Lemming

I have a 2020 incarnation of the SE2. It's basically an iPhone 11 processor - inside an older iPhone chassis. If you can live with the screen (which is obviously small compared to most now) and the battery life ('adequate' would best describe it - a longer lasting battery would be the main quibble) then there's not much to fault with it. It still works absolutely fine. We buy all our phones a few generations down, reconditioned, usually from Music Magpie. You get 14 day money back period to try it out and then a one year guarantee - and have had no problems with any of them to date. £220 - £260 will get you something like the older SE2 or an XR sort-of generation. Both of which will still work fine.

You could ditch the post and panel system - and change to posts, arris rails and feather edge - giving yourself the 'good' side (which is the last part of the process, nailed on from your side of the garden). They look nicer than posts and panels anyway IMO. Especially if you have to good side, which I wouldn't lose any sleep over taking, considering the circumstances.

Have a flutter if you must - but Crypto is pure speculation, not an investment.

I doubt if there's a single 4 bed house to be had in SE22 for anything close to ?2k/pcm (?!) Even the modest/smaller 4 beds must be more like 2.5k - 3k Larger/extended ones 3.5 - 4 (and above)

This guy seems to be a bona fide Grade A bell-end. If anyone 'of colour' or 'not' wishes to 'reach out' and engage his carpet cleaning services as a means of drawing him into a lengthy but constructive discussion re prejudice, xenophobia and racism - in order to bring healing to a hurting world .. I wish them well. I have a Vax.

Britain is (and always has been) chock-full of beautiful, unspoilt, reasonably-priced locations which you can sell-up, move to, spoil - and then go slowly and quietly round the twist whilst begging your old friends to please visit, please. I'll be staying right here, at least for some time to come.

I music magpie'd mine a few years back. You get very little for them but at least process is very easy - just scan the barcodes on them and it tots up the prices as you go. Stick 'em in a box and they collect. To their credit, their pricing did correctly identify items which were rarer, including a number of items I didn't realise were worth more (the most I got was about ?8 for one CD I think.. but the majority were peanuts of course). The process of selling hundreds of separate items on eBay didn't appeal. Sold them, haven't missed them since. Nor the vinyl.

Leaving your particular focus on anuses aside for the moment, I?m trying to imagine the circumstances under which anus might meet anus - and in all honesty, even I?m struggling. On the subject of things you don?t want your children to see, I feel it my duty to report that by the age of around 14, if not before, there?s a strong possibility that they?ve already seen it. And not as words on a dice.

SpringTime Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- if you're right about what you > say then there's no harm. On the other hand..

No doubt there's some infringement of the rules (whateverthehell they are today/yesterday/tomorrow) going on.. but in all honesty, beats me how anyone thinks our office-based-service-industry-face-to-face-rush-hour-commuting-globalised-city economy is about to spring back to life (at the beginning of the worst recession for 250 years) if a couple of dozen people in the park who walked to get - are going to cause serious consternation. I fear the end of furlough is about to clarify priorities for more than a few people.

Use of term 'MSM'? I'm out.

The sooner this eyesore is removed the better. (The Grove pub, I mean, not the skate area)

Hopefully though - when things do get back to normal, these young people can get down the casinos, nightclubs and bars with their ?8.72 / hour just like they used to. Assuming they can find a job.

first mate Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Yes, agree with this, so long as not keeping > people awake and clear up any rubbish afterwards > seems fair enough. Indeed. Rubbish is annoying. Though (as I think everyone has seen from what's left at some of the not-too-far-beaches after 'family' days out) abandoning your crap when you leave is 'not' restricted to the younger generation. Lack of consideration (or an abundance of empathy) is not governed by age. FWIW when I've been there all the 'yoot' I've seen have scrupulously picked-up everything before they've departed though I accept not everyone will.

I have observed these gathering also, but have instead attempted to use some empathy and common sense. Let's say, you're 23. You live in shared accommodation with limited space, and perhaps with no outside space. All the places you used to go to socialise (if you could even afford it back then, from time to time) - bars, pubs, clubs - are shut, or make less sense than a trip to the park in terms of safety. And let's face it - socialising when you're younger is basically 'it'. You're general future is looking pretty bleak. the weather is however, for once, looking great. You and your friends have the organisation and enthusiasm to carry food, a table, drinks and a little boom box deep into a relatively unpopulated park, where you can avoid going stir crazy but for a few hours - by doing something relatively normal without impinging upon anyone else's life to any great degree - and only mildly impinging upon a series of convoluted, senseless and ever-changing rules unenforced by a shambolic government who doesn't seem to know their arse from their elbow. Fine by me.

When your 'newspaper' starts re-writing 40 year-old comedy sketches as 'serious journalism' - it might be time to call it a day.

"Sarah Vine in today's Daily Mail" Six words that make anything that's already bad.. even worse.

There?s still one left

1/10

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What is a Block Party anyway. a) a Judge Dredd story from a 2000AD comic about 35 years ago. b) an imported American-English phrase which sounds a lot sexier than 'some people standing in the street drinking with some music playing'

Don't think I agree entirely with the prediction of a windswept barren 1980s retail wasteland - locally at least. I think there's is more disposable money knocking around than many people think. Admittedly it's becoming more concentrated in the hands of less people, but it's there and it's waiting to be spent. Yes, there will be some defaults, closures and evictions. But the desire of the commercial landlord to wring as much as possible out of their tenants is going to be balanced by a fear of having too many properties empty for too long, earning nothing. Also, don't a number of core local retail stalwarts own their own premises anyway?

If you're not on a metered supply and have a leak, usually sooner or later the Thames Water moonlight listening squads will identify it - and you will receive a command to have to leak fixed. They used to offer some money towards fixing the leak; you could opt for either replacing the entire supply line or just fixing the leak. As this is in the case of an unmetered supply then of course it is in their interest to get it fixed so you use less water - and make you pay for most of the fixing. As you're on a meter (and therefore are paying for water used by quantity anyway) I wonder if they zone in on leaks with demands to fix in the same way that they do unmetered supplies. After all - use more water, they get paid anyway. The leak could be anywhere, there are no guarantees a contractor will find it quickly - indeed Sod's law requires that it will be somewhere awkward. Ours was a slow drip, a small leak, which involved pulling up a few floorboards just inside the house, jackhammering concrete just outside the house, bridging the leak with some polypipe, re-concreting. I think the cost was about ?650 but this was going back some years. Given the opportunity again, I would have gone for the 'fully replace' option rather than fix the leak. It was more expensive, but the subsidy Thames offered if you had that done was also more generous. Then: you know it won't happen again - and we'd have much better flow of water in the house for showers and stuff, rather than it forced down a furred-up 100 year-old lead pipe. Some contractors have mole-type horizontal drilling equipment, which means they can get the new supply to the street without having to dig trenches.

Repeating myself from another thread here: I'm not a huge fan of the brick mix, but a bit of weathering, the efflorescence will disappear, a few trees out front, I don't think it will be a big deal. For true comparative awfulness, see the Dunstans Road 'creation'. And to echo someone above, most bog standard loft conversions look pretty crap plonked on top of every other house around here (with their fake cheapo slates, oversized plastic white fascia boards, white uPVC windows, no attempt to conceal the outrigger roof run-off angle so they all look wonky) - and most people can't escape looking at those from their back gardens.

As mentioned above, the white stuff is efflorescence, salt coming out of the bricks. There are various causes, some down to construction, some unavoidable. Usually it just goes away. Also worth mentioning that newly laid bricks (whether actual new bricks or reclaimed) can look a whole lot different some time down the line after construction, especially if they're retaining a lot of moisture when laid. A load of reclaimed bricks we used looked like the 1980s game 'breakout' after they were laid. Nearly had a heart attack. They dried out eventually and look great now. So wait and see. The windows all look lined up to me, apart from the 'unit' on the right where the windows are a couple of courses higher than the other three, this difference also visible along the parapet wall. Looks a little incongruous from the outside, but can't imagine why anyone would do this 'by mistake' (it's more work than making straight lines) so there must be a valid design reason for it somewhere which isn't obvious from the outside. I don't mind Velfac (I think?) windows myself but I'm not sure if they're the best choice for this design. On the upside, the mansard roof / loft area on this project looks a whole lot better than nearly all the loft conversions around here, so if you've got one of those and want to criticise this as an eyesore...