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The grumpy thread


outlaw118

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Only twice had a problem with the Visa verification, once when I forgot my password and guessed it (wrong :( ) and then buying a phone from Tesco but their computers went haywire.

 

As for Hastings, I was about to insure with them.  May reconsider that one then.

 

They've been OK, other than the renewals process is stupid. The best company I've been with for not having to talk to anyone was Swiftcover. Most changes could be made through the website, they even encouraged you to do this by making it gratis but charging an admin fee if you rang them. They want an extra £100 a year though :/

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ugh.

 

steel wheels with tyres are the hardest things to dispose of. not allowed at dump, scrap man wont have them if they have tyres on. I've also had no success with ebay listings for 99p

My local tip allows 4 a year, with paperwork to sign. Thats how I got rid of the 3 old ones from the zxq

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Ebay cheapskate bastards. I've put on some surplus (read shit colours) pool ball sets for £8 a set delivered. Some twunt has just bought 3, and then messaged wanting a discount on them. Ignoring they're cheaper than anyone else, it's not like I can stick 3 boxes weighing 2.5kg each in the post for the same delivery price as one box. I'm prolly going to get a neg for daring to make a fivers profit in total.

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Ebay cheapskate bastards. I've put on some surplus (read shit colours) pool ball sets for £8 a set delivered. Some twunt has just bought 3, and then messaged wanting a discount on them. Ignoring they're cheaper than anyone else, it's not like I can stick 3 boxes weighing 2.5kg each in the post for the same delivery price as one box. I'm prolly going to get a neg for daring to make a fivers profit in total.

Respond with two words. Fuck off.

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It's quarter past 2 in the morning and I'm wide awake in a hospital ward of coughing, snoring sleep talkers.

 

I'm just about to be hooked up to an IV drip and my system is full of morpheme, tramadol and ibuprofen. This is all due to an accident at work yesterday at about 3 in the afternoon.

 

I was in a machine called a Crendon Squirrel, similar to a hydraladder which is a bit like a self propelled cherry picker. It's controlled by foot pedals in the cage to drive it and change the height of the cage. My job involves building structures over the tops of kiwi orchards of hail cloth stretched over cables winched to about a 1.5 tonnes of tension up on wooden poles about 5.5 meters in the air.

 

I was driving the squirrel under the kiwi vine canopy which is about 1.7 meters tall

The plants are trained across wires at this height, supported by steel box section sat on top of wooden poles.

 

I was going to slow down as I was entering a tighter section to manoeuvre when the drive pedal stuck down and slightly right and sent me at full tilt into the poles, while the cage shot upwards as I had just tapped the other pedal to stop the cage scraping the ground. Effectively all the controls jammed solid and I had no control over the machine.

It pushed me up into the canopy and bent me over backward over the back if the cage and then dragged my chest, face and neck across the wires and vines. My left arm got caught between the top of the front if the cage and a metal box section and was pushed forwards from the wrist, almost to the elbow across it whilst also being pushed upwards into it. It was crushed, twisted and snapped between the top of the cage and the beam.

 

Luckily one of my colleagues managed to hit the emergency stop on the side if the machine as I was struggling to find the one in The cage while bent over backwards. He then reached up into the cage and hit the up and down pedal until it unstuck and lowered me to the ground.

 

The upshot is that I have a clean snap across the left radius, a chunk if bone smashed off the wrist end of the ulna, a big puncture wound and crushing from nearly at the elbow to the wrist and possibly a bone at the base of my hand broken too but it was difficult to tell from the x rays.

 

I'm in pain despite all the drugs in my system, my left thumb doesn't seem to be working and I'm under observation to make sure I don't have complications from the crushing before they set my arm in the morning and asses just how serious the damage is to my wrist.

 

It was a freak accident, i've been driving these machines for the past 5 months without incident and it was recently serviced and had been working fine up until that moment. I'm certain it wasn't operator error and I don't blame the company as they'd taken all reasonable precautions.

 

I'm just a bit miffed that my arm is royally fucked even though I am thankful that it wasn't worse. I have two puncture wounds to my neck from where it was dragged over the wires and vines right next to an artery which would have been far more nasty and possibly even fatal.

 

On the plus side, being bent over backwards at about 90 degrees has fixed a small twinge I had in my upper back.

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Glad your back is better mate, saves on osteopath bills!

 

Shitting Nora, as the saying goes. You were bloody lucky that it wasn't much, much, much worse, although what you have is bad enough. Hope the drugs keep the pain at bay and wishing you a speedy and complete recovery.

 

Ken

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You lucky bastard! Back fixed for free :)

 

Seriously though, it does sound like you were lucky (in a very unlucky way) as it could have been an extinction level event for you.  I hope your arm is not too bad (though it doesn't sound great ) and repairs properly. Bet you are going to get expensive metal bits in there - makes you much more attractive to the scrap man when it comes time for final weigh in :)

 

Get better soon.

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In the name of the wee man, that's some set of events you've been through, and still face with the setting of the bones etc. - I'm glad you're alive to tell the tale.  When you get more aware, I hope you have some fit (and expert at their job, obviously) hospital staff to take your mind off things.

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In the name of the wee man, that's some set of events you've been through, and still face with the setting of the bones etc. - I'm glad you're alive to tell the tale. When you get more aware, I hope you have some fit (and expert at their job, obviously) hospital staff to take your mind off things.

I'm hoping to get another x ray today as the radiology department seemed to be staffed by the residents of castle anthrax from monty python and the holy grail!

 

I think that what I find most annoying is that after looking for ages for a fun, manual car in NZ the spending 3 days changing the clutch on the Metro (update coming soon) I only got a couple of weeks of use and now won't be able to drive a flipping manual! I might have to sell it and get an auto.

 

Edit: thank you so much for your sympathy as well. I know I've met a few of you but the warmth of strangers from the internet is very touching. I love this little beige corner of the internet.

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Nothing that bit of matting and a splodge of resin doesn't sort out (mate did GRP roofing, so had loads of materials in the garage)Delta became City Sprint around 1998.

Oops, correct.... I did work at city sprint for a while too, had a 305 for years and many gt550's and cx's

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Here I am, still alive with arm elevated to stop blood pooling around any crushed muscle. All seeming alright so far, my arm has swollen a bit further but blood supply to my hand is only a smidge down, so I probably won't need too much hacked out of my arm. When I first got in, with the amount of crushing and pressure it had been under, there was a bit of a question mark over whether I would loose my left hand so I'm pretty stoked that it seems to still be alive along with the rest of me.

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I have to say Phil that despite your being wiped out on opiates, and only having the use of one hand, your spelling and punctuation is flawless :D. When I got bashed up and hospitalised some years ago I didn't even know who I was for about a week. I'm told I kept saying "BENSON & HEDGES, BENSON & HEDGES" over and over again.

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