Shyheels

I had a really nasty experience with one of their stewards coming back from Budapest last year. The guy was really aggressive. All I did was ask what the alternate sandwich was, a simple query, politely asked. I am always polite to cabin crew. But clearky he was in no mood fir any oassenger interaction whatsoever. He went off his nut and threw a sandwich at me, literally. It was astonishing. Other passengers gawped open mouthed. In well over two million miles of flying all over the world I never encountered anything like it, before or since. So my enthusiasm for BA has cooled considerably. The other members of the alliance - Qantas, Emirates and Cathay, are wonderful.

Actually, I am a platinum member of the One World alliance which includes BA, Qantas, Emirates and Cathay Pacific among others. That said, BA is my least favourite of that group...

I use a different service now. I am flying Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines this week - no brand name recognition troubles there! Home again tomorrow!

In Germany the beer and lemonade mix is known as a 'radler' or cyclist. It us very popular with cyclie tourists as you can drink them on an outing and not worry about getting drunk of dehydrated. The new drinking guidelibes are idiotic anny state nonsense, and gaving the same amount fir men and women, despite the general difference in body mass, is simoly a kowtow to gender politics.

That's bizarre. Perhaps you got some temp on the line. There are some very dense counter staff/telephone help around these days. I tried booking a ride from the airport (Heathrow) the other day and told the woman on the phone that I would be flying in on KLM. She said she never heard of that airline. Was emphatic on the point. Asked me to check my ticket again as she was certain there must be some mistake as she knew ALL of the airlines and had never heard of that one. When I insisted that ut existed she groused that it must be one of the brand new discount charter lines i pointed out that KLM was the world's oldest airline, and a major one at that. She wouldn't have it and declined the booking as she didn't want one if her drivers wasting time tryng to find a flight on an airline that didn't exist. Told me to call back once I worked out what my airline really was...

I was just being facetious

Why not? Or were you waiting for the year 2106 as per your post? :-)

Indeed! good fun! i rather enjoy the raffish style around the offce...

The PVCs arrived! I love 'em! Nice to step outside the envelope! might just become part of my home offce dress code - the joys of beng self employed

I guess the point is to have wet look leggings/jeans, not actually wet ones!

We are fortunate here. It would take a near Biblical flood to reach the floorboards of our house, on the upland where we are, although our garden is certainly getting soggy. El Nino is giving everybody a very weird and in many cases unpleasant December.

It is sad, this loss of colour and quirkiness in the world. Good business people are seldom the quirky innovators, artists and stylists - and vice versa. It is like this in virtually every sphere, not just fashion. Quirkiness is bought out, its essence bowdlerised and the resulting bland form - a broad and common mediocrity - is marketed to the masses. You see it on high streets and market shelves everywhere.

I kind of liked the uber slinky rock chic jeans my wife had in the 90s and these were they - first I'd ever seen. Your suggestion about Camden sounds like a good one- funnily enough I think that us where my wife found hers! I'm not at all Goth any more than I am fetish. I just happened to like the look of this particular style of slinky PVC jeans and wanted to affect this bit of daring for myself. the e-bay reseller with whom I was dealing is, I think, genuinely UK based - appears to be a lady who does a sort of small sideline business and has 100% positive reviews from an admittedly small base (160 sales)

Again, sounds like pleasant sailing at your end of the bay. There don't appear to be many, if any, alternate suppliers. The pair I ordered was remaindered from a French high street shop - and high street shops just aren't doing rock chic PVC anymore, it seems. Or at least it seems fairly rare thing to find and not exactly being a fetish kind of guy, I wanted to stick to the high street. I shall look on occasion in future, but with little exoectation of finding...

Sounds like a very happy end to your search/project! Hollywood could not have scripted it better. I ordered my PVC skinny jeans from an ebay seller in the UK. Supposedly posted on the 15th, not here as of the 29th. Not sanguine on the prospect of their ever arriving. Not when orders places for other things, on Boxing Day, were arriving yesterday. I guess the whole PVC thing just wasn't to be.

Alas, my PVCs never arrived. At least not yet and I am starting to wonder. They appear to have been lost in transit. Looks like I summoned my nerve for nothing...

God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay

But tomorrow's only Good Friday...

Alas my gear gets no lighter... I generally need to visit a physio after an assignment to get my back, shoulders and neck into alignment after schlepping a hefty camera bag around the traps for days on end...

Messy

Bah! Humbug!

It is amazing the changes technology is bringing. My wife takes excellent pictures on her phone as well, although we are not connected up to social media at all. The mobile phone market is cutting deeply into the compact camera market. If you are just shooting jpegs, and for personal web and social media use, there is little reason to carry a dedicated camera these days.

warm gravel for breakfast? You were lucky...

I'm a New Englander - old family; descendent of many sea captains and, in the 19th century, footloose artists. Bohemia and wandering is in my blood. Yup, not much juice in a cracker...

When I say I followed the herd I am perhaps being ingenuous, or rather, referring to a particular facet or facets of life - in ths instance fashion. As I say I was never in the least interested in, or tempted by, the drug scene. In other ways I was far from followng the ordinary paths. I hitchhiked away from college and drifted around the US for a couple of years, living in the juice of a cracker, before heading overseas and never really returned. I've not had anything like a sensible career, and have little enough to show for it other than memories, but I have plenty of those. I've managed to see over 100 countries on every continent, run grade six rapids on a raft, cycled through Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe, rounded the cape in a yacht, stood on the South Pole, run marathons in pretty quick time, and not worked in an office for over 25 years.