It seems possible that the positive test is confined to just one area of the building (showers) but a girl working for Northumbrian water has told him that he should be safe if he doesn’t use the taps….!

The test samples are seemingly sent off to a lab where they are grown for at least a week to see if they are OK or life-threatening. My mate’s worry is that he will have been working there for a week by the time the test results come back. He can’t afford to get ill (or die) as he has another, full time job.

Enjoyed that! But please do get yerself some bar end caps – don’t you remember derek-starship’s ‘apple-coring’ accident 😯

Baby weir-womble, natch. Atlaz – that is amazing – may I suggest a square crop to do away with the black edges which bolt the image to reality? Would make a great cover for Gormenghast 🙂

Soak in WD40 overnight then have a go with molegrips (not Molgrips)?

Yup – you can change your username if needs be – folk with really bad feedback do this. The time on site will include all previous incarnations….. You used to be able to see a bidders’ history (in terms of previous usernames) which was a handy tool for spotting dodgy geezers – maybe you still can?

That’s tip-top info thanks! Think I’ll give the SS one a shot – can’t really justify £120 on a part I can’t even see 🙂 Shallow? Who me?

Emmmm, pretty sure it’s a Truativ Stylo – raining too hard to go to the garage and check 🙂

Anyone hazard a guess? Also, it’s yonks since I’ve had to do this – if you could recommend a suitable removal tool I’d be grateful!

Just when you thought the interwebz had run out of pikchers.

And despite the pic, I run SS pads and have been lucky enough to have never had any problems – I do buy the posh ones though….

My Focus locking nut mangled itself – got a replacement locking nut set from an autoshop for about £20 and paid a local garage £40 to remove the stuck nuts. Cheap as chips – £200?!!

Aye, top work! Cider, cheese and bikes – it’s all good. Also happy to report that today’s very-important-shoot went like a hot, sweaty dream.

Moonhead – Member
Take 2 of everything!

You did mean two of everything from the booze cabinet right? Hic.

Cheers man I will. Good luck with the date…. Vile energy drinks are good for hangovers….! Nice kitchens by the way!

Gotta really, truly, possibly career-changing photography shoot in the morning (bridal stuff with big hotel chain owners) and I’m loving the Montepulciano 😀

Ironed my shirt earlier and batteries are charged – it’s all good!

Quick blast round Chopwell tomorrow – steering well clear of the super-slidey North Shore stuff though – slid off it last time and did my neck in….

Eh?! Your experience of a festival would be ruined by someone else getting high?!

If the internet comes round my house to nick my bikes, I’m gonna stab it to death with a rusty screwdriver!!111!!

Guy keeps bikes in garage shocker!! Who’dathunkit?! 😀

Anyway, any thieves will now get stung to death (training in progress).

Add to that the fact that the upandover door will now never move again (bolted top and bottom with huge expanding bolts in concrete at the bottom) and the fact that the bikes are locked to two separate floor anchors (more expanding bolts) with a huge Squire motorbike chain and several kryptonite U locks, and it will hopefully put tea-leaves off!

Went once, in the early days (the next year someone got stabbed, and the year after there was a gun scare). We paid some dude with huge dredds £5 to crawl through his hole (oo-er) under the fence 🙂

Lifechanging? Not sure, but it was most certainly a new experience – just being able to smoke with loads of other folk with no fear of arrest was extremely uplifting…

Well they don’t seem to be interested in stinging me but the dogs aren’t very happy about being near them… It’s a bit of a pain TBH as I’ve just permanently locked down the garage door and spent a good few hours hanging a new garden gate to give access out the back of the house – looks like this;

The corridor down the left is all clear of greenery now, but there’s piles of masonary, fencing etc underfoot, which is where the bees have set up shop.

EDIT: laugh it up – I made the gate myself out of old fencing 😀

Just had a chat with a chap from BeeBase, followed by another chat with someone from the British Beekeepers Association. It seems that; a) they’re bumble bees
b) they (their nest) can’t be moved or they’ll likely die
and c) if I can live with them ’til the end of the Summer, they’ll all die off, at which point it’s fine to block off / get rid of the nest.

So I reckon I’ll just stick a wooden walkway of some kind over the top of all the rubbish and wait for the cold weather.

Thanks for the tips – oh, and I’m in Co Durham.

Hmmmm. Food for thought. There used to be an old bloke further up the street who kept bees – was before we lived here but the neighbour thinks it might be his bees. Would they really stay together / reproduce for that long (he’s been dead 10 years…).

Off to Google for a local beekeeper then, but I can’t say I’m very hopeful.

There is an in between Cougar – Hi-tec ND grads are mid-priced and really pretty good – used them for years before upgrading to Cokin X-Pro with a Lee filter holder. Try buying a Lee polariser though 😯
££$$$££$!

*crosses gwj72’s remote house off list*

I start all my auctions at 99p for the reason above. I also never ever use reserves – let the numpties bid the item up to somewhere close to its true value and the serious bidders get involved in the last three minutes…

I also never sell off ebay – although this tactic has seen me have to refund in full for the last two items I’ve sold (cameras worth about £300 total, Grrr!). There was nothing at all wrong with them – I suspect buyers’ remorse and a bit of damage inflicted followed by the old ‘damaged-in-the-post-guv’ thing.

But over 750 transactions, I’ve only had perhaps a dozen problems as a seller, so can’t complain really…

This is quite wierd – just finished watching it on i-player and the first thing I said to my wife when it finished was, “Damn! I have a massive urge to find her and punch her hard in the face”. My wife would normally give me ‘The Look’ for uttering such thoughts, but happily, she concurred.

Another convert here for the Muckynutz mini mudguard. It just works – as a contact lens wearer I’d never be without one again. FWIW I ride a shortish travel hardtail and it really doesn’t have to be crazy-muddy to make it worthwhile – even the surface spray off wet tarmac can get grit and water under your lenses…

Yes! I’ve won the ‘stay-up-late-and-argue-on-teh-interwebz’ competition. Daren’t go to sleep now 😐

Right so we can finally agree on something – I also find it hard to vote for anyone. Given the choice though, at a very, very basic level, there exists one party hell-bent on deconstructing the NHS and another with a slightly less damaging remit.

The problem with “the Right libertarian argument for minimum government control” is that once you hand over the purse strings to those who earn enough to actually pay tax through earnings (rather than having it taken out of their Job Seekers’ allowance), said earners will skew the system in their favour , rather than helping those most in need.

I honestly feel that I can’t go any further with this – frankly, either you’re a **** or you’re not (not you personally). Either you have a sense of “dae as ye wid be done by” or you don’t.

It’s not an admirable intention, it’s a moral imperative surely? I don’t want to return to a Dickensian nightmare of cholera epidemics or endemic rabies – I also appreciate that neither of these things are happening in the US but there is most definitely an underclass consisting of those who can’t afford to treat their ringworm (as mentioned on page one).

It’s not down to ‘targetting’ where your tax dollars go, it’s down to voting for a party which will do The Right Thing with them. We are developed enough as a race to have some morals aren’t we?

May I be excused from being “educated” please? Thanks awfully 😀

EDIT: given the following posts, I don’t believe that pointing us at a bunch of greedy, self-serving barstewards counts as education…

Point taken Charlie – the NHS is far from perfect – barely adequate sometimes (my own gran died whilst waiting for surgery which we all knew was never going to happen) – but it doesn’t leave those born into the most deprived socio-economic groups high and dry.

Yes, if you’re well off and can afford the premiums, you get a top quality service. If you’re not, you get sweet FA – I wouldn’t be comfortable with the whole “I’m alright Jack” thing, and bogger the rest of you.

Thanks very much 🙂 And may I take this opportunity to apologise again for thinking the best of a stranger.

CharlieMungus – Member

Charlie – I assume you’re trolling, but did you read the link above?

Not trolling, we were talking about how some Americans seem to think the NHS is a mugs games, i was just outlining some of their arguments.

Sorry – I have this aggravating personality trait which means I tend to take people at face value 🙂 And actually, I actually do believe you believe what you’ve written. Not my job to change your mind and hopefully the recent US reforms mean that there are less people thinking the way you describe….

Charlie – I assume you’re trolling, but did you read the link above? Working man loses his job and health insurance and gets badly ill. No win there, I’m afraid 😕

Yes, but my car spends most of its life parked in a public place, as do most other peoples’. In my example above, I got stopped at a set of lights, but if traffic wardens (damn their eyes) had the ability to ‘shop’ cars without an insurance disc, say, perhaps with an attendant fiscal reward for the warden, I’m sure a lot of uninsured cars would be off the roads sharpish…

My point is, cars are in the public domain, and mostly not moving – not that hard to spot the absence of a disc.

True, but I’ve been stopped when my tax disc has fallen off onto the floor, so they do use their eyes as well as their computers!

Get the seller to list it as a ‘buy it now’ with a pre-agreed price. Buy it, job’s a goodun.

I put the ring on the dog’s collar and we went off for a Wintery walk on the beach. I was a bit worried when the dog started leaping in and out of the waves and ramming his head down rabbit holes but the ring stayed put….

Gave her the box at the end of the beach – it had a dog biscuit inside! She was supposed to notice th ring on the collar when giving the dog the biscuit, but I had to ask, “Oh! What’s that on his collar?” before she noticed the ring.

Re the special warranty thing – I took it as the sales guy gave me a 10% discount on a £700 machine if I did so. I cancelled the warranty before the first installment was due. Kerching!

😆 That’s pretty unlucky!