Aye but by the time they're 60 they'll be shagged out, their joints will be full of arthritis and their backs will be shot.

I used to work as a delivery driver – all the older chaps were absolutely done in from lifting white goods on / off vans. If you couldn't lift a 60kg package cleanly off the ground onto a van you got the p1ss ripped out of you (I could, but only did it once 8) ).

Pete G55 – very true. I've sold photographic kit which has gone for a fair bit less than its true worth. I just suck it up. I also sold an old, beaten up Belstaff jacket from the '60s to a Japanese buyer for £600. It cost him nearly £100 to have it shipped over too!

tron – Member

Stop publishing council "newspapers" which tell the public how wonderful the council are. There's no need.

Yes – this. The amount of total tripe which comes through my letterbox is unbelievable.

Also, legalise all drugs straightaway and crime will nigh on disappear overnight.

EDIT: OK, perhaps not legalise, but certainly hand out smack and crack for free, on the state, in an organised fashion.

The local skate park next to the dry ski slope where I work PT is absolutely disgusting. Mostly very young lads – they buy bags of crap at Sainsburys and Macdonalds then just fling their rubbish all over the place, despite there being a bin every three metres (literally).

We're responsible for making sure the place is safe and upon inspection today, someone has taken it upon themselves to block up all the holes in the drains with nuts, bolts and washers. I suspect it is a local type who's absolutely sick of the mess. Without drainage, the bowls will very swiftly fill up with water – one was already half full of rainwater today.

If it was up to me, the place would be cleaned out once a month – perhaps they'd realise it's a good idea to use the bins when they're trying to skate / BMX through waist-deep rubbish. 👿

Rosco-Osbaldistan Ferguson has a certain ring to it (I used to have a rat called this, without the Ferguson bit, but don't let that put you off).

At least give the pros a chance Sir. If they don't manage to sort you out then by all means, go walkabout.

Given your posts over the last wee while, I can't help feeling that you're teetering on the edge of the precipice.

No matter how far you run, you're still in the place where you are.

I do wonder if he was '…given the chance to change'. Just letting someone off several times for the same offence is very different to offering a much needed intervention (posh word for getting someone to MTFU and accept responsibility for their actions).

The same goes for drug addiction – is it a disease or is it an excuse for being weak willed – in my case I think it was the latter (all in the past now, thank Jehovah).

Getting perps into rehab rather than just locking them up and removing any opportunity for self improvement is simply a very good idea.

£40 shipping?! 😯

Are you sending them by Unicorn Express?!! Well done for manning TF up I suppose…

Lol @ this thread – you've been proppa sprung matey 😀

I always go on the basis that things find their true, real-time value on ebay. I'm guessing on the basis of previous comments that the item in question is the set of (hideous IMHO 🙂 ) stars 'n' stripes shifters you were asking about a week or so ago – apologies if not – can't be @rsed stalking your profile….

If they've had plenty exposure time-wise and geographically, then the finishing price is fair and you're just going to have to sell them – it's just what they're worth.

A wee bit different, but when we got our rescue dog, he howled all night. Every night. After two weeks of no sleep I was ready to take him back to the home.

The problem was that as soon as he heard me coing down the stairs, he would stop his racket, meaning that shouting at him would be pointless – he wouldn't know why I was shouting.

So I sat on the sofa, in my boxers for almost an hour, at 2 a.m., waiting for him to forget I was there and start howling, which, eventually, he did.

I burst into the kitchen and went absolutely radge at him – shouting and shaking a tin of pebbles at him. He shut the **** up pretty sharpish and never once made a noise at night again.

I can come to your house and repeat the exercise for a small fee.

Joking apart, this really did work for me as a total last resort – he's even stopped hiding from me now 🙂

Had a drunken fight with a mate which ended up with us both in The Water of Leith. We made up and went for a few more whiskies.
Fell almost 100 feet out of the tallest conifer tree in the Forest of Skene, survived and played a gig (sitting down) the next night (followed by months on crutches. Doh!).
Called my headmistress a bitch when I was in primary four (she was) and received the first detention in the school's history.
Had one of my photos used in a half page ad in a glossy sunday mag.
Snapped a bodybuilder's arm whilst arm-wrestling – the resulting spiral fracture was so complex they named the break after him (Casey Fracture).
Lots more which goes to the grave with me.

Motorbike and set of clothes hidden in bushes at drop off point. He can then arrive at pub fully clothed and be drinking pint when the rest of them get off bus.

OR, tape groom-to-be's c0ck up betweeen legs so when his mates strip him they all get a nasty shock 😀

Splash some cash on a decent pair of mitts. You will definitely not regret doing so. Nowt worse than cold, wet hands…

Well, picked the car up last night (been enjoying cycling everywhere the last few days but it gets awkward when carting a full camera / lighting kit around and no, I can't afford a cargo bike 🙂 ).

I've never heard so much backtracking in my life. Both mechanic and garage owner strenuously denied the worn parts constituted a danger. I pointed at the FAIL certificate they'd just given me – the bit where it says, "O/S Front Low Ball Joint, Excessive Play **DANGEROUS**". Oh it isn't dangerous – it's just an MOT fail. They didn't replace it in June because it was fine then.

They didn't charge me for a re-test but I'll go back to my old garage in future – he's eight miles away but there's an old railway track all the way back to my house so can cycle clean accross town no bother.

Sorry, crescent. And I posted that as a semi-fluent speaker of the red-tongue.

Not sinister, but possibly a pisstake of something sinister. If it helps dilute the sinisterness of such vids then it's all good.

Saw the original thread and was very impressed. I've walked up it with a camera rucksack stuffed to the gunnels but still much lighter than a bike. It'll be very hard work no doubt but certainly woth it for the down.

On the contrary, I feel there is plenty love helpful advice going on. Take my thread today regarding my local garage. Lots of honest opinions. Take the thread on cheap wedding photographers. I have deliberately held back but have seen others state my views exactly, backed up with sound reasoning.

There have always been strong characters voicing deeply felt opinions here, as on any other interweb forum. There are also a goodly number of eejits spouting phrases they feel are 'cool' in order to big up their internet personas. It's mostly all good. The speed of responses and high turnover of subjects is unmatched IME anywhere else.

They (both) look more like Sarah Connor than Arnie to me….

Lots of interesting responses; going to pick the car up tomorrow night. Feel a bit bad for hauling the underpaid, overworked mechanic over the coals today but he really should have admitted his mistake – I suppose an admission of his error and perhaps an apology is all I was after.

I feel I probably should have been completely honest about what the 'holiday' mechanic had found. But still annoyed he didn't pick up on the obvious problem despite my telling him exactly what / where the problem lay. I did make the mistake of trusting my local garage over a random chap who turned out to be right.

The only guy in the garage allowed to take payment is the owner, so I'll take it up with him and be totally honest when I pay for the work tomorrow.

With a local garage, you do build up a relationship – they'd done a decent job in the past and I trusted them over a complete stranger. If they said there was no problem, I had to trust them surely? They know better than I, no?

Don – a simple mistake but one which put my family's life in danger. Not good enough. It's not like he's repaired a washing machine badly.

Jackson – the safety issue is the main one for me. Tiger – I've told them to go ahead with the work for just those reasons (and the car was already up on the ramps).

Don't think I'll go back there even if they do offer some disco' (I'm pretty sure they won't). There'll always be bad feeling 🙁

Cheers for replies.

No mention of discount from mechanic but as I said – was unable to speak to the boss-man. May push for a little disco' when I go in to pay tomorrow…

The drop-link was only fitted after I insisted they had another look – I can't help wondering if they just fitted any old bit to shut me up? Didn't get rid of the knocking.

EDIT; CK, thet's also my experience. Thought this lot were a bit better 🙁

Sounds completely reasonable to me – just glad things are picking up for you again!

Donno, but I googled the lyrics and found this rather odd youtube vid

😆

Fair enough. My wife is a union rep – she's an NHS health professional and I see many parallels between the way staff are treated in her trust and my p/t cooncil job, that is, much, much better than in the private sector.

I've personally stuck my head above the parapet on behalf of a 'problem' employee at my work, safe in the knowledge that the management were breaking employment law and that a strong evidence base would protect the guy. I'd be far less willing to do do such a thing were I still working in many of my previous private sector jobs.

I only thought about that because of the OP's tale of the bullied 50 year old – that's truly horrendous.

il mio hovercraft è pieno di anguille. It's colloquial for, "Please replace my pawl spring"

🙂 HTH

nickc +1, 60 hour weeks for 20 grand!!?! I earned more than that (pro rata) doing my student job, working at a dry ski slope. The job was so laid back, pleasant and stress free that I still go in twice a week for the craic (I work mostly from home so it gets me away from the computer and I get some human company!).

Downscaling to a nice wee job at B&Q / Asda / wherever else might not look too hot on the CV, but will certainly look better than an unexplained gap in employment, filled, in reality by a massive burnout, coupled with depression.

I've been sh@t on massively by employers in the distant past – mostly catering jobs where you are utterly replaceable, so can identify with the feelings of helplessness / hopelessness / going home and reliving the various humiliations of the day. Not pleasant – I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type…

To those telling the OP that the fault is partly his own, humbug.

Whilst I admire and in part agree with TJ's sentiments , I'm afraid that as others have said, you may well find that future employers will take a dim view of prospective employees who have 'history'. Better just to get out with your sanity.

scottyjohn – Member
I had some tuition a while back from a pro photographer and he told me a the time that all camera bodies are rubbish, and not to waste a lot of cash on them. He advised to spend money on a couple of good quality lenses.

Depends what you're shooting to an extent, but to claim, "all camera bodies are rubbish" is just pure cr@p to be frank. I used to shoot weddings on Nikon D70s cameras and they were OK for the time – revolutionary even, in their way. Then I bought a couple of D200s and was blown away by the performance. I now shot on D300s and the low light, high ISO performance beats the hell out of my D200s – they're just much better in almost every way.

Agree that spending money on good lenses is important though.

I'm a bit unsure…. But I think it's been taken on a large format camera – the plane of focus (achieved by moving the back of the camera around) can be set in any direction you like – in this case, through the back of the statue's head and on toward the far cliff.

The odd light around the statue's head is dodgy photoshopping, but I think it's just where the photographer has used the dodge tool.

So there is only one focal plane – running out through the image. I used LF cameras a lot at uni and saw similar strange focal effects from studes messing about with camera backs.

IMHO

My dad's definitely…. eccentric. He 'collects' stuff. Bits of wood. Stuff out of skips. Broken pub signs. Hundreds of cars – some vintage, but he specialises in taxis. But also broken curtain rails, sheets of manky plastic, 40 of every kind of tool (who really needs six engine hoists or eight trolley jacks?!).

It's all a bit 'Life of Grime' and I fully expect to find him living in tunnels of old newspapers one day. All quite harmless until he moved house last month and muggins here was the only member of the family willing to help. Things were said which can never be unsaid 😯

Everything I put in the skip (we got through six) got pulled out and fondled, before being squirreled away in a far corner of the garden. I ended up starting a fire and burning anything flammable.

He managed to find a massive barn which he has rent free for a year, in exchange for a vintage Ferguson tractor. It is now stuffed to the roof with assorted sh1te, mostly squeezed in by me…. There's just no talking to him – there's a small piece of his brain which works differently to everyone else's.

And breathe.

scu98rkr – I see where you're coming from but the '-3' bit in the first line is where the sum falls down. The three empty boxes were a freebie, thrown in to sweeten the deal – unfortunately, the guy who bought them doesn't speak much English and I'm struggling to get this concept through to him…

Had a bike fall off a Halfords rack (my fault 😳 ). Fortunately it got its front wheel stuck on my mate's bike's pedal so I just dragged it to death for about five miles….

Got an estate now 8)

Well, found the receipt (thank the good Lord!!) which shows enhanced compensation up to £500. I'll call Parcel Force tomorrow and see what happens. Still waiting for photos from buyer….

Not bothered about getting the broken ones back – as long as he can provide photographic evidence of the damage. Nick – that was the figure I arrived at too.

Cheers for all comments / advice / help – much appreciated.

Yes, I paid extra to be covered up to £500. Can I find the bl00dy proof of posting receipt? Can I b0ll0x. Gah!!!11!

I have emailed the buyer asking for photos of the damage – I'll likely need them anyway to claim compo from the Post Office (if I can find the damned receipt!!!).

They were packed as securely as possible and must have taken a fair hit somewhere along the delivery chain – each cylinder was wrapped up in a cocoon of bubble wrap – they were also all in their original cardboard tubes which provide a fair degree of protection by themselves.

Right. Off to carry on turning the house over trying to find the receipt of posting.

Cheers for that bassspine – I'm slightly concerned about calling his bluff though – if he does return them I'm not in a position to easily refund the cash 🙁 Could be dangerous.

Just as an aside, I've no idea where he's got the figure of £71 from – makes no sense at all.

Pretty sure it's the sender's responsibility to pester the courier / post office…

Oh and I almost forgot the audiobooks. Sad and middle class I know. Right now it's Under the Dome by Stephen King and The Modern Scholar – Reconciling Christianity and Islaam.

The King book is just a massive revenge tale which I suspect will end in a similar fashion to The Stand by the same author; you spend the whole book thinking, "They'll get their just deaths" and then everyone dies 🙁

The religious audiobook is just confusing. I'm hoping it gets better on tomorrow's dog walk.

The whole concept of getting your arm stuck under a rock, setting up a pulley system to get it off and eventually drinking ones' own piss and cutting off a limb left me cold. Why didn't he tell anyone where he was going? Rule No 1 surely?!