@perchypanther is that a huge drip tray under that Aston?

“Sir, your shooting brake is soiling my gravel driveway”

Edit: Meanwhile a young Donald Trump looks on, thinking ‘that’d look pretty good in gold’

An interesting documentary here :-D

Or based on Tory questions from PMQs today, the Daily Mail is likely to go with:
– Defund the BBC
– Washing machines microplastics outrage
– Isn’t Stoke great!

Conservatives: The ‘not-a-party’ party Party.

ianpv
Full Member
After I had cancer in 2015 I was in a really bad way – was down to around 61kg (at my fittest I was 69kg). When I got the all clear I was obviously in terrible shape – think my ftp was around 155w (had been around 315 before I got sick). I got back into it by going on a bike tour around southern Spain with two non cycling friends. Riding 3-4 hours a day, eating and drinking more than was advisable and having a laugh. After 10 days or so of that the body was getting used to a bit of work again. Although I’ve never got back to the level I had I managed the highland trail 550 and a few other things since then, and even done a won a couple of local xc races. Just try and forget about how crap you are and enjoy the process of riding a bike. And if you don’t enjoy it any more, then don’t bother – life’s too short.

Did anyone else read that as Lance Armstrong talking to Peter LaFleur? :-D
(Brilliant recovery by the way!)

walowiz

Enough to not be fazed by some hills and have a good few hours out enjoying my mtb.

Maybe it is enough to recalibrate, go with the flow, get outside, cross train and get into a routine. And take it slowly. And remove all faffing 🙂

Don’t forget this!

There’s loads of talk here about training, sessions, schedules etc. I may be wrong but I think you may have forgotten that it’s supposed to be fun. What do you enjoy? Go do what you did before, but on shorter routes, in nice weather, without a watch or hrm, or anything to benchmark yourself and just enjoy the sensations of moving your body.

When you remember the fun, you’re likely to remember the motivation.

Some staggeringly good efforts here – nicely done! What do you do with them all when they’re built? Is the fun in the building process, or do you have displays or hang them from the bedroom ceiling?!

@sirromj these are brilliant lego storage boxes – they’re wide and shallow for good visibility and easy reach for small hands, and fit under a bed or sofa for storage: https://www.dunelm.com/product/42l-spacemaster-plastic-storage-box-1000009443?defaultSkuId=30045917

We have a few and vaguely split the lego into plates, bricks and random for easier finding.

A dinosaur’s vaccine passport

(It wasn’t really a meteor that caused their extinction)

Only £335 Rapha tax over the standard one. Bargain.

I’m going to put a Rapha sticker on my aeropress and put it on the classifieds for £350.

Roku box here – cheap, cheerful, effective.

Imagine the flaming if someone did this on the classifieds here :-D

Plastic bags – fossils of ancient oil-based life forms?

Thanks all. We’re going with a Taskmaster style challenge and a bit of time outside in the fresh air.

Something for everyone!

Presumably this is so you can connect remotely and work from home? If the alternative is going into the office, what would you prefer?

Strip poker.

Someone else suggested Directors’ Naked Attraction

Some great ideas here – thanks. Taskmaster/ Pictionary/ making something are definite contenders.

‘Will it float’ sounds bizarre and brilliant

Someone’s doing a quiz already (or I’d try to bung you some cash and beg you to send over a copy!)

I’m sensing a theme emerging :-D

Though I like the Cadbury’s Heroes idea. Might see if I can get some Christmas buckets to put under desks

This got petty and nasty for a while.

if someone can’t come up with a convincing counter-argument as why Starmer shouldn’t be focusing more on the deeply nasty and pointless Nationality and Borders Bill, which went through parliament yesterday, then that has nothing to do with debating skills.

As for ^this, I think Keir is playing it right. Yes, this Bill is awful and needs to be effectively opposed, but to prioritise that right now means going up against a strong and unified government (on this Bill).

If Keir can use trust, integrity and Christmas parties as a lever so confidence is undermined, Tories are rebelling, the PM is under threat and the Tory majority can’t be relied on, that’s a much more effective way of opposing any other legislation, shirley?

Ahem. I’ll just leave this here :-D

molgrips
Full Member
Have you any plans to take it all apart yet?

**** no. I’m done with that. There’s a chance I may swap wheels or something like that, or smarten up the interior, but I’m not getting involved again. Its a curse. You listen for every tiny noise, and you want to do everything because it’s there and you decide it needs doing. And given I made a few mistakes I start to worry if the noises are because of a mistake I’ve made. It’s frankly awful, and it leads to me doing stuff to the car the day before a holiday which is insanity. So no.

Posted 4 months ago

Given that it’s in Australia with a midnight kickoff here I’d imagine that the live viewing figures might barely make it into 3 figures…

I did the evening round 5 days a week for a year and loved/ hated it largely depending on what the weather was like and what I was missing out on. Used to enjoy the Kitkat from Mr Weekes and the Penguin from another house every couple of days though.

A great life lesson too – one house always had SCAN written next to it on the delivery list. I wondered what it meant but never asked and reliably delivered their paper. One day about 6 months in the shop owner did a count and I had one paper too many. He thought I was pinching a paper but I showed him that the paper count matched the list count.

Turned out that SCAN meant Subscription Cancelled and they’d had a free paper for months :-D

Almost everyone who has ever been in a Wes Anderson movie :-)

My place is doing similar from Jan. Just be aware of potential impacts on your pension – salary sacrifices can reduce the overall salary calculation taken into account for contributions (if Defined Contribution)/ career average earnings (if Defined Benefit). Get some advice!

I can’t stand Yvette Cooper, more Blairite than Blair and probably more Tory than some Tories.

So probably slap bang in the middle of where much of the voting public are.

This!

In the bell curve of the UK electorate the mode is probably just left of 5 (if extreme left is 0 and extreme right is 10) and 80% of the electorate are probably between 4 and 6.

The self-selecting Labour membership is being pulled towards 3, where the ideological purity is better, but the number of voters is vanishingly small.

What’s better, a hard left protest group or a centre-left government?

Turns out that our combi boiler can’t both do hot water and heating at the same time

AFAIK non can, they have a diverter valve that switches the flow over to the secondary heat exchanger when there is HW demand.

So it seems! So the first thing, before anything else, is check that your hot water isn’t permanently on.

We think we’ve just fixed this. Is it a combi boiler? Have you got a hot water tank? Turns out that our combi boiler can’t both do hot water and heating at the same time – our hot water was really hot and the upstairs rads were good, but downstairs rads were mostly cold.

We reset the hot water to just do mornings and evenings and the rads are all toast warm now.

@squirrelking – nice! Thanks

My own first world problem is that the bars above my gas hob end too far apart for the coffee pot to sit safely so I have to hold it and burn my fingers. I’ve always used boiling water so it only takes a few seconds but has anyone found or rigged up some sort of over-hob pot stand?

Apparently someone complained to the campsite in Southwold that the nearby light house was illuminating their tent at 15 second intervals throughout the night. I really, really hope that this is true.

I stayed in a beachfront villa (shack) in a beautiful hotel right on the beach and surrounded by coconut palms. Looking on Tripadvisor later, someone had given a 1* review, saying that they were kept awake by the noise of the waves.

For a slightly different perspective, have you heard of Grayce? They take on graduates as devs or change people and offer them on a placement basis to businesses with a view to permanent roles later. I nearly used one of their grads and was really impressed, but went a different way in the end.

It’s a really good model and one I wish I had known about before!

That sounds fun! Can I bring MArk Rober to help?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0_U1FHwACk

I seriously can’t stand the human race much more.
Is it my middle age, or is society broken and getting worse by the day?

Can you help me regain some perspective?

For balance, you also saw:
The vast majority of drivers driving sensibly and carefully
Most people parking considerately
Most people sitting quietly in the cinema (though rustling sweets has been a thing forever – maybe need to adjust your expectations!)
Most drivers being reasonably considerate to cyclists
Have to admit I haven’t seen people on here boosting their eBikes. Suggest that most people are not.
… but you may not have noticed those as humans are conditioned by evolution to see fear, danger and anger rather than ‘oh ok, everything’s fine’. This is reinforced by the media (when was the last time you saw a headline saying ‘life expectancy has increased again’ or ‘conservation efforts for rhinos, tigers and pandas are going really well’?) and we condition ourselves to seek out the things that we see as a threat.

There’s loads of great stuff out there. We need to find better ways of conditioning ourselves to see it.

Lend us your crystal ball…

This! Someone up ^ there gets by on ~£13k per year, the recent nonsense articles talk about £31k for a ‘comfortable’ lifestyle.

For people like kennyp who retired in early 50s – are you living on savings and investments now, before your pension kicks in? Did you pick a £number you could afford to live on and divide by the number of years you think you’re likely to live?!

The transfer to private fund makes perfect sense btw! Hadn’t heard that before.

I’m loving reading your stories. I’m 42 so a few years off yet but I’m interested in what planning and prep you did, especially if you retired at 50-55.

I have ~15 years left on a mortgage but can overpay, 2 kids @10 and 12 and a few investments and pensions here and there. What are the big decisions you made? What went well for you and what would you have done differently?

thanks!

It feels like it’s straying a bit into #firstworldproblems :-D

If this is genuinely what you’re trying to solve:

the problem is figuring out those days away with my other bike.

Can you not just plan your ride a week in advance, hire a van for the day for your bike and leave your other half and kids with the ability to go out and about in her (clean and unmolested) cactus while you go galluvanting on your bike?

Everyone wins.

When we moved house I thought I’d be helpful to the buyers and leave the paint tins for the wall paints in case they needed to touch up etc. I left them in the corner of the garage (on the perfectly painted garage floor)

The day before we left my 6 year old secretly piled the tins into a pyramid, and then left to ‘help’ with packing. At some point overnight the top tin fell off his pyramid, bounced on the floor and vomited Oxford Blue all over the garage.

That was a nice welcome for the new buyers :-D

I was in this position a few years ago (and also should have done it sooner!)

I trawled round a few shops but felt like a rabbit in the headlights so called a diamond merchant in Hatton Garden and arranged a visit (can’t remember the shop name but the guy was called Vivek). We set a budget and he went to a safe and brought out some bags of diamonds and emptied them onto a table. He explained the differences and I picked one.

Setting it into a ring was included in the price – I chose platinum band that could be resized later. Did the deal, picked it up a couple of weeks later and job done.

It was an amazing process, and the ring itself was valued for insurance at double what I paid for it. Highly recommended!

How many kids and when? Since it’s scouts can they work together to make something as a team? Could easily do a pallet Christmas tree in that time – bit of cutting, bit of nailing, bit of decorating, job done.

I do 140 miles round trip roughly once a week and occasionally stay over. It’s single-carriageway a-road for half and dial carriageway for the other half.

tbh I quite enjoy the morning drive in. But I hate the drive home with a passion, especially when I’m driving into the setting sun or through the dark and stuck behind a wagon.

Doing it more than once/ twice a week would leave me questioning my life choices.