Merryck

Just seen this on Reddit

I have a pair of in-ear bluetooth earphones, Melomania Cambridge. They're fine, not going to blow you away, but they were reasonably priced and are more than adequate for what I need them for. A couple of years after I bought them, well out of warranty, one of the metal rings around the right earphone came loose. This meant it wouldn't fit in the case properly and wouldn't charge. So I looked online for a guide how to take them apart and there wasn't one. I started looking at doing it myself, but when I went to remove the ring it felt like there was a wire or something. Not wanting to wreck it I emailed them asking how the ring was attached and how I could re-attach it. They sent me out a new pair and said to keep/recycle the old ones. Free of charge. Arrived two days after I contacted them. They're an old product, so maybe they just had loads of stock left, but I thought it was great service. Anyway, knowing I had a spare pair I took the ring off and it was a tiny bit of glue juuuust holding on. Once it was off it was clear I could just re-fit the ring and turn it about 30 degrees to lock it in place, so dabbed a bit of glue on it, re-fitted it and they're good as new. If I need another pair, or anything similar I'll check what they've got on offer first. It pays to look after your customers.

FFS! I paid a grand for the Micra and it's only got one rear wiper! I could have had my wipers at... 22.5% of the cost!

I'm sure I've told this once before, but I was once driving the Land Rover home quite late, would have been after midnight. My wife was with me, and as we were driving along a Police car came in the other direction. I looked in my rear view mirror as they passed and said "They're going to pull us over I reckon." We carried on and nothing. No lights or anything. I turned to her and said "Huh, guess I was wrong!". A few minutes later I see a pair of headlights coming up fast, just as we get to the same part of the road where the stag incident happened they turn on the blue lights and suddenly there's three cars, one overtakes me, the other pulls up next to me and they box us in to pull us over. They wanted to check it wasn't stolen. Again, luckily they weren't too aggressive with it as the Land Rover has drums on the rear. I asked if they were the same car we passed further back and they explained they were, and that they weren't able to pull a Land Rover with just one car in the countryside as they'd have no chance of stopping me if I didn't want to be stopped. They checked it was ours and sent us on our way after a couple of minutes. Was quite exciting really! I'm always happy to be stopped when I'm driving it as they're stolen all the time around here and it means they're more likely to catch whichever fucker's stolen it off me. They always apologise for stopping me so I make sure to tell them to stop that one specifically any time they need to. Hopefully whoever owns it after me doesn't mind!

Funnily enough I was thinking that as I wrote it, maybe they saw the stag coming and heroically launched themselves in front of my vehicle to save me. That must have been it!

Just before Christmas I was being tailgated by the police in an almost brand new X5. Right up my arse for a good mile or so as I stuck diligently to the speed limit in my little Micra. Anyway, we got to a bit of straight road and they went for the overtake. I was already doing the limit, so they were being bellends, but whatever, I'd rather have them in front of me than behind. I looked in my wing mirror as they overtook, having seen something there. As soon as they came past they SLAMMED on their brakes, moving right across me in the process. At this point I'm thinking "These guys are fucking deranged!" Until I saw a fully grown stag fly into the air, right across the other side of the road, over a roughly 10ft hedge. Bits of brand new BMW flew everywhere, and luckily the Micra's brakes were able to keep me from ploughing into the back of them. They pulled into a driveway about 100m down the road, I pulled in to check they were ok and the driver couldn't even get his door open, the deer had managed to push the whole front quarter back enough. Thank fuck they overtook me though, because the Micra would likely have taken out the fucker's legs and I'd have ended up with a face full of venison. Not sure I'd have survived it. It would certainly have written off the car.

Have you ever heard of the Lipstick Index? Essentially the premise is that when money's tight people will spend on small things as a treat. It's far easier to spend on a couple of drinks with friends here and there when your general outlook is shit as a way to lift your spirits. The upshot of it is that people will cut back on big spends while increasing the instance of treating themselves. Also when people say that, they fail to realise that every time they're walking past that same busy pub they're likely seeing different people. Or they're being intentionally obtuse.

When I was in my late teens we (my group of friends) were given an old Transit minibus by a friend's eccentric nan. It was big and red, and we decided we needed a van to lug around the equipment for our burgeoning DJ company we'd started. We ran it for a year or so, the whole thing was extremely dodgy. Eventually it stopped running so we abandoned it on my mum's driveway. After a few months the MOT ran out, it wasn't taxed, it wasn't insured and it wasn't SORN'd. My mum wanted it gone, so a buyer was found. Charlie was going to tow it over to them, with Nick behind the wheel of the Transit. All still extremely dodgy. So they get to Dover. Why they went through Dover I have no idea, there must be SO MANY cameras there. They're waiting in traffic, big red Transit lashed behind a Navara. The police pull up next to the Transit and motion to roll down the window. Nick starts to roll it down, and the officer begins the "What the fuck is that thing doing on the road" spiel, when the lights change and Charlie, not seeing any of this, drives off pulling the Transit with him leaving Nick to just shrug his shoulders at the officers with a look of helplessness on his face. The police either couldn't, or didn't want to follow them to deal with it so left them to go on their merry way. Nick still can't believe his luck.

I really don't like Jeremy Clarkson. He's a smart man, if you've ever watched him on a show like QI he's clearly intelligent, which makes some of the shite he spouts that much worse. He must know what he's saying and the potential effects of it, and yet is willing to still spout it. It really grates on me. I feel like he should do better. That said, I remember Top Gear before he took the reins and it was SO DRY. I used to watch it with my dad when I was a child and even he found it boring sometimes. Whatever you think of Clarkson he played an absolute blinder when they came up with the new format. It made cars, and car culture, more accessible to a much wider range of people, it was actually entertaining. He and his team deserve every bit of credit for what they did. It says a lot that so many of the team quit when he went. Obviously Hammond and May did, but also crew, producers, directors, editors etc. all went with him. Even the guy he punched in the face went with them I think. The problem they were always going to face was what happens after Clarkson. The entire format of the show was centered around him and his persona, when he retired/left it was always going to struggle. They shouldn't have tried to continue the show without making major changes to it. What those changes would be I don't know. They couldn't go back to the way it was before, it just wouldn't work with the new audience.

Just in front of the hole in the floor where the gear selector comes in.

I'd put a tenner on this being the issue. Without the fresh air duct your vents are just pulling air directly from the engine bay (well, wheel wells, but essentially the same thing. I had the same issue on all of mine because some bellend kept taking things off them in an attempt to make them go faster! That, the exhaust manifold gasket and the downpipe connection were a perennial issue with all of my Minis. Bunging up all the extra holes and making sure the hole in the floor for your gear selector is at least somewhat sealed should see a decent improvement.

I do yeah, although it looks like the Council are clamping down on people lining up on the road outside. Twice while I was there a really arsey parking warden came round to chase people off, trying to be Billy Big Bollocks.

I'm extremely jealous! I'm a simple man, if I won the lottery first thing on the list would be a huge barn to use as a workshop, second would be a second barn next door to fill with the shite that I'd inevitably collect.

Qashqai MOT today, passed with an advisory for front driver's tyre. I replaced the passenger side two weeks ago and I have no idea why I didn't do both at the same time. I usually do. No idea at all. That's not the grump though, my wife let our four year old play with the controls for all of 20 minutes the other day and when she tried to drive it the next day the battery was flat. Time for a new battery. £215!! For a battery! I'm only 36, but back in my day...

Oh fuck, I can't believe I forgot about this one! Near me there's the plate K1NKY. It's been around Canterbury for years. For a while it was on a Tesla, last I saw it it was on a Porsche. Great plate. Never seen the driver, but I imagine they wear a lot of leather.

A neighbour recommended a 50/50 mix of acetone and automatic transmission fluid as a penetrant. Reckoned it was better than anything else around for the job. Haven't tried it myself, but could be worth a shot?

Saw a BMW Mini today with the plate R33 EJB. Paddy Hopkirk's Monte Carlo rally winning Mini had the plate 33 EJB.

It's DIFFERENT. Change scares me.

How about this guy from 1941? Makes you realise how little casual fashion has changed.

My dad used to say "It's only a crime if you get caught". Which probably wasn't a healthy thing to be telling a child who was already displaying a very healthy disregard for authority!

Funnily enough, my toddler is happy to eat fish - I on the other hand hate any seafood that hasn't been mashed up and breaded prior to making it's way to my plate!

Yeah sorry about that!

It's my birthday today. I'm 36. Took the day off work and spent it with the family. Went out for a nice breakfast, then went to have a mooch around Faversham, then over to Whitstable for lunch (there's a decent burger place there called Please, Sir - I recommend it). After that we went and picked up stones off the beach for my son. I'm still not sure why, but we did. Stopped for an ice cream at a place that makes it in house (The Gelateria) then headed home to find a letter from HMRC. With a tax rebate of just over £600! Fuck yeah!

That's a proper bargain there. I made a little jig for making up hairpin legs so I could make some stools. It wasn't a massive job, but I wouldn't be selling individual legs for less than a tenner, let alone a whole set!

Don't forget their stellar plan to segment the city and fine you if you drive into any other part of the city. They were going to couple this with a bypass. Where they were going to get the money for that I have no idea. It would have been fought tooth and nail by everyone to the north-west of the city in any of the surrounding villages (all the people with money). It would never have ended up happening in my lifetime. Obviously the segmented city plan entirely relied upon the bypass and was going to be implemented either way to try and force the situation. Thankfully the new Labour/Lib Dem council immediately scrapped all these plans. The previous council also closed a number of the car parks, one in the center of town that was always packed has been empty since COVID and is now for sale as a 'development opportunity'. The multi-storey they built next to Canterbury West stands empty. They have zero clue how to deal with the city, none at all. I once heard an anecdote in the pub from someone who worked for the Highways Agency. They were running a survey of traffic coming off the Wincheap roundabout onto the A28. They had previously run a number of surveys and the number of vehicles was steadily growing, until the last one where the number of cars counted dropped through the floor. The council were absolutely chuffed with these results and took it that all their plans were working, refusing to listen to the Highways Agency who were trying to explain that they'd finally hit critical mass and the traffic was so bad that it was just gridlocked. A great start to improving things would be to actually build usable on/off ramps for the A2. Wincheap only has three out of four. Due to a new housing estate one of these off ramps now has two-way traffic on it. The other places you can enter/exit the A2 aren't even in the city. One is in Bridge (which again is a bastardised junction) and the other is in Harbledown. In the mean-time they've allowed development of the city to grow so much along Wincheap to Thanington that it is now bisected by the A2, which is meant to be a bypass. So now you've got a massive (and quickly growing) number of people who live on the 'wrong' side of a four-lane road and have to either cross it at the junction or walk along the river to get into town. The route along the river, while lovely, floods for three months a year and only has two access points between Canterbury and Chartham. I live just outside Wincheap and I avoid going into Canterbury whenever I can. I drive to Folkestone to go to places like Wickes/Homebase as driving across town to B&Q will usually take me twice as long.