Haven’t had an off-the-peg bike since I was about 13. 25 years of mis-matched frankenbikes for me.

Not withstanding the seemingly gung-ho approach, I was more struck by a narked neighbour that was somewhere in the background of the whole thing, while the builder was acting on verbal information from the council that wasn’t being followed up in writing, the neighbour was exploiting just that. I mean one neighbour holding the whole council to ransom with the threat of a judicial review, thats crazy.

I would understand if the guy had just fired ahead having ignored or exploited the planning process, or was playing silly games, but from his side he’d done everything that was expected of him and was acting in good faith. The invisible neighbour just seemed to be using strong arm tactics to heap on as much misery as the could. It appalls me that people have that sense of shadenfreuder (pardon my pidgin german).

Springers are great but they are so full-on that trips to vets are a certainty. See if you can persuade the vet to do a loyalty scheme – like you get in coffee shops – four injuries and ailments and get the fifth one free. My friend had to rush his springer to the vets after it found and ate a whole packet of rat poison. After panic calls to the manufacturer of the poison it turned out a fatal dose for a dog that size is about 25kg.

So an important lesson learned – if you have an infestation of spaniels then poisoning them just isn’t cost effective, better to set traps.

Landlord has been contacted

Just send him a link to this thread!

Dig a hole in you garden, or lift some floorboards, lay the carpet over it and wait for something hilarious to happen. Keep a camcorder handy

Did you hear the one about DJGlover being caught **** by his mum? It was so embarrassing, he wasn’t expecting her to wake up.

Ba-dum tishhhh

If they are a reasonable size see if there are any local charities/ recycling initiatives like Spuce[/url] here in Glasgow. There are places that can run an edging round small sections of carpet to make rugs too.

I grew up in St Helens – snow of any significance – especially snow that was still lying after 11am – was something I only ever saw on the news. 1991 was my first chance to experience proper deep stuff.

At this point what I should do is chastise you for darkening this forum with a question when you could very readily look the answer up on google.

Questions lead to conversations. And thats not what we are here for dammit. It distracts from the flashy blinky adverts.

Do you have professional indemnity?

Crosse-and-Blackwell-Your-Heart Nutritious Soup Bra

My local M&S ‘Simply Food’ filling station has Imodium in the sweet racks.

Aye people watch for any number of reasons – it might be there are more than one listing of the thing you are looking for and you want to keep tabs on them all, but you might bid and win on one item before the other auctions close.

I do it to gauge the value and level of interest in things I might want to sell, or might want to buy at a later date. With some things I’ve bought I’ve been in no hurry, so I’m happy to watch auctions for months on end before bidding on one that is getting little interest. I bought a £10k piece of woodworking machinery for £600 that way, but waited months and months for the right one to come up, watching hundreds of auction go by selling at 4 -10 times the price.

from the items I’ve sold I’d say i’d usually expect one bidder for every 20 watchers, but whos to say anyone who bids was a watcher.

I guess the question is where you source your hydrogen from, if you are splitting water to get your hydrogen then the release of water back into the water cycle shouldn’t make all that much difference in the grand scale of things. But the vested interest might be to source your hydrogen elsewhere.

With carbon being the demon du jour theres a lot of talk of extract hydrogen from fossil fuels (which are hydrocarbons), capturing the carbon and sticking it back underground. But just as the issue of emission of CO2 gets confused because people confuse the natural cycling of carbon with the introduction new carbon into the atmosphere, introducing ‘new’ water into the atmosphere potentially raises the same problems, its just that at present its an easy sell to suggest that an emission is ‘only’ water.

CO2 used to only be CO2.

I think its a non-advance. We’re too eager to be sold something that saves us having to make any real changes, we’re all ears for anything that allows us to just get on doing the same old thing without the guilt. Thats why Top Gear are so unquestioningly sold on it, because they are so deeply sold on all the fantasies of motoring. Its us, not fuel that needs to change.

Edit – I typed that too slowly. nmmmmm boosze

By comparison the Brompton is very much inhouse manufactured and very idiosyncratic – which means it does its specific job very well but the ideosyncracy makes it trick to play around with as other stuff doesn’t really fit. The Airnimal is the opposite – all the bits that bolt to the frame are bog standard, they are just arranged in an unusual manner. The forks, brakes, gears, shocks, wheel, tyres. seatpost, stem, bars etc are all common or garden, giving lots of choppy-changey upgrade potential.

My brother has the black Rhino. Very good fun, with road tyres on its also one of the most comfortable ways you can put in a lot of miles.

Not a fast folding / commute bike though – a really compact fold can takes ages – and is more of a dismantle than a fold.

HLO 1J0 959 753 AG (thats my key)

Makes note, orders key and starts stalking Carlos’ post for clues about where he might park his car.

Is it a nice car?

And a hose-clean pinstripe suit

Southside has some very attractive pockets – seek out the ‘bungo’ – the leafy streets around Moray Place/Regent Park Square/ Queens Sq / Marywood Square. If you are buying theres a few places available including one of the Greek Thompson houses

I’m just about to leave glasgow, so my garden flat there is coming up for rent, poss a bit small if you have an ankle biter on the way. But it has a garden and a secure shed for bikes. So come on, what are your priorities here! Its going to be be ages before he/she/it is running around fast enough to bump into anything and by the time they are you can tether them in the garden – Search for ‘Strathbungo’ on Gumtree and you’ll find it. That said its the Strathbungo Convervation area thats attractive, the strathbungo district is larger and takes in a lot of what people more commonly know as Govanhill. Govanhill is a bit Ghetto in places but close to the park is nice – Queens Drive, Niddrie Sq, Queen Mary Ave

On the opposite corner of Queens Park check out Camphill Avenue and Mansionhouse Road. Some of the flats there have astounding views that you can’t appreciate from streetlevel, but from the top floors you can see for miles. Bell Street has a charm to although the parking there is chaotic.

From there wander towards Millbrae Crescent its nice around there too – another bit of your Greek Thomspon

Moving out of town Newlands – Newton Mearns along the left hand side of the A77 gets more and more suburban and spacious

Lots of very bespoke parts on a brompton which limits how you can chop and change components – you’ll be particularly limited for tyre choices.

My sister in law has ridden parts of Mabie on a Birdy folder.

Theres not – but now when you post you are taken to your post at the bottom of the thread, rather than jumping back to the forum list. And you can edit it there. The chance to edit it expires after a while though

If your landlord hasn’t fitted them then the chances are they’ve missed other duties as well – you should have a gas safety certificate from them and that should be tested and updated annually

Jumping the gun massively – RA is routinely tested for with any joint complaints, and being tested for it doesn’t mean theres a strong suspicion. I’ve been tested for RA two or three times a year for the past decade, not because its likely but because I’ve been getting other tests done for a dodgy joint so they test for RA at the same time, because they can, because its routine to do so, and because frankly they are running out of ideas!

yes again

She has extra little arms and legs poking out of her mimsy! No way is that a fair fight!

The best car is the devil you know. If you are buying a used car you can only guess at how its been treated and why the owner wants to sell it.

If the one you’ve got works and does what you need it to, look after it and keep it.

My ex boss gave his old passat to one of his staff, as he thought it was on its last legs and the guy needed a run around car as a stop gap. Ten years later the passat was still getting him to work everyday.

Shredders work to the extent that someone can’t use things like your utility bills as ID – for instance to hire goods or get items on credit, but anyone with patience could piece together the account no and address on a statement. If you’ve shredded a who bunch of docs then piecing together some information from all of them isn’t going to take long as the address and account no will keep recurring.

I rip out anything with an account no on it and destroy it totally and usually do the same with addresses. When its time to empty the shredder I’l usually mix up and split the stuff and don’t put it all in one bin bag, or even out for one collection

The retailer needs a slap round the head, so you can at least do that to start with – if they are not sending goods to the cardholders address they should at least be sending paperwork to cardholders address. When I need large orders sent to site most of my suppliers, unless I have a credit account with them won’t deliver unless I present myself in person with my card in advance, or arrange to pay on delivery. The others always send the invoice to my address and the goods to site

If the retailer who was being scammed doesn’t do that, tell us who they are are we can all order free stuff. Its not Screwfix is it? I’ve had a go at them for sending goods to site but putting the invoice in the box rather then posting it.

Is this Heston Blumenthal? I thought the nation submitted flavours and the best ones were made into a crisp?

He entered and he won. Got his picture in the local paper and everything. His mum will be proud.

just click on it and I’ll give you a 20 second-ish blast

A sort of Jailer, where the inmate trades/buys perks for freedom.

Will esselgruntfuttock be along in a minute to say the same thing? he he

For me I’m self employed rather than in a job. And I’ve got a pretty broad practice. There is very little repetition with lots of variation is the scale, nature and the pace of jobs. Theres also a lot of satisfaction in completing things, partly because you can step back and say ‘I did that’, but also once a job is done its done, issue an invoice and forget about it.

I mean once or twice is careless, but how the hell did you manage to staple yourself sixteen times

Feel a bit woosie after counting them

Its certainly a warning to me to be a lot more careful with the office stapler!

do you see what I did there 🙂

adverts don’t really tell you what it is they’re meant to do

They don’t because they can’t. All the supposed health benefits associated with ‘friendly bacteria’, and antioxidants and other guff are disseminated by paid patsies in the press. Thats because if you have a totally unproven point to make you can write about it at will as ‘news’ or ‘fact’ but you can’t make unfounded claims on labels or adverts.

So you place adverts in the media that make hazy claims about how you can overcome a general sense ‘blah’ and non-specific ‘hurumph’ with a product, or use even more vague claims like “excellent source of antioxidants” without saying what antioxidant might do.

Then you get the press to talk about specific, but un-demonstrated, benefits of your product in the column inches around the advert, or in the ‘news’ between the adbreaks.

So if an advert or a label doesn’t make a very specific claim then the product doesn’t really do anything measurable at all.

The only exception is cosmetics, where you seem to be at liberty to make any claim about a product on the basis that if a cosmetic could actually achieve any active effect, it wouldn’t be a cosmetic but a pharmacutical.

Be warned that whatever advice you give moments before a stack will haunt you in every future social gathering. Somewhere in the crowd at some wedding reception you’ll here ‘….and then he said ‘feather your brakes’….’

Texan bars were bizarre – tough stretchy goo centre ( don’t think you could call it toffee these days) which when it stretched would make all the chocolate crack and fall of, becoming the adhesive that would stick you thighs to the scorching hot vinyl back seat of a mark 3 cortina