Be Excellent To Each Other

Ah yes, I remember your challenges now and I remember thinking that it was a great idea. Looking forward to seeing the list.

Blimey, Easter's late this year!

Yup. Easter Monday is only two weeks before Mayday. Bank holiday-tastic!

Should have taken it to the toilet before you left. Schoolboy error.

My daughter is very excited that it is the day after her birthday this year.

EDIT - It's actually on my birthday twice in the next 15 years. Hopefully I'm around to see them!

Crikey, that's morbid.

1 - Yes. I'm like that, sadly.
2 - It stopped someone else saying, "Unfortunately..."

Mate, worldwide, there must be literally a dozen people that would miss you.

I think everyone examines their own mortality from time to time. It's worse if you have people who rely on you. Either way you're ace.

At least he didn't hope to not be around.

See Curio, you have more slightly more fans than there are LibDem MPs! Living the dream.

I feel the same way - but totally get that this could also be due to my state of mind at the moment.

The year started with me almost having a nervous breakdown about my uni work as I was really struggling to fit it all in time wise.

At least I suppose this got explained when a couple of months later I got diagnosed with Dyslexia and Dyspraxia, all sorts of things started to make sense then.

Then there was the eviction. I had a couple of weeks of uni work to finish off before we could sort the house out, I think that took it's toll all of the traveling and working at weekends as well as the expense (I have good tenants in there now who have always paid their rent on time to date and are clearly looking after the property - so there is a positive end to it.).

Darryl went off the rails a little (to put it mildly) there was a time he thought he was going to prison, thankfully that didn't happen. After this he finally got a diagnosis of PTSD. This also explained a lot of his behavior/irrational decisions. He's under various mental health people now, but unfortunatly he also a criminal record which restricts him from doing most things he has trained for.

We managed to find some time to get some work done on the house which was nice, but also tiring, then I had to go back to uni.

Around this time I was very aware that all was not well. I have suffered from SAD for as long as I remember, but this year I don't think I ever came out of it. Cue a very bad day at work and a trip to the doctors and meds for depression and anxiety. Everyone has been very supportive though and bent over backwards to help me - I must not forget the positive side of this.

A couple of weeks before Christmas Chloe had a couple of seizures at school, she'd fainted earlier in the year at home, but after some tests they decided she was just dehydrated. They are now investigating her for Epilepsy. Her blood tests have come back clear, she is now waiting for a date for a brain scan.

So, 2016, as the saying goes, 'can get to fucking fuck'.

Fuck you, Jazzy's 2016!

Thanks Guys.

Jazzy wishing you a lovely 2017

I'm so sorry to hear of these issues Jazzy, I really hope things get much better for you and all concerned.

Cavey

So sorry to hear all that, Jazzy. Here's to a better 2017.

Thanks guys.

*hugs Jazzy*

Thanks Kern.

The list...

- Spend one night wild camping
- Learn a new skill and demonstrate it at the next New Year event
- Grow an impressive vegetable or plant, and bring it or a photo of it to the next New Year event
- Learn 10 common British wild flowers and 10 birds
- Cook from a new cuisine
- Try a new veggie recipe every 2 weeks
- Volunteering for an activity not done before
- Appear on TV or radio
- Visit the burial place of 3 different royal dynasties
- Light a fire using a bow
- Learn 3 poems or dramatic speeches and perform them on 1 occasion and at the next new year event
- Go to an art gallery and report back on a picture you liked

Whilst last year the general theme was 'travel', this year the collective unconscious of my friends all seemed to go for 'skills'.

That is an awesome idea. I might try a few of these.

Print the list out now and tape it to your wall so you still remember it come June.

Yes Sir

This is a good idea. I may well do something similar.

However, I've long been of the opinion that 1st Jan is a crappy time to make changes in your life. It's cold, dark, wet and you're broke from Christmas. I hereby suggest we make New Years Resolutions on the 25th March, which was New Years Day in England up until 1752. It's spring, it's light and warmer and you've cleared your Christmas credit card!

Fucking lulz

Our friends own their own business, just got married and had a baby, and bought a new house without selling the old one.

Their business is now failing (because of Brexit, genuinely (which is slightly schadenfruede-istic because they voted for it)), and they've put everything on credit cards.

I can't imagine how much that must be hurting.

Good point - more like I've managed to convince myself that my Christmas credit card is no big deal and it's ok to get spending again...

Can you tell us more about that?

They run a demolition business that relies on contracts for people to say to him "please come and demolish this thing for us".

Apparently after June 23rd his normal connections all stopped getting things demolished (presumably because nobody was building things in their place), literally telling him that they weren't going to spend money to demolish things because of the vote.

Wait. A demolition business is a thing? Man, am I in the wrong job.

Can I hire it to demolish capitalism?

You wouldn't last long, your tendency to throw yourself on top of explosives would see to that.

Well, not for much longer.

Not unless you come up with something to replace it with first.

A workers' demolitions cooperative.

I know how that feels.... gutted for them. This is very much the downside of being in business, as opposed to just collecting a monthly salary as an employee, fair play to them for having the balls to do it, regardless of outcome (if it wasn't for people like them, there would be an awful lot less wealth creation and trickle-down effect around).

Mind you, I'm in the building game and I can say with certainty that, following an *incredibly* brief post-Brexit blip lasting a month or less, the Contruction Sector is booming. Just look at the massive spike in Persimmon shares, and others, only yesterday.

I hope things get better for them.

Didn't house builder type shares plummet around the type of the referendum or am I thinking of something else? How are they now compared to back then? (Genuine interest, not leading to some intellectual conclusion of any sort )

In Berkshire were I live there is no sign of any slowdown in building, everywhere you look there are houses going up. The pub at the bottom of my road has been demolished and cleared, its in a huge plot and they are building over 55 retirement apartments.

There is not one brick laid as they are currently digging out for an underground car park, but the scheme is 50% sold already.

We are looking at moving in a specific area and what I have seen over the last 6 month is houses no longer going for stupid money, people still list them high, but within 2-4 weeks you see 10-15% coming off.

Well, I'm no expert nor wheeler-dealer in shares (hah!), but quick googling Persimmon reveals a big Brexit crash and subsequent recovery to at, or very close to pre-Brexit levels. So as far as the Market is concerned, they appear to be pricing Brexit as "meh, so what".

Ta

A quick Google reveals that the stock prices were:

Pre-Brexit - 2098
End of year - 1760 (more than 17% of value lost)
Today, following government announcement of more homes to be built - 1934 (still around 8% down)
Rough price expected had Brexit not happened had Persimmon moved in the same direction as their long term trend line - 2400 (so they are over 19% down on what they would have expected).

So, even on a good day, not a great position.

That's not to say that I think Brexit is killing housing or anything. I would have thought it to be particularly resilient to be honest. We still have massive demand outstripping supply by a considerable margin. I would expect builders to do well; we're not just going to boot millions of people out of the country and suddenly have a huge housing surplus.

*cue Brexiteers in unison* AWWWWWWWWWWW

There might be some worry about labour - I'm sure plenty of the people on building sites are from the EU.

But that's a ridiculous analysis.
Taking the absolute peak that occurred the very flipping day before Brexit and saying that's your benchmark is pretty daft, and hardly objective now, is it? Jem's me asked a straight, unloaded, friendly question (breath of fresh air) and wanted a straight answer, which I've attempted to give. Clearly, you're not doing that because, as per, you have your agenda, Curio.

For anyone who's actually interested, here's a link to the Persimmon share price time history graph. Click the 1-year tab.

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... %20history

Any fair-minded person would have to conclude that the current share price is pretty typical, or very close to the pre-Brexit price (and actually higher for some periods). They started the year with a share price of 1969, and, a year later, they're now on 1937 - yowzers. big deal.

Just to be clear (again ), I have no agenda here since I was - and still am - anti Brexit. However, I'm interested in facts, not distorted spin to suit a given political argument (either way), and I suspect Jem is too. Besides which, I work in Construction as I've said, and it's booming from where I am sitting.

Or click the five year tab and see how the long term trend stops dead in the past year.

If this was a global warming chart you'd say it was proof positive that it's stopped.

Um, I fail to see the relevance of 5-years anything, since we're talking about the effects of Brexit which was June this year btw....