Weston Super Saint

To be fair, you live on the island and she has 'blown the lot'. Chances are pretty damn high that you two have already met....

Today's A4 printed sign - and this is an exclusive! - says "welcome to Fratton Park, one of only one football grounds left still using one of these, enjoy it while it lasts" and is pinned up on the wall above this :

That was a concern having read some early reviews of Di2, especially as my garage does not have any power going to it! However, it seems that the newer version of Di2 where the battery is in the seatpost / tube and therefore more sheltered from the elements gives a much better battery life of around 1500 miles, which is a good couple of months for me. However, I've also ordered a 'battery bank' for about £12.00 from Amazon which holds a charge of 10,000 mAh. Since the Di2 battery is only 500 mAh it should be more than adequate to leave in the garage and charge the Di2 when not in use - it has three USB sockets so will also be handy for charging the Garmin edge at the same time

Blown The Lot

Right, sorted... The money has cleared in to my bank today - such a nice feeling - and I've set about spending some of the pennies! After a lot of searching and deliberation I have gone for the Ribble Gran Fondo : http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/ribble-gran-fondo/ and have used the 'bike builder' function to add lots of shiny extras on to it including Mavic wheels, titanium railed saddle and full Shimano Di2 gearset whilst managing to keep the total under £2k - just, although I've also ordered a Garmin 520, new tyres and mudguards to strap on the 'old' bike which took it over the £2k mark... Will take around 2 weeks before the bike is ordered which is no big deal as I have my hand operation booked for next Wednesday so won't be able to ride for a couple of weeks anyway! Looking forward to trying out the Di2 system and went for this as hopefully it will reduce the amount of 'fiddling' that I currently do to make sure the gears work properly!

Bought The Lot [but never paid for it].

Haven't they started doing that already after just one game? Or did they sign Joe Root in the off season?

Are the other four pitches the ones they had dug up and replaced over the last few summers?

Did they build that stage out of 'pallets' or is it more antique wood from the Victory like the table and chairs they threw away?

Are the 'handful of tickets' for the five seats we can see? Do they get to keep the microphone afterwards? Rallyboy is going to be uber upset when he sees the new table cloth - although I think the old stained bed sheet can be seen hiding under the BBC shroud...

If you've followed the thread in 'the lounge' you may know that yesterday I won my employment tribunal and as a result will soon have plenty of pennies burning their little holes in my pockets. Obviously in these situations the first thing to think about is a shiny new bike, so any recommendations? Budget would be up to £2k all in [including pedals and probably some new shoes because why the hell not!], although less would be great. I don't need to justify the expense to myself obviously but as far as Mrs WSS is concerned, I worked bloody hard over the last 8 months putting my case together in order to secure the win, so this is my treat - oh as well as a change of car As far as requirements go, I am open to suggestions. My current 'best bike' is a Mekk Poggio 2.0 with Tiagra 11 speed setup, including hollowtech crankset which I find pretty comfortable to use. However, I've found the gears to be a little hit and miss especially when changing under a bit of load and I'm aware that Tiagra is at the lower end of the Shimano gearing. I would look at Shimano again but would also consider different makers such as sram - I'm not a brand snob and would be happy with whatever works best! If it can be done for the money I would also consider Di2 or equivalent, but don't have a powerpoint in the garage so would need to consider how fiddly it is to remove and charge the battery! Basically, anything goes! So far, I've had a quick look and come up with these : £1,400 : http://www.ribblecycles.co.uk/ribble-gran-fondo/build/ £970 : http://www.planetx.co.uk/i/q/CBPXSLPFOR22TO/planet-x-pro-carbon-sram-force-11-road-bike-tour-edition# So, any recommendations? Similarly, if you had the same amount of cash to spend, what would you get?

I won It wasn't Hays that I took to court it was my previous employer - ITF Solutions. I joined Hays after that and was made redundant by them, but they did it properly with a consultation period and a genuine reason for redundancy etc. Eight months of my life is finally at an end and whilst I won't claim that I have lost any sleep over it, nonetheless it does weigh on the mind a lot of the time!!! Having represented myself, I spent the best part of 2 and a half hours questioning their two witnesses - even being 'hurried up' by the judge on two occasions so we could keep to the time limits he had imposed. He needn't have bothered as their solicitor was particularly useless. He managed a staggering 12 minutes of questions for me - about a third of that time was the glorious sound of silence as he flipped around his pages to find any sort of question to ask! My witness was then called to the stand and after going through the process of swearing in, their solicitor announced that on reflection he had no questions to ask! What a waste of time that was! Glad it's all over, but won't be completely happy until the cash is in my bank account!

Credit where it's due. 12,000 season tickets sold to watch that utter dross is a great achievement! Can't help but wonder whether it was fuelled by the 'early bird' offer that technically isn't an 'early bird', seeing as it ends 8 days before the first game of the season. More of an 'offer' to be fair!

Fingers crossed they don't present him with a giant cheque in the centre circle before a game

Ironically I am currently in recruitment 18 years previously as a General Manager for pubs / restaurants but the last 4 years since moving back to Weston in recruitment - 1 year in catering recruitment and 3 years in IT / Finance rec, mainly contractors, followed by six months with Hays - before they made me redundant this month - formulating strategy and processes for recruitment for a care company.... All rec work has been account manager / process based and I don't consider myself to be a '360' recruiter as 'phone bashing' doesn't do it for me....

No conclusion yet - looking forward to the court date next week Had a few interviews last week but nothing has come to fruition yet. Not the end of the world though

Would a better plan be to give up all of our nuclear weapons and therefore take away our ability to launch a 'preventative' strike?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36831308 This is why a nuclear deterrent / nuclear capability is still required. Russia, The US, Europe and everyone else with a nuclear capability understands the consequences that would follow just one nuclear missile launch - mutually assured destruction. The crackpot in charge of North Korea probably doesn't give a monkey's what would happen and certainly wouldn't care if his own citizens were wiped out!

Edit : Apparently he has another son called Theo who is a footballer though....

Nope. 1. His name is Widdrington not Widderington. 2. His son is called 'Kai' and he's a dancer not a footballer http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/14377276.Southampton_dancer_Kai_Widdrington_set_to_appear_in_Brendan_Cole_s_latest_dance_show_at_Mayflower_Theatre_this_weekend/

I don't think he was calling himself a goat herder either.

http://www.space.com/13347-big-bang-origins-universe-birth.html

Surely that would be the pan-European Cup? Which in a couple of months would be shortened to just plain old European Cup.

Sounds more like a desperate plea to me. Perhaps the season ticket sales aren't going as well as expected so this is the final rallying call to squeeze as much money out of the fans as possible. ‘Being a fan-owned club, if we don’t get the fans we don’t have the budget'.... errr wrong! The HNWs are ready, eager and waiting to put more money in to the club, provided of course they get more shares....

If it's this one, then you are mental!! https://www.strava.com/segments/642991 My knees are sore just looking at that segment so I can't imagine what they'd be like if I ever started to ride up it!!!