Perhaps...those of us who were born there but are not fond of that particular subculture...we tend to leave. I choose to live elsewhere in northern England, quite deliberately.

And then there’s the stinger: once you’ve been poor, the anxiety and downright fear that it accrues can remain. I haven’t really had to worry about missing meals or paying the rent for fifteen years or so, but the fear of everything coming crashing down and leaving me destitute has stuck with me. All it could take is…

Two pairs of jewellers’ needle-nose pliers and some pre-cut rings in a thin drawstring bag...chainmail on the go. Wrap in a piece of canvas to spread on your lap to work on. Not as tiny as the sewing kit, but smaller than most knitting projects. Small squares (15 cm per side) of chainmail make good pan scrubbers.

I’ve never seen any of these in the UK. The cheese replacements available here are almost exclusively unmitigated shite. There’s a pea-protein based one (Soya-free Cheezly, I think) which is vaguely palatable, but sadly does not compare well to even the rammiest el cheapo factory Cheddar. I mean, it’s not like I…

As a knitter I’m more curious to see the jumper inside out, to look at the techniques used.

Out here on the perimeter there are no stars

Look on the bright side: think how much money everyone will save by not buying any of these.

Grandma’s curtains...I’m not sure she would approve.

Original series Star Trek uniform!

America wins if we could get some other country to just take St. Louis.

That looks like Nick Clegg. So that’s what he’s doing now.

I’m so glad I’m not the only person who feels this way. Thank you.

I found that Chrome was opening several instances of itself even when I wasn’t using it (I use FF by default, but did use Chrome for image-using sites that FF would not display correctly like Argos and IKEA in the UK) I don’t know whether this was a plug-in problem but I noticed it when my PC started registering CPU…

Blimey. Nantwich is my home town. I went to a local primary school and then the grammar school (as it was), both schools are signatories to this heavy-handed nonsense. The town was a bit of a poky, one-eyed hole back in the day, and I fled as soon as I was old enough (late teens/early 1980s), but I remember both…

By all the gods and none those floral prints are nasty. Look like nylon sofa covers my mother bought in 1974.

This is cool. Also let's legally recognise either all religious belief, or none. Someone suggested having an allotment of floating days for everyone to claim for religious observance/whatever else, which seems pretty reasonable. Otherwise business as usual.

I'd never heard of the coffee rinse to stop hair shedding before; your post prompted me to investigate further, and I will try it. I generally shed like a mutt so anything to slow that down is hugely welcome - thank you for the suggestion.

You may have had a lucky escape (or at least your daughter) - Aviva is the name of a crappy insurance company in the UK.

That is not chainmail - I came here for chainmail and am disappointed. It's just some beaded stuff. IMO if the beaded skirt ended at her waist rather than up under the bust, and had an opaque lining of some sort it would look better. She does look absolutely beautiful in some of her outfits, but this combination…

It's frustrating when you have chosen your paint (whatever method) and when you put it on the walls it just looks...yuk. Having experienced the same issue as smithj33 after spending (far too much) money on paint I gave up with samples, painted all the walls white and then lived with it for a full year, watching how…