Pedroski

My only present to unwrap was a Plain Lazy hoody. But my best present really was seeing us all happy. Have had a really crap few months after daughter got a really bad liver injury back in August, and I ended up with bibasal pneumonia, and problems stemming from a frickin' hole they've found in my heart. So for everyone to be fit and well and happy at Christmas was brilliant.

Turkey curry is good. Proper one done from scratch - not a jar of curry sauce! Last year we had cold turkey with gammon and stuff on boxing day, then just bagged up the left over turkey and chucked it in the freezer. At Easter we got the turkey out and made a curry. Spot on it was, and it was made all the better by not being too soon after Christmas.

Arran, you're better off using an autoblock (French Prusik) knot instead of a normal Prusik knot. You can unlock the autoblock under load. For the loop you need either 120cm of 6mm cord, or 110cm of 5mm cord. Make loop with double fishermans. You then have loop right size to wrap 4 times around climbing line and clip into krab.

Or buy the boots in Oz?

£189 I think!

They look pretty decent. I was thinking of getting winch on front of my vehicle, but something like that might be a better option. I could just rig it to my tow hitch which is rated to 5000kg when I need to use it and stow it in the back when not. Better than having electric winch nicked!

Get one of the Petzl "square" figure 8. I've rapped on them over ledges, and the nice thing is you don't twist on the way down. Just need to make sure you clip into the 8 properly and back it up for safety before removing the friction hitch. Good back up is an autolock hitch on the brake side of the rope, attached to krab on leg loop. If you let go of the brake line for some reason, this'll save you. What I don't like seeing is was my mate does..... he rapps down on nothing but his ISC rope grab, and I always think something's going to go wrong.

I did the basic City and Guilds course a few years back and it is well worth doing. Before doing the course, which was in the days before you could read a load of crap from internexperts, I'd muddled through burning holes in plenty of bodywork! Getting proper hands on with proper decent kit on the course was brilliant. Not sure if they still do oxy-acet, but that was one of my favourites. never got round to doing the actual exam at the end of it though as the welding shop had to be closed due a problem with the gas cylinders!

Auto-darkening visor really is an essential in that it makes life so much easier. Decent one can be had for under £60. For heavy chassis work then I'd stick to arc welding. It's nice and easy to fill the groove properly and there's no feckin' about with wire and gas. The consumable electrodes are much much better than they were years ago when I first did welding. And you can get a really decent arc/HF TIG welder for a the price of a MIG. HF TIG welding is brilliant, and unless you're doing ally then you only need a DC one which is much cheaper than a good AC one. If you can solder and coordinate two hands properly then you should have much trouble TIG welding.

Should have asked for cash, bought food and eaten the evidence. Mind you, my bonus is going toward paying tax bill at end of Jan so no point in eating it!

That's what I just got from my mate I was moaning about - 6 days money for 1 day of work

Do what I do if not confident.... price the job taking into account a good wage for subcontractors/freelancers and a good profit for you. I don't climb with a saw - I'll climb for fun and climb to rig, but will let my freelancing mate do the cutting. Last job was 2 to 2.5 days - we did it in 2. I paid climber and groundy £800 between them for the 2 days. I worked on ground and did saw maintenance, ropes etc, and walked away with a tidy profit and no real grief (well, no grief now that I've been paid ). You could, for example, price your job at £1500, get a dead good climber and a groundy and pay them £800 and net yourself a healthy profit for doing more simple stuff and owning the job. Everyone's happy. You've also then got room to move the price a bit if the customer comes at you with a cheaper quote, and you still get a profit.

Drambuie, Port and proper home made mulled wine... and Prosecco to go with meals.

All the manuals are on the Husqvarna site. The one you need will be on this page Download Manuals - Husqvarna Outdoor Equipment Operation Manuals

Cheers for that. I knew it must have been something obvious but my brain was out of gear!

Mark, what's "EL"?

Accidentally, I said "while the response rate to leaflets was only about 1.5 percent, the number of jobs that actually came off the back of it was 6, which equates to 67 days work for 2 people at £400+/day.". I actually meant 6 days work, not 67!

We've had good luck with leaflet drops. They dead cheap to have decent quality A5 size ones printed, and my kids have done a couple of drops on way to school and a walk around a couple of blocks. Out of approx 200 leaflets delivered we got 3 jobs, all well paying, which led to 3 jobs for other nearby people who, while not responding directly to the leaflet drop, likes the look of us and the work we were doing. So, while the response rate to leaflets was only about 1.5 percent, the number of jobs that actually came off the back of it was 6, which equates to 67 days work for 2 people at £400+/day. That's £2400+ for a few pennies of leaflets. Kids were paid £5 commission for each job plus a few quid for dropping the leaflets off. Leaflet response rate 1.5%, but rate of return of the work gained was more like 2400%. Plus there's good likelihood for more follow up work. I'd say it can work with minimal effort, and in a lot of ways is far better than being fleeced by newspapers! Plus, you're directly targeting areas where you want to work.

£425 per day for 3 blokes! Including fuel etc! What happens if you knacker a saw or need a new chain? How do you pay for new saws and chains in the future? You've got to get some contingency money and profit into the equation. Double it. If you don't make nowt out of it then it doesn't sound like it's worth the effort. Too many people going in too cheap! Can you get customer to keep the chip for weed suppression, seeing as it looks like the Congo, and to keep the logs?

So everything's spliced and you want to know... what next? How about splice up your life?

"No Mans Land 2004" is brilliant.

Is that yellow and green? Only I ordered OP from FR Jones and yellow and green arrived, whereas I was expecting orange.

I'm with Easyliftguy. I wouldn't plant a tree near it at all. When we did my mother's house we "landscaped" the septic tank cover and pump wiring by building a removable cover made from decking, banking soil around and some nice stone and planting up with decent ground cover stuff like lavender and heathers etc. It actually looks really nice. Trees have been planted several metres away.

My little wife is from Brighton. Proper native.