And I bet you thought you’d got away with it after all this time, didn’t you?

Deviant.

Back in the day I participated in poll tax protests (fuck Thatcher) and later in some Reclaim the Streets protests.

The poll tax ones were quite tense. What with that and the miners there was a lot of political anger at the time.

The latter were much more fun and often had a chill family feel to them. Such a mix of people from families with small kids to crusties to clubbers with kick ass sound systems. Occasionally you’d see a couple of the “fuck a copper” brigade but they were mostly chill.

Just remembered another thing he taught me which should help with standing starts.

Doing a hill start, you pop it into first gear with the clutch down while still on the hand brake.

Give it some revs (not a huge amount, and how much exactly will come with practice) and slowly start to come off the clutch. What you’re looking at is the front of the bonnet. As you get to the biting point the bonnet of the car will lift slightly. At that point you should be able to take it off the hand brake without rolling back.

Same thing if you need to do a standing reverse start on a slope, only this time you’re looking for the bonnet to dip a little.

A looooong time ago I learned to drive.

Figuring out the clutch was just a single driving lesson. He took me to a road which was basically a long hill with no traffic around. He got me to head up the hill in first gear, then to slowly start depressing the clutch until we stopped moving. Then he got me to just play with lowering the clutch more (we slowly start to roll back), lifting the clutch (we start to crawl forward), adding some more throttle and then catching and holding it on the clutch again, rolling back slightly, crawling forward slowly, and again, and again - all while listening to the engine note so I could hear just before we stalled. We spent about half an hour on that hill and by the time we left it I had pretty much mastered holding the car on the clutch.

My parents passed their use-by dates and left me enough cash that we could afford a main contractor who’s pretty much sorting it all out. So far super impressed with them compared to builders I’ve used in the past.

Dodgy builders or overambitions DIY project?

I’m managing. I have a single electric hot plate, a slow cooker, an airfryer, and my barbecue outside. But I’m just dishing up minimal effort / minimal washing up food at the moment!

Oh, yeah. When my kitchen exists again I will definitely give this a go. No Scotch Bonnets in it because the kids but I’ll add some Encona Scotch Bonnet hot sauce to mine.

I love kedgeree. And the family enjoy it too. I like to use uncooked (undyed) haddock which I poach in milk. Then I use half fishy-milk and half water to cook my rice to amp up the flavour.

I’ve used lettuce in stiry fries many times, but not in something that cooks a bit slower like this. I’ll give it a go (the kids will hate it, but they have no vote).

When I was first learning to cook I once confused garlic clove with garlic bulb in a curry recipe.

I still have no regrets.

Mouthwatering!

[0 bids]

Not trying to pick a fight here.

I’m genuinely curious how TikTok has changed society. I don’t use it, but then nor does my teenage daughter. I get that it is/was popular, and changed the way people consume some kinds of content, but I don’t see that it changed society in any fundamental way.

Oui!

Alabama 3. I saw them lots of times in little pub venues and playing non-main stages at festivals in the mid to late 90’s.

Blew my mind when I went to live in the US in 1999, put the TV on, and one of their tracks turned out to be the opening theme tune to this relatively new show called The Sopranos.

He doesn’t need a moustache when he’s sporting that gargantuan tallywhacker.

Saw a thing about the world’s most expensive pizza ($2k+) the other night. Squid ink pizza dough, caviar, truffles, gold leaf, etc. It looked revolting.

Labour’s weak attitude to immigration is to blame here just letting these thieves just fly into the country!

I was furious with my wife in a dream recently and it did take a couple of hours for me to be alright with her the next morning.