Rate my plate

I was inspired by the raw beauty of the famous renaissance photo. Do you recognise which?

8 year old me walking around with a collection of Shag Bands on my wrist. No idea what shagging was, but apparently I'd done a lot of it.

I'm American, but my mom is a Geordie. We always visited my aunt when we went to England and i thought her living right next to a castle was the coolest thing ever.

I don't like gravel. That's it.

• noisy
• scatters all over the neighborhood.
• hard to walk on
• dogs and cats crap in it
• kids chuck it around and put it in their mouth.
• doesn't even look good.
• difficult and heavy to remove once you have come to terms will all of the above.

Gravel advocates... explain your case for gravelling your garden/drive.

Gravel sceptics, feel free to share your distaste.

I'm generally ok with the music that's on it, but the presenters man.
I don't want to listen to Jeremy Vine talking about "middle ground" on settled issues to rile up Daily-Mail readers so they phone in and froth.

The only thing it really has going for it is the music playlist, as it does tend to flow well with the day.

Radio 3 and 4 with the grown ups is becoming more and more my jam.

I took a different route to usual up to The Carriageway above Rothbury, Northumberland in the UK. The area of Rothbury below is called Pondicherry though I don't know how it came to be named after the Indian city.

A serving is 40g. That was about 2 tablespoons so I put more in.

So this is a double serving.

I had to go to a supermarket in Alnwick, but the weather was so nice I decided to go for a walk first. As I only had trainers on I decided walk in Hulne park, as most of the tracks are paved.

The walk starts out with some fine views across the valley.

The paved tracks make this an easy walk, and most of it is easily accessible, though further on there are gravel covered roads and some potholes, meaning it would be difficult for wheel chair users to go the whole distance.

And it's been rubbish so far.

My partner had to go to work because her boss wouldn't give her the day off. My kids spent twenty minutes crying because they wanted Mummy to stay off and all I've done is clean the house.

How's your Sunday going?

I had a car insurance renewal quote that had a 110% increase since last year. That's more than doubled with no claims, accidents, or points.

I went to a comparison site and found one that was 'only' a 50% increase on last year. Insurance prices are ridiculous!

Trying a post with images from thunder client

and another

I'm from Northumberland in the UK and I like hiking. Here are some pictures from a short walk in the grounds of Cragside

A while back there was a post about having an itchy ear.

Well I've been vigorously cleaning my ear after a shower in case it was ear wax build-up.

After doing that Sunday I've been getting blood on the tissue paper. GP said I've perforated my ear drum and I've been prescribed antibiotics.

Bugger.

If your ear itches - get steroid ear drops. I've now got to shower with cotton wool & vaseline in my ear to keep it dry.

Dry and itchy, until it heals.

I'm 40. I'm too old to be this stupid. :(

There's a man on my train this morning, and he's listening to stuff out loud on his phone, like fully out loud, not even slightly subtle. The train is in Britain. He keeps listening to 5 seconds of an annoying song, then switching to another song. It sort of sounds like kids TV music. He appears dressed to go work in a fancy office or something, and this is a morning commuter train, so I don't think he's escaped from a prison or mental hospital.

Anyway, amongst myself and another couple of hundred quiet passengers, we've tried everything:

• tutting and rolling our eyes
• harrumphing, whingeing and sighing
• when a bloke got on the train with headphones on, someone said loudly "Isn't it great when someone wears headphones? They can listen to whatever they like and nobody else has to hear it"
• sometimes it stops for a minute, and there's a widespread muttering of "Ooh, thank god that's over with"
• followed by an en-masse groan when it starts again "Oh no, not this again!"
• a lady on the phone saying loudly "Sorry, I can't hear what you're saying, because someone is being inconsiderate and playing music really loudly"
• saying to one another, loudly enough for the man to hear "isn't it annoying when someone plays their music out loud? I wish he'd stop doing that"
• muttering aggressive words, under our breath, in his general direction "prick", "wanker" "knobhead", "bellend"
• Someone getting onto the train, and not sitting at his table and saying "God, I'd rather stand than sit next to that prick", loud enough for him to hear.
• the ticket-checking man rolled his eyes, but didn't do anything

I think generally we're running out of ideas. I heard someone behind me mentioning they were thinking about "sparking him out", and someone else had suggested they might grab his phone and throw it out the window.

I was toying with the idea of going nuclear on him, and directly but politely asking him to turn it down, but it's a bit early for that kind of extreme behaviour. Perhaps I should throw something at his head?

Anyway, anyone who's been in a similar situation have any suggestions?

[Update] The train got full, so people were standing all the way down the aisle. Three people sat on the table next to him.

Opposite him, an older woman stared at him and shook her head at him, in a gesture I interpreted as "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed". He put his phone in his pocket and stared out the window. I gave her the subtlest of nods, to communicate "thank you" and "good job".

So we're safe, this time - but I'm still interested in solutions, as something like this could happen again!

Fish slice? Spatula? Or something else?

Can you feel the (unearned) power?

Source on Xitter

I've run out of Corn Flakes and I can't locate any bread so I'm pretty much cooked....

Just listening to some good old stuff when I realised that it was 30 years ago that our very own Monty Don was immortalised on the cover of this masterpiece. He hasn't aged a bit - it's all that outside work and vegetables, no doubt.

I did try to copy/paste the list into a different community but it gave me an error. It took ages so I'm not trying that again.

This is a grumbling/cheering/commiserating thread for a beautiful looking friday in February.

What are you up to?