You walk in with a plan. You leave with GPS-tracking Nordic hiking poles. The same old story, eh? I am standing in the middle of a supermarket, holding my tool. It's important that the security cameras see that I am waving my tool around. This is to avoid any embarrassment. OK, you've guessed the punchline: I am trying to compare my old folding set of hex keys with a new set I spotted yesterday on the discount aisle. …
"A screwdriver toolbox that's just a little bit too short to fit my screwdrivers into."
Argh! This! The tips on my screwdrivers in my mini-toolbox had worn just slightly too much, so I bought a replacement set, and they are all just a couple of millimetres too long to go into my hand carryable tool box. Grrrrr. I'm tempted to get a rasp out and hack a few mill off the handle.
Seems to me the whole point of getting new screwdrivers is that the old ones have worn tips, why would you wear down the tips of the new ones?
If you are an ocd type like me, you can even make a jig for the hammer smacking, so that the dent on the lid fits the one on the box itself.
I wouldn't be taking a few mill off the tips, but off the handles - the other end, the plastic bit.
Also, my "tool box" is a 900ml rigid plastic ice cream tub. :) Just a perfect fit in a small rucksack, and small enough to prevent over-accumulance of extra tools. I'm going to *have* to buy and eat some ice cream to find a replacement box.
Reminds me of the time my wife came home with a Christmas tree a few inches too tall for our hallway. I wandered off to the garage to get a suitable saw, only to amble back in and find Mrs Skint brandishing her secateurs, about to lop off the top 12" of tree.
This is up there in the Skint family annals with the tale of the sprouts she boiled without water that same Christmas.
Neither of us drink these days. Life is so much more predictable without the gin.
An underwater scooter? Saw one recently in Lidl - I might have been tempted if I hadn't stopped Scuba diving 20 years ago (one 5 hour treatment in a hyperbaric chamber was enough, especially as my dive had only been to 14m and everything was well within the dive table limits, etc).
@David Robinson 1
You haven't drank enough whisky recently! £16.99 in Scotland, and that is after a year that the £17.49 price was reduced to £16.49. Bear in mind a cheap bottle of crap blend is £14 - I use that stuff as fly-trap. In fact I'm away out after this.
My dad just died so I was divving up his drinks cabinet among the relatives, and my cousin in law Jim said, "I can't take this. I'm sure he'd want Danny to have it."
Me and everyone else assured him I was the last person my dad would wish alcohol upon. I would like his booze but I'll respect his wishes and stick to his sweeties and Hibs paraphernalia.
The iconic Frasers store in Edinburgh has just been turned into a Johnny Walker customer experience site. I have been drinking whisky in Edinburgh, and all around the world, all my life and have never tasted Johnny Walker. It's a Hollywood drink. I used to assume it was a whiskey like Jim Beam. Edinburgh is being Disneyfied. The Aldi-Lidl Islay malts are guid.
Never had Johnny Walker, or Chivas Regal either. For the price of a bottle of JW Blue you could get (at least) 3-4 bottles of a good malt such as Balvenie Doublewood.
My blend of choice is actually Black Bottle, it's usually no more than £18 in the supermarkets and it's what ALL the pubs on Islay sell. It's what you'll find most of the locals quaffing when they're having a night on the sauce, with the good local produce kept for savouring rather than for serious drinking.
two versions though - there's the (to my mind) better international version or the UK variant.
Fortunately you can get the former at the source. What is served on the island is anyone's guess.
I've spent a lot of time on Islay and will be back soon. Fond memories of previous Lochside Inn owners, an evening of whisky chat and persuading him to open the Quentin Crisp bottle that he had aquired with a simple "so what does it taste like?". We found out. It hasn't been touched since.
What's not to like? Decent birding and fabulous uisgea!
--> nearest
Couldn't tell you which version is sold on the island, I have hazy memories of some of the trips. We arrived and had a long wait for our lift to Port Charlotte so had lunch in the pub at Port Askaig and made an early start as it was £1 a nip, ended the night drinking the Port Charlotte hotel dry of Black Bottle.
I can't believe the prices you guys are quoting, that equals about 5 bottles of excellent Spanish wine.
I have no idea how much scotch that will get you here as I don't drink spirits. (Anymore)
On a different note, I approve of reduction in price of the (currently) unfortunately named Corona beer, it seems there are those who link it with the Plague™. It's essential to add that slice of lime though, I had had a bottle turn up at the table in a couple of bars with lemon and had to send it back.
Remember though that unless you drink it neat a bottle of whisky will last you a lot longer than a bottle of wine. Malts especially have to try to maintain their premium feel, and Scotland now has minimum pricing, so "premium" blends are a couple of pounds at least more than the supermarket blends, and the cheapest malts are usually around a tenner more at least.
Gin is very much the same since it became a hipster favouritre tipple as well.
"The Aldi-Lidl Islay malts are guid."
I must have got a duff one then. After finishing off the bottle (not in one sitting!!) I hated it so much that I didn't mind paying for a genuine Laphroaig to take the taste away.
I did get a nice and cheap 12 year old Islay malt from Tesco some years back, but that batch is long gone (rumoured to have been found in a warehouse and sold to Tesco) and their current cheapo Islay malt tastes like a cheapo Islay malt...
I must have got a duff one then... I didn't mind paying for a genuine Laphroaig to take the taste away.
Aye, you just exemplified the cause of class warfare and Scottish nationalism. I wouldn't turn down a Laphroaig, but I can't afford a bottle every other day. My favourite Islay malt is far better but I'm not going to name it online because that drove the price up so I can't afford to drink it. Wheesht yer mooth!
When I am elected I will pass a law banning sales of any whisky that the buyer can pronounce. When I become dictator I will ban all whisky exports.
Used to be they had cool but decent tools at affordable prices. Nowadays they have the same bargain isle shit everybody else sells for not THAT cheap prices. I've given up buying tools there because A: They're nowadays universally shit and B, they've apparently fired whomever worked at the office who knew what useful tools are and they rarely have something actually interesting. (And their tool naming/translation to Dutch is hilariously bad sometimes...)
Same in Scotland. See also: "Cool whip".
One of the problems with using synthetic phonics to teach reading here is that many/most of the schemes omit sounds essential in Scotland, like the "hwh" in "which" and the "ch" in "loch". They also tend to think that "four" and "for" sound identical, which confuses the hell out of children.
You'd love Canadian Tire aka Crappy Tire then Alistair, seriously its the only store I've ever been where you can buy a breadmaker, fishing supplies, car parts and a myriad of other stuff plus Canadian Tire money back (basically you can spend it like cash in their stores)
Curiously either Aldi or Lidl was selling Mole Traps in the UK. Sensibly not in the Irish stores.
But oddly they were in the Northern Ireland stores. Even Unionist gardens don't have moles, at least not the furry kind underground. Other moles AKA grasses can end up underground.
MY mum had a photo, taken by her dad in the 1920s, of her and her siblings, skinny-dipping in the lake at ages pre-teen. Tastefully done, no naughty bits showing, and nicely framed. She had it in the dining room, for a long while, then took it down when I was in my teens.
I asked her why, and she mumbled something about people perhaps not understanding. It's up in my attic. I love it. Children caught in the act of being children.
It's a shame what people have become, nowadays.
I was in Wales once, waiting on the seafront promenade to meet my father who was driving down for a day out. The beach was nearly deserted, and I had my camera out due to it having an excellent zoom function. I was there for quite a while.
Then I heard a voice from down below screaming up at me "You pervert! Stop taking photos of my kids you nonce! I'll have you! I've called the police."
I looked down and this woman was screaming up at me from the beach. There was about a mile of footprints in the wet sand leading back to two tiny pink dots near the water's edge.
"Huh?" I said.
"You heard. You're taking photos of my daughters in their cosies and when the police get here they'll have you and your camera!"
"Ma'am", I said, "when the police get here I'll happily show them all the photos I took of the off-shore platforms that are under construction, which is what caught my eye, along with the service vessels that are building them. I'll be sure to point you out when they turn up so you can explain why you think there's only one thing to see at the seaside. If they can be bothered to spend 10 minutes walking out to speak to you and 10 minutes walking back that is. Sounds like a waste of their time, to be honest."
Freak. Super protective, but happy to leave them on their own near the sea on mud and sand flats for half-an-hour whilst they went to shout at someone doing nothing more than enjoying the day.
The only embarrassing thing I was doing was showing possibly too much interest in energy infrastructure.
The Nivana album cover was pretty tame compared with the cover of that from Blind Faith. Another child sold for fame by her parents.
And if you have a copy of said album it might be worth putting it in a brown paper bag in case you get snitched on for, ahem, child pornography!
Impressive band line up though.
Remember that album being on display in my local public library... in public area that all users would walk past on ground floor (adult section on ground floor, kids section was upstairs)
Back in the days when ..
Most towns still had a library
Vinyl LPs were available as items to borrow
It was one I borrowed (for the music, no the cover)
On the potentially offensive covers area (but not kids), also remember library had Technical Ecstasy (by Sabbath) & Electric Ladyland (Hendrix)
It is interesting how manufacturers put esoteric screw heads on perfectly repairable things.
A Byron rechargeable wireless door chime needed standard AA Ni-Mh batteries. The compartment door screw required a hex 2mm Allen key.
That was better than another of their models. It implied the rechargeable batteries were "3 AAA". After a few years the batteries needed replacing. Access was gained by forcing the case apart - when it transpired to need a modular battery pack. Eventually a module of the right spec was sourced - albeit for a totally different manufacturer's product. The new one came with a sensible two-pin connector. However the old battery pack was wired in - so a jury rig connector had to be fabricated to mate with the new battery.
for showing off embarrassing photos to family and strangers alike
On a family holiday many moons ago in Great Yarmouth, when I was about seven, I had a photo took in a seaside photographer's shop holding a live monkey.
I was shit scared of that monkey, because it was all bitey, though the photographer was expert enough not to catch the bitey parts of the whole affair. But my face wasn't, and it looked like a full-length mugshot of someone on the FBI's most wanted list.
For some reason, we had about 20 copies of that bloody photo, and they came out every time someone came round.
A favoured line was "which one is the monkey".
I think I've managed to destroy all of them as time has gone by.
It is almost certain at least one copy of the monkey pic still exists and will inexplicably show up at the most embarrassing moment.
I too hated those bloody photographers monkeys, one on Hastings pier scratched my face and swung on my sister's long blond hair.
That was in the fifties and I still dislike them!
No monkeys involved - but I wandered into a bed and breakfast place in Goathland a couple of years ago, and discovered a picture of my mother and her sister aged eight or so hanging on the wall, taken when the place was a school to which they had been evacuated during WW2.
Those low costs things are not necessarily low quality ones. I'm quite happy with a couple of things bought at Lidl.
But for a tool, no way to buy a low-quality discounted one, instead I want to hurt myself when it brakes at first use. For tools I use frequently, I generally invest in Facom ones. More expensive, but never have been disappointed. I never had to test the warranty without time limit yet.
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Facom is excellent kit, my rolling tool box included up to 1" drive with an extended breaker bar that withstood a sound thrashing with a seven pound deadblow quite regularly.
The box was so heavy I fitted a brake disc to the front axle.
Lately Lidl seems to be going down the ' offer less for more' road, I assume the bean counters and MBAs have got their teeth into them, so offering quality at a moderate price is being replaced with maximising profits by corner cutting.
Lidl also have a poor rep as an employer.
In the UK Lidl (& Aldi) better pay than the other "high street" supermarkets based on friends of mine who work in local supermarkets.
All the supermarkets have a bad rep as employers, so if a wage slave in a shit job, may as well, go for the better paid one - discounters the best of a bad bunch in that aspect.
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That's because they sold out of the compressors very early on and never got any more in. But they had 10 times many of each accessory.
The current item I've noticed sitting on the shelves for months on end is electric Churro makers. They just don't seem to be able to shift them, or maybe they just have an inexhaustible supply. Maybe they thought they would be popular with stay-at-home Brits pining for Spain?
I was a regular visitor to our development office in a stately home in Dalkeith. One evening Tom Thompson took me round several of the town's bars for my first taste of various single malts.
Tormore became my favourite - but only seemed to be sold in Scotland. Many years later - while changing trains in Glasgow - I bought a bottle at the station off-licence. The price did horrify me.
It must be some sort of clever microwave radiation beamed through the shop that makes us think "I have to buy that. I wonder why it is so cheap." Somehow, on purchasing these things, the beam phase-inverts and you think "What did I buy that for?"
Simultaneously, you realise there is no chance of:
1: Going for a refund (you can see the staff pointing already)
2: Using it (you know it will break or won't work)
3: Giving it away (the embarrassment)
Your only hope is that no-one ever finds out and in the final accounting, you find you have four.
If these bargain shops were to do DIY Christmas Crackers they would make a fortune.
Just put the unwanted stuff in each cracker and away you go. Christmas sorted. Not sure about that plate compactor though...
===
Never seen these things in the Lidl's I've ever been in. There's hardly any room to socially distance. We must have Lidl Lidl's.
Buying more than intended. My mom would send my dad out to buy "Just. These. Items!" and hand him a shopping list with 4 or 5 numbered items. Dad would be gone FAR too long & return with bags of groceries (which mom forgave) but also car suspension buckling loads of utter *crap*. "Honey, what part of ''Just These Items'' came across as a request to buy dog kibble? We. Don't. Own. A. Dog!" to which dad sheepishly announced that he'd brought home a puppy from a family giving up a litter for adoption just outside the store doors. I think mom's eyes nearly shot out of her skull over that one. The dog wasn't the only one sleeping in the (newly purchased) doghouse that night.
I had to hold a hand up to my face so I could try to ignore the discount items display at our local grocery store, I'd be too tempted to spend my reserved-for-that-month's-rent money on useless tat too. "Hey look! A left handed screwdriver with a blinky light in the handle! GIMMIE!" style stupidity. I know I got it from my dad, mom would rather set fire to such a display rather than purchase anything from it. But then, show her the cookies & you'll have to drag her out with a team of eight Clydesdales while amputating her hands to release the packs of "iced molasses" cookies. *Amused sigh*
You have my sympathies Dabbsy, we probably shouldn't be allowed to do the shopping at all some times. =-Jp
Lidl's cable ties are fantastic, strong, cheap and in various colours, ditto their velcro cable wraps. Unlike the blackspur ones I picked up in the Range which I could make fail by lightly tugging on them....
LIDLs power tools look to be made by Einhell and ALDI seems to source from Scheppach for their bigger stuff (their aircompressor was scheppach rebranded, ditto their bandsaw)
Don't really rate ALDI for most powertools, too many random battery types still appearing unlike LIDL that seems to have settled on one for the last couple of years (well 1 each for 12 and 18v) I keep being tempted but already settled on Milwaukee and Hitachi as battery platforms...don't really need a 3rd...
Most of the tools lately seem to have been bought directly by LIDL themselves from Chinese manufacturers and the quality has taken a noticeable nose-dive.
Aldi's not much better anymore. A friend recent bought a circular saw there. He now has 3. One of which more or less works (the last one they sent as a replacement), one of which is still a bit wonky but fixed with the application of some mild bodgery and one he managed to make work properly by taking parts from 2 of the broken ones and mashing them together. They didn't even want to take the bad units back for Q&A, he could just keep them and they sent a new unit by mail every time he made a claim.
The one place you can't make an impulse purchase is the Apple Store. Nobody says "Oh look, there's a USB adapter going for €80, that'll make a great stocking filler."
Dear Santa
As I have been very good this year, please can I have an Apple Monitor stand for Christmas?
Thank you very much
Alistair
If tools are cheap enough then it doesn't matter if they break after the second use, but in general I haven't had cheap tools break on me - they just bend or deform a little and go out of true, which is much worse - since I cannot get myself to toss a worn/bent/wobbly tool away, I always think that I can fix it and still use it and then end up annoyed when the results are sub par...
==> Paris, since she is sub par...
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I just got back from Hornbach. I went looking for a frost proof garden hydrant and came home with a Makita saw, a dowel jig and drill bit depth stops. As for the hydrant - I'll try again tomorrow at Bauhaus and goodness knows which nice tools I will then come home with and there are still Merkury Market and Obi, to explore also. This is what happens when my SO decides to go on a hen's holiday in the mountains, leaving me unsupervised...
"And increasingly specific screwdriver sets supporting obscure screw types that no normal person would be aware of."
Which are needed when someone presents you with a repairable thing that has such screw heads.
It is known that I went to a UK Secondary Technical School (12-18) and worked in IT. It follows that I am assumed to have all necessary wood/metal working, plumbing, electrical/electronic, and IT skills (and materials). As well as more academic areas backed by my 2000 book library. If neighbours' kids have a school project then my door bell rings - usually the day before their submission deadline.
The only thing I haven't been able to provide for a neighbour is a bolt cutter - when one had lost her bicycle lock key. I am sure I saw bolt cutters in Aldi once - must have been in a hurry that day.
A neighbour recently asked** me to renovate her garden seat. Unfortunately the nuts on the slat bolts were rusted in place - and no room to get a hacksaw blade in. Hey presto! - the nut splitters bought in 1972 for a task on my 1956 86" LandRover.
**The neighbours ask to borrow a tool - and it soon becomes obvious they have no idea how to do the job. Usually they send a kid to ask for "a screwdriver" or "a spanner" with no indication of what variety. Renovating the bench started as a request to borrow "a saw". Eventually the job required two types of saw, the nut-splitter, electric plane, electric sander, wood chisels, screwdrivers, rule, tri-square, and digital caliper. The latter was an impulse buy from Aldi and has proved invaluable on many occasions.
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I also suffer from occasional impulse purchases. What saves me most of the time is asking myself, "where would I put it?" Given that all rooms and the basement are already full of stuff that I *might* need but never do. This question is most effective with kitchen utilities. Yeah, a rice steamer would be nice to have, but the kitchen ist just too damn full already!
Ok, so I wrote this comment with little to say just to be no. 100. Although I'm sure that others are writing comments at the same time so that I'll end up #105.
A while back strolling thru an Aldi I came across one of their weekly specials which made me chuckle - Wheelbarrow Wheels - there must have been 30 or 40 of them - does anyone know anyone ever who has worn out their wheelbarrrows wheel ? - Quite an atypical Aldi product - low value yet took up significant space - not boxed either so a nightmare to stack in the aisle -
I suspect you have never needed to obtain a spare inner-tube for a wheelbarrow wheel. They are difficult to source, expensive unlike the wheel, complete with tube and tyre.
Even if you have no garden and live high in a multi-story, I suggest you get a few in stock. You never know you will need one.
Must dash, I'm off to Aldi. Thanks for the tip.
My wheelbarrow tyre and tube had split from standing in one position with a load for months. It proved impossible to find a replacement complete wheel. Eventually bought a tyre and tube of the same size as fitted to the wheelbarrow. Unfortunately my hub was slightly bigger than the original tyre size suggested - being 8" rather than 6". A long struggle to get the tyre and tube onto the hub. In the end much brute force and levering was required - not as easy as a YouTube video had shown with a 6" hub.
I have two shopping styles, one when I go to the close Supermarket, a place I don't like, were I shop at the speed of "I need to use the toilet soon" and the other when I go to the supermarket I like , but that is freaking far away, were I take a long time looking to see if there is something in discount I may want because is really far away and I don't go there a lot
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