rabbitstew

Lol, that long bend your are talking about near the dam, i came out of the village there on my Ducati 996 earlier in the year and was about to nail it only to spot a cop car reversing behind a hedge up ahead. Was just pure luck. Had I been 5mins later or on my Yamaha R1 I would have easily been wringing its neck by that point. Got some great gopro footage of the cops watching me poodle by waving at them as they set up their speed camera. The same day, about 40mins later I was coming out of Old Weston on the B660, turned left still on the B660 and again (as you`ll know) its a long fast bit of road which goes up & over the a14 to Catworth, and wouldnt you know it another cop had reversed in a field entrance and for some reason was training his gun on a tree in the field. He heard the open race pipes on my 996 and swung around like Tiger Woods tee`ing off to try and focus the gun on me. Luckily for me (kind of I guess) minutes earlier, the clutch on my 996 had decided to blow up so I wasnt far off the speed limit as I past him with bits of clutch hanging out the side of my engine. He looked very confused as to why I wasnt speeding. Still, I made it the 15 mile or so home without any clutch. Will have to give motech a bell as Earls Barton is only just down the road. The only problem I had was that my cars a late 2011 and BMW properly encoded all the ECU`s on them & later ones so when I enquired last year only a few tuners could decode & map them.

Seriously if you ever fancy a spirited drive out (driving to your own abilities only no real silly buggary) then give me a shout. Theres a little group of us in reasonably 'performancey' cars (scoobies, focus RSs, STs, VXRs, 335is, m3s etc..) who like to go for a nice country drive every now and again round those parts. More than happy to have someone else tag along if they fancy it. B645 and B660 are group favourites I think And if you do enjoy the B645 please slow down for the 90 degree bend right near the water tower as you approach (or leave) Hargrave, as the idiot farmer who lives there seems to take great delight in spreading the road full of mud every day making it as slippery as hell. I drive that road twice a day every day on my daily commute and ive lost track of the number of cars ive seen in the ditches there. Other than that, in summer its a cracking route, especially when im out on my motorbikes, but the police also know that, so frequently sit in the B660, the B645 and the B661 out to Grafham. In summer you can literally guarantee if its a nice sunny Sunday the police mobile trap will be parked up on one or more of those roads. They have also for some unknown reason just dropped the speed limit in Tilbrook from 40 down to 30 which can catch you out. The 335d is a nice car. When I sold my zed it was a toss up between the 335d coupe and the 123d coupe. I went for the 123d coupe. Im just debating atm whether to get it remapped as you can get it up to over 300bhp & over 400ft/lb. Not bad for a 2litre.

A couple of experiences which always stay in my mind are... Getting my first big motorbike, a 1994 ZXR750L2. Just riding it for the first time. It was huge and I felt like I was wrapped around the petrol tank. I remember getting onto a by pass and pulling out to overtake a truck. I wrapped the throttle open fully and oh-my-god. I nearly shot my bolt there & then. The noise, the acceleration. I had not only overtaken the truck but about 3 cars before I backed off the throttle. Its an experience you cant really imagine unless you are a biker. It was like being strapped to a space shuttle. Even now, I still get a similar high/rush when im on my R1, but nothing will ever come quite as close to that first time. The other experience (why are they nearly always involving bikes/cars or birds?) was my first real proper girlfriend. I worked at a small company and this mega hot, fit blonde, Scandinavian bird started working there. The first day she turned up for work nearly every blokes jaw just dropped. She was single & every bloke there fancied her. She didnt help matters by wearing the shortest mini skirts ever and low cut tops etc. I wasnt overly interested in her tbh as I thought she was well above my league and so I was more interested in this other bird there. Anyway, the new bird organises a works night out to get to know everyone and before I know it shes made it extremely clear she fancies me and wants to go out with me! I couldnt believe my luck. We kept it quiet for a few weeks, but the looks on the blokes faces at work when they suddenly realise that we were dating was priceless. I felt like I had won the lottery and was walking on top of the world! Anyway to cut a long story short, she cruelly dumped me about 5 months later and ive not trusted women since.

In general when I got married we were amazed at how much difference there was in what people gave. Some guests who turned up for the full day (we had a sit down 3 course meal with fillet beef wellington etc. which cost us about £60 a head) only gave us a tenner, and yet one couple who we only invited for the evening buffet/disco gave us £150! Also, some just gave us a card and that was all! Luckily we only ended up with one present which we had no idea who bought it so we didnt do too badly. It certainly made me rethink how much I give as a present to people at weddings ive been to since. A tenner! Wow. I have cheap friends

I was going to say, I hadnt really thought about it until this thread but your right, ive never seen a late model in blue. I think from 2007 onwards black & grey were more popular so they made more in that colour before white became the "in" colour around 2009 onwards.

In general when I got married we were amazed at how much difference there was in what people gave. Some guests who turned up for the full day (we had a sit down 3 course meal with fillet beef wellington etc. which cost us about £60 a head) only gave us a tenner, and yet one couple who we only invited for the evening buffet/disco gave us £150! Also, some just gave us a card and that was all! Luckily we only ended up with one present which we had no idea who bought it so we didnt do too badly. It certainly made me rethink how much I give as a present to people at weddings ive been to since.

Congratulations..... I remember my wedding well. Sold my zed the day before it and its all been downhill ever since.

Hahaha, that was the only bit i didnt like about my roadster was that the backside did look big on it.

This was mine, 313 HR 2007 model. Sold it a couple of years back.

Im always buying stuff on ebay, but have really been put off trying to sell stuff on there after my last few experiences. I sold a mobile phone on there earlier in the year, described it totally accurately, saying how it was 3 years old, had a few marks as expected for a 3 year old phone, had loads of pictures on it. Sold it to some bloke, i actually finished work early so I could send it next day special delivery etc. Bloke gets it then moans that its got a few marks on it and its not mint. I pointed out that I said that in the listing. He raises dispute and ebay say ive got to refund him. I got phone back and just chucked it in the skip rather than go through the hassle of re-listing etc. Then I sold a motorbike on there. After it sold I actually found loads of spare bits for it, including new battery, new tyres etc which id not put on the listing. Bloke turns up, I tell him i`ll throw all these new bits in for free (£400 worth of bits), I then help him get the bike loaded up, then he turns around and offers me about £200 less than what the selling price was on ebay. I couldnt believe it, especially as id just given him £400 of new bits for free. He then got all funny about it, pointing out bits which id already accurately described in the listing. Id also said in the listing that id strongly recommend people viewed it before buying but he hadnt. I was one step away from knocking the guy out but in the end, as I needed shot of the bike and didnt want to go through all the hassle of re-listing I let him have £100 off the price and off he went. I used to sell no end of bits on there without any hassle, but it now has really put me off selling stuff.

And noone would ever know! - unless they found this thread!

So long as you kick out a few trade sales or trade jobs (mechanical work etc) and provide invoices you should be ok When I looked at getting a motor trade insurance, they also required proof of indempty (or public liability) insurance (or something like that). When I factored in the total cost of it all, it worked out cheapaer for me to just insure the 3 vehicles I had seperately - albiet I had no NCB on 2 of them. Now many years on ive got 3 insurance policies, all with various amounts of NCB on. Bit of a pain.

Have you got NCB on both cars? When I tried to insure a cheapie old banger for a daily car, most insurance companies were quoting me £900 for my zed (that was with 20 years NCB and a clean license) and then wanted £800 to insure some old banger as I had no NCB on it. So for me that made it uneconomical to run 2 cars and so I ended up just running my zed all year around. I even tried the so called multi car policies and they were actually more expensive.

Spotted at 1pm today driving down Chesterton Road, Cambridge, right near Lloyds bank and the sex shop. Ahem. Didnt get plate but was a white coupe 370z, had tinted windows and forum sticker in the side window. Looked pretty clean for this time of year.

I was recruiting earlier this year for a developer for one of my teams. I spoke to a few recruitment agencies locally and they all said that because virtually everyone who approaches them looking for a job has a degree that a lot of the companies they deal with will now only accept people who have a degree from certain "top" universities, such as Oxford & Cambridge etc. So having a "degree" in order to get a job now adays apparently isnt good enough from some companies perspectives as every man & his dog has one. From the other side of things, as someone who did go to University myself I found it a total waste of time. Sure, the nightlife can be good but you have absolutely zero money to actually be able to afford to go out. I was living on £30 a week of my own personal savings as I didnt want to end up in debt and spent every spare minute working to help pay for it. I did a Computer Science degree which I thought would be the natural next follow on step from my A Level in Computer Science. However, it basically just covered the identical same stuff. There were people on the degree with no previous computer experience, so rather than it being a follow on learning experience, it was a complete waste of time so I jacked it in after 2 years and got myself a job. Of course by then a lot of my mates who left school at 16 were now earning a small fortune & driving flash cars as they got themselves into building trades. Funnily enough 20odd years on, those guys are still racking it in as building trades always seem to have loads of work. Over the years I gained all the experience "on the job" as it were and now have much more experience than someone who has just left uni. However, when I was last looking for work I found some companies would point blank not even consider me simply because I didnt have a degree. The funny thing was, they said that the degree didnt even have to be relevant to the job, as long as it was a degree. So I could have a hair dressing "degree" and they would happily consider me for an IT job. Mad! As an employer I have recruited more people than I can remember over the years and personally having a degree means nothing to me. I always go on experience and the persons personality/character. The only time it becomes relevant to me is if the employee has just (or recently) left uni and doesnt have much experience. Then his knowledge, course work and results help me to assess what type of experience or learning ability he has before I get him trained up in his new job. So in summary, I guess it depends upon which company you want to work for. If you want to work for some very established top big firm then you may find that they will only consider you if you have a degree from a top uni. Otherwise, you may well be okay without one.

On the logbook it will say if its an import by having wording along the lines of "vehicle first registered in UK on 01/02/05". It will also only tell you the number of UK owners since it was registered as obviously it wont know about any before that, so it may say something like "2 owners since 2005". Thats from my experience - I had a 1996 motorbike which was imported from California in 2000 and my v5 logbook said the same as above.

Personally as a consumer I just cant be bothered to follow any companies blogs. They are just a thinly veiled sales pitch for the company and rarely have anything of any interest on them. Very often they reblog other peoples articles etc etc. Its a bit liked on LinkedIn. Its funny seeing what stuff companies post in an attempt to get you to follow the links and hit their website etc. Having a blog though is a lot of hard work. Ive 2 personal blogs, just mainly for my own benefit really more than anyone elses as they make a handy place to keep notes etc kinda like a diary. Unfortunately ive so little spare time these days, ive not been able to keep them updated.

Kind of. What I found when I moved house was that if the house has not been bought or sold since 1990 then the land registry might not have any details of it on their electronic system. Any house which has been bought/sold since then is all held electronically. The problem I had was that the house I was buying hadnt changed hands since it was originally built in 1970. However the surrounding houses had changed hands since 1990, so all their details and land boundries were on the land registries system, but my new house wasnt. And sods law the boundries and maps in my original deeds didnt match up with what the other house owners had claimed. This caused all sorts of hassle between the lawyers and the land registry who then would have to contact all the other house owners and dispute things etc. In the end I just said fine, lets go with the land registries version - so I lost a bit of land but the whole conveyancing wasnt delayed.

As above. The mortgage company owns the house & deeds until you pay your mortgage off. Even then its all done electronically these days. When I paid my mortgage off 3 years back I asked for the deeds and they just sent me an electronic print out of them to prove that I now owned the house and that was it. Back in the day before electronic records the deeds were much more important and effectively proved you owned the house. Solicitors & banks used to offer to safe keep them for you if required for a nominal fee.

Could be fun. I had a similar situation a few years back when a mates mum kept inviting me over to "fix" her computer. She`d answer the door all dolled up and it nearly always transpired nothing was wrong with the computer. She`d co-incidentally have just cooked something for tea which she was eager to share with me and always plied with me alcohol. Naively I didnt think anything of it until about the 4th time it happened then I twigged she had the hots for me. Was a bit embarrassing and everything, especially as it was my best mates mum. I cant watch the American Pie films in the same light now.

Should send her down for life.

Nice bike although wrong time of year now. My R1, 996 and ZX7R are all tucked up now until the sun comes out again. I used to be an all weather biker, but with the way I ride and the state of the roads I decided long ago it wasnt worth the risk! Also, never seen a van with so much carpet padding all over the inside. Its like something a serial killer rapist would have!

Mines because i like rabbit stew! (and pies obviously!)

Its a shame they always play this same game when it comes to paying out on cars. When my brothers Golf VR6 was written off many moons ago, his insurance offered him exactly 50% of the market price. My brother nearly accepted it as he presumed thats all they thought it was worth. Looking online we ended up sending no end of adverts off to them proving the real cost of replacing the car with one of identical spec/age/mileage and it still took a couple of offers from them before they finally agreed the real market price. Glad you got it sorted out in the end.