My mate’s tatties started turning brown and dying off, just as they were ready to dig up – nothing they did made a difference, they just keeled over and died. When he tidied the plot up, he found out that someone had dug them up, nicked the spuds and just stuck the stems back in the ground again.

People can be pretty sh!tty. :(

I think you’re bob-on – my second cousin was playing III or Vice City at twelve or so, and I asked his mum if he should be, it being an eighteen and all. She said “I can’t not let him have it, all his friends have got it” – I thought, you bloody can, if you’ve any sense of parental responsibility… Mrs Pondo teaches 11 year-olds at her school who are playing it – you really wonder whether their parents have got the slightest clue about what’s in it.

Interesting post – my old beast is sufficiently not-given-a-f***-about that I probably could have done the kerb climb, but I’d have been with all the people giving you the fingers as you went past. But given your side of the story, I don’t know what else you could have done.

I have a 90 mile round trip commute. I’m lucky in that I work near the M40, so I can just pop off a junction or two early, find a quiet place to park, and cycle in from there. It’s not ideal, it takes a while but then it’s going to take a while just driving, but even my shortest one is 24 miles off the drive, which is petrol money well saved. I’ve dabbled with using the train instead of the car, but that’s no cheaper and is more time intensive.

Hawkstone Park (holy grail)

Respec’.

D’you know, the single player is so great I haven’t even thought about the online – but in light of the (recently spotted, by me) half mil bonus, I think I might have a dabble. :)

Proud of marrying my beautiful wife
Proud of doing a bit of freelance scribbling in a time when journalism seemed to have hit a wall
Proud of doing Cycle 2 Work day (95 mile round trip, out the house from 04:00 to 19:30)
Proud of being commending for my efforts by the Royal Marines when I tried (and failed) to join for the second time (they didn’t say it the first time)
Proud of doing eight rides up the Tumble in a day (12 000 feet of climbing in 75 mile on a Kona hybrid) for TumbleUp4Life
Proud, after having never left home before, of getting my first passport and heading for Europe to work for six months in 1998
Proud of my road KOM (now sadly just fourth) with an average of 50.3mph down Edge Hill
Proud of my lovely family and friends, with which I’m truly blessed
Proud to have got off me backside and joined an amateur dramatics club
Proud of losing four stone in eight months before me wedding

Wow, I didn’t think it would be that easy, but when I think about it, there’s loads of things I can look back on quite happily – nothing you could write a book about, granted, but that’s not what this is about. Thanks, OP, for cheering me up on an otherwise fairly dispiriting day. :)

Range Rover drivers with personailised number plates

I do wonder sometimes if the bloody things come with a number plate on – I bet there’s not a car with a higher percentage running private plates.

Customer service gubbins on the phones.

Paid well for the industry as a whole but I’m a bit over it and looking for the holy grail of something that pays the same or more but is more fun/challenging.

one is a movie soundtrack, another a best of…

Two of them are movie soundtracks. Onve of those two is an alright soundtrack album – and the other’s from a Rocky film?!?! He’s having a giraffe.

Aren’t a fairly hefty percentage of the people paramedics are called out to suffering from mental illnesses to varying degrees? It could be someone who’s got severe problems upstairs, rather than just some violent scrote/waster who’s just attacked him for shits and giggles

It could be, and obviously that would be a bit of a different matter. But the piece is written as though it was just for the proverbial aforementioned giggles.

Go see a doctor. I had back pain, oo, about two weeks ago, nothing that I could think of to cause it. The doc said it’s probably a muscle strain, massively common and nine times out of ten you don;t know what caused it – he gave me some leaflets about some simple exercises and said to keep it moving (but obviously, refrain from entering the highland games until it’s fixed). I also got some advice second-hand from a nurse, who said take ibuprofen, wait two hours then take paracetemol, wait two hours and repeat – if you live with the pain, it’ll change how you move which will have a knock on affect. The doctor said it might take a couple of weeks to clear up – not cycled yet, but I’d say I’m about 80 to 90% there.

Just makes no sense to me whatsoever. Seriously – just put them down, make the world a better place.

That IS sad. :(

Had a fantastic night up Cannock on my tod, a great ride but real spooky on my own. There were deer all over the shop, which was scary until you got used to them, and after awhile I started thinkin about big cat sightings and seriously freaking myself out. I thought “think logically, you’d have heard if there had been anything like that up here – besides, what would they live on?” Then I saw another deer and aanswered my own last question.

It was scary but fantastic – deffo be doing that again.

Not booked any in but enjoyed the ones I did last year, so might be on the cards. :)

a picture of a white sheet of paper?

Heres one I did earlier:
“Like”. :)

No. I’m led to believe there is no onus on you to prove that you’re purchasing it to commute, but there is a hopeful expectation that that is the case.

… think that its hard not to respect the man….

On the contrary, it’s very easy.

silence of the yams ?

Likey. :D

I’ve done one, really enjoyed it – cheap, cheerful and tons of em about.

http://www.aukweb.net/events/

Can’t remember if we had a route, but then I always just follow someone with satnav. Nice people, non-competitive, low key – good fun, will deffo be doing more. And I think it’s where you have to start if you harbour any ambitions of doing Paris-Brest-Paris – they do some monsterous great big ones. :)

Step throughs are good for keeping legs warm in winter…

They’re really not.

Well… I kind of like the sentiment, but I think the best way to knacker a child’s education is to impliment a system that tries its damnedest to get everyone to the same level, rather than teaching them with the idea of getting them to maximise their potential. Set targets, so that schools have to aim for so many As, so many Bs, so many Cs, etc, (so there’s no incentive to push the best, and every incentive to ditch the worst) place the onus of responsibiity entirely on the teachers and remove it in its entirety from the parents, but at the same time give them more frequent and stringent imspections (which place an extra burden of work at random times without adressing what happens when Ofsted aren’t trampling about the place in their dirty great boots), and hang the spectre of performance-related pay over their heads (said performance being that of their pupils, rather than themselves), denigrate teachers in the press, bang a new system of acadamies and free schools in there just to really make the whole thing an untanglable mess of Geordian knot proportions, and you should be good to go.

I wouldn’t be tempted by a 50 – I had a 125 and commuted 20+ miles each way into Birmingham for a couple of years, and the 125 was fab. Step through (although I don’t remember much in the way of protection from the weather!), dirt cheap to run, and fun to ride – that’s the biggest issue I’d have with a 50, I think it’d get prety dull pretty quick. You’re hardly going to be ripping up the tarmac on a 125 scooter, but they’re nippy enough round town.

No idea about the licence, deffo worth checking with DVLA as it is a minefield – I had to do CBTs with a 1992 car licence and whilst they cost a few quid, they are a good, useful course. Made me a more observent and hopefully safer car driver, too.

Interestingly, I’ve found a Ben Goldacre blog about the Express’s reporting on cervical cancer vaccines –

http://www.badscience.net/2009/10/jabs-as-bad-as-the-cancer/#more-1374

And it seems to me that, while he is critical of the coverage (and explains why), he makes no sweeping statements about the medical industry as a whole. I must say (and not to labour the point) that I have read Bad Science, and I remember it as being very evidence-led and singularly lacking in sweeping statements. I’ll give it another go, though – it’s a good book.

I do know that in Bad Science he has made sweeping statements that are not true across the board in the industry.

I really don’t think he has, you know.

Surprised at all the love for It, it’s a long way from the top of my list. If you’ve not read any od his stuff before, I think Different Seasons is a good place to start, Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption and The Body are fantastic and accessible, as well as being amazing films. Loved The Stand, Christine, Pet Cemetary, Thinner, Skeleton Crew, but he went a bit overblown in tne nineties, for my money

If a group of local parents were opening a free school with the best interest of the kids at heart, I’d probably volunteer as an assistant metalwork or PE teacher if they’d have me.

It seems to me that the last people you’d want organising your child’s education are a bunch of well meaning parents with no training or experience. Certainly, when they get round to opening a hospital or accountancy firm, I’d avoid those too.

I see he’s just come out in support of the Mail’s clobbering of the Ed Miller Band’s dad. Along with his ferocious attempts to destory the education system, it all rather marks him out as a bit of a ****.

I don’t think you’d see posts on here if it wasn’t a British rider. Really like that cycling news piece – hoping it’s something innocuous, and there’s a big old investigation into how it got leaked…

… as there is still a big debate on what the actual cause of the problem is!

Have a shufty at this if you’re not sure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_09_13_ipccsummary.pdf

I’d go along with cover em up, maybe put them in someone else’s garage for the day (but then, moving all of them at the same time will really show a passer-by how many og the thing’s you’ve got!). Do you know anyone with a big van you can borrow? If you’re in the house for the duration, maybe chuck at least some of them in there?

Well, as long as we all acknowledge that there IS a problem – that’s a start, right? :)

Badger 1 corsa 0 – hit one driving home late, little feller tore through the fuel lines, £200 to fix plus forty quid in the tank gone to waste.

They’re like little black and white tanks.

That is what Derren Brown would call a c***’s trick. :(

Excellent, today I’ll be able to go out and enjoy riding my bicycle. Oh hang on, I did that yesterday, when Bad Pat was apparently my boss and before Good Cookson was my new boss. A bit of perspective please.

Aaa, blow it out – guess what, you and me like different things. I’m not going to follow you round saying the things you like and I don’t are sh!t.

I do hope so but, as has been said already, the sport needs to put the truth out there to draw a line under it & start again. If not, then it’ll be a long, long road back to credibility.

Yeah, for sure – but Cookson’s the man for that job, if anyone is.

So when does Pat do his Oprah interview?

Flippin brilliant – thought it was all going to go wrong after the machinations of this morning. Fresh start, anyone…?

Anyone got a favourite radio station yet? I am loving Vinewood Boulevard at the mo.