He looks a lovely chap. Condolences.

Nooooo..don’t get a pug my working stock lab is 20kg she’s lovely and small but big enough to give a hug.

Just got some new troy Lee skylines and they are a lovely fit. Not overly baggy or too long and great fit on the bum.

The olive on the right hand side is not a weed

Amazing what you can find out. I think I’ve tried to be careful about keeping my identity a bit private purely due to paranornia about bike thieves so would be interested to know if I can be identified.

V8ninety you could certainly ask whoever was maintaining your new garden to continue but expect to pay for it as it’s your garden now. Renting a place should be no different to buying in the respect of if you can’t afford the place and everything it entails don’t buy/rent it.

Saying that I rent a property out and I go round and do the grass once a month as it’s all quite steep and needs a strimmer but I do that because I want to keep the garden in a reasonable state as it was my home and I care about my neighbours who shouldn’t have to live next to a mess.

Stay

Really gone off sliced bread since getting into baking real bread. Love to make something different every week so sometimes a worthy wholemeal or Rye,or a 50:50 with wholemeal and white is good, usually chuck in some seeds and also lately some sea weed and this with butter and peanut butter/cashew butter will keep me full till lunch, if I’m spoiling myself I’ll go full white and discovered a really easy fast soda bread last week and was scrummy with jam!

Crumble

You will get through this and out the other side. It won’t be possible to see this now no matter what anyone says, your deep feelings are telling you otherwise but your brain is lying to you! I have felt similar to you at the end of relationships, hours spent crying in a heap on the floor imagining the future you’ve just lost BUT held on and waited and it wasn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things before I found someone so much better and have ended up happier and more contented with life than I ever could have been with those people I cried over.

Lived in a 10 bed house in Bristol in my uni days…oh we had some parties! A toilet got blown up but the worst thing that happened was a dare between 2 mates to jump from a second story roof garden into a tree below only he missed the tree and went straight down 2 stories to the pavement. Broken feet and spine. That was a very abrupt ending to a party. He’s OK now thankfully.

Got a lab puppy when I had a 3 year old cat. Had to shut them in together at first so the cat didn’t just run away as he’s a softy but he soon realised he was the boss with a timely claw to the snout. As a puppy Beech used to try to get the cat to play but now she’s not fussed and they have been known to sleep together in the dog bed.

Is a bit more light in your property worth a life affecting disability? Do you understand about kick back? An experienced tree surgeon was beheaded in my county a few years back. The customer found him hanging dead in the tree due to his saw kicking back at neck height.

I was using Street view to try to see the house number for a property I had visited for work and whilst scrolling up the street there I was standing next to my van with my dog outside another property. Hadn’t seen the car go past either. I was much amused!!

I had the same in early March. Totally knocked me. Never experienced anything so horrible before and feel like I lost 2 weeks of my life. Couldn’t think straight for awhile either.

Don’t forget you can get really good cordless electric hedge cutter now. I just got the professional grade sthil one and the long reach too. Lighter and less vibes than petrol and so much quieter and no fumes in your face so generally less tiring.

You can head out to work outside for the day with no jumper or coat(me this morning for the first time this year..yay!)

The cat stops spending all day on the sofa and starts spending all day on the summerhouse roof sun bathing.

When/where is it on?

Can’t believe no-one’s mentioned hula hoops…all flavours. Love love crisps but generally not the posh kettle type ones
…too hard and weird flavours.

Kind of made it up as I went along. Did a bit of planning whilst still in employment then went for it. At 24 I was fine getting along on lots of hard work for not much money and now 11 years on I’ve got a couple of employees and things are pretty bright. Can’t imagine working for someone else now.

It depends how good the gylphosate from aldi is but yes if that’s the route you want to go spray the lot leave for a few weeks then rotovate the whole area and rake it into a nice tilth, tread down and rake again then seed and don’t expect to walk on it for another 4 weeks after that or turf instead.

Had my carpal tunnel op a week ago so no riding or work (manual labour) for a least a month. I was just getting to feel like I could do stuff again when I got hit with the most debilitating flu. I’ve not left the house since last Thursday and feel so weak. I’ve never had an illness like this before and combined with the surgery it’s knocked me big-time. Here’s to recovery and getting on the bike in time for the nice weather!

Tpbiker…yawn. How does rat thread get turned into another cat hating thread?! Live and let live I say and that goes for the rat too.

Thanks for the replies

My contract is up and I was looking at going gift gaff for £10 a month no strings and buying the Z5 compact for about £350 but spoke to Vodafone who I’m with and they sucked me back in with a good offer of that phone free and £25 a month for a decent package so over 2 years the giff gaff would have saved me nothing. Had the phone 2 days and loving it. The screen seems great to me and its got a good camera and most importantly to me it’s not huge.

Sony experia z5 compact on Vodafone for £25 a month. 600mins, unlim texts, 2gb.

Yorkshire pudding and crispy chicken skin or crackling

One…Grooverider. Gets called Groovy most of the time There was a Fabio but he went to another home as a kitten.

Omg I was in love with David as a teen or should say Fox really. Taped every episode ofthe x files it was the best thing on tv at the time.

I thought new research suggested no link of high cholesterol to heart disease and that animal and diary fats are no longer the demon they were touted as….

As a woman who has done internet dating I would say ‘no way!’ It’s weird. Never have drawn out pre meeting scenarios as you may immediately find out you’ve just wasted 3 months of your life on someone who you can have great text banter with but absolutely no chemistry. Also most women and probably men to be fair would like to be prepared for their first date by sprucing up/looking their best not just out of their lunch break having had last night’s garlicky curry for lunch and in an unflattering work uniform !

I discovered a really healthy and different lunch snack in a shop when holidaying in Oz over Christmas. It’s kind of like a spring roll but raw. Rice paper wrap softened in water for a few seconds, fill with any finely sliced vegetables and if you want a layer of chicken, prawns or tuna etc. They came as 3 in takeaway containers. I’m going to do them as an alternative to sandwiches as I eat a lot of bread. Gonna try teriyaki chicken and sweet chilli prawn fillings plus carrot, spring onion and cucumber. The wrap has a pleasant soft slightly jellyish texture with a nice crunchy filling. Loads of these on pinterest including how to fold it up correctly.

Isn’t this a pumpkin and sweet pot pie with the word vegan in front of it?

No as it has no butter, cream or eggs in it. I’d never made vegan pastry before but it came out great.

I’m not vegan but enjoy experimenting with vegan cooking as it helps with gettinga more varied, healthy ddiet and I’ve discovered the wonder ingredient chia seeds. So how about a big bag of organic ones or a jar of organic coconut oil should be about £7 quid. Made a vegan pumpkin and sweet potato pie with pecan topping last weekend with both those ingredients in. It was bloody lush!

Why would you keep the ketchup in the cupboard (once open, obviously)? Do you also store other conventionally refrigerated items such as milk in there?

Ketchup in the cupboard….it doesn’t go off it’s mostly sugar/vinegar which are preservatives. Do you keep your honey in the fridge?!

I’m a trades person and am quite surprised at the resignation to this and how common unreliable trades people are. I don’t know how they stay in business as I have always thought that being on time and doing what you say you will is absolutely vital. Maybe they just get by on new business rather than repeat business but I don’t understand taking time out of your busy day to quote then not returning a quote but maybe they are just juggling too many balls and some (the least attractive) get dropped. The only thing I would defend is not returning an initial enquiry (phone message)should not be held against you or mean that you are not a good reliable person. From my experience at times I am unable to return all enquiries. You are working flat out using loud machinery etc in or on someone else’s property who’s paying you to do a job not be on your phone all day, after your days work you go and quote for some jobs, when you’re home you spend some time doing admin/sending off previous quotes and when you finally sit down and have time to look at your messages you have lots of missed calls some leaving no message some leaving good detailed messages with a return number (yes their number is logged in your missed calls but if you’ve had 10 today you might not want to go through matching up the message to the missed call) some messages are less appealing and those may not get returned. For me it’s people that leave abrupt messages with no info but just saying can you come and quote this Saturday as I’m at work all week…Sorry I’m not interested in spending my weekend working. I do try to text back at least as many as possible even if it’s to say sorry I’m fully booked at the moment but i do reply to 99% of email enquiries (unless they’ve fallen into junk) as I can sit eating my dinner or watching the tv whilst I do this whereas returning calls takes up a lot of time. So don’t take it personally if a tradesperson doesn’t return your initial enquiry but try emailing them too and give good info about the job unless of course it’s fixing a smelly loo then don’t tell them till you’ve got them in the door and plied them with tea and biscuits and finally don’t ask them to come on the weekend!

I used to find that bomb hole tricky. I think it’s the sudden transition from steeply down to steeply up and I tended to lean into the up face too much. Don’t get how you could come out of it in a nose landing…you must be absolutely flying into it to come up into the air with nose pointing down!

Rather than just dog walking which is fairly limited on income what about a doggie day care? If you can get premises and there is demand in your area. It seems to me a way to make it more of a business rather than just being a self employed dog walker. Could even sell products to your customers when they come to collect their pampered pets such as treats, toys etc. Could sell extras like grooming. If there is a dog walking forum get on there and get researching. I’ve been self employed for 10 years but a year ago I joined an industry forum which opened my eyes and I’ve now moved from just being self employed to feeling like I actually run a small business with much better earning potential.

I can recommend m an s particularly for the bigger bust. They do a range of levels of impact and the highest level is what I go for when riding. They do one which zips up at the front which is the most sturdy.