Received this dreaded email after ordering something the other day.

I'm not getting my parcel, am I?

Combined Cadet Force

I still have a hard time explaining this to people who don't know what it is.

Essentially, kids are "voluntarily" put into this thing after school where they dress up in uniforms and berets and forced to do marching drills.

You then pick whether you want to do Army/Navy/RAF, and you get to do some shooting drills. Guns are brought into the school (without ammo) and kids are shown how to shoot.

Every year each group goes on a summer camp type excursion where they get to fire real weapons or fly gliders or something.

And that's it.

PSA innit. The sandwich should be mainly pickle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lyhccGJHUk

Sing along if you know the lyrics:

Rats, rats, we are the rats,
Celebrating yet another birthday bash!
𝓶𝓲𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓮𝓵, it's your birthday today,
Cake and ice cream is on it's way!
And 𝓶𝓲𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓮𝓵, has been such a good boy this year,
Open up your gifts while we all cheer!

Even beats the sublime John Player Specials Lotus livery.

Take a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkwind#Discography

Every year from 1970 onwards is either an album release, or a live concert, or staggered album release, all with at maximum a 1-year hiatus.

In 2003 to 2004 something drastic of cosmic and celestial import must have happened.

Morrisons this morning, it's a big pack but still... worlds gone mad

Learning to drive late in life. I'm good with awareness, changing gears, interactions, roundabouts, spatial awareness, yadda yadda - a lifetime of cyclist awareness.

I just can't brake softly to save my life. It feels like I put the pedal half down, and nothing happens to the speed and then I do an inch more and suddenly the whole car locks up.

Is this normal? I just have to get used to finding a gentle breaking point somehow?

If a federated community like this already exists, please point me to it. I'd rather not divide the effort any more than necessary.

I think it is clear to anyone in the UK. The disabled community is now under attack.

This community is an attempt to help pull people together and consider ideas for support and to enhance our voice.

I like many others in our community over the last 14 years. Have enough mental health issues. That I'd be grateful for other mod volunteers who will share the time managing the group. In the hope, we can keep the workload of off to few people.

https://feddit.uk/c/disabilityUK

I'm on 2 teaspoons a day.

Any studies out there about the negative effects of it?

Is Marmite poisoning a thing?

It took 10 years, three ex's, two countries, and living with my mother for a bit, but I finally paid it all off.

Ask me how I feel. The guy who took my final payment on the phone was happier than I was

Mine was chocolate concrete, hands down. Second was the cornflake and jam cake

The image shows a shop shelf, with a rip-off cheap toy, based loosely on the Transformers cartoon. The toy is called "Deformed Car".

Just needed to share this with someone… somewhere… it was so odd.

So went out last night to an asian restaurant, it’s a sort of bigger chain but only has a few places so I thought it might be worth a go. We were just thinking about somewhere easy to get to and I fancied ramen. Which in the end wasn’t that great.

So I order some Korean bbq ramen and my wife decides to go for the duck pancakes. Young girl takes our order and It’s brought over by a young guy, in fact all the servers and everyone working there look like a bunch of teenagers. As he goes to set down my wife’s plate he for some reason asks, “would you like me to shred your duck?” The question kinda throws my wife and she is basically just says “uhh yeah… sure.” Thinking it might be a table experience like cutting steak or something.

Anyway I see the soul literally leave the boy as he turns away from us to an empty table and starts shredding… the entire restaurant picks up on something odd going on as we all watch him shred… it goes on for soooo long. By this stage I am laughing my ass off at the weirdness of what is going on.

Eventually he turns back with the plate, handing it back having used the cutlery that came with the dish. We didn’t have the guts to mention to him and told the other person who took our order to get new ones.

To be fair, the duck was shredded to an excellent standard! At least made us laugh!

Had a policy with them on a CBR 125, provisional license. Over halfway in to the policy and I'm getting a new bike after passing the full bike license tests, so I call to ask for costs on moving the policy over to the new one.

After 10 minutes on hold, get told "Underwriter says no, and doesn't give a reason", then they cut the call on us.

I wondered if it was due to the provisional license entitlement as I hadn't yet updated them - costs are about £35 admin fee per policy change bear in mind so you'd want to do any changes all at once - so I called back to request just a change of license on the current policy. Get told "Underwriter says no to the new terms on the existing policy" and the call gets cut off again when I start asking questions on what to do now.

Call back a third time, state what's happened so far and miraculously this time the call doesn't cut off. Get told "you have 7 days to resolve the incorrect license issue on the current policy" or they'll cancel it on my behalf (which if done by the insurer is a massive negative disclosure on your file that sticks around forever).

Get put through to the cancellations department to cancel it because there's no way I could drop back to a provisional license entitlement, lost those months towards the year's no claims bonus. Didn't need to pay to cancel, got a 5er refunded for the current month(!). Now have to SORN the 125 immediately and move it by van to the dealership, good thing it's owned outright and not a finance bike with compulsory insurance!! Seems there's a reason them being the cheapest on the market, buyer beware.