JD™

Yea, the breaker bar's gone, for a start.

...happy new year.

Oh good, DK is back... If we only discussed trials stuff here the forum would be even more dead than it is. Mainly because 'pure' trials is more boring than Danny Kearns pretending to have a point. The video rocked.

Get loads of coal for all the people you know who don't deserve presents.

Shame it's not disc ready, I'm sure in that case @DK. would suggest the new Danny Macaskill™ MT7s instead.

Got the flat back, and it's not completely f**ked, so that's good. This ones getting sold so we can get ourselves a house down here, so I won't be letting again for a while either way. Thank f**k that's over.

Thanks Ads, good to know we're obviously not the only ones! Out of interest, did it put you off the whole landlording lark or have you carried on?

Update on tenant situation: He took it to court, lost, then appealed. Lost again last Friday, given a date of today to move out. I've been contacting him ever since to arrange a time to come get the keys off him, radio silence. I know that when I go up there this afternoon he'll still be there and I'll have to sort out bailiffs and whatever. This guy is f**king me right off. Can't wait to take him back to court to take everything he owns.

#blessed

That one looks a bit more Australian.

My surefire technique, which has so far worked for something like 15 months not sure exactly: Smoke more than you've ever smoked in your life today. I think the day before I quit I got through just over 60. Didn't feel like smoking the next day. Or the day after. Or most of the days since. Some days I've fancied one, but by now it'd be such a waste of all the time not smoking that it's not worth it. No patches, no e-cig, no nothing.

THanks Adam, really appreciate it. I don't think we'll be letting anything out again any time soon but if we do I'll probably go down the lazy route of using a letting agency who guarantee the income. Obviously you make less, but what price is not wanting to go and rip someone's face off?

That's how I originally wanted to do it when I first got there and noticed he'd not moved out – he wasn't there so I was tempted to change the locks. It's legally Mrs Ds place though and she wanted to do it properly. Ah well, long term it'll all be good, it's just annoying that it happens just at this time when wife doesn't really need the extra stress. Trying to keep it away from her as much as possible so she can carry on with the task of growing a human, but she obviously has to know some details!

I used to say, semi-tongue-in-cheek, that people are dicks. A lot. I've stopped saying it so much over the years because it makes me seems less sociable than I actually am, but I still think that for the most part people as a whole are dicks. Mrs D and I served notice to our tenant earlier in the year to move out in mid October. We did that because we have a baby due in January and it would give us a chance to sell it and sit on the money for a bit while we found a nice family home for ourselves. We gave him 2 months notice instead of 1, because he was nice enough and it would give him a bit more time. I gave him some informal notice about a month before that too, just to be extra lovely as I'm sure you all know I am. Obviously it was also to help us – by giving him more time I figured he'd have more chance to find somewhere to move to. Didn't hear much from him, so after the notice time had been and gone I took a trip to the property to give it a tidy up ready to get it on the market. Except he hadn't moved out. He's been squatting ever since, so we've had to get some legal guys involved. The process was meant to be that we serve some papers to a court, the judge gives a possession order to evict him and we get the flat back in a couple of weeks. The paperwork to get that done isn't cheap, which is lovely when the rent isn't coming in and there's still a mortgage to pay. I've been waiting to hear which date we get the place back, and then get an email today saying that that won't be happening, because the tenant is angling to get to stay there until APRIL. Of course, to send a solicitor to the hearing means we have to pay out more cash. Now I'm not even sure I trust this system enough to know that we'll actually win. What's the point in tenancy agreements if the tenant isn't going to adhere to their end? After that, what's the point in the agreement if a judge isn't going to go "well, you haven't adhered to your end, get the f**k out of their property"? The best bit is that he's clearly being advised by the council, as he's trying to get a place from them and it's in their best interests to drag it out and f**k us up as much as possible. People are dicks. Tenants are dicks, legal busybodies are dicks, councils are dicks and judges are dicks. I'm a dick, and you're all dicks. Probably. But thanks for reading my rant.

This says they'd allow up to 12.

They can lose the drone crashes and celebrity 'deaths' next. That'd be swell. Otherwise it was a decent improvement, probably because the American didn't drive anything.

That was tense.

I kind of want to get the bike out sometimes. Videos like this should motivate me, but instead I just think "nah, I'll leave it to those who are good at this".

4 months and we get some fibreglass and a couple of fuel lines. I know they've got other stuff to do but it's getting a bit ridiculous now.

The Vulcan bit was swell. The rest was very meh. Shame.

Got this Amazon Prime lark for The Grand Tour, so figured I'd use it to watch a series while wife tries to get to sleep at night. Did the first episode of Startup last night. Found myself thinking there were too many sex scenes. Maybe I'm getting old.

f**k cruise control. You don't mention a budget so I'll say look at the Tesla range.

The worst bit about the iMac thing is that I only listed it after having my arm twisted by wife. When I get it back I'm keeping it.

Worth the Prime subscription.

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