Be Excellent To Each Other

The records are a bone of contention. They used to be in a shelving unit in the front room, with the hifi gear on top.



But a few years ago Mrs H wanted to tidy the room, so the albums and cassettes went into the loft and the hifi went into a cupboard, except for the record deck.



Now we really want the loft clear of stuff we don't use or need, so everything's gone except four boxes of albums. Mrs. H has seen some LP shelving units that she thinks could go diametrically opposite to the hifi corner, but I don't see the point as we'll probably never play them and they'll just take up wall space. We could probably flog a lot of stuff that we don't want to keep, but off the top of my head I have no idea how many we'd be left with and whether we'd perhaps need two of these shelving units to house them.

We also had four wall mounted units with all the cassettes, as seen on the right in the top pic, but they were mostly of albums I'd bought and only played once to record them to cassette so I could play them in the car as well as in the house, and all of those have now gone to the tip. The Technics twin cassette player shown in the top pic will now only play in the left hand unit and in reverse. The right hand unit just snarls up tapes and I suspect it only really needs a couple of plastic gears replacing to get it back into fully working order, but as I've ditched the tapes, there's not a lot of point in that either.

The record deck is a Linn Basik that I've had for yonks. It works, but you have to gently push the platter to when you switch it on to get it going. I did take it in to the shop I bought it from to see if it could be fixed, but they said the motor is glued in, so the whole plinth would need to be replaced, so I didn't bother with that as it is only a minor inconvenience to give it a shove to start it. Mrs. W asked my if I'd like to get the family to club together to buy me a replacement for Christmas, but that's also pointless. We'd still rarely use it, and the Basik is still working, so why bother.

Very nice turntable… shame it will cost a bit to rehouse the records. They’re not the prettiest units but the Ikea Kallax units are the perfect size and pretty cheap.

Irritating that I recognise that as a Toyota Yaris dashboard.

Strong entry for headline of the year from the Guardian today:

Couldn’t find a thread for this to go in, but Grim… favourite, Ms Willoughby, at the dangerous end of a plot to kidnap and murder.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67027015

Happy Birthday Mali!

Giphy "large cake with red shirt":
https://media2.giphy.com/media/2qPUYiMHrlkoU/giphy-loop.mp4

Have a Malicool day!

Thank you.

Got some sweet boots

They're nice! Happy birthday Mali!

Look great!

Nice boots. Happy birthday.

Happy boots, nice birthday.

Happy birthday lovely chap xx

Thanks, all.. didn't get up to much. Just hung about.

Sweet anti-grav magno boots!

Happy belated birthday, dude.,

What’s going on outside the window?
That wall looks very close.

Or very big and far away.

That’s the illusion.

this is a bit weird - I can access the forum from work, but if I use the mobile page it is blocked!

Similarly, I can access the forum from work, but not Peex

Me too

Had my Covid and Flu jab yesterday. Those and cottage I am a tired bunny today.

One for Mimi:

https://www.eurogamer.net/the-cosiest-g ... ominvalley

Oh I’m so glad that is coming soon. I remember it being mentioned as being in development what feels like a lifetime ago, so it’s great that it’s got a release period. It’s a shame it won’t be here for Christmas, but I’m looking forwards to it!

That may well be the most twee name ever

It's just my name, dude. No need to be rude.

I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

Hello fine people. My Wife's doing a knitathon for Dementia UK if anybody's got a few pennies to flang at her. kiss kiss.

https://www.justgiving.com/page/helen-b ... 7978910779

pennies flung

Cash beflunged!

Thank yous lovely people.

What is she knitting? One big thing or lots of small things?

I have knit a single clue. She is a mystery.

Well Markg needs some new golf club covers if she’s stuck.

Apparently she's making one of these: https://www.alzproducts.co.uk/twiddle-m ... -cat-sport . But different.

My weather nerdy pointed me towards something very strange and worrying. A little under a day ago there was a tropical storm below Mexico that all the models said wouldn't be much more than a tropical storm at landfall. Within twelve hours it blew up from 45mph winds through categories 1, 2, 3 and 4 to a Category 5 at 165mph, making landfall on the major city of Acapulco. I have never in my life seen an explosive intensification of a hurricane like that before. You can usually bank on at least two days warning with them taking at least 36 hours to ramp up to such a level. The hurricane literally cored the city at the top end of the scale. Might very well be in the headlines tomorrow, barring some miracle where the mountain over the city took a big bite out of the winds somehow. Still night over there.

That’s a really nice idea.

And Mark could still use it as a golf club cosy if needed.

Just had my first piano lesson.

Apparently I'm "good with my fingers" and have "good rhythm."

Not 100% sure I wasn't being flirted with.

Anyone after a chaise looooooooooooooooooooooooooong?

All day long

.

Absolutely beyond parody, that one:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/ ... eadteacher

No, no, no, you must do all things you don't like doing. You must!

I wasn't sure where to post this, it could have gone the GPOY thread, the black dog thread, the middle aged spread thread, but I decided it could here.

My phone reminded me of this photo from 2 years ago today.



Which reminded me that I have not been up to that pool for a swim since mid June, and that (or rather the lack of exercise that not going there has brought about) has led to me being in quite a sustained funk since then.

My calves and feet get quite sore even after a shopping trip (or sometimes even just standing up in the kitchen and making a meal) Which has left me feeling that I would be foolish to try the 15k round trip through woods and moorland on uneven terrain.

All of which means I've added about 10-15kg in weight in the last 4 months.

However, it also reminded me that I look exactly like my dad when he was a similar age.

Here he is holding my eldest son about 25 years ago:

.

Which brought me some joy and a couple of tears to be wiped away.

Sorry to hear about somewhat-enforced lack of exercise + consequences, Malc, and I've missed the regular chats we had about that and anything else we could think of.

The rest of this, though, is absolutely lovely.

Yeah, we didn't settle on an evening that most peeps were available for resuming a regular/semi-regular Zoom, did we?

Truly, all the greats come from Bicester.

Oxford Mail: Oxford Historian Identifies Bicester Home Linked to Osmonds