continuing…. For paypal, banks and all the rest you wouldn’t be able to change addresses with them via email, especially not an autoreply. you’ll need to login to those accounts and change them there. However if you do what I’ve described then you don’t need to do that until the next time you want to use that service

If you are using an email client, rather than webmail, you can set things up so that you have two inboxes, one for your new address, one for the old. Tell everyone you can think of to use the new address.

Then set thing up so you can only send with the new address. So even if people are using your old address you are replying with the new one. Create a signature with the new address reminder in it too, to hammer the point home if needed.

Keep the old address running until you are happy that nobody important has slipped through the net, probably about a year or so.

It would seeming depend entirely on whether write for the telegraph or not.

Words only mean what you mean when you say them.

But in answer to the original question… I’m inclined to think: An Idiot in the company of racists.

I’ve got a set of disk hubbed wheels with Open Pro rims that I run with road tyres for road duties on my Inbred, can’t decide it look cool or massively mistaken.

Works very well. No reason not to run them with CX tyres that I can see, might try it sometime for a laugh.

The trick, if you intend the switch back and forth between the 26″ and 700c sets frequently is to either have matching hubs or get a set of shims for rotors. The latter aren’t too easy to source, mine came from Germany and I’ve forgotten who makes them. (and thats only a solution for 6-bolt rotors)

Don’t pedal
Don’t brake
Don’t steer

So sitting in a cafe is indeed the way to do it

did mine today. And have quite an exciting bill to pay. guess I chose the wrong month to up sticks and move house, find 2 months deposit and a whole house worth of furniture and white goods. Feb is going to be a but frugal.

If its going in the hold make sure you protect it. Speaking as someone who has arrived at his destination with his belongings soaked, sticky, smelly and full of shards of broken glass.

remember that whisky is a major export, you’re probably not taking them something that won’t be readily available in the shops where you are going.

You need to do it from itunes rather than from the ipod, which I guess is what you’re doing. However maybe the music you have has DRM which is preventing it being copied.

You could burn audio cds or DVDs and your friend could re-rip them from those if something is preventing you burning the original files. DRM will allow a limited quantity of audio disks to be made.

so if you have pet bats, take them with you. Or take a doggy bag (batty bag?) back home.

car boot perhaps?

You’d be surprised at what does sell on ebay, even broken stuff. If you can describe the faults well, who knows. I seem to have done better at times selling faulty stuff than as-new stuff.

I sold a bunch of sodium lights that were surplus to requirements, three that were brand new and boxed and one that I’d opened and played about with, and in the process lost some of the screws and fixings.

People seem to respond to a longer and more detailed description, and as a result the one with bits missing ended up selling for quite a bit more than the brand new ones.

You could maybe take all your faulty electrical stuff and sell it as one job lot.

Instruction manuals I’d be less sure about – does anyone read them these days? I think in most cases you can download info from manufacturers websites these days. But do searches for the manuals on ebay and see if there is any trade going on.

I think the trick for a proper clear out is to set aside a decent amount of time and do it all in a oner. Get everything together, photograph it well, describe it well and get them all up at the same time. Use a pair of scales and make sure you give reasonable postage prices for items, horde boxes and newspapers so you are ready to pack and send stuff. It wasn’t just ‘useful’ stuff I sold when I had my clear out, but odd little bits of ornament and curious, stuff that either hadn’t come out the cupboard for a long time or had been sitting on a shelf for so long that I’d stopped noticing it. Its also exactly the kind of thing you pick up in a junk shop and buy because its pretty or amusing, and ebayers will buy it for the same reason. The odd thing is you can sell that stuff, and the next day you’re not even aware that its gone.

Some stuff won’t sell, some will and one or two things might make a few bob. It doesn’t matter whether individual items sell for a lot, sell a lot of stuff for a few bob adds up to a lot of bobs. But you get all those bobs for one session of listing items and one trip to the post office. Its actually quite good fun, and it can be quite amusing what sells and to who.

Then use all those accumulated bobs in your paypal account to go bargain hunting for something a bit more special. You can be quite frivolous then because whatever you buy you’re effectively getting it for free.

I should add…. the midges are to be celebrated really. Without them the Highlands would be like the Lake District.

Midge season is roughly June – September. Thats not to say that there are midges everywhere, all day, day after day. Midges are a problem mainly when/where its cal, still and damp. So when its sunny or breezy they’re not much of a problem. Its one of the reasons to head up into the hills, as its always too windy for them up there. Similarly on the coast the breeze is enough to give you some peace.

Sheltered, still, woody, damp areas are where you’ll suffer most with them.

The trick is in not being too rigid with your plans, if you go somewhere and its midgy, change your plans and go somewhere else.

Its also a question of how much midges actually bother you, i don’t really react much to bites, so apart from the annoyance of having them buzz around, some faint red dots are all if get from bites. Some people seem to be more desirable to midges and also seem to react more to the bites. My mum can smother herself head to toe in repellant and the midges will still ignore everyone else and bite her eyelids.

I took it up around 1999, perversely perhaps as physio for a dodgy knee, which was swollen and not straightening properly and as a result of the limp some of the muscles around the knee were wasting away. I built a bike out of bits from my brothers loft – a mix of hi-ten lumpen steel, thumbies, full five finger plastic brake levers and a mismash of misaligned drivetrain and other fun, including a chainset with two different brands of crank and biopace rings.

Took it to the lakes with my brother and did a lap of Skiddaw, had a riot on the way up, then rattled my eyeballs out on the way down. Coasting back into Keswick I discovered the wonder that is the autumn-end-of-season-bike-shop-sale and bought a nice plush pair of Bombers with still rattling hands that i could hardly hold a pen with to sign my name. I figured that if I’m going to do this properly it would be nice to see and feel what I’m doing.

Of course the bombers wouldn’t fit the frame, so I had to buy a frame (which I still run as my about town bike), and then of course non of the components on my rat bike fitted the new frame and within two days I was a fully fledged bike tart.

Or try this place
Hamish Macbeth[/url]

I worked on a film at Ardkinglas House recently, very very nice, and I know you can stay there, nice people that run the place too. Home ,apparently, to the tallest tree in Europe. Not a castle, but has castle stylings. Its not as old as it first seems, its actually from from the early 1900s, so its a bit more homely and comfortable than you’d expect. The detailing in the place is astounding.
ardkinglas

Its near Inveraray so you’ve got Ardgarten to the south for straightford, if hilly cycling.

I clicked around the site – if you go up a level you’ll find a whole host of switches to use with the player

although at the bottom of the description it says ‘sorry switches not included’ which is a bit baffling

how about this

I wonder what branded merchandise there is for people who didn’t survive the Bush Administration.

someone with a time machine

its the final countdown[/url]

As mentioned with a rescue dog the dogs history is going to matter more than the breed. A good rescue centre should match you with the dog and they should also be prepared / expecting to take the dog back if things aren’t working out, its nice to think that the dog has been ‘rescued’ but its as likely that they’ve been handed in by owners who can’t cope with them. Thats no reason not to do it though, treat it like a project – you’ll get back what you put it. If you’ve never owned a dog then the trick would be to get some good books on dog training/ownership, look for ones that deal with correcting behaviour and training older dogs, rather than ones that only deal with training a puppy from scratch.

Perhaps think more about dogs that need rescuing too, retired greyhounds need homes and are easier to live with than you’d think, contrary to what you’d imagine they are lazy arses who spend most of their time asleep.

Estrogen! So white fillings could impair my map reading abilities?

The Sanity Trowels

I doubt the dessert industry is in any trouble though.

There would be no point it taking ‘gullible’ out of the dictionary, because gullible people wouldn’t look, they’d just take your word for it.

However, if you were to remove ‘Sceptical’ from the dictionary…….

sloth-tastic

Look for something that will turn into a good yarn – ask him what the naughtiest thing he ever did was – or the most trouble he ever got into. Could be quite funny, but it can reveal a lot about how things used to work too.

When my granddad was a kid he used to have a job cleaning out and lighting the fryers in the local chippy before he went to school, back when the fryers were coal/wood fired. Anyway, he was arsing about and inadvertently burned the chipshop down to the ground.

The whole thing ended up going to court, the chippy wasn’t insured (and I guess in those days you wouldn’t expect it to be) and my great grandmother was deemed to be liable for her sons actions, and of course she wouldn’t have had public liability insurance, so to compensate the chipshop owner she was sentenced to cook the guy his supper for the rest of his life.

If you are doing recordings you’ll find that its worth doing a few of them over a period of time, partly to get him comfortable with being recorded, but also stories are better than answers to questions, so its worth revising anecdotes as they’ll be likely to told better second time round, but you might also find new tangents and diversions when you go over old ground. You want to arrive at a point where you hardly say anything and the stories tell themselves.