Lockdown was a strange old time. I still remember my first permitted exercise. aka my normal morning walk along the coast. It started exactly the same because there aren't often many people about here at 6:45 in the morning, but coming home was weird. Heading for 9:00 and no people, no traffic. Just like a scene from 28 Days later. Apart from the lack of Zombies who were presumably still at home wondering what to do with all their pasta and bog-roll.

I still love walking, even though it can quite literally be a pain in the backside. But I'm lucky to have a coastal walk plus woodlands that start on the edge of town and extend for miles. the pressure is starting to build all over it at the moment (all inexpensive social-housing you understand - yeah, right) which is worrying. Especially when you see the acres of brownfield and ex-commercial sites just sitting around empty. It's almost as though the developers prefer to build ultra-expensive housing on leafy sites with sea-views for all the cash-rich second-home/landlord/investment buyers we seem to suffer with.

My shoulder is no longer as stable as a banana republic/UK government!

I can't remember where the story would be up to, here.

> I had a very dislocatable left shoulder for a few years. I did once manage to do it with a sneeze indeed. Keyhole surgery when I was 20 mostly fixed that.

> I bust my left shoulder's collarbone a couple of times. Once crashing a mountain bike, once getting knocked off a commuter bike by another cyclist being a stupid idiot who doesn't look before emerging across a road from behind a parked lorry and who was fortunate I wasn't a car. No surgery required but it's a little wonky since that second time.

> Just before my kid was born (so, ulp, just over 10 years ago) I dislocated the right one, crashing a mountain bike. This got progressively worse over time to the point where it was coming out quite often and very inconveniently (well, it never is convenient really but there are worse times like while swimming in deep water etc). It was becoming a barrier to the mountain biking because quite innocent little manouevres would sometimes pop it out and that tends to end the day/weekend prematurely.

> Keyhole surgery wasn't gonna fix it apparently, too far gone, so I got something called a Latarjet procedure done. This is where they take a bit of bone from the front of the shoulder/chest area and bolt it to the front of the shoulder socket to stop it being able to come out. There's some relocating of how various muscles connect around all of this as well. I think they're still attached to that bit of bone or something like that. Have to say, hats off to the NHS on doing that one and for giving me some nice morphine tablets for the next couple of days.

> I got some NHS physio to get over it, kinda felt it was a bit insufficient so also did some private on the side. My surgeon got pretty mad when he found out, saying I was going too far too fast. Oh well. I think we were pretty careful but I suppose I'll have to wait and see.

> Once I was done with physio I started working on extra rehab with a personal trainer to build up strength and hopefully avoid doing it again.

> I still see the trainer because I found I quite liked having a strong body (I'm not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger but I have a lot more muscle and definition than ever before), find the added strength useful and the work we do on things like core and mobility mean I don't easily get back trouble etc and so on. My sessions range from traditional squatting heavy weights and so on to things that are pretty much just yoga/pilates really.

> I just really like mountain biking! Can't really stop until I'm incapable! And now they've invented e-bikes so when I'm not fit enough to pedal I should be able to get one of those.


Pedalling through London as lockdown started to ease was pretty fun in a a 28 Days Later style way.

It was indeed a strange time. I was so glad we had our dog because it forced both the wife and I to go out every day for a nice walk. Being otherwise confined to your house, I think it did us a world of good. Of course, being restricted to out local area (5 miles max during 1st lockdown) wasn't great and did make some of the walks a bit more repetitive, but it was interesting exploring some places we hadn't been to before, such as the private top-end of our local golf course.

We did have the advantage that when the second/third lockdowns happened, the rules up here became "don't go outside of your local authority area". A bit of a shit if you live in Aberdeen City like some of my wife's colleagues, but we're outside that in Aberdeenshire - you can drive almost 100 miles deep into the Cairngorms and still be in Aberdeenshire, so didn't feel restrictive at all to us.

Of course, saying all that the pandemic isn't an experience I'm eager to repeat again. I was thankful however that I already worked from home prior to lockdown, hence no adjustment was needed from that perspective and I already had a good home office set up - not like some of my colleagues sitting awkwardly at the kitchen table with their laptops!

 

Oh, most definitely. I had the joyous experience not long ago of suffering my first hemorrhoid - which was just terrific. What made it even better is that I was visiting my wife's parents in Germany at the time. Her dad is a retired medical doctor and insisted on checking it out (I wasn't sure what the hell it was at the time), and it's a simply marvelous experience to bare your arsehole at your father-in-law...  :-@

It would really have sucked if City of Durham was still a unitary authority but County Durham is huge. We could even have visited Barnard Castle, legitimately.

:D

Ok, so, I propose an annual Teh Day when we all pile back in here. When's good for y'all?

Any day you fancy. 1st of June?

Well, gosh, this place is still here. (heart)

I pop in once every couple of years, I guess, when I randomly think of it.

I was curious to see what date I first registered here, but apparently that's not in my profile. Member #39 though, so that feels pretty early.

It's reassuringly nostalgic to see quite so many names I remember still posting, even if it is for the first time in years.

When was the last Meat?

There was a London meet, that was quite well attended but it's going a good way back now - 10+ years, maybe even longer.

There's probably a thread!

Aside from that, I suppose there's arguably been mini-meats here and there - I've had the pleasure of Kenny's company a few times lately and I think I saw a facebook update showing erm, two people from here, in Manchester recently? Oof my poor memory. But a mass attendance event has not happened in a good while.

Yes, very true, I met Serg for dinner a couple of years back in London too. Oh, thinking about it, there was a York meet too - that was after London I think

From a quick search I count at least five meats in the past ten years...

2024-04-03 msg:43024.1 Manchester Mini Meat
2020-01-20 msg:42105.1 Leeds mini-meat, Saturday 20ndsth Jan
2017-06-24 msg:41942.1 June Meat
2014-12-20 msg:41295.1 Saturday 20th December
2014-07-19 msg:41092.1 Teh Northern Meat - Summer 2014

None of those combine "London" and "well-attended", but I have photographic evidence of three that do, in Sep 2013, Sep 2010 and Dec 2008.

Oh I'm very out of touch then! I think that Northern Meat one was the last one I attended

That was also probably the last one that had more than four people at. :(

We need a new big meat... one to celebrate reaching a quarter of a century, which we actually did last year if the dates in msg:34805.35 are correct.

where's Fozza. He was always good at forcing people to do fun stuff, some kind of sales magic skill.

Last person I've seen from here is Mouse when he drove by where I was living and I happened to be doing some gardening in the front. These days we live relatively local to each other.

I miss you all. This place was really special.

As William said, my mental health has been in a slow decline for a long time. Nothing new, still just the anxiety, panic and resultant agoraphobia. A couple of years back, though, my mum died and that sent it all off a cliff. Had a very rough couple of years. I'm levelling out again now though and that's *good*.

I'm still doing the same old stuff - chatting online, playing games, watching and reading stuff.

I think of the people from here frequently. You all had a huge, formative, impact on me and mean more to me than I can express. It was an amazing place to 'grow up' online, we were all incredibly lucky to have experienced it.

It also kinda ruined me for the modern web. Everything is so *disappointing* in comparison.

I do seek out places which capture some of those old internet vibes. I messed around with Gemini for a bit and I'm on Mastodon (and sporadically active - let's be friends if you're over there!). I've avoided the Facebooks and the Twitters and whatnot.

Spending most of my time when I'm not in voice chats watching/reading lefty political stuff and wondering whether, in the upcoming election, I'm going to not bother voting or cast a pointless vote for the Greens.

(hug)

 

Lovely way to put it. That's exactly how it feels  :') 

I shall try to catch up with you on Mastadon although I become increasingly poor at managing complexity. I set up a Mastadon account a while back just for this reason.  Meanwhile, don't be a complete stranger here. There are a handful of things associated with this site that have changed my life. You're there in the mix.