Careful who you buy the shokz from thou as I bought mine from what I’d consider a mainstream UK retailer (JD Sports) and Shokz wouldn’t honour their warranty as they’re not an authorised reseller – quite how they came across the stock then is a different matter.

@jonm81.  Ooo, that’s interesting to know as I too believed you can only do it late on Jan 31st :)

So if I owe say £3k from BTL rental income, if I do my tax return this month I can pay it through my salary by having my tax code adjusted accordingly?  That’ll be nice! Dan

Hate running, rubbish at it so don’t go much but biggest eye opener for me on the last one was to start way slower than normal.  It didn’t even really affect my overall time but just felt alot more pleasant.

Picking up on the couch to 5k, well done on completing it.  Maybe you’re like me and get motivated by meaningless targets.  What about:

1. buying some cheap, highly unscientific smart scales; recording your current miserable body condition and setting targets to attack those numbers?
2. buying a cheap garmin, signing up to meaningless monthly challenges and using that to drive you?  See how many badges you can collect.  I find this drives good behaviour in my routine.

Nike air force 1 mid in dubious “colour way”, late 40s with a wiff of failed accountant about me. Totally immune to Rusty Spanners assessment – where’s my prize.

In fact, let me trigger you all by saying they’re my favorite pair of kicks I own!

Yup, as above.  I was part of that contractor loan ordeal, was a big number but not big enough to lose sleep over so as soon as they started getting heavy I paid and never looked back.  Wiped me out mind you but moral of the story: house always wins

I think talk of running cost generally is fairly irrelevant as it gives no real indication of efficiency and doesn’t allow for cost of any solar, battery etc that a user may have invested in. Equally, it doesn’t work in depreciation/cost to get into an EV.

I’d rather just talk about miles per kw as its definitive but then people have put effort into their set up and it may encourage others to know how cheap they can make the running cost with time/money invested upfront

Ah, regrettably I have some relevant input. We went that route with our last microwave some time ago, I don’t really call the brand.

The air fryer was a little pathetic and put us off so never used it again. Things may be better now but having just got our first separate air fryer I’d encourage you to keep them separate if you have the space

Thanks all, this is really useful as I now have “just leave em, the new hedge will hide them” on the list! :)

@submarined – interesting, the wheels you’re referring to are the carbon gravel ones? Or the cheap Prime road ones mentioned earlier?

@boriselbrus  Haha, me chuckle.  What can I say, a child of the 80s – don’t come for dinner as I use the same ecelectic approach to measuring ingredients

Oh God, I’m so sorry, I hadn’t twigged we were talking road tyres – I saw barzo and stupidly went straight to mtb tyres.

Forget me! 

@CP. To be fair, I’m not the most experienced off road biker so you may be right. I rode them mainly on wet rooty single-track in the woods I swapped them for maxxi shorty’s front / back and could barely move lol. Now on maxxi high rollers and enjoy the balance. 

Hmm, not impressed with the grip on the Barzos, even allowing for them being a very entry level tyre in my opinion

Thanks all, still nothing but not in a rush beyond some of it being needed for skiing in 3 weeks time.

Good to hear re: the Prime wheels looking nice, I went for the cheaper Prime Baroudeur as I didn’t want them showing up the rest of the bike :)

Doesn’t help you now but a while back I had to claim from excess4insurance and they were good as gold.  Saying that I had the docs.  Any chance you can go back to the car hire co for the docs?

Was that the little one that’s on hotukdeals? I’ve bought a full sized 12inch one ready to attack 50m of 20ft conifers in the new year but anticipate nothing will be over 20cm in width so maybe the lighter tool would have been a better idea.

Reminds me, I need to start a thread about stump grinding (ahhh, reminds me of my courting days)

Hmm, how quick are people seeing their orders processed?  I ordered early on 5th and it’s still not shipped – anything to worry about? (to be fair, relatively low value with 5-6 clothing items so I anticipate that’s a pig to pick)

Not on an EV tariff as our two vehicles aren’t big enough batteries to warrant it but interesting read as I’d not thought to use the app to work out average; both November and the average since going to Octopus Tracker in July is 16.8p.

So that I’m not entirely off-topic, one is a 2015 PHEV.  Ran it through a dongle to discover my usable battery has gone down from 7.5kw to 5.3kw in the 5years we’ve owned it.  Hey ho, I plan to hold it for another 5 years so will make interesting reading! :)

I’m the same as J-R, won £10 in the first couple of weeks of the lottery being a thing and never did it again – decided being part of the 1% that was up on it makes me kind of a big deal! :)

I used to check my numbers to see if I would have won but felt that was asking for trouble lol

@nickfrog.  I noticed that, I’ve been adding things to get the rush of shopping without spending anything lol

I’ve held out for 4 weeks as don’t need anything but bought the £60 Prime road wheelset when it dropped a couple of days ago in the hope it spit-polished my old road bike enough that I avoid the temptation oof buying a whole new bike

Lol Jeffl, like your style.  Reversing the onus!

Food.  Used to love going round the supermarket getting bargains, deals etc.  Sad but would bore the living shite out of my wife showing her what I got.

I now try to get it delivered as there aren’t really any deals as such, I can’t afford to splurge on stuff that isn’t on the list and it’s depressing as hell walking round seeing people pick things up that they may enjoy only to put them back again because they can’t afford it.

Code didn’t seem to work for me.

I’m torn anyway; we don’t cook complex food, 90% of the time we’ll be just cooking salmon, simple veg, frozen things for the Little Village Idiot so it feels like the normal air fryer is the way to go.  The 15-in-1 appeals but I have a a feeling we’d just not use it enough to justify the space/money/compromised usability of the normal air fryer

This is great stuff.  Keeping an eye out for games that don’t need too many resources as it’d be good to do as a non-drinking drinking game when in the pub with mates.   Couch of Power is closest to hitting the mark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_(game) is a good bluffing game using dice.

https://www.dominorules.com/threes-and-fives is a good variation on dominoes

We live 30 mins from Portsmouth so every other year a group of ~8 ol’ giffers go for a cycle ride.  We did St Malo and West of it last year utilising the train to ensure most of our cycling was on the coast.  Top tip: if you do that, train into the likely westerly wind – like riding downhill all weekend! :)

If it were me thou, nicest part is into Caen and going east from there, Sat night in Honfleur so you have easy ride over the big bridge Sun AM and then explore countryside North of Le Harve, to then ride back along the coast to catch the ferry.

The odd years we then fly somewhere: my favorite I couldn’t recommend enough was Biarittz: get the hire bikes delivered to the airport, ride down to San Sebastian and then up a tarmac’ed tin mine path into the mountains for the night followed by a countryside ride back to Biaritz.  Smashing

ride up the canal to breakfast in the city.  On to Bayeux (train if you want) as it’d be rude not to and then hit the coast for a gentle peddle east as far as you want to go.

We crossed the big bridge to Le Havre on Sunday morning and it was amazing or you can ride up

chakaping: not great

Thanks. I’m a bit tall and my issue going up to £1k is I’d struggle to justify it with how much time I spend on any kind of bike.

I was tempted to spend £100 upgrading what will be well worn cheap wheels with these…

https://www.wiggle.com/p/prime-baroudeur-alloy-wheelset

… but while online searches show positive reviews even when they were £250 the reviews on this bundle is discouraging….

https://www.wiggle.com/p/prime-baroudeur-tubeless-bundle

@ceept. Brilliant, thanks so much as my 30yr old 2nd hand ones are wafer thin! – never thought to replace them lol

@jonnhyboi. Thanks so much, yeah, to say all the bits are unbranded I feel like the extra for 105 is the better value offering.

I’ll stick with my old jalopy, I kinda like it’s old enough to buy a round in the pub! :)

What’s people’s view on their Vitus Zenium road bike? Clearly not a touch on more expensive models but worth considering as a way of getting a leg over a cheap carbon road bike?

I’m on a entry level alloy trek 2nd hand 18yrs back and didn’t know if it would inspire me to ride more.  Or better value through my cycle to work scheme being high rate tax payer?

Not really ticking the history box but a canoe down the wye can feel like Cape Fear while being within a reasonable amount of safety.

You can park the car downstream and get a company to supply the boat/transport upstream and there’s a lovely campsite half way.

I’m sure this is all well known but just in case. 

Charlie, that sounds like a winner to me!

Forget the kids, let’s go together! :) 

I’m afraid another instance of being talked out of it – wanted our current cat to be Spartcius simply to see if everyone else in the waiting room can resist the urge when the vet calls him! 

Are we saying these the cheesy motivational msgs are only on the free version? – that’s hilarious as it’s a clear nod they know it’s annoying.

Spent a short time on electrician forum, their “now subscribe” msgs were way too passive aggressive to the point I stopped using the site altogether

Wot Onza said! You’d need to work out the possible returns. 2 miles to school – just use the big car, no 2nd car. 10 miles and a frequent need for 2 cars – I’d say jump in and enjoy the ev experience with eyes wide open re range limitation.

You’ll be surprised how infrequently range will be an issue and in those instances you have the big car anyway. I’m a little jealous if I’m honest lol

I’m the same as Sharkbait (hesitant about smart meters for a long time but made the jump).  I’d agree with Dazzy that I don’t think it’s really helped me to reduce my usage but will take the benefit of getting cheaper electricity as I don’t have a great imagination when it comes to scenarios where having a smart meter in the future will be punished over a normal meter.

Oh jesus, you’d think that would be the first thing they’d check on the support line.

Pleased that you [hopefully] have it sorted as it isn’t getting any warmer!

I notice I really have to try hard to manage my thoughts and pushing myself to exercise.  Didn’t ride my MTB all year (bloody golf, getting rid of the membership at renewal – I’m the wrong side of 40 to be dropping proper exercise) but have been out in the mud a couple of times since Autumn hit.

I mug myself off believing the garmin’s monthly badges/challenges mean something but they really keep my momentum going into winter if that helps anyone.  (picture those generals standing next to Kim Jong Un with all their medals – that’s me that is!)

Just to chip in, thanks for the update as it’s nice to see threads from start to finish.  Hope your daughter is doing well at school – my background is one of moving schools only when the last one gets condemned so I can only imagine moving life/the whole family based around a school.

…. Not sure if it helps as didn’t clock the fix period but it was 31p/elec and 7.5p/gas, with higher standing charges too that represents around a 30%/50% uplift on what tracker is currently averaging out elec/gas respectively so I’ll stick with tracker and hope I don’t regret it