reb

In sad lonely man news; my microwave korma fucking exploded all over the inside of my microwave.

Can you complain?

I'm used to them running at least 10 minutes late, they changed all the times 2 weeks ago to make the timetable more achievable, I'm not quite used to them actually running on time!

Some pictures

My experience of VAG shite is it stays fine for most of its life then spontaneously dissolves past the point of repair, usually just after you've fixed something expensive. Everything else I've owned has either not rusted in my ownership or rusted in a controlled fashion so it can be repaired (admittedly not always in my ownership)

Today I had to have a blood test, it was at 10:45, so I had to get the bus at 10:15, I woke up at 10:00 so that was a good start. I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything but water past midnight, so no morning coffee. Blood test was fairly painless. They weighed me too, I've gained nearly 10kg since December somehow. Once I finished with that I went to Costa for coffee and a toastie before I got the bus home, I thought I had enough time to buy some fags at Tesco too but as I walked towards the bus stop I saw my bus leaving. Not particularly feeling like wandering about a town with fuck all in it for an hour I walked round to the bus stop at the train station, as soon as I got there the Dundee bus pulled in, that seemed like as good a reason as any to go to Dundee so on the bus I got. Got to Dundee and immediately remembered that the city centre is a desolate wasteland with nothing of any particular interest except CEX and I really don't need more video games I'll never play. I sat on a bench smoking fags and peoplewatching til my arse went numb then walked to the bus station; the bus that would drop me right at the end of my drive was just pulling away. Obviously not time to go home yet! So I get a bus to St Andrews instead, knowing there's a regular* bus to the village from there. I get there to find it absolutely rammed full of students, turns out it was the fresher's fair today! I sit on a bench on Market Street peoplewatching again for a while, then order a pizza from the Domino's I used to work at. I have a brief chat with a couple of my old colleagues, one of whom is going on break and sits with me while I eat the pizza. We reminisce and lament the high staff turnover. Then I go to the bus station. You'll never guess... my bus has just left again! You may realise at this point, I'm not very good at buses! I find out there's a quicker bus goes from a stop around the corner anyway, right next to the pub I used to drink in with Dad. It's not for an hour and a half, so off to the pub I go. I go in and mercifully it seems to be relatively student free, though it is rather full of middle aged men telling eachother golf stories. I ask for a Strongbow, find out they only have the dark fruits one, that'll do I suppose. Then I find out it's a bloody fiver! Daylight robbery if you ask me. I sit at a small table in a little nook and drink slowly. After about 20 minutes my colleague from earlier turns up and we decant into the hilariously shit "beer garden". We chat about life again then it's time for me to go for my bus. I manage to not miss it this time and it's empty except me and the driver. By the time we get to the village, the sun is low and it's not quite as boiling anymore. Before I embark on the walk up the road to the farm I pause on a bench to admire the view over the fields. I say hello to the sheep. When I open the front door the cats run to greet me. All in all quite a pleasant day, if not particularly exciting. It may not seem like much but it's a big step for me to spend an entire day out and about on my own, I've spent the vast majority of my time since dad died either in my cottage or in hospital. It's a nice reminder that the outside world isn't as scary as it sometimes seems.

Doesn't rust *yet*! I'll bet in 25 years the plastic arches will fall off revealing biblical amounts of rot.

In the pub for the first time in a very long time. Bloody fiver for a pint of Strongbow! What is the world coming to?

Holy thread resurrection! Strangely it seems I'd read all the old posts even though the last one is from 2 years before I joined, odd.

Is that Jonathan Creek's house?

I've not even bothered renewing my 1yr medical licence that expired in January because between two claims and a newly diagnosed health condition insurance will be ££££. Add into that the cost of tax and fuel... I'll stick with my bus pass for now I think. Part of me is even considering getting a ticket on the 205, selling it along with the rest of the contents of my unit and sacking that off to save even more money. It's going to be a long time before I can trust myself behind the wheel again, might as well improve the cigarette and beer budget, eh? But I know I'd regret selling the little pug.

It's a long time ago now, nearly a decade in fact, I'm a shit cyclist now. I did rather effectively turn kfc family buckets into impressive leg muscles. And it turns out if you can shift nigh on half a ton of pedicab and passengers up hills, even if slowly, you can absolutely fly on a lightweight fixie.

Edinburgh. We had an area we were licenced to operate in, with threats of fines and/or licence revocation if we operated outside of it. It could have done with being slightly less restrictive, there were a couple of pubs tantalisingly just outside that we'd have to say "sorry, outside the area" Luckily the pubic triangle (a junction with 3 of the most popular strip clubs around it) was inside the area and two of them would give you a tenner each for people you brought them. Easy £30 for a full bike, plus whatever you charged the punters.

Caddy, I think? Some sort of van shaped people carrier with VW badges on it anyway. I'm not very good with modern cars. I stayed inside for two years then when I went out all the cars were different.

I got a taxi back from an appointment yesterday. The driver was inexplicably posh and was using most of the power available from the 1.9TDI. I glanced at the speedo coming up through the village, the community group on Facebook would go mental if they'd clocked him 😂

When I did pedicabbing I had basically the same rules. With the added one of "please don't touch my arse" which hen parties needed reminding of. Oh and "don't steal the blanket" which was maybe a bit hypocritical because I think I actually stole the decent blanket I had from another rider. It's still on my sofa. I miss that job. There's a lot to be said for a job that provides large quantities of banknotes to take to the casino at 3am on a Thursday.

Once due to train companies being shit I ended up on a rail replacement bus all the way from somewhere 45 minutes north of london to Glasgow. Which is all well and good but I live on the other side of the country from there! They said they'd pay for a taxi for me, and that it'd be ready as soon as possible after reaching glasgow at about 1am. I disembarked the bus and tried to light a fag, the first since london, only to be told my taxi was ready and I had to go right now. The taxi driver saw this unfold and just as the door was closed he said "don't worry, you can smoke as much as you like once we're on the motorway!" That was about the only good thing that had happened all fucking day that day. I haven't been to london since because I haven't got over the memory of sitting on a coach watching my phone battery die with hours left to go.

One of the pickups on the farm has the reg SM22 KFC, which would be more fitting if it was a chicken farm rather than a sheep farm admittedly.

I have a rant brewing about wasteful use of digital resources, but I'll put it somewhere else so as not to clog up this thread. That would be wasteful.

I always thought they did that because filling in the online form actually prints a change of keepers slip into some pale character's in tray and he spends 12 hours manually changing things on the system each night.

If the costs are by hour, I have an idea to halve the costs! Reduce the duty cycle from 100% to 50%; switch the server off for an hour every other hour.

I finally got something done today that I've been meaning to do for a while:

My idea has slightly more monetisation routes than Stollies and Roadrunners.