Kasper the rescue lurcher – much photographed 🙂

My folks used to keep port in the booze cabinet for years, get it out at Christmas, and have one small glass. They’re still alive 🙂 Better off drinking it out of a hollowed out stilton…

I’ve got that one – it’s had three outings so far, and (touch wood) no problems with battery or charger. It’s brilliant!

Don’t normally share the work stuff on here, but had a blast shooting a Don’t Tell the Bride wedding a while back – was on telly last Tuesday. Despite my best efforts, I only got in the way of the film crew twice – my nanoseconds of fame 🙂

Picked up a couple of bikes at a local police auction – one for me and one for my mate when I was about 16. I kept the bright yellow Muddy Fox Courier, and he got the Trek.

Other mates got involved and we spent the next five years trawling about all over Aberdeenshire and beyond. Loved it! Still loving it now 😀

?

My wee brother had a song he made up all by himself at the age of three. Whenever he got in the car he’d sing; “Car, car, go to London town” until we arrived. Drove me and everyone else in the car mental and went on for nearly six months.

“Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town Car, car, go to London town”

SHUT UP!

Still get it in my ears whenever I’m standing on the pedals uphill. Have also woken up with it in my ears…

Now I’m a bit lost. Why would happy, settled Irish types suddenly leave their brand new, unsympathetically built bungalows and decide to move to broken Britain? 🙂

Just to clarify. These days, there are far more ‘genuine’ travellers than there are new age types.

Please see the writings of Pete Loveday for further clarification.

EDIT; not that I’ve anything against crusty types protesting against motorway extensions or the like…

My comments, as always, are made independently. In the main, they were made as a refutation of Trailmonkey’s argument. I did read the whole thread and was briefly aware of all contributors, but some posts stood out…

Another ex of mine moved to Oz upon the completion of her PHD in pig farming 😀 Every month, the sellotape-wrapped envelope would arrive – it was always yellow – it was always stuffed with buds of the best quality.

What a joy to see the letter on the mat!

Christ. New age travellers have absolutely nothing to do with the OP’s intended discussion about “Travellers’ camps”.

New age travellers were doing their thing when I was growing up. They were loosely associated with environmental concerns, good drugs, free festivals and dogs on a bootlace.

Travellers, in the case of the OP could perhaps be categorised into Irish travellers, settled building and horse-dealing travellers, and the real-deal-Romany-travellers.

The creation of ghettos is always a BAD THING. It creates divsiveness in communities. Give the travellers somewhere to live on a brownfield site and they’re happy. Most of the sites here in the North East are between industrial estates in the middle of fekkin nowhere. The locals aren’t bothered because the nearest houses are far away. The residents of said sites are only there for half the year anyway (I know this as I have to deliver photos to them and half the time, their relatives have to pay for them as they’re away travelling).

Saw this earlier – Ben Stiller = trendsetter.

Wait…. That’s a trike! And other than the spacers, I’ve seen plenty worse.

project – Member
And some men say women are STUPID, she proves it and gets the certificate, for being stupid, showing absolutely no comapssion, haveing no damm idea she has run somebody over, and just being a now hopefully banned driver.

Listen luv, if you can read this spec savers are always doing offers.

Erm, for starters it was a bloke who misjudged the gap and knocked him off in the first place – not condoning her lack of observational skills thereafter but there it is. For main course, you can see she is in shock, as is the cyclist – this causes people (either gender) to do odd things and behave in a way they might not normally.

For desert, I offer you a reported post – and this only after a few hours of thinking about it – that comment is genuinely disgusting.

I had a long and rose-tinted-glasses type correspondence with an ex girlfriend whose student visa ran out, forcing her to return to the states.

I must have gone a little over the top – she sent me a card in which she asked me to marry her 😯

Wasn’t ready for that and her next move was a visit to the UK….

Still though, I treasured the letters and was a bit peeved when my folks threw them all out when they moved house 🙁

Letters from old mates are great – I keep them all.

My Volvo saloon has heated wing mirrors, wipers on the headlighs but no rear wiper. I haven’t had it long enough to remember to wipe the rear windscreen before getting in every time, and really, really miss the wiper.

No light in boot either, which is rubbish – it even has a pull-out belt for holding your shopping bags, but no blimmin’ light?! *gnashes middle class teeth*

Never mind the tabs and booze – there’s some serious emoticon addiction going on here. Just scroll up and down the page – it’s a sea of pac-men 🙂

Dismally failing here. Gave up for two whole days with the help of Morrison’s best 2mg lozenges. Bought a packet of baccy which lasted nearly four days (a record) and have spent the last week wibbling between resolve (lozenges) and failure (tabs).

It’s at least the eighth effort to quit…. Does there come a point where you just say fuggit I’m a smoker?

Couple from a Spring storm which I’d forgotten about……

No sleep…. Sorry – any excuse to post a dog pic 🙂 Was just messing around taking shots for my new ad campaign.

The cops in Sunderland had big, burly off road bikes years ago which they used to chase down lads on stolen bikes. They just drew level and kicked them off 😀

When I lived in Edinburgh, there was a problem with young lads on pinched bikes traversing the city using the network of disused railway lines / towpaths. To deal with it, the force bought a fleet of electric power assist bikes. I shitteth you not.

Any chance you could give us a bit of background on how you got them back Tony? Or would it prejudice prosecutions?

We told an annoying ex public schoolboy acqaintance that drinking the stinking, rancid, three year old bong water would get him very high, and that it was a huge treat to be allowed to do so. I’ve never seen anyone puke so hard and long.

Also (and this one wasn’t deliberate)…. I stayed in student halls for a short spell. Right next to the halls was a park where you could always expect a decent crop of magic mushrooms. Me and a few mates picked a few bags full and spent a happy hour condensing them down into a viscous black liquid. We poured it into one of those 500ml Coke contour bottles and left it in the fridge to cool down.

At the time, a Chinese neighbour had managed to squeeze a family of five into his tiny, one-man room. One of his female relatives necked half of our mushy brew thinking it was Coke. We sat in my room listening to hysterical screams and debated whether or not to tell them what was happening, but by that time we were well into a full on trip, and were all too scared to do so.

Nippy? Nippy?! I had one for a year and it was quite literally the most sluggish car I’ve ever driven. Up to 40 it was fine, but joining dual carriageways on slight inclines was a bloody nightmare. Overtakes needed half a click of open road to plan.

Also, you’ll have no way of transporting bikes – you can’t fit one inside (unless you remove the rear seats, which is a viable option as they’re designed to be removeable) and the exterior just will not take a bike rack as all the usual mounting points are plastic. Roof rack might work…

They look quite good (IMHO) and mine was comfortable for long drives but there’s no way I’d buy another.

I’m lopsided too! My left shoulder is a fair bit bigger (wider and higher) than my right. You wouldn’t notice unless I was nekkid – an osteo I went to see noticed straight away and asked if I was a cyclist 🙂

I blame it on unsupervised weight lifting as a youngster. It’s probably reversible, but I’m too lazy to go anywhere near a gym….

I just wonder where 4 blokes manage to appear from to confront anyone unless you are in their front/back garden. Poachers possibly?

My money’s on the possibility that you met the local poaching crowd – a Bastid bike light looks very similar to rabbit lamper’s light.

No idea where Primrose Wood is, but I’ve been challenged by neds in the local woods here in the North East when walking the dog, and when riding through local woods. Said neds were hunting with dogs. They claimed it was their woods and that I’d better not be hunting there or there’d be trouble.

I know the local landowner – he’s a dick, but he wasn’t there. Also, my dog looks like this, so is unlikely to be mistaken for a hunting lurcher;

Night of the Demon from Columbia Pictures – an adaptation of a MR James story, Casting the Runes.

Shows its age (1957) but well worth a watch. The demon appears at the end and looks like a muppet, but I can forgive Columbia given the quality of the rest of the film.

Thats because Karate is crap. Doing Kata’s and never hitting anyone/getting hit isn’t going to help anyone in a fight

Don’t know which style you tried, but the club I went to was a blend of bastardised Tae Kwon Do, Karate, kick-boxing and various other styles (Kafdo Karate run by Karl Felber).

The free sparring was fast and hard and I had many a bust lip / black eye. With that all said, after a break of about a year, I went and tried another club (can’t remember what the MA was called – something like Uian Gaar or somesuch) and got kicked all over the place. It was all about elbows, knees and keeping your feet on the floor as much as possible.

I was going to say (much as it pains me) Photobox, until I read the post! Mrs Removed bought me one for Xmas a few years ago. It’s regularly dishwashered (daily) and still going strong – no fading of either image or text.

Print quality was very good too – why do you think they’re not good enough?

I like bits of Kirroughtree – it feels like a proper day out rather than a spin round a trail centre.

But ther is one section in particular which is basically a series of pointless meanderings up and down and looping around, gradually ascending, followed by a mile of riding in a wide, wet ditch.

That bit ^^^ is just before the lovely swoopy, bermy section before Shredder (is that the right name?!).

My memories may be coloured by the fact that last time we did it, the shop was closed, so we did the whole loop on one small tangerine and 500ml of water between the three of us.

😳 After having had a wallet and change nicked from my jacket from my first ever crubbish P/T job, I went home and sewed fish hooks into the inside of my coat pocket and filled it with washers (sounded like change when shaken).

Sadly, there were so many blue catering plasters in evidence, that I never did find out who the thief was.

Stuff holes with crumpled up newspaper prior to plastering. That’s what we always used to do before landlords’ visits when I used to rent 🙂

“30 EPZers would turn up and basically get lashed for three days”

So do they end up with loads of blurry bleached out self-taken shots of themselves and their mates gurning at the camera, like everyone else? Or are their drunken shots much higher quality?

There is usually a ‘pap-shot’ gallery for the comedy drunken photos, and photos of six people all trying to set up Manfrottos / Gitzos, Lee filter kits in the same place….

It’s actually a lot more fun than you might imagine. Honestly, I really do shy away from clubs or large groups but on these meets you’re totally free to do your own thing, perhaps meet up with some folk at lunchtime, or just disappear on your bike for a day. I’ve met some proper good types on such meets.

I’m a long time member of ephotozine – a friendly photography forum which seems to have grown massively over the last five years to the point where almost all sense of community has been lost, which is sad…

That said, I’ve organised a couple of meets through the site – one in Kinloch Rannoch, and one just last month on the Isle of Skye. I’ve also been on meets organised by others.

The group tends to split up into four or five smaller groups through the day – folk all have different ideas and agendas. In the evenings, it’s usually a case of eating, drinking, messing about with studio lights / remote strobes, swapping ideas, learning PS / LR tricks and did I mention the drinking?!

There used to be a cracking meet at Rowrdennan youth hostel – the warden was a member of EPZ and block booked the whole place out so about 30 EPZers would turn up and basically get lashed for three days, occasionally going off to take photos….

Hoping to attend the Southern Ireland meet next year – a good crowd go to that one!

I took a proper kicking from a bunch of six or seven casuals in Aberdeen years ago. The only help from six years (yes really!) of karate was that I was able to stay on my feet and protect my head. I threw one punch at the start, which had the desired effect of knocking one chap over, then they pretty much all just piled in!

But I’m sure that without the very basic knowledge of the karate, the outcome would have been a stay in hospital.

In any case, it can’t hurt to try a martial art – if nothing else, it’ll give you a bit of confidence.

Wee boys’ fight. In light of recent events, please calm down and let your wee willies go a bit flacid.

Godwin’s law before the first post. Chapeau!

Life would be full of fear. Bullies would run the show. If his scientists were correct, the race would be pretty much perfect by now and we’d have massive unemployment within one generation as older workers lived (even) longer.

Quite close really, wasn’t it?

Done!

My mate (a bloke) got absolute dogs’ abuse off an old lady for parking in a Mother-and-Child space at a supermarket. She spent a whole minute dishing out insults and telling him why the spaces were reserved, even continuing as he unbuckled two of his three kids from their car seats.

CaptJon – Member
Why do people continue to make a comparison between the public and private sectors? Seems a very odd thing to do.

Mostly because the grass is always greener. Truth is, nearly everyone is suffering.

Also, the public sector is the new private sector. Hospitals, leisure centres, libraries and all the other institutions which used to be run as a service to the public are now all being forced to be run like businesses; to be competitive, to respond to market forces, in short; to make money.

So troubleshooters are hired. They slash budgets, get rid of staff they deem to be superfluous and ‘streamline’ admin. As a direct result, the service slumps. The few remaining staff are overworked and lose any sense of loyalty, both towards the people they are now forced to call clients and to their overburdened management.

The trust / library / leisure centre ceases to be profitable as more and more client benefits are stripped and the services close their doors.

The staff who are lucky enough to have full time contracts are called into a meeting to justify their existence; they cannot, because their place of work has closed, so they are put on a ‘Switch Team’ and redeployed into, often, unsuitable roles elsewhere. Meanwhile, their expectations of a pension they’ve been paying into all their lives are dashed. Strike, shite. Firebombs are the way forward.

The above ^^my own post^^ doesn’t refer to me – I did work for a leisure centre in the North East of England, forced out of ‘business’ but I’m lucky enough to earn a living being self employed. It’s mostly on behalf of my better half. I’ve never met a human being so dedicated to her work (in the NHS) and to see the way she and her colleagues are being treated has forced me to open my eyes.

take pictures of it’s arse.

its, not it’s.