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One for the SMB catalogue. Sat watching the match in this Irish bar on Sunday. Three mackem lads come in (hoodies from some gym/boxing club saying “Made in Sunderland” or something similar) about ten minutes before our game kicked out, spent all the game rooting and cheering for Arsenal and then left at full time. You’ve got to laugh

Cheers. That’s precisely where I get all that bullshit from. Oh and wear sunscreen

Hope everyone’s situations pick up soon, even if I’m late to reading about them all. Rayvin, it took me a good 6-8 months of navigating the job market before I found something decent and I wasn’t looking in a role that had anywhere near the job specs you’re looking at. It’s a massively frustrating experience so I absolutely sympathise with you on it but you can’t beat yourself up over it. Hope you feel a bit better for chatting about it. PL, awful news about the missus but glad it appears that she’s on the upward turn. Going away for something like a wedding or a weekend away can do the world of good sometimes. Glad that her graft was OK with it all too. I can tell you now that if anyone at my place went through similar, they’d be shafted as soon as they came back to work.

And just to extend your bullshit cliche, ‘the race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself’ [\Baz Luhrmann] I hope your wife is through the worst of it, PL.

His World Cup book is excellent but must admit, it’s my only real experience of reading any of his work

My next door neighbour deliberately waits days/weeks to throw balls back over and also hides a lot of them. And she is working class. She has a young kid as well. She is such a miserable prick. Luckily the kids have about 20 balls so we don’t miss them. I’m going to start hoying dog shit over there one day.

🤣

@wykikitoon Have you been hacking accounts? 🙂

@PaddockLad Sorry for what your wife's going through. Hope she's feeling better soon but it's shite losing a pet in whom you've put so much love and attention. Have you got a colour in version of that book for a resident of Boldon? 🙂

Here PL, I'm really sorry to hear about your wife's troubles this year. Hopefully time will help. Awful to hear she's struggling though and I hope things get better soon.

@Rayvin Bit late but I just wanted to agree with pretty much everything that's been said (apart from @Christmas Tree and @Monkeys Fist contributions). Hang in there and keep coming here to vent. Someone has usually got sensible advice (apart from @Christmas Tree and @Monkeys Fist obviously). 🙂

Why are none of us remotely surprised. 🙂

Andor season 2 was better than I expected. Felt more like a quality political/spy thriller than a Disney star wars production. A brave nod to current world events too.

I agree with that, he's done something daft in this instance, and the BBC must be delighted to have him out of the way now. But well done to him for speaking out on this issue generally; a 100 people a day have been murdered every single day for over a year and a half and most of his fellow celebrities havent let out as much as a squeak. (pun not intended)

When I was a youth and working at the Calvert Trust, we had a lass turn up as an instructor that was married to a local TV news presenter- she was fit as fuck, proper flirty, and soon made it clear that her bones were there to be jumped. She wanted me to teach her how to climb, which I (correctly) saw as an opportunity to get ahead in the bone-jumping queue, and I took her out to a crag that had a lot of chimney routes- basically ones that meant your legs were splayed on either side of the route, and poor old me would be forced to get an eyeful as she made her way up I was 18 at the time, she would’ve been 26-27 I guess, and she had me sussed straight away, but didn’t mind in the least. It would be ungentllemanly of me to say whether bones were in fact jumped that day, but I can say that I have fond memories of a certain lay by near West Woodburn She and the newsreader husband split not long after, and he married his co-presenter who he’d been getting stuck in to on the side, so I have no guilt whatsoever about “teaching climbing” to his then Mrs.

@PaddockLad Sorry to hear about the current Mrs. PL’s problems mate, and I fully agree with the gist of your post- sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re not.

I cant think of many people who would have navigated this downturn as well as you have Rayvin, in terms of still managing to get by and opening up new avenues for yourself in a brutal market. That's not to say what you're feeling is invalid of course, it must be gut wrenching having to go through it. I agree with what MF said (not the stone climbing blart), but as much as things like houses and careers are important to us in the grand scheme of things they dont define us. Getting through life without being a major cunt to others is unfortuantely rare and I suspect you are particularly good at it. Having said that the frustration of these problems is very real and I hope something goes your way very soon. A few years ago when I was stuck in terrible job in Dubai I couldn't leave, I'd apply to new listings every day desperately. Went on for almost 3 years, tons of interviews no luck. Eventually I got absolutely sick and resigned for the sake of my health, and believe it or not during my 30 day notice a recruiter reached out, I had one interview and got offered a job paying 40% more . I was delighted but also furious that this couldnt happen a year or two sooner. Life is just fickle and often doesnt make sense, but ride it out long enough and I'm positive something will go your way. Having mates to vent it out with regularly over a beer (non alcoholic preferably ) or something is absolutely crucial too.

@Rayvin Sounds to me like you’ve made perfectly logical choices at the time and are now probably paying the price for the industry you’re in changing in ways that were completely unforseeable. Trying to sound as unpatronising as possible but that mate is just life. When the entire world when tits up in 2007-09ish I really struggled to find work, I was completely unprepared for it as I was, in a game that is very cliquey, just about the most “unclubbable” cunt that you’d come across. It’s not that I wasn’t “a nice guy” it’s just I didn’t play games with people, am not two faced and I tell people the truth (with monotonous regularity some would say) So some people would say all that is admirable but in reality it was naive as fuck; did it help me get work? Did it fuck (I wasn’t the only one, but there were groups of lads in work that I was friendly with that all had better mates/better contacts at management level) On a brighter note, that was also around the time I came across this board so my life has been even fuckin worse since then 😆 I eventually hid out the next 4/5 years in the RN shipyard in Portsmouth, eventually doing a bullshit QC desk job which I wasn’t cut out for but paid a ludicrous amount of money… I didn’t plan any of that, it all just happened. And what you’re describing is “just happening” to you. Obviously, your way out of what you’re describing may well “just happen” too…although it goes without saying people such as yourself don’t leave things as much to chance as I have in my life; educated professionals such as yourself have definite plans and ambitions; that is something that I should’ve changed when I was a lot younger than I am now, and it’s fair to say I’m still trying to work out what to do with my life even now in my mid 50s ☺️ All joking aside you’re just not ahead in life at the moment, sometimes folk are and sometimes folk aren’t. That is the nature of it. I’ve been ahead for years but this year has been very challenging indeed due to my wife pretty much having a breakdown in the new year; it was mostly brought on by the grief of us having to put our dog down due to it’s deteriorating behaviour (ie biting). She couldn’t stop bursting into tears, she works at a solicitors so it wasn’t good (they’ve been very supportive tbf) She was off work all of January and February. She went back gradually and is now back full time but she didn’t go in Monday and Tuesday last week as she’d been trying to ween herself off the anti depressants she’d been prescribed and had a drop in mood. So it’s still one day at a time but it she is a lot better and we’re off to my neice’s wedding on Saturday in North Berwick so we’re both really looking forward to that. So now I’m going to close my copy of “THE BIG BOOK OF BULLSHIT CLICHES” and fuck off to bed but remember…. Sometimes you’re ahead and sometimes you’re not…

Oh aye, now it becomes clear. "Erm, you lead and I'll second love" "And while your ahead, can you remove that annoying gettyimages watermark from your arse love, cheers 👍" YOU DISGUST ME.

I went to see High on Fire last year, just after drummer Des Kensel has left. I fucking loved Des and was genuinely concerned the "new guy" might not cut it. The new guy turned out to be Cody Willis, who was the Melvins second drummer for a lot of those tours. Absolute fucking magician.

I appreciate that man, thanks. Though I will say, I do actually hope my friends are as happy as they seem to be. Aside from not wanting to pull anyone down, it gives me some hope in the end. But you're right, we all go through things. I dunno, at least I'm fortunate with having good people around me, this board very much included.