Only for softie Yanks. If that guy was Antipodean he would have bitten through his arm days earlier.

If he’d been a Scot, he’d have deep fried the boulder, eaten it for breakfast and washed it down with two pints of home(bladder)-made Irn-Bru.

For what it’s worth, I pretty much always have a ‘gentlemans’ folding pocket knife’ somewhere about my person. Just force of habit really, and it does get used daily. I could do without it – use my teeth, get up and find some scissors or whatever, but it’s handy and looks very inoffensive. Obviously doesn’t come down the pub with me.

alpine girl – Member
user-removed
That’s a good (I presume educated) guess!!

Ah well, close, but obviously my stalker skills are getting rusty 😉

I used to do holiday cover on all the roads up there and yes, the weight of the bag was truly horrific. Used to pick some great gear out of the bins though – could never believe the stuff those ‘posh’ folk threw away!

EDIT: pretty sure the shop is still there – the chemist definitely is (or was two years ago…).

I’m guessing that they price their wheel buiding in a way that takes into account profit made from the price of the parts (hub, spokes, rim, rim tape).

Having said that, I never say no to any request – I just quote my happy price 🙂

EDIT: too slow again 🙁

I also did multiple paper rounds, with 2 routes on Sunday with one of the most expensive streets in Aberdeen

Alpine girl – I’m guessing the street was Rubislaw Den, and that you worked for Jackson’s newsagent on Rosemount Place (or maybe Watsons, depending on your age).

Am I close?

Peeled for what exactly? That article doesn’t mention what’s been taken…..

Grumm – I did a stint at Burger King – grim as hell but it’s where I learned how to roll spliffs the size of battleships on the half hour break 🙂

The usual paper rounds until I was old enough to take a job scrubbing pots / washing dishes in a local Italian restaurant.

Lasted about a year at that then took a job collecting glasses in a nightclub (too young for a bar man). Lasted a week at that – my arse was bruised to bits by all the 40+ year old women grabbing it. That was just not pleasant (after the first few!).

Lots of good points made.

I do a fair bit of work for no-win-no-fee lawyers. Invariably, the people whose injuries I photograph are; a) embarassed about claiming, b) indignant about what has happened to them and c) looking for a payout.

Given that my business insurance is almost double my car insurance, I’m bound to fall on the side of those arguing for a reduction in the number of ‘whiplash’ claims.

Ones’ neck may hurt for a week or two – it is not worth £3000. You will not have problems in back body when you reach the age of 72 as a result of said injury.

I agree entirely with the post above that legislation is badly needed to stop whimsical claims. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how this aim maight be achieved. Answers on a postcard please.

OK last confession… I was in the loft of my parents’ house and my three year old brother was at the bottom of the ladder squealing to come up. He started climbing the ladder so I went down and carried him up.

He spent half an hour happily gurgling around and coo-ing over all the old toys and boxes of photos and books. When my mum called us down for tea, I tried to pick him up and carry him down but he wailed like a banshee and refused to come. After a good ten minutes of persuasion I told him I’d leave him in the attic and the witch would get him.

I climbed half way down the (14 foot) ladder and repeated the threat – no response. This tactic was repeated twice until I was on the 2nd landing. At this point a pair of infant feet became apparent; my brother was lowering himself from the trapdoor without the benefit of the ladder.

As I ran back up the stairs three at a time he dropped like a stone, over the 14 foot drop.

Amazingly, he landed on the substantial baby-gate, only recently removed from the bottom of the stairs. It had several bendy plastic slats which propelled him into the air, much as if he’d hit a trampoline, before he finally came to rest on the carpet. I’ve never heard such screams….

My folks still think he fell from the bottom rung of the loft ladder.

Didja see what I did there?

My mate and I superglued plastic doorbells and held the button on till they stuck. A super-scary version of ring-bell-run as it often took 20 seconds or more for the glue to hold the button in, and you just had to stand there with a twig pushing the button!

Damn we were extreeeme!

Last time we had one of these, some poor soul told us he was responsible for his father’s death 😯 He was deadly serious (sounded like an accident) but didn’t reappear on the thread. Can’t remember who he was…

reggiegasket – Member
Good article in the Independent yesterday about why youngsters binge drink.

Answer suggested was to get them in the pubs, not clubs/parks. That way they don’t drink as much and the oldies keep an eye on them.

Oh please god, no!! I like my local just the way it is thanks, i.e., not chock full of young folk shouting drunkenly and trying to batter lumps out of each other / me!

😀 😀 😀

😀

Toys – I’ve re-read the relevant posts and stand by my assertions. If you do the same, you may understand why*

*I say that in the absolute certainty that you won’t, and that even if you do, your blinkers will remain in place…

Erm toys – you’ve completely missed the point there – the reason people are unhappy on the other thread is not that the dog is pulling a weight, it’s that the dog was (very likely) in training for illegal, cruel and unnecessary dog fighting.

In bikejoring and sledding, the dogs are not. Simples.

It probably fell out of my hair 🙁

So many genuinely amazing pics – I keep coming back to this thread for inspiration 🙂

This one was shot today for a Facebook 31 day photo challenge. My £100 Optio compact camera never ceases to amaze me 🙂

EDIT: it’s a very, very close up shot of lichen on a wee twig. Didn’t spot the insect bottom left whilst shooting – quite literally smaller than a full stop.

😥 I was born and bred in Haddington 😥

Lovely wee place with great countryside – my Dad now lives nearby in the beautiful Saltoun Hall – keep meaning to get up for a visit with the bike – every time I’m there I spot loads of inviting trails up into the hills….

I am trying to understand your point, but it keeps coming back to the fact that you rode around in the Alps on a variety of lightweight XC bikes until you broke one and that you had “loads of punctures” until you fitted something more suited to the job in hand.

+1 willy waving.

When I were a lad…. I bred hamsters, gerbils, rats and mice for the local pet shop. Yes gerbils are less smelly than hamsters. Both are a wee bit ‘nibbly’ IME – I was bitten by both. Gerbils like company, hamsters will also live together happily if they’re given hamster holidays now and again (have a seperate cage and put one of them in it once or twice a week – also helps if they get a good run around now and again – I used to make mazes / enclosures out of books).

Mice make the best pets IMHO – very interactive. But they are a bit smelly and are even better escapologists than gerbils.

Thanks to Drac and cougar for the circle / arrow explanation. It’s been there six months or so – only noticed it be cause of this thread…

There’s one of those exclamation mark signs on the A1, shortly before Haddington, heading North – always prompts discussion as there is no obvious hazard….

Seen tonight on my way home; square yellow sign, black border, black circle on the right hand side, black arrow on the left…. Means nothing to me – something to do with the new build flats 1 click down the road?

Grand! Nice swear filter avoidance too 😉

Aye, will do.

Stoner – maybe someone already has – the ad appears to have turned into a static, soundless ad for the Stroke Association….

I rear ended a brand new SAAB back in my twenties. I had a brand new (to me) car at the time and was only insured for my old car – hadn’t taken the required ten minutes that morning to swap the policy to the new car. Lots of damage to my car (write off) but his had a few tiny dents and a few chips in the paintwork.

I explained to the guy I’d hit that I wasn’t insured but would pay for repairs and a hire car. Cost me 2.5Gs even though the guy was very reasonable about it and didn’t go down the main dealer / police route. I did have to pay him in cash though, which hurt a LOT – it was my savings for a bike trip along the Karakoram Highway 😥

So it may be worth waiting to see if the guy who hit you can make good on his promises, and put his money where his mouth is…

[blatant plug]If you want self catering, you could do a lot worse than one of my mum’s cottages. Wood burning stoves, brand new ‘themed’ decor (proper old Scottish kitsch with tartan all over the place 🙂 ), nine miles NW of Portree and great views out over the loch…..[/blatant plug ]

Here you go![/url]

RS4KEV – Member
There are a few around here that are

Circle
White edge
Blue colour
White diag cross on them

They look like faded clearway signs but they are new. Not in highway code book or Wiki….

Anyone?

You are now entering Scotland.

Depends on your needs to an extent. If you plan to process large numbers of files, go for LR. I would struggle to live without LR now – the ability to batch process big bundles of images is a real time saver. Yes, you can do this with PS but much less hassle in LR.

If I was just processing 20 landscape shots though, I’d probably stick with Elements (which I haven’t used but assuming it has the same interface as CS5 for dealing with raws).

If it does work, it would probably be with a select few clients and regular daily deliveries – I can say from experience that project’s scenario does happen if you try to take on too much.

I pinned quite a lot of hope on the legal firms in Aberdeen but most of them already have an old fellow who bimbles from building to building two or three times a day.

I ended up with about two dozen regular clients, all of whom needed stuff delivered a few times a week.

That’s pretty awful.

My sister’s friend (very clever, very pretty, quite well off) was taken in by a confidence trickster a couple of years back. The guy took her for about £7Gs IIRC, but he did have lots of previous and did get caught. Not sure if any cash was recovered though 🙁

From everything you’ve said so far, I would say you’re doing everything right thus far – a quiet chat combined with your mum’s threat of the polis may do the job if he’s not a professional scammer (and if he hasn’t already spent all the cash!).

Good luck.

Agreed ^^^^ I started up a cycle-courier company in Aberdeen (although this would be about 12 years back now). I worked bloody hard at it, then my slack as **** mate business partner dropped out, which didn’t actually matter very much as there wasn’t enough work for the both of us anyway.

I struggled on for a year – this in a city with the largest industrial estates in Scotland. I would no way ever do it again – it nearly broke me.

It might be worth doing six months with an established company (you’d have to move) to see if it’s your cup of tea or not – also to steal business info 🙂

Sorry can’t help but know from past experience that the AA won’t assist if they deem it to be an RTA. Good luck!

Best double post EVA! Because it wasn’t the

Very, very last post tonight

was it? 😀 Cos there was another! Do you see?

As an aside, I can well believe that the STW team are very peed off indeed – at least one of the ads (CTC if memory serves) was time sensitive in that it was trying to flog Gift Memberships in time for Christmas.

I doubt such advertisers will be amused by the thought that subs readers didn’t get their mags until the New Year.

Just for the record, I don’t give a tinker’s toss when it turns up because I’m not plain weird. If anything, I just feel a bit bad for the mag staff.

Right! After my last post I went off for a piss, had a ‘lightbulb’ moment’ and realised what everyone was trying to tell me (sorry if you’ve posted in the last twenty mins or so, but thanks anyway!).

I reckon if you stare at something for long enough, your brain ceases to be able to bring logic to a problem. Apparently, going for a quick slash works for me – light now working beautifully and italspark, my apologies, but it is also beautifully insulated – please let me send you some cash for taking the bread out of your mouth.

Thanks again to all for the helpful posts!!

Thanks for the advice – I know how frustrating it can be trying to explain something over the internets. Still none the wiser I’m afraid…

@ snaps – that’s almost there;

I’m assuming the live from the light fitting goes with the two live wires coming out the ceiling, yes?

And the earth on the light fitting attatches to the two earths coming out the ceiling?

So the neutral wire on the fitting will attatch to one of the black wires (as yet unidentified) coming out the ceiling – where does that leave the remaining black wire?

Mr Mojo – the two switches only control this one light – I have no multimeter sadly.

EDIT – the posts made whilst I was typing have cleared up a lot of confusion – thanks very much indeed. I shall sally forth for another go…..

ChrisE – that’s what I thought too – I’ve put the live, neutral and earths together. Obviously not that simple…