It was patently obvious that none of them ever went near a bloody pub except for once a year when they were on holiday in Cornwall where they’d invariably be that **** that asks the bar staff if they can do them a pot of tea

Nothing to add to the smoking ban arguement…..but that above is literally my mum!! She even takes her own tea bag FFS!

You’re on their turf

No I’m not, I’m a post grad in a department filled with postgrads from across the globe and of a wide age ranges. I am however of course not going to be ‘that guy’ and moan to their face….

38 and literally proof reading my MSc dissertation currently. I gave up work last year and went back to do an MSc in environmental sustainability, with 0 prior academic background in this area.

I’d echo lots of what has been said really…..my back is ****! I’ve not had an office job, so spending extended time on a computer has been tough! I found the first month hard….very hard in fact, it was quite a steep learning curve. I’ve mainly treated it as a 9-5, but for me it’s been 6 days per week for much of it. It has gone very well though, I start a 4 year funded PhD in October, and up until this point I’ve got the highest average mark on the course. I take it very seriously though….lots don’t even bother with the set readings etc.

Socially it’s probably more of a mixed bag at post-grad than you’ll get. I’m a very outgoing personality etc so have plenty of mates on the course. There have been plenty of times when I’ve found folks and their immaturity slightly annoying, but overall it’s not been an issue.

£8 is pushing it. Most wedding venues I play at across the country are about £7 a pint now. Think that I paid about £7 for a pint in Manchester yesterday.

I was 10 when What’s The Story came out and just starting to learn guitar. I could basically play that album note for note by the age of 12 and it was what made me want to become a musician. I was too young to see them in that era and more into metal by the time they called it quits so never saw them live  Loads of folks messaging me today asking me if I’m going…..I worry that it’ll be one of the least pleasant crowds ever to be apart of. Literally going to be a very ragey cokefest. Also, were they ever THAT good live? I always feel like I’m watching an Oasis tribute band when I see videos of them. You can’t really deny the cultural significance of them though. Most function bands that I play with end the night with DLBIA and practically every single person sings every single word of it, very few people ever write songs which achieve that level.

On the topic of the folks getting locked up and their defences advanced….my favourite so for ‘the defendant was only in town to buy a suit for a funeral but got caught up in the events’…aye of course he was ? There’s been several other crackers too.

Mazda 2. Headlights and heater both about as useful as a candle….other than that my bangernomics one did me proud for a year.

Mowcop  Castle

/Thread

Not sure how well you know the area Phil, but happy to send you some van stopover recommendations if you’re unfamiliar with the area. Can’t help with ride suggestions sorry.

Following. Unlikely to use MyWhoosh due to me being a virtue signaller. Indievelo sounds interesting though. Zwift at £18 per month, given how crap it is, is a bit rich for my liking and limited usage.

Ah ffs. Cheers for the info. Looks like that’s her birthday present sorted anyway! (Ironically the Apple watch was her 30th present a few years ago).

Yeah it’s a mega place. We’re heading there in a couple of weeks as a part of our honeymoon road trip. Town is really cool. Lots to do in the surrounding areas to in terms of hiking, water based stuff etc (May might be a bit early).

Is Apple care on a device by device basis or just a one policy fits all type thing? I’m fairly sure that she has Apple care on her phone.

Blimey! Cheers for that….. they’re only about £250 new ffs.

Ha you’d never guess we were deep into the school holidays!

Kid free here, but wholeheartedly agree with the notion that all kids are *****

I was a teacher for 18 years, no idea how I managed it! OP we’re fast becoming the only kid free couple out of all of our friends……holidays being worse that just staying at home seems to be a recurring theme amongst them all!

I dont really care if it gets resolved or not. I will be long dead before it becomes a problem and we don’t have kids so no next generation for me to worry about.

Sometimes I wish that I was ignorant like this. Must make life fairly simple in one sense.

I can’t see how JSO’s tatics are useful, and I’m not sure they understand the Overton window, but to see them as equivilent to the rioters we’re seeing getting sentenced is ludicrous

All this demonstrates is your own lack of comprehension. As I’ve posted in other threads, despite my alignment with XR I’m no huge fan of Roger Hallam. However, to suggest that he’s unaware of the Overton window is quite simply ridiculous. Firstly, he is aware of it….and secondly….the whole modus operandi of JSO is an attempt to navigate and shift the ‘Overton window’ (no-one really uses that phrase these days) via the radical flank effects. This is something that Hallam himself has written about extensively. #rantover

E. Homemade veggie balti

D. A very nice bottle of St Emillion that we brought home from France earlier in the year. (Been out for a pint earlier)

L. Sgt Peppers on vinyl.

DMM used to do something called the protection pack…..which is 4 hexes, a set of nuts and a set of offsets….great value, add in those quick draws off Cougar and you’ve got what I led my first years worth of climbs on, up to VS 4c. I now own 4 cams and still have a maximum lead of VS 4c! This year has been a write of for outdoors climbing for me. Hoping to right that next year. Might need to join a club though as my climbing partner is going to become a dad in the new year.

Cheers for that gravedigger, very enlightening (facepalm emoji)

Some of the stuff on SM is hateful. Obviously given that she’s female there’s the inevitable misogynistic twist that these things take. There’s a petition with 50+ thousands signatures on demanding that she and Anna Mears apologise for bring shame to the nation….just can’t quite imagine it happening if it was two males as the breaker and head of olympic team.

Stunning pics as ever @Spin.

Finishing my MSc dissertation, a month with a bad back followed by COVID have seen me climb twice in about 2 months ?

Really need to do something other than type, but not got the energy to go to the wall tonight. I did do aone of the classic rock routes on Tryfan a couple of weeks back.

I’ve never ridden a carbon bike so don’t have a preference on that front (I’ve actually only ridden 5 or 6 mountain bikes in total I think!).

Chisel Comp doesn’t seem to be showing in stock/expected date at my lbs yet. Not sure that I have the know how to go frame only and build one up for a comparable price to the Comp version.

Hopefully doing a week in Tignes for season opening with my mate….will be flying and staying in a Chalet. Not done that kind of trip in about 6/7 years. Mate is a VERY good snowboarder, so will be out of my depth at times!

Then a trip in our motorhome in late March again. Will see where has good snow. Serre Che and Montgenvre are so well set up for motorhomes, which make them the obvious target. But may try a a site in Bourg St Maurice which has access to Les Arcs etc. Not been there before.

Also, new snowboard will hopefully be happening, likely a Salomon Sick Stick.

Kwarteng comes across as one of the most arrogant and delusional people in the world imo. Genuinely thinks that he’s more intelligent than basically anyone else on the planet. His arguements around economics and social issues are totally incoherent, he just delivers them with the confidence that an Eton education brings.

On Truss, I’ve thought for some time that she is suffering from some form of mental health issue and as someone who has suffered from them myself in the past, it’s not something that I throw out there lightly.

As someone else who is keen on a bike of this sort…..with the Chisel, if you get the higher end one which is £2700, is it actually going to be a worse bike than the current half price Epic Evos, which seems to be a few hundred quid cheaper?!

Both are sadly still a little bit above my budget currently ?

That woman sentenced today lives less than ten miles from me…..which is closer than her nearest mosque. I suppose the sentence might seem a bit harsh until you remember the JSO folks who got five years for attending a zoom meeting, and weren’t in any way shape or form inciting violence or hate.

I suppose peak level ‘asking for an apology’ would be that Lewis brakes thread! EDIT: Too late!

Demanding an apology from strangers on the interweb because they criticised some knock off Chinese brakes…..right you are!

But yeah that nurse story sounds really **** weird!

We’ve got a pretty good balance I reckon. She’s the clean one, I’m the tidy one. I don’t hide stuff when I tidy it though, I just dump it all in a mound in her wardrobe. At least she knows where it is!

Too many grass clippings doesn’t do much good for ours. Keeping it wet is important and regular turning. I’m reliably informed by our local composting expert (80 year old woman in the local green party, absolute legend) that if you put cardboard in, then wet it first, and don’t put too much in.

Also, in terms of stuff growing in it, I was always told not to put stuff with seeds (ie tomatoes) in there?

Marina Hyde’s take on it is absolutely amazing:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/13/donald-trump-elon-musk-x-twitter-politician-tech

So stuff that wears out……seat covers, mattress, door hinges, water pump.

I’m not quite sure how a van gets around the Brexit issues that a yacht faces?!

Anyway, I lived in the UK, on a farm in a 6m motorhome for 2 years with my wife whilst we were doing a barn conversion. We had a decent shower etc (really not sure how you’d not have this as a pre requisite?)

In Spain, it will get very very hot inside the van for a large portion of the year I’d imagine! They’re bad enough in the UK! Which would point towards Aircon, and thus, an electric hookup.

You need to think about stuff like storage and how you’re going to get water, empty toilet, empty waste water and do laundry. We could do all of the above, plus plug in to electric at the farm, much harder to do if you’re ‘wild camping’. Moving around every few days becomes a chore, even when you’re doing a tour rather than just every day life.

There’s pros and cons to it I guess…..I’ll be honest, as much as I love our motorhome, if we were to live in one spot again, I’d buy a caravan, not a motorhome. Obviously not as flexible to move around in then though.

In terms of resale, living in something for a few years will wreck it….. I read somewhere that the ‘life expectancy’ of a motorhome is 700 nights use…..so less than 2 years. Ours isn’t dead, but it’s only 3.5 years old and is a hell of a lot more worn than the stuff of a similar age that has had standard recreational use.

That is incredibly generous @colp! Ours is a cockapoo too. How do you source the axles? Just been looking online….I’m on 12mm thru at the rear I think? (I always get confused over standards!)

@Elshalimo yeah he’d love that…..done loads of big days in the mountains. Where do you stay in Zell? Reading mixed reports about Seecamp…. it’s not cheap is it?!

I’m going to look up Zell area now, I don’t know it at all. We’ll have gravel bikes but not sure how much we’ll ride…. could probably do with trying to hire a dog trailer out there….got a rucksack for him, but at 15kg it’s not much fun with him on the back!

Yeah we’ll definitely be doing some relaxing, so the itinerary needs to be curtailed. Not much fun for the pooch if we’re just driving all day either.

Amazing stuff here, will have a look. Neither of us have been to Germany or the Austrian Alps so they do appeal. Trying to convince my wife that we can’t fit in France Italy Slovenia Austria and Germany in this one trip ?

I’m calling out the Aussie break dancer as a social experiment…..in her videos from 2022, whilst not amazing, she’s much better than the standard of what she did in the Olympics. She wasn’t dressed as a PE teacher either! Cultural Politics of Break Dancing is her research area….. she’s probably now got enough material to work on for the next decade.

Bouldering and lead climbing are good for this: most decent walls have problems of a broadly equivalent standard these day. I’m sure that there are better climbers than me on here (Spin and generalist for starters!) but when I’m in decent shape and not time poor, I’d climb/train 3 times per week minimum. Obviously not properly structured training etc and I probably drink more in a week than most athletes drink during their career! I’m not too shabby though, most casual observers would think that I was good. Bouldering: can’t get off the ground, like literally won’t be able to hold the starting position…..the first move may as well be in a different postcode it’ll seem that far away. Lead: very very unlikely to get off the floor, not out of the realms of possibility, but literally no chance of making the first clip.

Hahaha you just know that all of that 28% voted Brexit