This is why I shop at Farm Foods.
None of this pretentious nonsense.

My mate has just had his house done. New build, painted white throughout. Finish is good but they did do a LOT of prep, which took a few days & made a LOT of mess. House was empty, so no bother with access. Spray went everywhere.
His verdict, be honest, given the prep they did a roller would have given just as good a finish, & probably just as quick. I think for new builds, on a site, it’s probably loads quicker. But for DIY, I’d stick with my roller set up.
It does seem quite the in thing at the moment.

We have used the Dover – Dunkirk sailing a few times. Slightly more miles but the roads seem to be quieter & the driving easier, plus there’s a good stretch before the tolls start. Dunkirk is a grim, grim place though.
I’m with the poster above though in having a stop over. Trying to drive through the night, on either side of the channel, is a grim affair. UK side your at the mercy of incessant overnight lane closeures, to change a freaking light bulb. French side, Northern France is bloody awful. We tried it once but ended up parking up at an Air till morning.

I think I’m ready for one. I have a jacket with patches on the elbows, & I’m wrong side of 50. I’m ready.

We bolstered Birthday & Xmas money to get my lads a basic spec iPad each.
Pound for pound the best money we have spent. They still work as fresh as they did 3 years ago. They had Samsung tablets before that, they went in the bin when the iPads came along. Not looked at Android since, they quickly end up bloated & unsupported in terms of software updates; same with my HTC phones. Apple has its critics but by heck does the stuff just go on working, & working properly.
I’m writing this on an iPhone 6 that still works perfectly.

Transfers to an IBAN number only ?

This is practically a pron thread.
Keep the photos coming. :-)

DPD were no better before Xmas.
Handy tracking app showed it out for delivery by Driver X, with a 30 min window.
30 min window elapses, no parcel.
DPD driver in the street, so I leap from the front door & flag him down.
Yes, its Driver X.
No, he has no parcel.
Show him the phone, shrugs shoulders. No parcels left on the van, must be an error.
Ended up driving across the Midlands to collect the thing.
To be fair, everyone I dealt with from DPD was spot on, had plenty of DPD deliveries before with no issues.
Its just one of those things, not helped by Xmas deadline.

Never any issues with Parcelforce, but why you can just elect to have it delivered to a local sorting office for collection I dont know, it would save them a load of work.
The downside of late has been the queue at the local sorting office, its out the door most days.

I’ve looked at a few physical back-ups but none give me the level of confidence I was hoping for.
So I’m using One Drive & Google Docs.
With Flickr’s 1k file limit coming in I’ve just emptied my Flickr account & put it all on Google.
One-Drive works seemlessly.

For some reason I always overlooked brands like Giant, Trek etc, but the carbon Trek Remedy’s I’ve hired the last few times at BPW have been brilliant. I’d happily buy one.

We bought our eldest a Lenovo core i3, 15” screen, pretty sure it’s 4gb of RAM, 1Tb HD. It plays Minecraft fine, much better than I expected it to. The screen is excellent. He’s moved on from Minecraft now & TBH, he found the PC version just a faff & ended up back on my old Xbox360 mist of the time. He still sits on it now. His latest laptop games are an Airport Sim & a pretty cool Rollercoaster Design program. The latest incarnation of his laptop appears to have a SSD which should speed things up a bit.

It’s light, ok it’s not built like a business machine, but it’s so light compared to my 15” work Dell Precision. It must be 1/3 of the weight.

I can’t believe someone suggested buying a child a 17” laptop, it would take all their strength just to lift the thing let alone haul it to School :-)
I was glad to downsize mine from 17”.
To be fair though, it played Minecraft well with its Nvidia card, i7 chip & 32g of RAM. :-)

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8333494

Is there an age limit on windows needing this certificate ? We sold last year, had no certs for the windows. They had been in for 20 years or so. I remember a question on the sellers information document, regarding the age of the windows, I just ticked “Don’t know” as I didn’t know how old they were.

Best bit about Sydney was the ghost walk & few beers around The Rocks area after.
Uluru was a tourist trap, The Olgas was better. TBH, it’s one of those you tick off, we flew in, Sunset – Sunrise, flew out again.
Cairns was good, chilled out. Look up Reef Teach, a cracking evening with an Irish marine biologist. Plenty of options for heading out to the reef. Don’t bother with Scuba, borrow a wet suit & spend the day snorkelling. The Atherton Table Lands were nice also.
The highlight for me (apart from meeting family), was Brisbane. Loved it there, would of happily stayed. The Gold Coast was awful, The Sunshine Coast much better. Your spoilt for choice.
If I went again I’d go Dubai – Singapore/HK – Sydney. Longer overall but the flight from Dubai to Sydney (in economy…) was just unbearable. Did two stops coming back & it was much better.
The place is enormous.

Just measure the diameter & trawl Ebay.
Your bound to come across something suitable%
Email me the diameter & I’ll see if we have anything at work.

Wouldn’t be without mine now. It goes anywhere I do.
I don’t buy many for £5-£6.
Kindle unlimited is pretty good.

It was ok.
Can’t say much more than that…

I have the Thule Xpress one.
It is indeed, on & off in seconds, the only contact with the car is on the tow ball. It can be locked in place also. It is very well made.
It holds my Puffin without any fuss.
It needs a light board, but I’ll shamefully admit I’ve never used it for the 15 min trip to where I ride. (If I were heading further afield I’d stick it on, but the bike goes in the car then.
For nipping out for a quick blast it’s fine, it lives in the boot all the time.

Thomas Nagy, YouTube Spark, bought the cheapest 14v Lithium battery drill that Amazon do, something like £22. He was full of praise for the thing after trying several times to facilitate its demise.

The Mantarey ones from Debenhams seem to last me very well.

Lezyne for me, same as their pumps, very well made.

First World Problems dot com.

2 kids, small dog.
Yes to having a nice house but a few musings…

Basically, as above regarding putting stuff away. If the place is tidy then cleaning takes a fraction of the time. Constantly putting stuff away is my biggest bugbear. It’s actually easier to put stuff away most of the time.

Keeping the lounge clean & nice is important. As someone said, it’s the sanctuary, somewhere kept nice for relaxing away from the madness. My two leave their rubbish lying around in there at their peril.

Dog…a couple of old towels by the door for wiping paws on. Keep the lawn short, even in winter. If you can, a canopy over the door or even better, a roofed veranda so that you have a dry area outside the door is a bonus. As much as my wife hates it, I put down one of those proper industrial/ commercial threshold matts. It’s a bit larger so shows & boots can be removed & left on it.

A find a good soaking of Fabsil on normal Shorts helps. If it’s monumentaly Monsoonic I do have some cut-off ex-army goretex but the backs are cut too low. But tbh, I’d rather have Lycra when it’s that wet, the cold I don’t mind but sweating / rubbing from nylon et al is not my thing.
[yes, I said the ‘L’ word]

Not my cup of tea but that is bloody lovely.

Or, save yourself a load of hassle & use a split tube with a std rubber valve stem. :-)

The RC303 still rates as one of the best hardtails I’ve owned.

Nothing profound to offer you mate, except loving thoughts, vibes & wishes.
Your in the thoughts of a stranger, many miles away, although I think you did lap me once (quite easily) at an SSUK.
In their hearts they know your there, make that first hug a tighter one.

Ball bearings tapped in to the hex slot on bolts makes them nigh on impossible to get off. Bastardisation is the obvious one. Put Raleigh stickers on.

Happy Birthday mate.
Tell the kids you fancy a puddle splashing session. Get out there & get wet. Warm up with hot choc, harribo & cake.

Giant Toad-in-the-Holes & winter veg.
Use plenty of eggs, as per the BBC good food recipe. Make the mix up a few hours before.
Big old Cumberland sausages, not puny weeny chipoloatas. Chuck the sausages in a pan for 20 mins, pour in the mix & back in for 25 mins.

For veg, chop up a pile of Butternut Squash, Sweet potatoes & Parsnips, toss in a bit of oil, season with salt & pepper & into the oven.

Wash down with a decent ale.
If anyone asks for Leffe, make them wash up.

Perhaps they see it as the last thing they could do to free their loved ones. I know that’s hard to comprehend, but imagine your totally & utterly trapped by a black cloud that shrouds everything. You get no enjoyment from anything, anything. Anthing & everything is hard. You can’t talk about it because you can’t put it in to words. And who would you tell ? You can’t burden your loved ones, your a grown man FFS. When it gets so bad, there is nothing that offers ang hope, just darkness. Walking away will hurt them. Not walking away will hurt them. Trapped by knowing anything you do will hurt them. But it’s seemingly the only thing you can offer them, to release them from you. It’s despair, a desperate, desperate act that feels like the only thing you have left. Slowly but slowly anything that offers hope is switched off, closed off, shut down. Then there’s this thing, this act. You know it will hurt but you imagine the calmness & release that switching off will bring. This becomes the only thing that offers anything. And it grows, day by bad, minute by minute, it grows. Knowing you have this means of release becomes the only thing you focus on. You start to look at how, when, where. Why just doesn’t come in to it any more.

Orange grips..,ladies will point at you & laugh, loudly.

Go for black with the orange collar things & those very same ladies will plead for your phallus.

I’ve just presented her with a sparkly clean oven. (Not a euphemism).
I was going to wrap the oven cleaning kit but the old romantic I am, I thought she’d prefer it this way.

I watched that the other day when it first appeared. Stunning scenery & some brilliantly shot footage. Really enjoyed it.

50 this year.
Org.

Old
Rotund
Grumpy

In work at 6:30. Trying (badly) to look busy at work.
Just treated my team to a greasy sarnie.
24 Crispy Cream’s have also just appeared, with tins of shortbread.

Finish about 12, haircut, pick up one of the Wife’s presents, walk the dog, pick kids up from School, cook tea, drop kids at Scouts, join other Leaders for a few drinks, bed. Done.

Always lifts the spirit when we turn the corner.

You could fit a Bafang kit to pretty much anything with a “normal” bottom bracket…
I think there are some UK distributors now.
A step-through would be the obvious choice.

The Tesco Finest won our terdown.

Just ply them with that M&S red cabbage with apple…my word that was the highlight of my dinner last year. I’d have happily had just that with some stuffing. Turkey is way, way overrated.