The thing is, for me it was a day and I’d have been happy to have done it cheaper but for the Mrs it was something she’d been dreaming of and planning her whole life. In that context the cost is worth it. I kept an eye on individual expenses and negotiated down where I could but I made it clear I didn’t ever want to know the final amount. Did make her promise it wouldn’t be over £10k though.

Mate had Tangerine by Led Zep, we had Fluff by Black Sabbath. I wasn’t allowed run to the hills.

I’m a bit of a bomber fan. Still run a single crown shiver, z1 drop off in lime green, z1 wedge, z4 fly light air and a jnr t on various bikes. I like simple, well made things that feel good and keep on working. Don’t care about weight.

Beating an offender to death with the sauce bottle in question in front of the rest of the office is very likely to act as a deterrent. Could throw up some other problems for you but on balance, worth a shot I’d say.

Good grief that was boring! I may have dozed off for a while around the middle, did we ever get to the bottom of the menacing saab driver?

Quite.

My boss is on my side, my stakeholders don’t care where I sit, it’s my bosses boss that’s the blocker. Moving to the new job

makes at least short term sense so I think that’s what I’m going to do. I can live with the risk of delayed career progression. I will be interested to see the reaction when I hand my notice in. I’ve already talked it through with my boss and he’s very supportive, it’s the higher ups I’m interested in…

As for speaking to HR, good advice, but we are HR!

With the facts written down like that it looks pretty clear cut. Looks like I’ll have to let my head rule my heart on this one. Thanks folks.

Hmm… being less miserable does appeal :-)Seriously though there’s a chance that this could force a change of location in my current job. I’m not sure that would cure all the issues though. It’s a good thing decisiveness isn’t one of the key attributes for either role!

Horrible time, really feel for you. Our two are rescue cats so don’t know exactly how old they are but I’m dreading the day I have a decision to make.

Had a flatmate who once woke up, prepared and ate a full loaf of eggy bread then went back to bed. That gluttony was his entire day’s activity. He was also fond of eating 24 packs of space raiders in one sitting. Was very skinny too, but I bet he’s massive now.

Same guy was comically accident prone. He broke a toe seeing how high he could kick a door, didn’t learn his lesson and pulled his groin attempting to kick a light fitting and my personal favourite, cut himself on a microwave. We moved once and took bets on when he’d first hurt himself in the new flat. We all lost – he injured himself on the door on the way

Another guy that shat himself in a taxi and left a trail of nutty brown foot ans hand prints from the front door to the shower.

One flat we didn’t take the bins out for about 6 months, we turned a huge cupboard into the bin room. When we finally cleared it out the contents of the bags at the bottom had decomposed to bin soup. That flat was fumigated after we left.

Tsunami? I’d just bunny hop it.

I was once just ahead of Tracey Moseley at the top of Innerleithen DH during the practice for a race (this was some years ago). I graciously allowed her to start her run first and set off less than a second after her to see how long I could keep up. She was out of sight within seconds, before either of us had even hit anything difficult.

Does it still have the tree rape scene in it? I remember reading the director saying he regretted including that scene in the original.

I really enjoy being petty. And vindictive.

The SSPCA obviously disagree with you Rusty. They were very happy to let me adopt my two rescue cats in the knowledge that they’d be living indoors. And it’s not like they were happy to find just anyone to take them, I had to wait months before they got any in to re-home.

I can understand where your point of view comes from but unfortunately things aren’t as black and white as you seem to think. Mine have had the opportunity to go outside, they just don’t want to.

Not sure yet if I’m getting over there this year…

But this is how I rocked it 1999 stylee!

My 2 are variously terrified and completely uninterested in the outside world. We got them as a pair but they hate each other and spend their time at opposite ends of the flat. Other than that they’re utterly content, don’t seem to care much if we’re around or not either. They’re not Bengals though.

Bear in mind £900 today won’t buy you what you could get for £900 in 1993 in any walk of life. With regard to the question, there’s still technology in a bike, it’s just not all about getting it as light as possible.

My dearly departed V6 Pajero was the best in snow. In 4wd it was unstoppable, or for a laugh you could select RWD. 3.0 petrol V6, short wheel base and the power to the back wheels was fun.

Other than that, as I said in the other thread I never once got stuck in my mark 1 clio 1.2. It had no power, didn’t weigh anything and had tiny wheels. Even crap tyres didn’t stop it (when I was a student it was getting remoulds at £8 a wheel). More than once I’d be driving through the snow and hear on the radio that the road I was on was closed.

I’m not having that. Crewe’s closer to London than Newcastle!

North?! That’s over 200 miles south from where I am, and I grew up another 100+ miles north. Even then we could drive another 3 hours or more without running out of island. What you’ve got there is south!

My Pajero was obviously the best, but most surprising was my old mid 90s 1.2 Clio. Front wheel drive, no power and tiny skinny tyres (which were £8 a wheel as I recall). That thing just never got stuck, got me over a few “closed” roads too!

I just scrapped my old Pajero, I put in all the details but they declined to make an offer, so they don’t buy any any any car! Then filled in a load of forms for online car breakers, all offered me scrap value of about £150. Had a look on ebay and similar spares/repairs were going for £400. Ended up selling to a guy who was honest enough to say that I’d get more on ebay but offered me £350 if I wanted to save the hassle.

I’d stick it on ebay with an honest and full description, I might sell for more than you think.

As above, I’ve gone from Edinburgh with it clipped onto the outside of my bag no questions asked. You won’t be the only one on the flight with a helmet and it’s not worth their hassle to make you all pack it, although I think technically they could if they really wanted to.

That’s true about the worldwide thing. All over Europe, in Africa and in south America I’ve experienced the same thing. See a UK passport or hear English being spoken and people are polite at best, but the minute they find out you’re Scottish they can’t do enough for you. I imagine the same would be true of Irish or welsh.

This is basic stuff. Sport, especially invasion games like rugby or football, thrives on tribalism. On a very simple level we used to have war on a local and national scale and now we have sport. For that to work you need to have an in-group, who you like, and an out group, who are the villains. For Scotland, England are the dastardly clan from the next glen, why wouldn’t we want them to lose? Or why wouldn’t we feel an affinity over another small nation like wales or Ireland who also have to live in their cultural shadow?

That and no one likes England anyway.

I often think Edinburgh must be a nice place to visit but after 12 years I’m getting pretty sick of living here. If my flat hadn’t taken such an enormous nosedive in value I’d have left already. It’s a bit like a temperamental old VW camper I think. Full of character, everyone sees it and thinks they want one, and fun for a weekend but sod having to drive it to work every day.

Don’t get me started on “just”.

“Just wanted to ping you an email…”

Cretins.

My suggestion would be a fiat barchetta, and not just because I have one for sale…

Stem needs slamming.

When playing rugby you realise that some of the kit you’re wearing is older than some of your teammates.

Very fit and forget in my experience. I’ve a couple of pairs on different bikes, never done any maintenance of any kind on them, and while they’re maybe not as smooth as they were, still work perfectly fine.

Alpaca steak. I like to think the same one provided me with a jumper too.

I once lost my wallet on a night out. Looked everywhere for it the next day and eventually gave up and cancelled my cards. Then I borrowed some cash off a flatmate and put on my jacket (an entirely different jacket from the one I was wearing the night before). In doing so I found the missing wallet nestling in the sleeve. I’ve never before or since found anything in the sleeve of a jacket, let alone one I hadn’t even been wearing!

That’s what I fear. Although in this case they’ve been paid to deliver something and they haven’t done it at all.

I wanted to update this thread, and thank you all again for your kind words. We had the follow-up scan today and it was as we’d feared. In a way it’s a relief as it feels like we can start to move on now that at least we know for sure. I’m not what you’d call back to normal yet but I am feeling a lot better than I did a week ago.

An employer can say anything they like in a reference provided it’s factual. Given that some of the more common questions include why did person x leave and would you re-hire, there’s plenty of scope to include negative feedback without it being subjective. Even where it’s policy only to confirm job title and dates of employment a company will often state that a person has been dismissed. I work in hr and give and take references every day. As someone said, the most telling ones are often unrecorded and over the phone. If people think someone’s been taking the proverbial they don’t hesitate to stick the boot in. That said, I’d often only be concerned if we reached that point and the candidate had given me a very different story.

I think (hope) she knows me well enough to know how I’m feeling. I don’t talk a lot at the best of times, more of an introspective type with added hugs and tea-making. We’ve both gone back to work today and we’ll try and keep our heads down and hope this week passes as quickly as possible. Had some more bad news about an unexpected death in the extended family yesterday, so it’s been a pretty brutal couple of days.

Thanks again for all the words of encouragement, they’re helping, they really are. I’m trying to concentrate on doing what I can for my wife just now.