit.

Sugar costs a fortune to grow, and has massive carbon footprint.

My LX (2008 as it happens) do this all the time and have done since new. They do it all year though, but certainly worse in the cold. I’m deeply fed up with weekly wheel-out and clean/exercise/lube the pistons. Without that (or even with that), they just touch-skim the disks all the time, and make the most awful high pitched strangled cat ringing which drives me nuts.

I bought a secondhand Yamaha last year for £60. PSR-275. My daughter (8) is learning very fluently, and any limitations are not yet evident. She also has a weekly lesson on the real thing. It’ll be some time before we need to trade up, it’s capabilities are still well beyond that of the players.

last year.

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07012010284[/url] by mountaincarrot[/url], on Flickr

I think the above two remedies are ideal. There is no such thing because who except you would buy one?

I’ve had two sorts – both cheap ones.

I had some from Nauticalia (other places sell them). They run on a D cell in each wrist. No on/off switch. I bought some Ni-Mh cells to fit. They heat the palms only. I could still loose feeling in my fingers and thumb whilst having sweaty palms. Not sure about them and I don’t use them these days.

Still fed up with cold fingers I bought some “Blazewear” brand. These claimed to heat the fingers (they do). They are badly let down on several counts. They claim to be “waterproof”. What a stupid idea, may as well put your hands into plastic bags. They get damp and cold inside within half an hour from condensation. They also don’t heat the thumbs! Now I know what it’s like to have warm fingers and no thumbs. Also the build quality in the battery boxes is very poor. I had to re-solder all the dry joints in mine. They also come out a bit small. – perhaps it’s this small Chineese sizing, I find it often with gloves.
You get what you pay for. I wouldn’t recommend them, and stopped using them also.

Some nice looking stuff for ski-ers if you have £200+ to play with. Not willing to spend that, so I shall probably keep suffering.

@trailrat. I do like those. Better looking than my homemade ones. I’d need to cut holes for my Rhoff shifters by the sound of it. Thanks for the pics. Worth thinking about.

I’s say yes to the brake. We live in a hilly place. There was a good 18 months when my little girl got excellent use from her rear brake down the hills.

If you think not, then just go and ride down a hill without any brakes and see if it changes your mind!

Ours was a Lidle wooden bike. It had very good rims and could easily take a small cantilever off an ancient kids bike, fitted onto some steel straps screwed to the “monocoque”. (Wooden bikes are brilliant). I made some extra-weak springs, and used gear cable to reduce the friction.

Worked a treat. By the time she got onto her pedal bike, she could not only balance perfectly, but could scream down hills and skid to a stop!

OK. I posted earlier. Here is Work in Progress. Need a bit more effort to get right, but cost only £2. Start with two ice scrapers from the £ shop.
I need to adjust them now to give a little more brake space for the fingers. And the elastic cuff means you need to use your teeth to pull the second one on! (Not ideal 😕 ).I ride Rohloff so the single twist grip works quite well.

Yep, it’s the common lack of support as well which doesn’t help. I think you need to cure every stage to make it perform properly. I can vouch for the wide hidden gasket on the Trimlux. Seems a good idea, and has worked for me.

You have hit on a fundamental concept problem which few builders will accept. It’s not simple to seal a shower tray (which sits on the floor) to a wall. The floor is timber which shrinks/expands and moves. In new houses the floor may move several mm as timbers and floorboards shrink. The joint (a couple of mm ) between the tray and the wall can never be sealed with the common method of grout or silicone. Grout has pretty much zero flexibility, and even low-modulus silicone does not have enough stretch if a joint is very narrow and the movement large.

Many builders are (unfortunately) too obstinate to recognise this fundamental problem, and will continue to slap in grout and silicone same as they always have, then convince the unfortunate naive consumer that it works.

What you want is something called “Trimlux”. Look it up. It separates the “sealing” from the “weathering” and allows enough space for the silicone to actually stretch within it’s compliance and not come away. I installed mine 7 years ago and still 100% watertight. I wouldn’t use anything else.

I have photos, will post them tonight because they are on my home PC.

Hi Ebygomm, I’ve tried mitts and don’t feel safe, can’t hold the bars properly when braking down rough hills. Similar for lobster mitts. My two outer fingers don’t stay on the bars tightly when both the inner two are used for brakes.
It’s one finger on the brakes for me. Have just ordered some 2011 Specialized sub-zero (which have 3+1 lobster set-up) to see if they will do the job.

I made some the other day. Let’s say the design isn’t finalized. I happened on some car windscreen scrapers in the £1 shop which have a big blue insulated/padded muff round the handle. So £2 and half an hour on the sewing machine, I had some pogies. (I DID remove the ice scrapers 😆 )

Problem is the cuffs. They have a nice elastic cuff, but that means it’s not possible to get the second hand in or out without using teeth! I also didn’t leave quite enough space for the brake lever, but that’s easy to fix. I’d call it work in progress..

What is it with baggy stuff? Who’s judging you anyway?

MTB’ers like stuff that works. That’s why our bikes are so good these days. – Lycra works!

I’m pleased there is nothing on my bike which freezes up these days -except my fingers. At home I have a whole drawer full. I even have two electrically heated pairs(poor), and have tried chemical heating pads (sweaty palms & frozen digits).
Three sets chosen from the collection today, wool, powerstretch then Goretex outers. Still no fingers. Can there be a solution?

He’ll soon work out it’s all tosh. But that doesn’t matter. Kids are are very good at getting enjoyment from things that know are not real, they enjoy going along with the game just for the ride.

As for Jesus nonsense. Kids get a sharp reminder from me that it’s not to be believed and not to waste too much of their attention on it. My 7 year old treats RE as a bit of an irritation, but it’s also part of her education to understand that everything teachers tell her is not necessarily true. She’s getting good at that, it doesn’t stop her enjoying the Nativity play. – It’s a fairy tale.

Use several KWH drying out ugly damp sod, – then watch it smolder miserably.

Never tried it mind you, I’m airing a pre-conceived bias. – They are a load of rubbish.

I had this problem after adding thick loft floor insualtion.

Eaves vents in soffits all along didn’t really fix the problem. I only cracked it after adding a ridge top vent. Easy to do. Hoof it up onto the roof and choose a ridge tile. Drill a big long slot in the centre and make sure it goes go right through the ridge board. Cement on another ridge tile on top with air gaps to leave the slot. It sucks air out a treat.

(Or you can get vented ridge tiles, but they do the same thing).

Also Make sure you have foam seal all round your loft door, and there are no air gaps round pipes going up from the airing cupboard.

Dry loft.

I hate it. The novelty soon wears off. I do 10 miles off road every day to/from work and after the first day or two, it can get grim unless it melts fast.

Last Feb the 10″ dump made it almost impassable after day 2. When my normal 30 minute ride took me an hour and a half, I gave up and took to the roads for a week. Melted then re-frozen ridges hidden underneath, ice chunks overlying slush. The car drivers though it was fine and it was still horrible for another week on the trails.

Nah.. More practice needed. You need to cut the blocks on a spiral. That way the top doesn’t fall in when you are building it, and you get a nice “Igloo” shape, not a lumpy space rocket..

(This was last year since we are not exactly snowed in right now!)

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07012010284[/url] by mountaincarrot[/url], on Flickr

Surely the point is not whether it was legal to cycle where you did, but whether sad bloke could cause criminal damage deliberately to your property.

You could legitimately have called the cops, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be after your house and family next though.

Coffeeking. “maybe I’m deficient in something”. Probably yes.
Lots of stuff is useful for “vascular fragility”. – ie easy bruising. Bioflavanoids (found in various fruits, – much so in citrus peel and pith) is an idea. Scoff the skin of half a lemon (pith and all) every day. Chop it in your breakfast if you don’t like it.
I read that bilberries and ginko can also help. Absolutely no experience of the latter myself.
I’ve been hospitalized twice through trauma due to another silly sport I do, but never had any visible bruises to show the nurses. I have put that down to diet, (but perhaps I’m just lucky..).