just in the interests of balance sky had harriet harman on the other night for her tuppence worth about what was wrong with the nhs. setting of targets really nothing to do with them and if it was they were on holiday at the time and we should be really, really sure that it wasn’t their responsibility even if it was them in power and making the changes. it’s like the pair of them were stamped out of the same mould, a pair of hunts if you will

for the kids or you? you could think about going from dalginross down to callander via ari then back up via glen ample, then a road cycle back to comrie

i have a swedish army bike that i use when i’m visiting the family. at the end of the cold war the army pulled out and left loads of them on the island. great for the flat but you wouldn’t want to be going uphill for any distance.

what’s the opposite of (dad)fail in interwebland? daughter wins?whatever it is 1shed your daughter has done it and you may now bask in your proud dad moment. congrats

not because of how it’s made but what it’s made from

but if i was to do such a thing, and now you’ve mentioned it, i might, it’d cost substantially more than the above link which should give you more than enough clues re method and material!

my own wee google would suggest there’s a market for such things tho as always it’s as much about marketing as market. pricing’s always tricky but you’re never going to be as cheap as someone who outsources.

so far i’ve never been asked to make any form of blanket for what it’s worth…

you could always google ‘handmade baby blankets’ where there are many people making just that short of thing. that said you can, as you surely must be at this stage now, laugh at how wide a definition ‘handmade’ is.

however, here’s one that should be right up your/her street for starters
http://www.beadsmoorewoventextiles.co.uk/baby-blankets.html

is she dyeing yet? something to think about? (good fun but stinky!)

skipping briefly on….

how are you ending up in that empty godforsaken place?

the only place i know of nearby is the hotel in kilmartin. i have eaten in it (years ago) but never stayed there but when i’ve been by it, it’s always been busy

arguably not the best and not arty as such, but definitely my favourite piece of critical theory bollocks
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html

i would also submit the disumbrationist school. surely there are some people on stw who could give this a good shout…
http://reverent.org/bad_painting_contest.html

you mean like this?

My work explores the relationship between Bauhausian sensibilities and life as performance.

With influences as diverse as Kafka and Buckminster Fuller, new insights are synthesised from both orderly and random narratives.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by the theoretical limits of the universe. What starts out as undefined soon becomes corroded into a hegemony of power, leaving only a sense of failing and the prospect of a new beginning.

As subtle replicas become transformed through emergent and personal practice, the viewer is left with a new agenda of the inaccuracies of our world.

http://www.artybollocks.com/

nice…

i hear rabobank are sending a team…

so phil can’t figure out where the drugs come from…

we could always speculate. take one thom weisel for example. thom weisel the cycling fan who was behind subaru-montgomery, the team that would eventually become us postal. same thom weisel that assisted usa cycling in its time of difficulty.

surely you ask this couldn’t be the same thom weisel of montgomery securities, the same montgomery securites that funded a certain biotech company (to great profit) back in the eighties. what were they called? oh, that’s right – amgen. and they made what? that would be epo.

but would then be the same amgen who would be facing massive fines for its unethical pratices with regard to cancer patients and epo. the sort of stuff you can read about in (fairly long winded and a bit dull) fashion in kathleen sharp’s book blood medicine. but we wouldn’t want to cloud the issue of routine and institutional exploitation of thousands of ill people with the fact that some people’s viewing enjoyment of a bike race was spoiled because some blokes enjoyed the benefits of corporate sponsorship.

not that i’d ever suggest that just because someone has links with the company who makes the drug they were taking would ever do such a thing. because the likes of thr uci wouldn’t be up for that. no, because, say, if you were hein verbruggen and you had a team sponsor or backer doing something like handling your investments, someone who knew their way around such things, someone like thom weisel for example. you wouldn#t want to be doing that cos it would look like a conflict of interest or something.

but that would be a red herring because the issue at hand is that once the armstrong cancer (sic) is excised from cycling, sport and hopefully exiled into space then all cycling fans can rest easy and get down to the business of pretending they understand all that physiology and biochemistry stuff and watching the wonderful new era of clean cycling unfurl into 2013.

and it is a clean world of cycling and things really have changed, when a break has been made between what’s happening now and the bad old days of epo. me, i can’t wait for the start of the racing, the classics, the tour of california, oops, that should read the amgen tour of california. wait a minute tho…

ah yes, the joy of agricultural vehicles. not only do i still do this but, having that joyful triad of being fat, unfit and old, am doing it more now than ever

another +1 for FIP

i’ve also a growing liking for sveriges radio

respect to euge for the estonian. those finno-ugrics are beyond me!

i think spanish is a good choice. if learnt well it makes it a whole lot easier to learn the other romance languages and, if you’re lucky. will elad you eventually to romanian which altho a bit niche, is rather lovely.

you should be surprised. i can’t go into detail for obvious reasons but i was at a very, very serious crime at the weekend and the cid didn’t even turn up far less do the interviews which they still haven’t done.

perhaps the police among us could explain if this is normal?

i really, really needed some samphire and the shop said it was out of stock, like so much it’s ‘out of season’ blah blah blah

nope, this doesn’t look dangerous at all!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aVuu0-q8dQ&feature=related

that wikipedia article is brilliant. joiners fixing the boards while the race was on!? were people just a bit more mental in the olden days?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_track_racing

i’m still up for a bit of a race but after a year of near constant injuries and illnesses this year was back about getting back into it. but, and altho i’m not back to proper fitness, i found myself strangely unbothered. there’s going to be more of these young guys quicker than me just because i’m getting old!

what i have got this year which i’d kind of lost before all the shenanigans is a real feel for being out on the bike and where it is i am. rarely now, i’ll travel any distant to go out on the bike. i muich prefer to go from the door. i stop. i take notice of the wildlife, look at the environment. i’ve taken a picture or two. i record soundfiles. i’ve got a really good ‘training’ diary.

i have, more or less, taken the advice of those training manuals for cyclists past their sell by date and learned it’s good to rest. even better when the weather’s crap and ms swiss asks me what i’m about i’m quite happy to say that i’m just off for a burl to keep the legs turning.

last week i stopped at a really interesting wee piece of archaeology that i must’ve cycled by countless times when i’ve had my head down. met a guy who was doing a bit of work around it and had a splendid wee blether.

coincidentally i’m doing loads more miles so you never know maybe next year i’ll do a race or two. but only if it fits around everything else!

richard holmes wrote a fine biography of him a while back. worth a read.

not pike surely…..?

ah, the british and their funny eating habits. just for you (it’s in swedish but you get the gist)
http://www.recept.nu/pelle_johansson/huvudratter/fisk_och_skaldjur/ugnsbakad_hel_gadda/

i don’t do a whole lot of fishing here but if i do it’s fly fishing. as above, it’s well tricky but once you’re into to it, totally absorbing

and why might it be that i go fishing mainly in sweden (other than mrs swiss’s brother having a fishing company). it’d be things like this
http://www.fiskesnack.com/fotoalbum/showimage.php?iid=96919&cid=9 (sadly this is not me)

coincidentally i once had some mates who were done for ‘assault with a cucumber sandwich’ in a very similar incident. charges dropped in the end after a talking too. perhaps had they not been coming from the cricket club it might have been different…

…in a day. laughable.

me and msswiss have been going to islay every year for the past few years and we’ve still not done everything we could. and we’ve not bothered visiting any distilleries

there is only one route. it’s a landrover track and not particularly difficult tho there is one uphill bit that might get the whininess quotient up a bit, might be worth checking if the teahouse is open if you’re planning a breather. not sure the parrot place will be open this time of year. beyond that there’s nothing there at all. it’s brilliant. totally go and if the dog is there remember he’ll expect you to open the gates….

muddyground, you’ve missed out the thieving feckers…

no worries. pm on its way. a metric shitload of string you say? with me it’s wool. i share your pain….

+1 for what muddyground said

stalls are variable experiences and not helped by either people who’ll nick your ideas wholesale or just undercut you because they’ve outsourced their ‘crafts’ to indonesia. i keep trying to persuade mrs swiss to do this last but she gets all hung up about exploitation/handmade ethic etc! but if you can sell at local stalls then, if she can make the stuff, some of the bigger fairs are a possibility. but then you have to be able to ‘discount’ and make a ton of stuff. that of course leads you to shops and their ever so generous ‘we’ll take a minimum of 50% of your asking price’ (and that’s before those cheeky wags who want you to be paying their vat as well.

not that i do any of this stuff – i’ve just been sucked into mrs swiss’s textile empire…

i’ll pm you her email addy – tell your other half to feel free to email her any questions

i will point out (before anyone else might) that the swiss manbag is quite as nature intended and has never been subjected to any sort of voluntary chemical burning…

as i can’t get the url thingy (let alone any of those other doofers) to work i would recommend the reviews for veet for men hair removal gel creme 200ml. much amusement.

moth-tastic!!

all manner of moth spotting related shenanigans (scotland) here
http://www.eastscotland-butterflies.org.uk/mothrecords.html

yes, because the likes of orica are a cornucopia of goodness….

we like the yarn bombing in my house. here’s this for mrs mm to check out…

Massive Crocheted Alligator Playground Pops Up in São Paulo!

no, someone commentating on themself playing football. played for englandshire youth once upon a time. and dundee. apparently.

given the last poster’s moniker then a matter of life and death surely?
i must’ve watched this and world at war for the first time at around the age of eight

or you could go to sweden where not only might you get tbe ar a range of borellia type infections but you might also come across this (possibly not for the squeamish – no pics)
http://www.thelocal.se/33578/20110504/

that would be handy only it’s not like i haven’t used it for other things before and, annoying tho it was, at least the basic functionality was working. as it is after some hours of trying to get round its foibles i’m kind of scuppered it would seem. ho hum. definitely bike now!

nah, that didn’t work neither. not even remotely. thanks tho

okay, a question then. apparently there should be a master page thing. i can see this and, i’m told, if i set my guides on this page it will be applied across my pages to form some sort of template macgubbinry. except it doesn’t. suggestions?