randellp

Are you sure you didn't see an Alpina of some sort? They may have a different badge at the front. But the new ones don't have central pipes.

"Bird seed is a hippy urban myth, the hemp seed in bird seed is irradiated (to prevent reuse) and hence can't germinate. It's 99% unlikely that bird seed spills have caused the plant to grow and I'd suggest someone has been a bit naughty :grin:" Chri5 - I cannot believe that all bird seed hemp is irradiated. My M-I-L has lived in her house for 20 years so why should someone start planting seeds, around her bird table?

This happened in my mother-in-law's garden. The plant comes from hemp seed which comes in mixed bird food that grows after the birds scatter around bird tables. I'd also imagine it's from a variety with zero or very low levels of THC so that it can be grown legally and harvested (somewhere in the world) for bird food. I would very much doubt you would get in trouble for this, as you'll never grow anything from this plant that has a narcotic effect. Although some nosey neighbour might dob you in for growing it which might meen you get unwanted attention from the BIB. As it is I enjoyed scaring the M-I-L saying she was up for several years in jail which was fun....

I would have thought that a car "enthusiast" who'd just had his pride and joy resprayed would have set to with a bucket of water and sponge immediately. Not a car wash either - I know some people are funny about swirling etc.

well - our current mortgage is with Halifax, and we want to move back to Nationwide. I am still tempted to pull everything out, but apart from this I'm very happy with the bank, and I suspect all they'll do is wave bye bye as I have to set everything up elswhere. The lady today did seem a bit "it doesn't work like that" from the advert, so I might at least get some mileage if I do some complaining! At least that might make me feel a bit better.

I have just queried Nationwide on my above rejection. They won't enter into any correspondence on explaining my rejected application (I would like to fix it in order to prevent future issues). They will also not entertain any appeal, or process a re-application, for 6 months. This, apart from being very frustrating, is downright weird!

Banks will fiund any excuse not to give you a mortgage at the moment. I've been an account holder at Nationwide for 18 years, with various ISAs, savings, shared account & current (Flex) account, yet they declined a mortgage renewal this month due to a "badly maintained Flexaccount". From what I can see it is because I've used my overdraft facility over the last couple of years.

Last week I found a load of undeliverable messages in my inbox because someone or something has used my hotmail account to send spam mail to my address book list. I've changed my password, checked for viruses (none found), cleared out my cookies & cache but it happened again this weekend. Anyone know a) how this can be done and b) what to do about this? Cheers.

People's attitude to speed is just screwed now. There was an article in my local paper this week about the Police being dismayed after they set up a couple of speedtraps in "notorious speeding spots" in town, without catching a single driver speeding. The Police expressed disappointment about this, and blamed their lack of collars on drivers warning each other that a speed trap was up ahead. Not that people weren't speeding at all though??? I hate this whole thing....

HAve you both actualyl seen pictures of each other? that might make the date less of a surprise....

Robin - you dared, but I would have to replay and say that is nonsense, and irrelevant to this thread.

And you will know where the spare back door is kept too!

I am concerned this is going to happen to us with our house sale. Our purchaser seems a bit, lets say, "wide" and couldn't get the idea that we really wanted as close to the asking price as possible, and not drop 10% he was originally offering. So despite us accepting an offer from him, I am certain he's going to try and pull a fast one running up to exchange. I sawe this happen on Location Location. It was quite funny seeing Phil go ballistic, and they ended up meeting half way to ensure teh sale, but I'm not sure how funny it will be if it happens to me! Some useful ideas above though....

I like sea fishing and often go out on a boat when visiting the in-laws in Dorset. It's also great casting out from Chesil beach in the summer and bringing in some Mackerel for tea! I can appreciate the "sport" of coarse fishing, cos it's great chilling out by the water and challenging bringing in a crafty fish, but I don't like the fact you can't eat what you catch when you get it from a river or lake. Unless of course you are lucky enough to catch salmon or trout where you can keep it. I also don't like all that baiting up of fishing lakes to catch that elusive carp, whic has grow fat on eating spam and dogmeat. It's funny that the Poles are nicking all these prize specimens from fisheris and having them for Xmas lunch. They must think we're mad putting them back again!

You've got plenty of time to start getting ready for this. Get some trainers from a proper running shop to start with and have them fitted properly for starters. Start out training gradually - decide on a running route locally (I use google earth - very useful for measuring out distances) and choose a short distance (3-4k). Taking it very easy to start with, alternate walking/running/walking until you can complete it in one go. Then start extending this distance until you can do 10k without stopping. If you go twice a week between now and June, you will complete this with ease.

always make sme laugh when I see that

Cheers Chris - that's an impressive record and some big hills! The pyrenees are one hell of a ride. Once I get relatively fit and used to being in teh saddle foe a few hours I'll switch to off road, as I know from experience that you need to train there as much as possible to to the technical differences. I'm currently doing 30+ mile rides on road and will be building them up over time. I'll swap to off-road when the weather clears up. I'm also stuck on road at the mo until my new On-One mtb arrives necxt month (thankyou Cycle to Work scheme), and at the moment I'm training on my old MTB converted to single speed and slick tyres for commuting and training. I just wish this rain would stop!

Why oh why oh why did I agree to do this? Feeling a bit porky after Xmas my boss suggested I should sign up with him to do this 100 mile, all off road, 10,000 feet of climb 13 hour event. Having found some people's written experiences on the web (and mostly people take two days to complete the 100 miles), I am now wondering if I have made the right decision. I've usually got on my bike a couple of times a month, do a bit of running & gym stuff. I've completed the London to Brighton a couple of times with ease. However, this is not the same thing at all! You really have to be very fit, and have trained hard to complete this in the time allowed (or you get picked up by a man in a Landrover before the finish and don't get a medal). Has anyone on here done this, and any handy tips to make it easier?? There doesn't seem to be much useful info in helping you finish the event, so I guess I need a similar training regime to the London Marathon to ensure I've got the endurance for such a tough distance. And I'm going to have to get to love hills! Once it gets a bit lighter and warmer I'll be cycling to work most days (7 miles each way on road - but I can lengthen that & go off road to get more miles under my belt during the week), and I'll definitley be doing longer weekend outings - either on the SDW itself, or more conveniently on the Ridgeway which is similar, but much closer. Wish me luck! RP

Eh? This car did 217mph when nothing else did. And it looked (looks!) fantastic. It even won at Le Mans. So, it was a bad time for Jag business, and it didn't sell well, but it's still iconic, if not groundbreaking. And it had a metro engine FFS!!

330d coupe - I'm confused. you're not really condidering a tweaked Cooper for long distance cruising? The ride is hard, and you'll get 50% the mpg of the BMW. Runaround I can understand...

Nice to see you talking yourself back into trouble Nemesis. If, as you say, you owe up to £60k, and you still live at home, then you really need to get rid of that TT and take a long look at your lifestyle, expenditure and priorities. Resolving even a fraction of your debt takes committment and sacrifice, and a certain amount of humility. So if you insist on keeping your expensive toys and lifestyle, when perfectly practical cheaper alternatives are available you will never sort yourself out.

I owned a Soviet Red Lada Niva (4x4) which had some great offroading ability (as long as I could get over the fear that it migt not make it home in one piece), and pretty much looked the part, with a lot of "character". Yet I really loved that car. Even though it was fairly easy to work on, (and I had to do a lot) I had to order spare parts from France, and the crappy ungalvanised Russian steel shell was literally crumbling away and everything seemed to fall off. It blew a head gasket on me, the front brakes seized, the carb used to ice up and stop the car dead at very unfortunate moments (like on the motorway). When I finally sold it (at a dealer for a minimum 1k part exchange, yay!!), the gear lever had started to pop out of gear in 3rd & 4th. It was truly fecked. However, when I'm in South/East Europe I still see them and get all misty eyed about my old crappy rustbucket. And I loved the fact James Bond drove one in The World is Not Enough, and the driver's door hinge cracked just like mine used to!

I'm all for this if they are used properly by drivers. I really hate using the M25 during medium/quiet periods when there are sometimes 4 or five lanes available but tw*ts still insist on driving in the outside two holding up the rest of us!

You can try the Independent Parkign Adjudicator, details : http://www.parking-appeals.gov.uk/IveReceived/challengePCN.asp Your local council will need to be part of the scheme too.

Funny that, I used to get a lot of respect in my 205 gti. Which is still, to this day my favourite car.