MarkW

Oh absolutely! The sincere ones are deluded and the rest of them are charlatans.

Same here: I've got a 5D mk III, but as it spends all its life in fully manual mode all the fancy bells and whistles are completely wasted on me! I still use my first SLR - an Olympus OM20 I got in 1986 - but my weapon of choice is usually a medium format Mamiya 645.

'Volume 2' is the one I've got. I have a bit of a problem where photography books are concerned: I've been buying them for 30 years and we've long since run out of shelf space at home to put them on, so now they're migrating into the office!

He's very good! His band (The Abiders) are no slouches either! He's also a good photographer - my wife bought me one of his books for my birthday, and there are some nice images in there. He uses a Widelux, which is a panoramic film camera with a little panning turret in front of the lens, and it captures a unique perspective.

It's a something-and-nothing place, isn't it? I liked the aquarium, but I think the one in La Rochelle is still my favourite. I also had a fantastic night at a Jeff Bridges gig while I was there!

Chimps and gorillas aren't even in the same f*cking genus as each other, you knuckledragging Gammon!

I never make New Year resolutions, but I do usually make a list of things I'd like to do or achieve in the next 12 months. My 2020 list included taking the family to California for the Monterey Jazz Festival, to Rotterdam for the North Sea Jazz Festival, getting a couple of lessons with a Dutch jazz drummer whose band I love, and to get out gigging again after a two-year lay-off. That all turned out well...

My wife and I have been together for 24 years, during which time three different women have said that they'd really like to get it on with her. She's not remotely interested in women though, and I can't say that the prospect of having two of them laughing at me fills me with enthusiasm either!

This lady was a family friend and used to babysit me back in the 1970s... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319103/Businessman-Lionel-Webster-chokes-death-S-M-session-pensioner-couples-dungeon.html

I am grateful to @geofferz and his poignant and moving story of all that flange he's been nailing because it has given me inspiration for my wife's Christmas present. Does anyone know if any of those 'experience day' providers caters for this market at all? Something along the lines of a 'Lesbian Taster Session' or 'Bi-curious Experience Day' would fit the bill.

I'm not sure it would be entrapment, because the 'hidden' camera wouldn't be enticing you to commit an offence - not like an open van full of computer gear with a plain clothes officer hiding round the corner would be. There's a stretch of road around here where the police regularly put a tripod-mounted camera right behind the wall of a disused village petrol station, where you'd have no chance of seeing them until you were well past them.

I know.

Speed cameras have nothing whatsoever to do with road safety - the police lifted the lid on that one themselves when they threatened to fine motorists for flashing their headlights to warn each other of the presence of camera vans. They defended themselves by pointing to Section 89 of the 1996 Police Act: "Any person who resists or willfully obstructs a constable in the execution of his duty, or a person assisting a constable in the execution of his duty, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one month or to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale, or to both.” If the purpose of the camera van is to improve road safety in high-risk areas by getting people to slow down as they always claim, then warning other motorists of its presence can hardly be said to constitute 'willful obstruction'. But if the purpose is to catch as many people as they can and collect the fines...

I'm truly awful at accepting compliments! I don't get them that often (most people have long since learned not to bother) but my view has always been that if people's criticisms of me are water off a ducks back then it would be hypocritical of me to take much notice of their compliments. And I've always felt more comfortable around the people who I know dislike me - at least I'm sure they're being honest! It's not a sophisticated response, I admit, but then I'm not a very sophisticated person...

Nice - not been to Llandudno for years! Is that the Little Orme and the Great Orme in the background?

Look, don't come in here with your knowledge and shit - you're completely f*cking up my play for TOTY! The whole point of my input here is to annoy the gammons enough to get me the award, and so far I haven't even got a nomination! Mind you, after my last post they're probably too busy scratching their nads and wondering which football team Nietzsche plays for...

I generally find that misspelling and illiteracy are a fairly reliable benchmark, but that seems to be an unpopular approach!

And what has @Gerontious done to deserve being nominated? Seriously, this is all making me think that my twat-o-meter is in serious need of calibration. Perhaps some sort of Nietzschean "Revaluation of all Twats" is in order...

Look, some deluded knobber has nominated me for MOTY so I need to even things up here with a strong play for TOTY. If you can point me to the post in question I'll jump straight on it and join in taking the piss out of her spelling.

Seriously now, I'm going to have to take exception to @raesewell being nominated for TOTY. What some people see as pedantry I see as a selfless devotion to helping some of our less fortunate members express their vacuous, illogical and usually downright moronic ideas in a way that actually gives the rest of us a fighting chance of understanding what the hell they are driveling on about. Just as woolly and imprecise language usually betrays woolly and imprecise thoughts, so illiterate and misspelt posts invariably betray a braindead, bottom-feeding f*ckwit whose opinions are to intellectual discourse what a toddler banging a drum is to jazz. And don't forget he's doing this for free, and in his own time: if he were a teacher in a school where the pupils were as illiterate as most of the people on here he'd be nominated for a Hearts of Gold award for his efforts, and might even get to meet Esther Rantzen on telly.

Quite right too! In my not remotely humble opinion there's nothing malicious in TOTY - it's just a bit of harmless fun. Anonymous nominations don't appear to be in the spirit of the thing to me, and more importantly they deny the nominee the satisfaction of calling you a twat in return!

Aww, thanks man - I appreciate the kind words. But seriously, I'm not in the same league as people with the knowledge to contribute genuinely useful bike-related stuff on here: most of what I post is just light weight piffle to make people smile, usually written as displacement activity when I'm struggling to motivate myself at work! And I fear you're overstating any 'bravery' on my part for sharing my childhood story. To be honest, it was actually quite an interesting experience to write it down and launch it into the ether, because I can count the number of times I've shared it over the last 30-odd years on the fingers of one hand. It's not the sort of thing that ever comes up in everyday conversation, so having the opportunity to commit it all to print and 'publish' it was quite cathartic I suppose. Now I'm heading over to the TOTY thread to nominate you for not agreeing with everything I say.

So how did it go? Was it a success, or are you frantically arranging buckets and bowls under the drips coming through the dining room ceiling whilst your wife watches from the sofa and tells the kids that she's married to a total bellend who has the IQ of a really stupid donkey? Not that I have any first hand experience of that, of course...

I am looking though! I see something obscenely quick in the sub-£5k bracket taking up residence in my garage next year - possibly along these lines...