Bearing in mind the lottery comments and MTG’s response, I must quite like my job – I’d definitely carry on doing it if I suddenly became stinking rich. Although I’d do it in a slightly swankier way!

I swallowed the American dream BS referred to above in my (very) late twenties, put all my apples into one ricketty basket and spent four years turning my hobby into a business, via college and uni.

Sorry, but I really, and I mean really love my job, at least 80% of the time (photographer FWIW)!

I do this with depressing frequency. Usually on threads which provoke a strong response within me. Then I remeber the utter futility of trying to educate people* on the interwebs and delete the whole lot.

*Bring a twit round to my (obviously right) way of thinking.

That’s just plain nuts!!

Have emailed you damitamit…. Let me know if it doesn’t come through – my email’s playing up a bit….

Damitamit – for real?! I’m 37, have 8 years no claim bonus, have held insurance my whole driving life and have one sp30 which is now four and a half years old. Apparently it’s recently become very expensive to insure jap imports?

As I said – he’s more a workmate than a mate, and it would be bought completely ‘as seen’…. Managed to get an insurance quote of £800 now, which is better than I’d dared hope for. Might well be game on 😀

Hmmmm. Just managed to get my first sub £1K insurance quote on the FTO. Not looking good….

Other option is another mates 2.4 litre, uber-sensible Volvo S80 D5 on the same £100 a month terms. He wants £1600 for it which is about £4-500 under the usual asking price – it’s immaculate and very well looked after mechanically. Just over 100K on the clock and seven years younger than the FTO. Insurance is a couple of hundred less too….

Or just keep my Focus estate, put it through its £6-800 MOT and hobble along for another year. The Focus is looking very tired though and my clients do notice such things. Aaaaaah – decisions!

guitarmanjon – Member
user-removed – Is that on Skye, near the Fairy Pools on the way to Glen Brittle? Always fancied taking the bike to Skye but haven’t managed it yet.

Yes, exactly there. There’s a thread on my blog about a few Skye rides – and on here somewhere too….

That Clockwork looks lovely! Here’s my Halfords bike….

Thankyou – now that I have permission from a stranger on the internet, I most certainly will.

😀

Looks just like this one;

Actually, just remembered, got a compliment slip with my last order telling me they’d upgraded my pads (for free) to kevlar – they were out of sintered.

So Kevlar are the way forward. Maybe.

Pays to be paranoid.

I’ve had the same set of sintered in my Juicy 7s for over a year. Used in fairly sh1tty conditions over the winter and long braking sessions throughout the Summer – still got about one third of their life left (Superstar FWIW).

X0 out back has worked flawlessly for two years – same cable and the odd tweak of the barrel adjuster. Taken a beating from lifting bike over stiles and bending mech hanger, and a good few rock strikes.

X9 front mech is toss. It works, but only because I replaced the allen key bolt which clamps the cable with a sturdy nut and bolt. The original fitting stripped within two months and it’s now a PITA to get a spanner where it needs to be every time I fit a new cable….

Isn’t this just a discussion about getting what you pay for?

Broke my neck on some super-slidey stuff at Chopwell last year. Did my first section since at Ae two days ago (sh@t mesel’ but thought I’d better get back on the horse and all that). Also super-slidey so didn’t touch the brakes…. I found it helped me to look well ahead.

Mange tout, Rodders….

+1 chudsy. At the local dry ski slope, instructors are put to work cleaning the staff room / toilets if their lesson fails to turn up. Yes, they’re working beneath them, but they’re still getting £18 an hour for cleaning, which is well over the going rate….

Really sorry to read all this – sounds a lot like Tom (Gordon’s) accident last month in Sunderland.

IME, sadly even very obvious, story-telling damage to car and bike won’t help much if there isn’t a witness. The polis are very fond of hearing from both sides that it was the fault of the other, and writing it off as blow-for-blow. So I’m hoping there was a traceable witness?

That is so wrong on so many levels. They should start him on something quality – perhaps the syrup tainted Innes & Gunn would appeal to his childish palette?

Seriously though, you might as well feed your kids Silk Cut Extra light tabs if you want your family name to fall from the tree like a rotten, diseased apple. You did the right thing.

During my twenties, I worked as a multidrop driver – first for a local company, then through an agency, and finally for Parcel Farce.

I would have killed to get a nice, rural route, meandering about through the NE Scottish countryside – these routes were given to the oldest, most time served guys.

My routes were almost always serving the needs of the huge, sprawling, grim industrial estates which serve the needs of the oil businesses, and sometimes the dreary, endless grey sattelite commuter towns around Aberdeen.

Yes, it is hard work and all three companies I worked for regularly took the p1ss – sending you out to a residential address with a washing machine, single-manned, sending you out with a pallet of chains and gear to tiny workshops with no forky, etc, etc….

That said, you’re (kind of) your own boss for most of the day, you can stick on Radio 4 and sit in a layby with a view for the afternoon play, eating your lunch and if I’d been anything close to the equivalent of £20K, I’d probably still be doing it!! As it is, I’m self employed and pay myself less than £20K a year. Hmmm.

My lunch today was two day old roast chicken and bacon with salsa in tortilla wraps. NOM!

I do like a bacon sarnie, and will happily chow down on a nice big steak, but if you really want to feel like you’re helping animals like the bile bears, sign up to PETA – I did, and only donate £8 a month – you can donate 50p a month if you wish…

I signed up after watching that devestating video showing various furry creatures being slightly stunned then skinned alive, somewhere in rural China. The naked carcasses were then thrown onto the back of a cart where they gasped a long, slow, unimaginable death….

Donate to PETA

What’s Beethoven’s favourite fruit?

BANANA NAAAA BANANA NAAAAA BANANA NAAAAAAA BANANA NAAAAAAAAAAA

Apple.

5thElefant – it’s an argument which will continue to boringly trudge along….

FWIW, I use my old metal bodied Nikons with infra red film and it gives me results which (IMO) would be very difficult and time consuming to replicate digitally, even with an IR modified digital camera.

Whether art is or is not a ‘practical application’ is for you to decide I suppose…

Good thread and sentiment.

(The Police Force is) seen as a great big money pit that doesn’t turn a profit; budgets and the most important strategic decisions are based on what is happening in the here and now, and not what could happen.

Sadly, the same is true of the NHS especially and all other publicly funded bodies generally. They are all being forced to operate as businesses, rather than public services, funded by taxes – I just cannot for the life of me see how that will ever work.

McHamish – Member
I wonder what the world would be like if everyone had the same opinions…no need for politics, one news paper, one TV channel.

Russia in the 70s. Pravda. But i suspect that was a rhetorical question?

Like Kevevs, I change my mind from day to day, so end up sitting on the fence until I’m forced to make real world decisions. I’ve been slapped by a policeman (hard enough to bring on a fuzzy moment) – I still genuinely have no idea why, and am old enough to remember

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC ORDER BILL

which made a criminal out of anyone attending a peaceful protest or unlicensed celebration.

So I am very wary of normal folks, who happen to be in uniform handing out arbitrary justice whilst stressed out of their minds, on the streets of our cities. And very, very wary of any new legislation coming on the back of public unrest…

On the flip side, as Elfin has already said at least once tonight, I’m also extremely grateful that uniformed folk like Easygirl are around to nip genuine crime in the bud – back on the fence?

In answer to the OP, WGAS?

Christ. Shut up.

Actually, thinking back to my Russian Dwarves, they prolly are hamsters. They don’t look right, but honestly? Wait a year, they’ll die and she can get some normal-assed hamsters.

That looks like a gerbil to me…. Are you sure it’s a big-assed hamster?

If you / your BF can’t live with the crazy-long Velocity stem, do what I did – go to Halfords and buy a quill stem adaptor for a tenner – then you can use whatever modern sticky-uppy stem you like.

It’s totally changed the ride on my old Kona Hahahahahhaannna (for the better) and despite the nay-sayers, it hasn’t snapped / ovalised the head-tube / killed me yet, despite some rough stuff.

And be aware that if you buy a student copy, you can’t upgrade at the reduced price if / when you want to get a newer version. My student copy (I really was a student) was a false economy – I had to stump up again for a copy of CS3 when I outgrew PS7…. If you buy a full price version, upgrades are much, much cheaper.

The thread…..! It Lives master!

My wedding ring came from Argos 🙂 It was so cheap it shredded my flesh for a few months before I tamed it with a rat-tail file…

Oh! I got away with typing, “shite”! Perhaps the hyphen made it OK…

*Tries to imagine a silver van, but in my head, it looks like it’s been sprayed with tins of Halfords paint*

Due to a puncture, I had to drive near on 100 miles on a space-saver tyre on the way back from the Wicker Man Festival last Sunday. So that’s a long way at 48 mph on 60mph roads.

It was actually a very refreshing experience – occasionally, I’d pull over and let folk past. I understand how frustrating it is to be stuck behind some twit doing 20 round all the corners, then speeding up to 70 on the straights (thus rendering a safe overtake impossible), but 50 is a decent enough speed on a NSL road…

My parents live on the Isle of Skye, and maybe four times a year I drive up there from NE England. Invariably, I’ll get stuck behind a hire car doing exactly the above (stupidly slow in the corners, crazy acceleration in a bid to appease the locals on the straights) on narrow roads, and yes, I’ll admit it, I’ll overtake on blind corners (no headlights ahead and I know the road) and it reduces the overtakees to a skidding, shite-smelling standstill.

Ex white van man here too.

The only full susser I’ve ever ridden was a GT i-Drive, from Halfords. So my opinion doesn’t count. But FWIW, I wasn’t heartbroken when it got nicked.

Woody, “….and it is the prolonging of life through advances in medicine, to the point of necessitating care for every function, which is unnatural”.

Yup – that’s exactly what I was trying (and failing) to put my finger on. I see little value in keeping folk alive just for the sake of a pulse (and £800 a week…). Lots of pain, zero pleasure (my Grandad in his rare moments of lucidity tells me he’s, “Not at all happy”, and does it with a smile on his face as if he’s embarrassed by this state of affairs).

Oh and to the OP, well done for even addressing the need for training. I recently started up a sister business for my wedding and portrait stuff (blatant plug coming up)

dog photography north east

…and am constantly astounded by the number of dogs who won’t even ‘Sit’, let alone come back when they’re called. Lots of owners say they’ll have to have an indoor shoot as their dog will “just run off” if let off the lead outside. And even the indoor shoots are a nightmare because the lead needs to be on – the dog’s never been taught to stay…. It’s been eye opening 🙂

Didn’t miss it richc – our lurcher’s recall training started almost exactly at that age. We got him at six months old – never too young to start.