When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
We take risks everyday. Some bigger than others.
Just getting up in the morning and making it out the front door is a risk.
Getting through that day – risk
Driving with the looney traffic – risk
Every heartbeat a risk.
But do you know what? I’m still here writing this bilge so it must have worked out ok.
Stupid question….
Have a good day all.
I’ve just purchased this item from EBay. Here’s the listing:
This is being sold as spares as sounds like the belt has gone so don’t play tape has some battery leaking marks but radio plays fine.
Please study the pictures as this makes up some of the description thanks for looking and please check out our other great bargains 👍
Ebay
Just a sucker for a bit of retro me. I’ve worked on the discman, blog post here: Sony Discman D-121 Pt:2 as well as on a few others spread over this site.
This one dates between 1991-93 as these were the years that these particular units were manufactured between. I knocked the price down a bit but ended up paying about £18GBP in total.
It looks to be in good cosmetic condition with light usage as you can still see all the numbers on the rubber pads quite clearly. For a unit that’s potentially into its 33rd year that’s no mean feat. Anyway we will just have to await its arrival and not get too excited.
I preferred the tape Walkmans to be honest and I’m hoping this one will be a simple fix so I can play all those old REM tapes I have sitting in the cabinet at home. But it probably won’t be a simple fix. And it has corrosion , how quaint!
The assessment and repair post can be found here: Sony Digital Radio Cassette Walkman WM FX-20 assessment and repair
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
I had to ask my wife for clarification here as my mind had drawn a blank. Now the flood gates have opened. In the words of George Michael- “Turn a different corner and we never would have met.”
Yes, this question really is a closing doors moment. We all make decisions on a daily basis, lots of them, and then occasionally a big one comes up and you have to concentrate on how you respond. Not all decisions are particularly bad, but hindsight being a wonderful thing you occasionally look back and say, “ I wish I had done that differently.”
For me that moment would have been in the late 80s. As a couple my wife and I have always had a bit of a spend thrift attitude to money, if we had it we kind of spent it. Sometimes we lived beyond our means as I’m sure we all do from time to time but we had good times and made memories and don’t regret that for one moment as you can’t put a price on good memories. They were what we used to call picture moments, we still have them from time to time and we will occasionally say to each other “This is a picture moment” and we know at that point one of us has taken a mental picture of that very moment for posterity.
In the 80s we had a chance to purchase what was our old house for about £80k. Considering we were only 17 miles from central London it was a bargain, but because of our spendthrift attitude for life it was out of our range even at that price. Instead we poured endless amounts of cash into a flat we renting, we should have realised we were lining someone else’s pockets and not ours. We didn’t care, as ignorance is bliss….isn’t it?
Fast forward about 3 years, a little wiser and settled due to impending marriage and the offer for the same house came in this time it was in the region of £140k the price had risen by £60k. This time we jumped at it, it was tough and we had to knuckle down on our finances but we did it.
Looking back yes this is a regret that I wish we had jumped at when we had the chance. If we had where would be now? Would we be in a better position or not? All I know now is we are happy, we are content and happy with our lot. We do not envy people, in fact we are happy they have done well and celebrate their good fortune, yes we could have done things differently but would we be as content with our lot?
Like I said at the beginning, George said it all in his lyrics.
Regrets, none at all, lessons learned definitely, are we better people for our experiences? You bet ya we are.
Have a lovely day all.
What makes you nervous?
I just don’t feel safe anymore. I feel nervous purely for that I guess?
I feel nervous for my family whenever they are out, not for anything they do or are capable of but for what they may or may not encounter. They are all responsible people and in the words of my late step father are “Big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.“
No it’s everyone else I’m nervous of, society in general. There seems to be a massive imbalance between good and bad and bad seems to be winning.
Maybe I’m being melodramatic, maybe I’m being over sensitive, but I long for the day when the madness of society fades away.
I must be dreaming as I dont ever see that happening.
Try to have a better day than I am having. Be happy.
Just brought this. Here’s the listing on EBay
Excellent sound quality on Blaupunkt DAB radio with built in speakers NOTE CD player mechanism is not working
(possibly an easy repair job)
Radio & remote OK.
RRP £99.00
EBay
I ended up paying the grand total £21:22 GBP for this item and that included postage. I may have got quite a good deal, however as usual I will have to await its arrival as you can’t always trust EBay listings. Hopefully the issue with the cd mechanism is a relatively easy fix 🤞
Looking forward to getting busy on this one, back to the end of the ever growing list of items to work on you go.
Check here to see how the repair went : Blaupunkt BPHF-1R Dab CD radio assessment and repair
How do you use social media?
I was on SM pretty much from the start. But more often than not I signed out and had a month or two away every now and then as I just didn’t need it.
I was a child of the 70’s and if someone wanted to call me an arse or show me a picture of their dinner they’d have had to walk a few miles or so to do it.
Facebook was a joke, that was ditched years ago.
Instagram was taken over by talentless nobodies calling themselves “influencers” I was that impressed that I ditched that too.
I go on Twitter or X or whatever they call it now, every once in a while but it’s quite a horrible experience. I use it to follow a few music sites, or technical sites but you can’t help but notice the utter hate and disrespect people have for each other on there. It really is an utter cesspool of depravity and to be honest I just don’t need or want that in my life.
I use WordPress as a blog presence and I quite like that.
So no, I’m not a great fan of SM, my choice, you may love it and good on you, whatever floats your boat I say.
I guess I’m probably not that social. Close the door on the way out please 😂
Have a great day. Stay safe.
Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
Tea.
That was it. Tea.
I’m back on nights tonight and I fancied a lay in, but it seems the wife wanted the same. Eyes closed, a sleepy glance to the right to see if my wife was awake. She wasn’t.
It’s going to have to be me isn’t it? Wait a few more minutes. Still no movement.
The dog has clocked I’m awake and he wants to go outside now. Damn it’s going to have to be me.
Dog in garden, two cups of tea to the bedroom and the wife is miraculously awake. She’s better at this game than me. 😂
Good day to you all.
I’m referring you back to this blog entry I wrote on the 10th March The best laid plans and all that…
Here I was complaining about the weather due to a garden project I was undertaking and the time frame my wife has kindly put on it.
It was being severely hampered by the weather and on the odd occasional day I was able to do bits but the time scale was moving ever closer.
Well I finally managed to get the digging complete with a couple of inches more of mud removed and made as level as possible before more rain moved in.
Then I had an 800kg bag of MOT type one sub base layer delivered and this went down in a few hours and I was then able to hire a wacker plate to get it down nice and solid and even all over. I’ve put a wooden edge in as well that will eventually have some bare root Hornbeam hedging put in alongside it to form a softer border.
But it rained again for days 🤷♂️
In the meantime myself and the wife went to a local garden centre and got an absolute bargain with the pavers, these were delivered the next day and I was able to place them roughly where I wanted them to be before cementing. Then guess what? Yes you are right it has rained pretty much from the 28th March right up to a few days ago the 11th April.
We’ve had some sun the last couple of days and the surface of the garden has dried off a bit. The patio area has dried off quite considerably so on the 14th April I was finally able to get all the pavers cemented into position, I was able to do a first rough cut of the grass and generally have a little tidy up. There was an awkward period when the works supervisor (Alfie, our dog and head of security) intervened and decided to sit on a paver I was cementing, but talks took place and strike action was avoided when a chewy treat was supplied.
I’ve ordered an 800kg bag of pea shingle to finish the job so I’m hopeful the time scale will be met. it was a good day.
This morning the 15th we have had torrential rain, hailstones and a thunderstorm, woo am I pleased I got that cementing done yesterday, you bet I am. I just hope it had time to cure to a state where the down pour hasn’t affected it too much. I’ll check it out later, and I’ll just have to refrain from using the pavers for another 48hrs or so.
Note: I’ve just checked and the cement has set nicely, I’ll leave it another day and it should be all good 👍 we now await the pea shingles arrival.
Fast forward to the 17th after yet more rain has fallen and I now have 800kg bag of pea shingle occupying part of my driveway. I have ordered far too much, however it means I will be able to prioritise a couple of other garden projects that I have recently put on the back burner.
Guess what? More rain but I’m not giving up until these stones are in place.
A couple of hours later I’ve put the shingle in place, first a layer that I’ve then stamped down and then another layer on top to bring it all up to level across all the pavers. I must admit it has come up quite well.
I’ve finished it off with a small circular paver for the wife’s stone toadstool that has been a feature in any garden we have occupied since we first met, as well as some decorative fencing and lighting with 15 newly planted Hornbeam hedgerow plants. I have a vision of having a nice hedgerow line down here within the next couple of years as well as being a natural source of drainage for the this part of the garden, that naturally gets very wet due to neighbouring gardens being concrete wastelands.
I’m very pleased with the result, it’s on time and the wife is now off my back, and she’s very happy, phew 😥
Thanks for following this little project, stay safe and stay happy.
Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
In the past I’ve struggled with anger at times, not a very nice trait I inherited from my father, not a very nice person I must admit. I’ve tried hard all my life to not be like him and 90% of the time I am successful, but just once every now and then I let myself down and I instantly regret it.
The good thing is that when my anger surfaces it does not get taken out on anyone, I haven’t hit anyone in anger since my school years, it’s usually inanimate objects such as walls and this is where I have learnt one of my most valuable lessons.
I was fixing a heavy wood cabinet at home, I’d been working nights and I was tired, in theory I should have gone straight to bed and rested. Instead I decided to continue, managed to hit my thumb with a hammer, used some ripe old language and then decided to land a right hander square on a solid wood door.
It transpires that after suffering quite a bit of discomfort in my hand I had broken the knuckle on my little finger, also known as a boxers fracture.
What lesson have I learned I hear you ask? Well to be honest when I feel any anger coming on now I just think of my hand and the anger subsides.
Anger is not worth it and is a waste of energy, it causes pain and upset and no one deserves to witness that.
I was a fool, probably still am but I’m now an educated fool.
Happy day to you all.
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
Well this is another one that’s not going to be hard to answer. I have a friend who lives in the Melbourne area of Australia and thanks to him and the regular pictures he sends me I shall not be visiting that country anytime soon.
Now I don’t know if he’s doing this deliberately to keep me away, if that is the case he has succeeded.
Australia looks a beautiful place and I’m sure it is. However I am an arachnophobe to the point of absolute terror not just being scared. You should see me going into my garden shed here in the Uk, my wife says I look like the Pope giving a blessing as I have a large stick and I’m waving it about so I don’t get caught in any web.
It all goes back to when I was younger and my parents would force my elder brother to take me out to play with him and his mates. They of course used to use and abuse me as youngsters do, and one of the things they loved doing was stuffing all kinds of creatures down my neck and watching me scream and run around, I really was a bag of nerves back then. I’m not much better now especially in the presence of spiders.
To be honest it seems everything in Australia wants to kill you. If it isn’t many varieties of spiders, it’s the snakes. If not the snakes it’s the waterborne animals such as Crocs. Even the bloody Kangaroos want you to fight you!
And then there’s the heat. If the local wildlife doesn’t get you, then the heat does. I like a little warmth just like the next guy, but being a well done piece of meat doesn’t appeal to me.
Nope, I’ll be giving Australia a miss for the rest of my life if that’s ok.
Happy day to everyone 👍
Foxes Den 
You must be logged in to post a comment.