Despite owning a good number of big, sharp knives, this is the one which lives in my pocket. Needs sharpening every week and although it’s got a locking blade, I suspect the cops would laugh at it.

EDIT: normal size packet of rizlas btw…

Collect the cat and introduce it to the dog in a sensible manner. As above, if someone brought home an apex predator twice your size and made it clear it was going to live with you, how would you react?

Slightly OT, but when our baby was due to come home from hospital, I brought stinky baby blankets and onesies home from the hospital a few days in advance and stuck them in the dog’s bed. Dog hasn’t eaten the child yet.

Lots and lots and lots of dogs…

A “Monarch of the Glen” print by Landseer – common enough but it was in what I now know to have been an 18th Century Italian gilt frame. Took a photo (it looked special) and sent it to a few mates with better knowledge than me. Ran back to buy it for a tenner and it had gone :oops:

I well remember coming down to Newark to do a temporary job and seeing loads of Kleins and Konas knocking around. I remember wondering why on earth there were so many nice bikes knocking about in a place with no mountains (I’d come from Aberdeen).

So yeah, move.

Obviously not. My “main” bike is still 3×9 and my runaround is still 3×7. Other than the consumerist need to spend money, I can’t see a reason to change tbh. What? It’ll make me faster? Nah. It really won’t, and if it does, who actually cares apart from Strava? What? It’ll shave two ounces off my bike weight?! Balls. I’ll just change my shoes and have a poo.

dirtybike. Honestly, you have your answer. Put a picture online and prepare to have it nicked and used by all and sundry. The only answer is a great big, dirty watermark which will be a pain in the bum to clone out.

A few stock libraries insist on non-watermarked photos. Photographersdirect springs to mind. Footflap’s case is absolutely extraordinary – I’d be up there with a pipe bomb.

Not keen on spending the best part of £40 on a battery – there must be a DIY workaround surely. Don’t mind paying top dollar for good quality but I’d rather source the parts for myself here in the UK if possible.

I thank you Sir. But crumbs, they’re not cheap are they! I’m not averse to a spot of soldering if there are any cheaper alternatives – Maplins or suchlike?

No ideas? I know it’s the wrong time of the year but any help would be appreciated :-)

Some days I’m amazed at how fantastic the local drivers are around here (NE England); pulling right on to the other side of the road to overtake, waiting patiently until all the traffic islands have finished, not overtaking on blind summits. Then I have days like today; old lady very, very nearly clipped me and scared the crap out of me doing about 45 in a 30 zone, businessman pulled out in front of me at a roundabout causing me to come to a standstill and right at the very end of my road, a neighbour pulled the ubiquitous overtake then immediate left turn.

It’s a lottery and sometimes the polis are as guilty as the rest of them.

Kind of depends on the kind of riding you’re doing. If you’re into all-day / multi-day wilderness trips, they’re less than ideal. I must admit, I’m a bit of a luddite – I resisted disc brakes for ages due to worrying about possible failure half way round a remote route. If you have cantis / V brakes you can fix pretty much anything with a minimal tool kit. This was borne out when I fell off at Camasunary (Skye) and had to bend my rear disc back into some sort of shape by standing on it – still left me with half a brake all the way back to Sligichan.

If you like to blast around trail centres, it’s a different story – I can see the benefits of getting to the top refreshed and ready to head down, never more than a few miles from a bike shop / power point.

But for me, the simpler the better when it comes to two wheeled adventures.

And this ^^^ is why I watermark anything I care about before it gets near the interwebs. My Zenfolio galleries are set up in such a way that clients can share their photos online but every time they do, my brand is plastered on the image. Free advertising innit.

Still no joy. Would it be politic to turn up at the guy’s door, where he lives with his partner and child, and demand my lights back? He only lives a few miles away and whilst he’s bigger than me, “I do this for a living” ;-)

So sorry man. Eventually this thread will drop off the bottom of the page and you and your partner will be alone. Just remember you’re not really alone, as this thread shows. If it helps, give it a bit of stiff upper lip when around your partner. Positive thinking and self reliance.

I well remember the bottom falling out of my world when we were told that our baby was almost certainly going to be affected by Down’s Syndrome. Turned out that was the least of our worries and eventually we tried again. He’s four now. Impossible not to use platitudes but there’s always the next time, and the next.

Beautiful-stunning-way-out-of-my-league-American girlfriend of three years on Erasmus prog went home a year late and sent me a Xmas card saying, “Merry Me” on it a few months later. Failed to understand what it meant and carried on my merry way. Penny dropped a few years later.

Lost the use of my right hand aged 29, lost my job as I couldn’t drive, spent a year recovering, went to uni, finally got a degree, set up a business, still doing it. Nothing compared to some of these tales!

It’s the privacy issue I find most objectionable, a person with a camera can be approached and asked not to take photos of you. Something you can’t do with a drone.

Well, you can ask but if the photographer is on public land (even if it’s your doorstep) they’re perfectly entitled to legally snap away. It’s how the doorstepping paparazzi get away with it.

Ach, I won’t let it put me off lending / giving people stuff but research is obviously the key here. No one likes being taken for a mug.

Cheers all for thoughts and helping me to decide to warn the group and get on with life :-) chakaping – really good of you but I have enough torches to light up most of the north east, so I’ll struggle on ;-)

chakaping – you offering? CTM – honestly, nothing would surprise me.

The admin of the group named him within about three minutes of my genuinely subtle post :-D

Didn’t name any names but members will likely know who I’m referring to… Feels better to have got it off my chest!! Irony is, my older Magicshine has just packed up :-D Good job the nights are getting lighter!

Have just mentioned it :-D It really isn’t the money (although I’m flat broke too) – it’s just the total rudeness and sense of entitlement.

cp – fair point! My newest camera is a D800 and files are supported. I know there’s a workaround for newer models (of Nikon cameras) but it’s an extra step which would be a bit of a pain…

Or LR 4 for £30 – I still use LR4 standalone but will eventually bite the bullet and pony up the subs for the monthly package.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Adobe-lightroom-4-4-Genuine-for-Windows-Mac-Download-/182399518814?hash=item2a77dbc85e:g:9-QAAOSw0fhXiin2

She hates water so you take her out rowing :-D

Yours does look far less affected than most I’ve met by the eye problem / folds in general. Had to photograph two Shar Peis dressed up in ridiculous outfits a few years ago. They were clearly pissed off about it, boiling hot and had recently had their eye folds cut and stitched up. I honestly thought they were going to maul their owners (I wouldn’t have blamed them one bit!).

I’m afraid I wouldn’t have one due to all the problems listed above, lovely though they mostly are.

Our lurcher is very territorial / protective of us and the house. All very well and good but it drives me mental when someone is legitamitely coming through the gate to knock on the door. I just can not stop him barking – even when the door’s opened and it’s someone who lives in the **** house that he’s known for ten **** years. Or the postman / window cleaner / other people he sees all the time.

In every other way, we’ve been soooo lucky with his training. I can leave a steak on the table and nip down to the garage, he walks heel without a lead past all distractions, his recall is incredibly good (not perfect but close enough) etc, etc. But the barking makes we want to kick him in the balls – unfortunately, the rescue centre chopped them off as a puppy.

Slingy mummies do get *very* into it and I’ve seen desirable slings (particular pattern) change hands for very silly money. Bit like retro bikes I suppose. But as above, the shared interest breaks the ice I suppose.

I do still cringe when they do “JAZZ HANDS” at each other, to show they are ‘hands-free.

Nice one! Glad to gear it :-)

We’re selling up in NE England and moving back home to Aberdeen. Looking forward to being able to cycle out of the city within 20 minutes but not looking forward to the insane house prices. We’ll be lucky to get £80K for our three bedroomed house here and lucky to buy a two bedroomed place in Aberdeen for less than double that amount.

I have very mixed feelings about it tbh – it wouldn’t be my first choice! Can be pretty grim up there in Winter (but where we are now is pretty grim all year round in terms of lack of culture, architecture, work prospects etc). But the surrounding countryside is excellent and varied.

No choice now anyway as Mrs Removed has already moved up with Little Removed so we need this place gone ASAP – it’s lonely by yersel’!

You can take a lot of Cocaine with no noticable side effects

What? Nobody said anything about taking loads of coke. It’s a small amount of an unidentified powder. We’re not talking about an addict yet.

EDIT: sorry, misread that. Yes you can but eventually your nose will blow up and your behaviour will out you. Nothing more annoying than a coke head down the pub

I truly feel for you man and feel very lucky that my kid’s mum is who she is. But at the very worst, it’s a bit of coke, not the end of the world by any stretch.

Not ideal, but at least it’s not smack. Or Vodka which would be a much worse but more acceptable discovery. If you’ve recently split up, chances are she’s having a crappy time. Perhaps it’s just a temporary coping measure, whatever the substance is?

12 months old? Anyway, still reading with interest because I use photographic printing companies on a daily basis.

Online magazines? No. STW by the bog, yes, when I was a subscriber. These days, in a cost-cutting drive, I’m mostly reading my back catalogue of Pete Loveday’s comics. If you haven’t heard of them, you have now :-)

You were doing ok whilst you were criticising the music, but there’s really no need to carry on and insult us as well. On a roll were you?

No offence intended! It’s easy to get hot and bothered online but I wouldn’t recommend it. I probably shouldn’t have commented at all, but I do feel that this kind of saccharine BS is worth a few seconds of keyboard time.

Never mind the implications, that’s just a very bad photo.

Similarly, I’ve had two bans for telling my favourite joke… Involves a swastika…

Just do your job. No matter what they tell you you’re doing, you’re still just doing your job. Just **** a.ll of that shit and then **** it again imho

Teenage pregnancy rates have reduced significantly in the last 10 years.

Or, perhaps that’s complete crap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy_in_the_United_Kingdom

Perhaps they’ve all visited Mumsnet and are doing it up thr bottom (as advised by certain members of stw).

I can’t really answer in an objective way. My mate found a bin bag full of Swedish Erotica in the lane beside our houses when I was eleven. It was up there with pornhub. pretty explicit. Agricultural even.

Did this discovery colour my formative relationships? Don’t know – my partners were often equally enlightened because they were equally exposed to this stuff and wanted to try stuff out.

I wouldn’t want my son (now four) to discover all this stuff until the time is right but the new hedge-porn is the interwebs and it is what is is.

Nothing much has changed between 1985 and now, other than instant gratification.