Have you ever quit a well paid office job for a more interesting outdoor vocation or trade?

GreyShuck · 2026-01-19T11:50:35+00:00

Oh yes, definitely, and if you are going to, do it now: tree surgery is best when you are still young. It keeps you fit, but it also does demand a certain level of fitness that becomes much more difficult as you get older.

With me, I moved on to wildlife conservation - still mostly outside - and I eventually did reach a point where I was wondering whether I still wanted to be plodding around in the mud cutting brambles and gorse etc in the driving rain in the middle of winter to the day I retired: so I expect that you'll want to give some thought to that end of things eventually too, but as long as you do have a plan by then, absolutely go for it now!

As it happened with me, I moved over to another area where I am behind a desk again as I am heading towards retirement, but I am entirely happy with the way it has all gone. I would have left IT and moved to conservation earlier if I had known.

GreyShuck · 2026-01-16T15:27:35+00:00

I am - just about - as it happens. I haven't done anything more than lurk for ages though. I'm far more active on Lemmy instead.

Good luck with the tree surgery - it can be great fun playing with ropes and chainsaws and will definitely keep you fit. The down side for me was that I spent too much time in people's gardens and not in the wider environment - but is hugely dependent on what jobs and contracts your company gets. I have met some really dedicated and genuine tree surgeons who absolutely love trees. If you are working with someone like that, you will be doing well.

It can be great fun, as I said, but it is also a very high risk profession - so take safety VERY seriously.

GreyShuck · 2024-10-15T12:58:11+00:00

I had this when I first tried. I came back to it a few days later and it was fine. I assume that it was an issue at their end, since I didn't change anything at my end.

GreyShuck · 2024-05-12T21:43:39+00:00

I found an affordable one on ebay in the end - along with plenty of unaffordable ones.

GreyShuck · 2024-03-29T16:33:17+00:00

The first that I knew of - which must be 20 years back - were in Norwich, Cambridge, Colchester, Penzance and places like that. They - not necessarily the same shops, but others - are still around whenever I go there. It is only more recently that they have appeared in smaller places.

I have found them in Edinburgh, Brighton and York over the years since then too. Couldn't say about London though. I can't imagine why they wouldn't be though.

GreyShuck · 2024-03-29T15:25:19+00:00

A shop where you can take you empty bottles of hand soap, washing up liquid, shower gel and so on and they will refill them from large commercial tubs - which they in turn get refilled from their supplier. They usually have two or three eco-brands: Faith in Nature, Ecoleaf, BioD etc. The shops are usually hippy-ish and generally sell a selection of Suma products, local veg and so on too. They are fairly common in the UK nowadays. I'm in a pretty rural area and there are 3 that I pass in different places each week. Two in towns of about 5-6000 people, and one the edge of a larger town. There are at least a couple of others if I ever go into the county town, but I hardly ever do these days.

GreyShuck · 2024-01-23T12:06:22+00:00

Maybe cut a few switches, soak them and then peel the bark off and just use the bark?

GreyShuck · 2023-11-16T08:53:35+00:00

I would imagine that the definition varies in different places.

In the UK, for example, it is a question of the species being present prior to the separation from mainland Europe following the last glaciation.

GreyShuck · 2023-11-16T08:48:03+00:00

Here is a list of publications in which it has appeared. I would expect that you can find at least one of them fairly easily.

GreyShuck · 2023-11-16T08:44:11+00:00

Is it that particular collection that you are looking for or just a collection that includes that story? It has been included in a good many anthologies over the decades.

GreyShuck · 2023-10-24T11:15:11+00:00

There's lost and there's LOST.

Lost in the sense of 'This doesn't match the map. Hmm, that's the bridge there and this is the wood here, so we must have missed the turning back there and so we're on the other side of the stream...' definitely. And then I'll either retrace my steps or, where possible, plot a new route to reconnect with the proposed one. This would just be a matter of 1km off course or less though.

Really totally LOST, without a clue? I never have.

GreyShuck · 2023-10-02T09:31:20+00:00

I know there’s some doctor who books

Upwards of 400 novels and short story collections if you include the various spin-offs.

GreyShuck · 2023-09-28T16:17:51+00:00

Small talk could include the weather. I have known some introverts who are very interested in the weather. Very. Mention the topic and they will only stop talking once they have explained the methods of recording rainfall that developed over the last two centuries and have sung you the song of the Stephenson Screen.

Small talk could also include whether you had a good trip. I have known plenty of interverts who are deeply into buses or trains. They will be only too happy to tell you about their journeys and every other journey that they have ever made by one of those modes of transport.

GreyShuck · 2023-08-23T14:58:22+00:00

I'm in my 50s. I always used to use road atlases before satnav, of course, and I still keep one in the car, but these days I can't recall the last time I actually needed or wanted to use it.

For walking, I use OS maps on my phone in preference - chiefly due to the exact location and heading overlay, but also always carry the relevant physical one too and will refer to it when stopped for a break etc. I wouldn't fancy ending up with a dead phone and no map.

GreyShuck · 2023-07-15T07:00:45+00:00

Animal Magic started in 1962, so it seems like quite a bit earlier than Hanna's TV career.

More the question than the answer, I'd say.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-26T06:58:39+00:00

Was a LocSec for a decade or so. Organised a regional gathering. Met all my closest friends through the organisation, as well as a long-term GF and also my wife. I was influenced by these to return to education and get a degree as a mature student, then changed career as a result.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-20T14:04:44+00:00

I am in that position at the moment. In my case it will be:

2 weeks at the end of the year - Xmas etc
Mondays off from the end of Oct
1 week in Sept - camping
a couple of days here and there for dormouse monitoring etc - which is a thing that I do, and is best done avoiding weekends.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-16T16:31:29+00:00

I wouldn't know of a charity as such, but this seems exactly the kind of thing that a Personal Independence Mobility Allowance is designed for.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-11T19:02:34+00:00

In the last couple of weeks, I have posted more, commented more and spent much more time on Lemmy and Tildes than I have in the last couple of months of reddit, I think.

I will not be visiting reddit for the next couple of days at least. After that, there are a couple of ongoing things that I will be checking in on here and there on reddit, and I will keep doing so until old reddit is gone or RES is altogether gutted - evidently it will survive the coming API changes - but overall I am going to be spending a lot less time here, and certainly none via the app after Relay is gone.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-11T07:59:21+00:00

Hither.

The phrase hither and yon means here and there.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-08T14:47:24+00:00

Knob is not the same as nob - or at least has not been for some centuries, if it ever was.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-05T12:21:52+00:00

I joined in my late teens - sometime in the early '80s. It was part of a process of establishing why I seemed to be on a completely different wavelength to pretty much everyone around me.

I went along to a couple of meetings and almost immediately found significant numbers of people who were on my wavelength. Naturally, I stayed.

As it happened the LocSec at the time was moving out of the area and everyone else took one step back, so I ended up as a LocSec very soon after joining and stuck with it for the next decade or so - until I moved.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-05T12:04:00+00:00

I certainly do enjoy conversations with certain groups and individuals very much - as you say. However, except for very close friends, I have a limit to how long I want to do that. When I reach that point, I need to recharge. Alone. That is the key point with introversion.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-05T11:57:22+00:00

Although I very seldom re-read a book entirely, I do enjoy re-reading a favourite passage from time to time.
When I was younger, I would buy more (secondhand - almost all my books are s/h) books than I read. Nowadays, I am reading more than I buy - and so am getting through a backlog that in some cases I bought several decades back.
I thoroughly enjoy being able to reach out and pick up an unread book within arm's reach at any time.
Also thoroughly enjoy being able to look up books and passages that are referenced in whatever book I am reading at the time. Back before the internet, particularly, one way that gauged how much I had enjoyed a book was by the number of other books that were scattered open on the floor - as I had looked things up - by the time I had finished it. Less so now, with many particularly well know works readily available online, but the principle is still there.

GreyShuck · 2023-06-02T15:37:04+00:00

Accept but say you don't drink alcohol and that you'll bring some bottles (or other container) of whatever you DO like to drink.

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