25 years old and married-don’t own a house yet and have no kids.

Between us we earn quite abit more than we spend on bills/general living, and excluding my 8k of student loan debt have no debts or savings……starting to save for a deposit on a house after xmas, but with me being self employed I’ll be amazed if we can get a mortgage on house that we’d want to buy before I’m 30 :(

Yes

I’ve not done a PGCE, but did work as an unqualified classroom teacher for 3 years……Like others have said, the first year is the hardest. After that, you’ve already got most of your lesson plans and activities sorted. The good thing, is that you enjoy being in the classroom!

As above, the very cheap Strat copies are a false economy….I’ve seen loads of them just fall apart within a year or so. The Squire and Yamaha budget stuff is pretty decent though, and more than adequate for a good couple of years playing.

I’d steer clear of the ‘Method Books’ as almost all of them are full of at least 50% of useless guff. I’d recommend getting lessons, a decent teacher will make life much easier in the early stages of your playing. (I am slightly biased in saying this though, as I’m a guitar teacher!)

I guess it depends what you want from riding…..I race and want to ride fast…..gears are faster. I will soon be SSing my bike for the winter though, to save wearing parts out……I rode SS and rigid last winter, and really enjoyed it…..no more or less than riding my geared hardtail though. Its all bikes innit!

I’m pretty sure that its under £1.30 at an Asda in Stoke, and has been for quite a while…….

Takamine were very popular about 10-15 years back…..less so nowadays as I see it. I’m not really an ‘acoustic’ player as such-but I’m a fan of Martins myself. Takamine’s always seem a little ‘cold’ when I’ve heard them.

Oldgit: its a toughie imo. I’ve not played that guitar, but Jackson’s are well made and the ones that I’ve played all play very nicely. At that sort of pricepoint its just starting to become worthwhile upgrading the pickups if he really likes the guitar in general. It is gonna cost over £100 to do a worthwhile upgrade though. Is he just into playing metal? Does he study the instrument properly and want to progress in the future? If so, I’d just leave as is and get a different style guitar-he will almost certainly be needing one if he wants to look at other styles/sit down with the guitar!

EDIT: Just seen that this is 10 months old :oops:

Have you tried Elgar’s Cello concerto? simply stunning as is Rodrigo’s guitar concerto. Berg-piano sonata and Lulu spring to mind. Debussy-his first book of piano preludes are amongst my favourite pieces. Stravinsky-Rite of Spring, Petrushka. Steve Reich perhaps? Oh also, some Michael Tippet-try his concerto for double string orchestra and his string quartets.

I caught about 20 minutes of it-simply awful!

+1 for Primus-simply awesome.

Hmmm Keef mentioned these to me today Taz-I was asking him about the possibility of one for a 1×10 race setup!! What is it that you will be using? Or was it a troll that I’ve missed?!

One of my all time favourite albums! I’m listening to ‘Steal This Album’ quite a bit of late-really underated :-)

580mm here…..anything more is just frivolous :-)

I’m off to Ludlow food festival with my new wifey tomorrow :-) Hopefully get a road ride in on Sunday too…..although I’ll probably be eating and drinking Saturdays purchases!

Condolences emma :(

Eating-nowt atm…..I had some nice pasta earlier though!
Drinking-I’m currently on my second glass of Shiraz
Listening-Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich although very strangely Rocketdog I’ve just been listening to Rodrigo’s guitar concerto!

I am freelance peripatetic teacher in schools-both high school and primary-I mainly teach guitar. In the past 3 years I also taught as a part time classroom teacher in a very high achieving high school (teaching music). It really wasn’t for me tbh! Even in a school with very good discipline, you will find that 50% of your time is spent dealing with backchat/’classroom management’. When it was good, it was the best job in the world, but even part time I found that it very easily took over my life in a very negative way. As a previous post has mentioned though, get as much work experience as you can-PGCE’s are pretty hard to get onto atm, and it will give you a flavour of the job, although the pressure (which is very high!) will only become apparent once you are actually employed. I’m back just teaching guitar/other small communtiy projects now and love every minute of my job :-)

Fender Jazz Bass. I keep toying with buying a 5 string Musicman too.

Guitar wise its an Epiphone Casino, PRS Santana SE (knocked a chunk out of that one today :() a 1967 Martin Parlour guitar and a 5 string cigar box guitar! I’ve also got various old electrics and acoustics from when I was younger.

I’ll be there again…..i’ve done the last 3-I finished the 2 hour one in 2010 in around 80th…..I was around 30th in February this year…..I should have the win sewn up for next year quite easily :-) Can we have a brass band again?

Bizarely MTG that pic is Dan Martin walking at the Basque Country as I mentioned earlier!

Dan Martin had to get off and push on a climb during a stage of the Tour of The Basque Country this year. He’s proper crap isn’t he! I mean he’s only won a single stage of the Vuelta this year ffs!

Put a hundered or so riders together with barely enough room for them and inevitably some stalling will happen.

There’s a bit of difference between DH and XC in the way that they’re raced though-DH is a time trial, whereas XC is a mass start event so dealing with others around you is all part of it.

GW what race was this in the that you were altering seatpost heights? What category was it too?

GW to clarify….you’re saying that you have climbed off your bike at the top of a climb and dropped your saddle in a xc race?

If so, did you raise it at the start of the said climb on the next lap? Over 4 laps that’d mean that you had to stop at least 8 times….20 seconds per times gives you over 2 minutes of time lost-in my last race that would have cost me 3 places.

Nick did you ride all of the A lines at Dalby this year?

I’ve run with the bike at several races this year. Does that mean that GW and Juan don’t like me? :(

Oh and there’s bloody no way that I’d be going off that drop on my ‘race’ bike!

IMO XC needs better, more technically challenging course design with chicken lines that take longer than main line features to bring skill back

They already do-think Olympic course and Dalby to name but two in this country. The rest of your post was so idiotic that it merits no further comment :|

Seen him about on a number of forums……he’s evidently a tool! He gave out his mobile phone number on this thread fwiw:

http://www.bikeadventuresuk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10208&p=115361#p115361

8)

His Bike Radar flounce :-)

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=16107399&highlight=#16107399