What's made you grumpy today?

[captainkurtz]

So sorry to hear about your Mum, Thenop.

Was in a similar situation myself a few years ago...my mum had a succession of falls at home...eventually because obvious she was no longer able to live independently.

Very difficult situation caring for ageing parents - in every respect.

Home your mum continues to improve.

[David L]

A cheap hosepipe

[Fishy]

Emails released in the US on Friday suggest Mandelson forwarded internal government information to Epstein when he was business secretary in 2009

Oh Mandy Mandy Mandy.. you're a bit of a prick aren't you

[The Picnic Wasp]

Peter Crouch in TV adverts for three different companies. Why?

[Thenop]

I swear I just coughed up part of my lung. I feel a bad case of the Manflu coming up, the world's most dreaded non-lethal disease.
I wish my wife strength in the days to come.

[Nick]

Painting and decorating my daughter's new home. How the hell am I so utterly shattered and feel like I have pulled every muscle in my body, how did I get so decrepit, scary.

[Slim]

So close.

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[Fishy]

In an unusual intervention, a Kensington Palace spokesperson said Prince William and Princess Catherine were "focused on the victims" in light of new information contained in documents related to the late sex offender released in the US.

Hope you'll bring up human rights on your trip to Saudis Arabia you fucking hanger on..

[David L]

In an unusual intervention, a Kensington Palace spokesperson said Prince William and Princess Catherine were "focused on the victims" in light of new information contained in documents related to the late sex offender released in the US.

Hope you'll bring up human rights on your trip to Saudis Arabia you fucking hanger on..

Hilariously hypocritical

[Slim]

In 1991 I went to a place near Matlock, a gunsmith and shooting accessories shop, to be measured for a target rifle shooting jacket. Then three weeks later, I went to pick it up. Those were the only two times I went there. It was about a 20 mile drive north of Derby. I'd been in the East Midlands, and at Rolls-Royce, for about twenty months.

I don't know what made me think of that last night, but I've always remembered the location. It was at a place called Via Gellia Mills, an old Victorian cotton mill building converted into retail and business units.

So I had a look on Google Street View. It looked so familiar. I recognised it instantly. Yet it was thirty-five years ago. That gave me a melancholy feeling I haven't been able to shake off.

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What really gets me is to think of everything that unfolded in the following ten years. If someone had asked me on one of those spring days in 1991 what the next ten years might hold, I'd have assumed I'd be in the same job, and living in the same house. But in fact those years unfolded a bit like a whirlwind. I moved to London and worked for two financial organisations. I had a string of relationships and interesting foreign trips. Even the world itself was about to change: the Internet, mobile phones, Britpop and digital TV were all just round the corner as well. Mundane things now sure, but all part of the tapestry of the 90s that was going to unfurl. Part of the story.

I think it's jealousy. I do enjoy life now, but my story is sort of settled. The last chapter is predictable. I feel jealous of the young man who rocked up there in his Talbot Sunbeam with all those chapters and experiences still ahead of him that he couldn't have predicted. Actually I feel a bit jealous of the life he already had. That job in a big company, being pally with lots of interesting people. Just a seven-minute drive from home.

I have a powerful urge to go back to Via Gellia Mills, now. But the sad truth is that I think it's a desire to step back into 1991, and of course I can't.

I still have that shooting jacket, it's in the loft.

[David L]

That's a bit sad. My best days are here, now.

[captainkurtz]

In 1991 I went to a place near Matlock, a gunsmith and shooting accessories shop, to be measured for a target rifle shooting jacket. Then three weeks later, I went to pick it up. Those were the only two times I went there. It was about a 20 mile drive north of Derby. I'd been in the East Midlands, and at Rolls-Royce, for about twenty months.

I don't know what made me think of that last night, but I've always remembered the location. It was at a place called Via Gellia Mills, an old Victorian cotton mill building converted into retail and business units.

So I had a look on Google Street View. It looked so familiar. I recognised it instantly. Yet it was thirty-five years ago. That gave me a melancholy feeling I haven't been able to shake off.

Highslide Image Viewer

What really gets me is to think of everything that unfolded in the following ten years. If someone had asked me on one of those spring days in 1991 what the next ten years might hold, I'd have assumed I'd be in the same job, and living in the same house. But in fact those years unfolded a bit like a whirlwind. I moved to London and worked for two financial organisations. I had a string of relationships and interesting foreign trips. Even the world itself was about to change: the Internet, mobile phones, Britpop and digital TV were all just round the corner as well. Mundane things now sure, but all part of the tapestry of the 90s that was going to unfurl. Part of the story.

I think it's jealousy. I do enjoy life now, but my story is sort of settled. The last chapter is predictable. I feel jealous of the young man who rocked up there in his Talbot Sunbeam with all those chapters and experiences still ahead of him that he couldn't have predicted. Actually I feel a bit jealous of the life he already had. That job in a big company, being pally with lots of interesting people. Just a seven-minute drive from home.

I have a powerful urge to go back to Via Gellia Mills, now. But the sad truth is that I think it's a desire to step back into 1991, and of course I can't.

I still have that shooting jacket, it's in the loft.

Thank you for this beautiful post.  I'm am constantly looking backwards, with a huge feeling of melancholy.  Constantly thinking of things I could and should have done differently and I often yearn for the life I had between, I'd say, 1989 and 2000.  Youth is completely wasted on the young.

I find life quite difficult in many ways now.

[Slim]

This is the only photo I have of myself in that shooting jacket, also taken in 1991. Scanned from an article in the company newspaper entitled "First shot a winner for Jim" and captioned An action picture of RRA crack-shot Jim Gibbon.

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The jacket was blue.

I scanned the whole piece and got ChatGPT to transcribe it, it reads:

RRA Raynesway Analyst-Programmer Jim Gibbon is riding high in competitive shooting circles since he topped the Derbyshire Winter Individual League for small-bore rifles.

Jim's aggregate scores came out top of seventeen other competitors for twenty-five yard target-shooting and his consistent accuracy gave him the highest score in the league.

Jim, who only started competitive shooting in earnest a year ago, was entering the individual event for the first time ever. He is a member of the Rolls-Royce Rifle and Pistol Club and practices two nights a week at Moor Lane.


Pardon my nostalgia.

[Fishy]

Workmen outside our house who for  the last three days seem to be making a trench then fill it then flatten out then come back the next to dig out it out fill it in then flatten out and today is more of the same.. all this to try and fix a lamppost I think on the other side of the street

[Fishy]

William and Catherine all smiles in Valentine's Day photograph https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjmgkyw7yvo

Not news BBC.. fuck off