Bellend Sebastian

You mentalist. The last 10k of the 10k I trained for felt like crap to me this morning. I'm amazed how many people do what you've done, you must have some inner strength I just don't. How are you feeling now?

Leicester Big 10k done. Second actual race in a row where I've been a bit disappointed: 54:32 is nearly 3 minutes off my personal best, but actual position for my age group not too bad

They do this don't they? My boy will sit there on his PlayStation all day chatting to his mates and having a grand old life of leisure, and come about 7 in the evening after I've been doing jobs all day he comes down and declares that he'd "like to do something" with us. If it's not falling asleep and knocking a can over, it's not happening, son

Bar making my wife a coffee and my son his breakfast I've done literally sod all of anything useful today. Arrived to pick up my daughter from dancing half an hour early because I got the time wrong. I am ON IT

I hate runs when it's warmer than it's been for ages

I'm not sure that "BIG BOOBS IN PROFILE" was an appropriate response to a now deleted Leicestershire Police tweet about a missing woman being found safe and well, but it made me smile at a time when I needed one

It would've been better if my lad hadn't had his bike nicked. I like to think they didn't know they were robbing a 12 year old (he'd naively left it, not completely unattended, but easy to nick) but all the same, FFS

My Garmin watch is saying I have a fitness age of 20, has something terrible happened to young people that I don't know about

'I'm sorry Prime Minister, I misunderstood the term "Politically EXPOSED Person" quite spectacularly'. Niche financial services joke for you all there. I'm here all week, regrettably for you all

I'm cool with this, and am looking forward to making lots of new friends

Aim high, that's what I always say

It's always the ones you least suspect, isn't it? Not great Trump 2024 PR, but for all I know that campaign has got the monkey torture weirdo vote pretty much sewn up anyway. The thing I find mad about it is that he seems to be putting himself forward as the guy that indulges horrible monkey torture weirdos rather than simply being one, which in some ways seems worse. Great to see some Brits getting in on the act as well

Don't usually rush to put things in here as it's mostly seems to be very damaged people doing terrible things with as much of a weary inevitably as me leaving the house in the morning with my flies undone, but seriously, WTF is going on here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68716467

I've seen this posted from a "aren't the Tories awful" angle but I think it's a bit more subtle than that and is a good piece on how we've got to where we are, and perhaps prompts the old grey matter to think where we might go from here. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain Not intended for a UK audience which I think says quite a lot. I don't think there's anything in here that's new to me but it's rare to see something that sums up the whole period. It ALMOST made me see Dominic Cummings more sympathetically, so proceed with caution

Oh Debs, I'm so sorry

I've not, but I know a tiny bit about the expedition. Isn't that the one where they take lots of essential things like heavy furniture? That's right up my alley, I'll check it out

There are few things I enjoy more than a factual account of a poorly planned expedition going absolutely tits up. I'm about a sixth of the way through it and a third of the men are already dead and frankly it's all such a terrifying nightmare I'm quite pleased for them. They were absolutely clueless about a lot of things in the 18th Century, including important things for maritime exploration, like nutrition, foreign people, infection control, navigation and swimming, but the one thing they were really good at was keeping excellent records at a time when most of us would probably be focused on not dying horribly at any moment, and for that I'm thankful

Sorry, missed this. Spiritwalker is right, long term returns are no great shakes. Its history and limitations are well explained here: https://monevator.com/is-gold-a-good-investment/ The lack of correlation with other asset classes gives it some appeal, but I think it's something you can hold a bit of alongside bigger holdings in other things. Punters often seem to view it as a safe bet as an investment but the truth is, buy it at the wrong time and its value can still drop like a stone like anything else. Where I've seen people actually invest in it it's usually amateurs who have convinced themselves it's time to go into gold for *reasons* , it doesn't do what they were convinced it would and they then sell it for a loss

The one thing I'd say about this is don't make any judgement on it after 12 months. If this is genuinely a long term investment, if you're a regular saver you WANT it to tank every so often, as your payments will be buying up assets on the cheap. If it's money you're genuinely not looking to touch for a good few years, go as racey and high risk as you dare. The volatility will provide plenty of opportunities to scoop up units when prices are low, take a long term view and unless the whole economic model that's been around for centuries collapses and is replaced by something else, in a few years you should be quids in

I think it's helpful to think in timescales. Your chances of the value going down over a given twelve months are actually quite high, which is why any decent adviser should be discouraging any potential investor with a short term investment goal not to take any risk e.g. if you're trying to get a house deposit together by 2026, stick to cash. The chances of loss reduce the longer the investment period. When you get to five years, it's actually quite difficult to lose money on mainstream equity investments, but anyone can be unlucky with timing. Depending on your level of risk I think it's probably sensible to expect a long term average return of around 5-6%. May not sound a lot but basically equities pretty much always outperform cash long term. You get permission periods of great performance (like we're enjoying at the minute, and welcome after a prolonged period of not much happening) with equities but equally occasionally things go to absolute crap. My £130k pension fund turned into £100k in a matter of days when the pandemic hit, which obviously isn't great. I'm OK with that because I've seen it all before and know it will come back (which it did), but not everyone will be. My main tips are: take a long term view and don't look at any investment in the moment and assume that what it's doing now is what it will always do

Up and down all the time mate, like a bride's nightie. But over a long time, more up than down. We're in one of those purple patches at the moment. I was talking to some investment managers the other day and they were pretty bullish about market prospects and thought the good run would continue for a while yet. I'd always suggest to folk wanting to dip a toe in is to invest on a regular basis rather than piling in in one go (unless the market has crashed and it's difficult to lose)

I'm worth 25 grand more than I was last summer just sitting on my arse. Shame I can't get to it for another 7 years, like

I've lost count of the times I've turned them down. Changes nothing

According to that site, for one heady moment I'm sitting at the top end of "intermediate". I'll enjoy it while it lasts, which I'm sure it won't. In fact, there is already a bit of a cloud on the horizon as I'm pretty sure I'm starting to suffer from plantar fasciitis. It's not troubled me before and I'm extremely wary of self diagnosis, but I know other folk that have it and my symptoms are identical to what they've had and I've read about. Have we talked about this before on here, anybody got any good tips for it?

Still one of the most iconic photos I've ever taken, I reckon