Yes, and Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Wordle 1,035 2/6*

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Quickest one ever, probably four seconds.

Absolute clowns, but a lot of thick people have been taken in. I don't think Bridgen is one of them. He's just trying to salvage a career out of their ignorance at the expense of people's health and lives.

I'm literally represented by the most dishonourable, irresponsible MP in the entire House of Commons, and I voted for him. But I'm looking forward to cleaning him out of there.

Quote from: David L on April 18, 2024, 07:01:39 PMWhen I look at that picture, I can smell Brut 33

Interesting. I get Old Spice.

Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on April 18, 2024, 07:26:13 PMI hope you enjoy a glass or two of something expensive tonight, James.

Thanks! I wasn't expecting to do that today. But I do have a half-decent bottle of red.

I first took out a mortgage in 1991, on my old house in Derby. It cost me £38,000. I took out a 95% mortgage with a 5 year bank loan for the 5%. But it was a 27 year mortgage so if I'd never got married, I'd have been mortgage free in the first half of 2018.

But this is a much nicer house, I must admit.

Quote from: David L on April 18, 2024, 06:05:36 PMThis was on a few years back. Not sure whether it was pilot episodes but I thought it had sunk without a trace. Surprised to see it back. Amusing, in the most part, for our demographic.

We've recorded it to watch later. I hope it has the wokerati frothing at the mouth!

I was thinking about that last night. In some ways it does have the BBC Woke trademark - the colleague he shares an office with is gay, his best friend is black. But although Tony is obviously an unreconstructed '70s male with no sense of political correctness or propriety, he's not completely a unsympathetic character and some of the jokes work both ways. I think it's pretty inoffensive in both directions.

People like Mammoth really did exist, my driving instructor was one. So were one or two of the people I knew at RR.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2024/04/17/emma-raducanu-company-profit-commercial-endorsements/

The body of the article is paywalled, but the headline pretty much says it all. That winning serve at Flushing Meadows turned out to be very lucrative.

Watched the first episode of Mammoth last night. A PE teacher is frozen in an avalanche in 1979, and revived perfectly preserved in 2024. A bit like Life on Mars in reverse. Loved it. Especially liked the dialogue with the lesbian PE teacher he shares an office with. BBC2.

Our mortgage deal is due to expire in May, so I phoned Santander to arrange a new one. But the best deal they could offer me was going to cost me an extra £200 a month, because it's a very short term (due to end in December). The only other option was to pay the whole thing off now.

So they sent me a redemption statement, I did the sums taking into account interest I'd lose and I've just paid off our mortgage. I made a payment of nearly £49,000 using a smartphone app (we were due to pay them £43,600 in December).

Wordle 1,034 4/6*

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Two minutes, but I thought I'd got it on the second go.

The forecast was for showers in the late afternoon but since it's been such a thin cycling month due to the weather, I thought I'd just take the Tricross and accept the conditions. Actually the weather was rather nice when I set off, sunny and mild.

A couple of miles later I noticed that I had a lot more lateral movement in my right shoe than I ought to. I tried to remove the shoe from the pedal, but couldn't! The cleat was securely attached to the pedal, but clearly it wasn't properly attached to the shoe. It wasn't actually giving me any trouble though so I pressed on, hoping I wouldn't need to release my right foot until I had a chance to stop and have a better look, which I did near Twycross.

The front cleat bolt was missing altogether and the two rear bolts were loose. I probably had an Allen key in the saddle bag though. Did I? I still don't know, the zipper was corroded onto the zip and wouldn't budge.

So: I decided my best bet was to remove the cleat (it was easy enough to unscrew the bolts with my fingers) so I wouldn't lose it - and attempt to operate the right pedal like a conventional bike pedal. A mistake, probably. I'd been doing fine with the cleat loosely attached apart from the fear of not being able to unfasten my right foot. But without the cleat, my foot kept slipping off the pedal. It was just about workable though so I kept going but cut across via Little Twycross and Bilstone to keep it short.

Half an hour later, the rain came down. I'd expected showers, but this was 15 minutes of persistent cold rain. Naturally this made the right cycling shoe even more slippery on the pedal.

Only 23.53 miles, but I wouldn't have gone out at all if I'd know it was going to rain like that. I've done 222 this month which I suppose is acceptable. And 1592 this year. This time last year I'd done 1800. Actually I've just noticed that I did a 120 mile ride a year ago today. It was the day I got two punctures near Bourne, a lovely warm day. How can that be a year ago already?

https://www.strava.com/activities/11204052764

Wordle 1,033 3/6*

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Quick, about a minute. Very useful second word.

Quote from: Slim on March 21, 2024, 03:35:16 PMJust had a call from Vision Express. They've broken my Oakley cycling frames.

Cross-posted that from the "grumpy" thread with happier news. They refused to replace them, but offered a new pair of frames up to £80 in value (ie inferior). After an argument in the store - their manager lied to my face, claiming I'd been told they were likely to break and this would be at my own risk - I gave up and accepted, but I put a powerfully negative review on Trust Pilot.

Their complaints department contacted me to apologise, offered to replace the Oakleys with the original Oakley frames and told me I could keep the ones I'd already accepted as replacements - which actually I quite like. So I've ended up with a free pair of specs.

I think you nominated most of the well-known Who tunes there - I'd also say I Can See For Miles, Squeezebox, Pictures of Lily maybe, Magic Bus definitely. Who Are You and The Real Me as well.

Similar to my Rolling Stones experience before I embarked upon a Stonesathon, I know some of the albums well (only Quadrophenia and Tommy actually now I think about it), I know some songs from the other albums from rock radio, TV etc but there's a lot of stuff I've never heard.

Wordle 1,032 4/6*

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Nice & quick. 40 seconds.