We should probably include Andy Samberg in this thread somewhere, but I’m not sure which film?

Hot Rod – has some excellent lines in there, plus Isla Fisher

Yep it’s not much fun when it rains on the bikepark type trails. I remember riding back from Champery to Chatel, I had to go pick up the van as one of the guys had broken his wrist. It looked grim when we set out back, it started raining while we were on the cable car, by the time we got to the top the clouds had rolled in and it was properly chucking it down. Rode down into Les Crosets and got onto the lift up to Mosettes and then picked our way along the trail back to the top lift in Chatel. I don’t think I’ve ever been as wet as that except in a swimming pool.

Ninja dual zone big air fryer here, had it for about a month. It’s great for knocking things up quickly but need to get the hang of it properly so we can have something a bit more varied than chips.

Parents have a Ninja 15-in-1 thing and they very rarely use the oven or hob now.

@TheBrick yeah I reckon about a grand would be ballpark. I’ve driven and flown and either way it was about the same. Flying is better for solo, driving better with mates.

Bear in mind you’ll need a few quid over there for food/beer as well.

Another vote for those Earfun ones, also bought based on WhatHiFi reviews. Can’t comment compared to more expensive ones as I’ve not needed to buy another pair since.

The wife has been using them recently. She usually never has in ear ones as they don’t fit but these are the first she’s used that aren’t uncomfortable or fall out.

On One 456 Summer Season, I’ve posted photos of it a few times. Built burly, weighed the same as a small moon, smashed through everything with 160mm coil Marzocchis on. Loved that bike.

We’ve stayed at Hardhurst Farm a few times, it’s a basic site but it’s cheap (or was the last time pre-C19). It’s not got any play area to speak of but it is a bloody big field so the kids can just run around and wear themselves out.

Cafe on site, pub at the bottom of the road. Hope is a 15-20 min walk away for shops and other pubs.

and email those together with a photo of a sliced melon to this person in Edinburgh….”

Any particular melon? Honeydew, Galia, Cantaloupe, Piel de Sapo? I imagine the NHS are very strict on this.

Both ours have gone straight from an Isla balance bike to 16″ wheels. An Isla CNOC 16 in the case of the #1, and #2 got a Hope Academy 16 (basically an Early Rider Belter with much bling). They both moved around 4yo mark but didn’t really get the hang of pedalling properly until 4.5yo. #1 child moved onto an Isla Beinn 20 (before they did small and large) and he’s now onto a 14″ frame/26″ wheel OnOne 456, which I suspect isn’t going to last much longer because he’s growing faster than I can keep up with.

However, they are both among the tallest in their respective groups at school so it was a fairly easy transition. As others have said it’s always much easier to remove the pedals (and cranks if you can be arsed) and let them use it as a bigger balance bike to begin with.

Only thing that’s not been mentioned I think are those stickers that go on your headlights which seem to do absolutely nothing, throw a set of those in the glovebox.

Next time we drive on the continent I’m getting one of these

I put a 14ft x 8ft pent roof shed from https://www.powersheds.com/ together for my dad last year, good quality, no osb in sight. He got the timber base as he was putting it at the bottom of the garden. Piece of cake to put up, had it done (mainly by myself) in a day.

We are in the midst of selling & buying. Numbers are small compared to others mentioned here but worked out as percentage they are still fairly big. We put our house on the market just as Liz and Kwasi decided it would be fun to play Monopoly with the country’s finances.

Our mortgage was fixed until January, at this point we were going through the searches/surveys stages of buying and had a buyer in place for our property. To avoid early repayment charges I decided to switch to a tracker, current payments are now around 24% higher than they were when fixed (£330pm to £409pm). We had a mortgage offer in place in February from Nationwide, the same mortgage now is around £140 more per month.

Since then everything went to pot, our buyer dropped out, we lost the property we were looking at and are only today back at the stage of accepting an offer on our house. An offer that is 5-6% lower than we previously had. I expect if we were selling at the higher end of the market this would be around 10-15%.

We haven’t found a place to buy yet but our estate agent expects there to be quite a few properties coming to market as people exit fixed rate deals and suddenly find out they can no longer afford their repayments. As we are looking we are seeing properties come to market and within weeks be reduced by around 5-8%, some even more, especially if they continue to stay unsold.

The other advantage of a 3 phase supply is that you can install 12kw of solar panels if you want.

Or a 9kw Sauna

Knowing how heavy a normal Barracuda BSO is I dread to think how heavy that tandem must be

What about a -tshirt? Granted this is even more geographically specific than just Scotland.

We have one of these that we take camping https://www.colemanuk.co.uk/stoves-fuel/camping-stoves/unleaded-2-burner-stove/SAP_3000000396.html

Falls down on the cheap requirement though, they are getting on for double what we paid about 8 years ago. You might be able to find one secondhand.

Clear breach of the geneva convention? What about the dambusters raid?

Dambusters – 1943
Geneva Convention – 1949

Not to mention that the Ruhr dams were hugely strategic as they provided electricity and water to the steel factories. In the Ukraine it seems they just wanted to knock a river crossing out.

I was looking in the wiki page for the reservoir earlier. 18 cubic kilometres of water, or about 18 billion tonnes in weight. I don’t know what that is in swimming pools but it’d be a bloody lot.

456 Summer Season, got it around 2011, started with 100mm Recon forks, went to 140mm Revelations, then billy big balls Marzocchi 66 RC2X 160mm coil sprung ones. Superstar wheels, Hope brakes, 2×10 SLX . It was bloody heavy but it was ace. Stripped it down and moved everything to a Mondraker Dune. I still miss this bike.

Fatty – got this when there was a promo code floating around for 20% off everything. I think it was a staff discount code but they honoured loads of sales. Upgraded tyres to Nates and swapped out the notoriously bad OEM QR skewers for Hope ones.

456 Summer Season (again) – not technically mine. This was built for the eldest through 2020 as he had outgrown his Islabike. Frame, brakes, and wheels all sourced through STW. I’ve swapped the stem out since this photo was taken. It’s heavy but it has a 28t chainring so he can basically ride up walls.

I think it was around 1987/88, mum and dad took me and my brother to the bike shop. I got a 16″ wheel BMX style bike in white and red (may or may not have been a Raleigh), and he got a Raleigh MTB in white and maroon with 20″ wheels and proper gears.
As this was my first bike dad had got me stabilisers. Got home and within in about 5 minutes I’d asked for them to be taken off and I was away. I never have been allowed to forget that he wasted money on stabilisers that I didn’t need.
I inherited brothers bike some years later which then saw me through until I got a Marin Bolinas Ridge for Christmas in 1995.

£950! They’ll sell them all though, mainly to insufferable buffoons.

I have a Jogger, the front half of which is effectively a Sandero. Got the Extreme version which I think equates to the Stepway. It’s a good car, as fossy says it has everything you need and nothing you don’t. I do think the carpets could do with being a bit better but a set of floor mats will sort that.

Fuel economy – it’s the 1L 3-cyl 110hp engine, I’ve done 12k miles since November and it’s averaged around 50-51mpg – vast majority of that has been motorway. Round town it does tend to dive a bit as it needs a bit of a prod to get going.

Dacia prices though have jumped around 10% in the last year. My top range Jogger was £18245, the base model is now £18295 and mine would cost £20595.

Had a Berlingo which I christened the Donkey. Because it was old, noisy, smelly, slow, and not that good to look at.

New car is just called the car, as in “Get in the ****’ car or you’ll be late!”

A Google of Continental Roller Shutters got me these. They look to be manual, but the Syston ones can be electrically operated. Nowt about smart operation though.

Continental Roller Shutters

‘Continental’ Style Window & Doorway Shutters

I hired a Mk8 Golf (the one with awful touch sensitive heater controls) last year, the first thing the guy showed me inside was how to turn off lane assist. I’ve driven quite a few cars that have it and it is probably the most annoying safety feature now fitted to new cars. Got a Dacia Jogger in November which thankfully doesn’t have it, as their CEO said why fit it when people just turn it off anyway.

@Bullet I’ll take your Bastos BMW M3 and raise you a Bastos TWR Rover SD1

Also, I like this

Goat village – near Lindarets if you like goats!

I’ve never been but you can smell it on a hot day.

I’ll echo all the above. I’d definitely do rascals big day out over to Champery though. Going up and down all is fun but big days out like that are funnerer. The only thing I have to add is go to Morgins if you have time.

They’re bollocks.

Buying we got a lvl 2 done on a 1920s 4-bed seminin need to of complete refurbishment. Survey came back and it was all fine apart from what we knew.

Selling, our house has been fully renovated over the past 9 years. Buyer got a lvl 2 and the surveyor went to town on it. Made up all sorts of crap even down to the boiler may not be working because the heating wasn’t on while he was there. The pillock could have just asked us to turn the thermostat up so he could check.

All surveyors are not equal. May as well just get the cheapest one because you’ll probably pick up on more than they will.

As I’m now at a laptop I can have proper look through Pistonheads

RS Megane(s) https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/14504449 or https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/14651341
RS Clio https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/14607077
Focus ST https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/14507017

Curveball – BBR MX-5 https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/14765974
Waftball – Jaaaaag XJR https://www.pistonheads.com/buy/listing/14667604

There’s load of other options, plenty of 1 and 3-Series BMWs, the odd TT and Boxster, and for some reason an abundance of Nissan Juke Nismos (bleurgh!). Me I’d have the Clio but I like French cars for some stupid reason.

I think the step from 20% to 40% to 45% should be smoothed out some both by reducing the middle rate and increasing the top rate back up to 50%.

Anyone that avoids tax should be thrown in a pit of hungry tigers and their belongings sold off and the value redistributed where needed.

Out of your options I would say the Mini. Fiesta’s have a habit of going missing in the night.

What about a Renaultsport Clio? You don’t mention budget but I guess you be looking at the five door version with the 1.6 turbo engine.

The worst I’ve been in so far was the Ramada Wakefield just off J40 of the M1. After that I stuck to Holiday Inn for a while purely so I could get enough points for a free weekend away. Now I’ve done that I’m going for the same but with Marriott.

Can’t you adjust the privacy on individual posts as you create them? Been a while since I actively posted anything on Facebook so I couldn’t tell you for definite.

From the sounds of it you’re not going to get far going to your line manager and you’ll not get much further going over his head. If your notice period is quite long I’d consider just putting it in now and looking for other jobs immediately. No doubt your current place will come back with promises of extra bodies and a raise but what’s to say you won’t end up in the same position 6 months down the line.

I was in a similar position this time last year and I got signed off work for two weeks with stress. I had a very understanding manager though and I came back to a different workplace with a much changed/reduced workload.

Oh and I always found my high powered BMW fine in the snow, it was people in cheap underpowered font wheel drive cars going to slow that caused the issues.

Worst humblebrag ever. Power and price of the vehicle has nothing to do with any of it, it’s up to the fleshy blob behind the wheel.

Back in 2010 when the whole country was a mess I had a Nissan Micra which had all of 51bhp, didn’t get stuck once. Same goes for Beast from the East, 90bhp Berlingo was fine. I drove to Ayr from the North East during the worst of it but others at work couldn’t manage to get their BMWs/Mercs off the drive to do the 3 mile drive in.

I’ve only ever used them for bits and bobs. No complaints. If they have what you’re looking for and you’re local Cyclefix at Birtley is a great little shop.

As above I’ve worked for both large and small companies and it’s all the same depending on who is running/managing it. Arseholes tend to be distributed evenly so chances are you’ll encounter one sooner rather than later. I’ve yet to encounter an arsehole free workplace.

I had some Tektro cable discs which were terrible, replaced with a set of Zoom/X-Tech Chinese cable operated hydraulic calipers. They were only cheap but they are miles better than the cable discs.

I had something similar in an old Astra. Fake front fog light switch, turn ignition on, press fog switch then start.

Mk2 Astra? Once the most stolen car in the UK. A friend at uni had one, after the third time of it getting taken and dumped at the side of the road with an empty tank he started taking the rotor arm off when it was parked up. They pushed it round the corner and torched it.

All of Dalby Forest, it’s uphill out of the carpark and continues to be uphill until you get back to the car. Or at least that’s what it seems like.