poke_pants

I was speaking to my 92 year old Nan recently after she had a brief stay in hospital. Remarkably, as far as both she and any family members can recall, it was her first ever trip to a hospital, she home birthed my Mum and Uncle and has never had an illness or injury. In fact both her and my Mum can't remember if or when they last had a cold (I don't remember my last one, many years ago but I did used to get them).

That got me thinking about what might be considered normal life events or moments I've never experienced (I'm mid 40s), either mundane or exceptional. Here's two from this 45 year old...

Despite driving roughly quarter of a million miles including many in not particularly new Ren

30th ex tins open at 2pm today and run till midday Friday.

As with the previous drops, DO NOT attempt to get on the site straight away. Try late evening or early morning tomorrow or Thursday, even for the ETB the queue was down to seconds (or non existent) after a while. There is no advantage at all to getting in there early and waiting for 3 hours.

This has usually been announced by late August/early September but we've only got Manchester and London events over the winter this year (which have both had Open Air events already this year), is that it?

London is a huge grind to keep returning to for events even though I get that it's the easy and obvious place to hold them financially. Hotels, transport etc is just crazy on a Saturday night in particular.

Such a shame if we were to lose those, I know cost of living etc has meant it's been a hard sell to get tickets sold for events this year, but I would have hoped the Anjunadeep name would fill some of the smaller venues in Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Belfast etc, ev

Currently looking to put together a Mini PC for a Sinden lightgun and up to PS2 and GameCube gaming.

The budget is £250 which would appear to get a 5300U/16GB system on Amazon with the weird voucher system they use (where an item is £300 but you just tick a box and it's then £250). BOSGAME come up a fair bit.

Any specific recommendations for UK devices? I see quite a few recommendations here and elsewhere which don't seem to translate to what we have available in the UK, and pricing can be a fair bit different.

I've ordered A LOT of handhelds from China and always selected the budget/4PX option. Delivery has always been within about two weeks with a handover to Royal Mail once it reaches Heathrow or East Midlands, never any customs fees.

My 8GB GC shipped via YunExpress today and Evri emailed me to confirm they are expecting my parcel, so I'm now in uncharted and frankly terrifying territory (Evri are AWFUL).

Does anyone in the UK have their Nova already? How long did it take? Did you receive a customs charge?

From a forecast of 25c until recently it looks like we're actually going to hit 30c on Sunday in London now, with much of the event throughout the hotter temps.

Does anyone who has attended in previous years know what the situation with shade and water is? I do not manage well in heat so it's kinda worst case scenario for me, if there is shade / somewhere to sit can you still hear the music?

With regards to water, do the bars sell bottles or is it usually in cups? I've heard it mentioned that there are taps, does that mean you can take a bottle in?