*Bob*

I was hoping to avoid repaying my student loan by reaching however-many-years-after it is before they give up trying to get it back. The plan worked worked well for ten years or so. It was buying the overpriced house in ED which finally did for me.

I'm still flying the flag, people.

I claimed income support and housing benefit for a good year and half before contributing a penny in tax. Come to think of it, I didn't contribute any tax for a few years after that either. Is that fair?

I agree 110% with Fuschia. If you think I haven't got better things to do with my time than sit around reading pages and pages of postings on an internet forum and then post my own comment on it, then you are all sadly mistaken.

Is that a cigar butt I can see there, quietly biodegrading?! CALL A WARDEN

On the upside, it keeps the fresh spittle moving around your mouth, thus preventing it from smelling like an open sewer on the bus home after a day on the egg and cress sandwiches, roll-ups, Snickers bars, pork scratchings and a few pints.

Alas, these were simpler times, when I knew nothing of the wider world.. young offenders, peregrine falcons, lesbians and the like..

PK was only good for (at best) a minute.. maybe two.. of flavoursome chewing. So indeed after you'd licked it and cracked it, your options were sorely limited. Some people stuck it to their jacket. I preferred to lob mine down a drain when no-one was looking and perhaps go try and catch a frog by the pond.

Woo-hoo! Perhaps we should start a TS club, LTP? We can celebrate with a drink. You bring the vodka, I'll bring the tonic and we can carefully mix the two together every time we top-up the glass, using a specially provided receptacle (TS250-related joke for two people)

Jeremy, if you don't know where the Oriwisu Spot is, then I feel very sorry for your girlfriend.

Ha Ha It's the same bike but not mine (I haven't quite got to the stage of taking pictures of my vehicles yet). Mine was red anyway. It drove the ladies wild.

Despite it being possibly one of the worst motorcycles I've ever owned, for some reason I grew very attached to this little East German number.. If you misplaced (what I think you could loosely call) the key, you could start it by sticking a teaspoon into the ignition - which (logically) was located on the top of the headlamp.

He is out to get you, Carolyn. he won't stop until he's got everyone. Thanks god I can get my sport fix from the Darts and 'World's Strongest Man'.. otherwise he'd have me too.

Just bin it and put the telly on.

What I find intriguing is (generally speaking) the lack of connection/empathy/support between gay men and lesbians..

So farewell Ian Paisley. Nevvurr! Nevvurr! Nev.. er, ok then.

Certainly I'll admit that I'm applying a little crudity in my depiction of the honourable profession of surveying. I'm giving a worst-case scenario.

Obviously I can't speak for all surveyors, as I haven't used all of them. Not yet, anyway. I can only go on personal experience, which is thus: I've never used an estate agent surveyor. I've had two surveys, one Homebuyers (?500+) and one Full Structural (?1000+), both carried-out by RICS folks, and both contained arse-covering exaggerations. Roofs, flooring, structural movement, woodboring insect infestations, boilers.. the lot. The 'professional indemnity' bit is exactly where the arse-covering happens. You get given a worst-case-scenario, which means the surveyor is in the clear if the worst happens. And if it doesn't.. well hey - you're hardly going to sue someone when it turns-out you're house is in much better shape than you initally thought, are you? You have to learn to read between the lines when it comes to surveys. Unfortunately you don't always recognise this until you've had a couple of them, and by that time you've already wasted time, money and cacked your pants over something that was never a problem in the first place.

Would anyone on here really want to own-up to owning one?

For all your lanyard requirements: http://www.lanyards.co.uk

Bad news.. Your house has indeed been cased by an evil criminal mastermind. Rupert Murdoch.

My favourite survey gaffe required the immediate replacement of a 'thirty year-old roof which was nearing the end of its natural life', despite the roof actually being a hundred and thirty years old and in need of a few slates re-fixing. But cheers to them for pointlessly holding-up the sale of my flat, causing buckets of stress all-round, and charging the buyer a wad of cash for the benefit of their totally inexpert opinion!

I forgot to add: The bank assesses the risk by a) having a look at the size of your deposit and b) sending someone over to make sure that the house exists, all four walls are roughly in place and that it's not likely to fall over in the next twenty-five years. This is what you get with a basic valuation - which is all a lender requires. Anything you want to spend on top of that for a fancier survey is for your benefit - not theirs. Like they give two hoots if your windowsills are rotten or the pointing is a bit iffy.

I agree that you shouldn't rush into chopping trees down in an uninformed hope that it will stop your house from falling over. Removing a tree will cause a change in the water table and that change may - or may not - do the foundations of your house a favour. But lenders sure do looove to cut those trees down! Especially as the cost is under the usual ?1000 excess... As regards surveys, you've got to have 'em, but they are a bit of a joke, most of the time. And yes, they give you the worse case scenario in order to cover their arses. How often does a survey come back with Twenty Reasons Why Your House Is About To Fall Down but for some reason the lender seems more than happy to cough-up all the cash and also give you a regular insurance policy, despite the terribly fraught warnings? On three occasions now, I've had cause to spend money on a real expert in order to investigate a perilous survey. On all three occasions they surveyor was found to be talking utter bollocks.

This registers zero percent on my worryometer. Good luck in Wonderland, Alicia (ie outside London).