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I'm not normally a gadget man, but during the boredom and confinement of Covid, I bought a Pinter, heavily promoted online at the time, described by purists as "home-brew for idiots". Couldn't be simpler, a plastic keg with a tap (about £60), you order a pack online of flavour concentrate (about twleve styles to choose from) and a small amount of yeast, tip it in the keg and fill it with water. Keep it at room temperature for about 5 days, finish it off in the fridge for another 2 or 3 and you're ready to go.
To my surprise, it was actually good-tasting beer. For a £12 pack, you could make about eight pints, but the last one and a half were a bit sludgy and you have to finish it off within a week. I was so keen I got a second keg within a few weeks, so I could have a new one to look forward to each weekend. The problems were...
1) As they were a start-up, they struggled to cope with their initial success. Deliveries were late or cancelled, the quality could vary, once bursting in the pack, once the yeast was a dud. 2) I was drinking a lot of beer!
I went on a health kick, put the kegs in the shed and pretty much forgot about them until we were clearing out to move. To my surprise, the company is still going (probably changd ownership a few times), bur they have changed their branding focus. Instead of their own brews you can have the great taste of Brewdog at home now if you can't be arsed to go to any supermaket and buy 6 tins for a fiver, but I don't regret my summer of Pinter.
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Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 13:52 - Oct 23 with 969 views
Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 13:52 - Oct 23 by BrianMcCarthy
A rowing machine. Loved it for a few months. Now it mocks me.
God, rowing without water is boring.
We had one of those too, kept it under cover in the garden. Like you, started well, but grew to hate it. Lucky to get about what I paid for it when I finally got rid of it.
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Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 14:21 - Oct 23 with 887 views
As a self-conscious teenager in the mid-70’s I was particularly concerned with the appearance of my hair (I had it then). I even went so far as to show a picture of Phil Parkes to ‘Mr Bugden’, a peculiar man who provided a mobile barbering ‘service’ to the kids in our local neighbourhood, asking for a similar style.
Needless to say Mr Bugden’s expertise hadn’t been acquired through an apprenticeship with Vidal Sassoon and I ended up looking more like the comedian Emo Philips.
I eventually managed to persuade my Mum to invest in a device which I had seen advertised in the back pages of the Melody Maker (along with the loon pants and patchouli oil) that seemed to offer up the possibility of styling your own hair, thus saving the expense of regular trips to the barbers.
The gadget, two pieces of plastic with short and long prongs at ether end between which you had to insert a razor blade, duly arrived and I eagerly prepared for my first (and last, as it turned out) DIY haircut.
Placing the device at the crown of my head I swept the thing forward only to realise that all I had done was leave a 6” x 2” bald furrow, surrounded by thick, long hair, down the middle, a sort of reverse Mohican. It looked like I was being prepared for brain surgery.
My last 3 or 4 years in the UK I was a postman, I would get up at 3am and cycle to the sorting office for a 4am start. I lived only a 10 minute cycle to the office. Yes I know I could've stayed in bed longer, but I'm a slow mover in the morning. I would flick the telly on while having my coffee and toast, now this was about 22 years ago so not much on the telly at 3:30, with the exception of infomercials, I got hooked on watching Chuck Norris and the delightfully lovely Christine Brinkley advertising the TOTALGYM! So me mid 40's that that looked like a great way to 'buff up'. Me arse, like Brian with the rowing machine, loved it for a month or two. But It was the length of a snooker table when opened up, so I had to close it up after each use, almost having several fingers amputated on a daily basis. Well it ended up in the garage, it was brought with us to France. I pulled it out blew off the dust and used it a couple of times. This only made me remember why I stopped using the fecker. Finally took it to the tip a couple of years ago. 150 quid spent, oh well I helped Chuck buy a new pair of numchucks I guess.
When you reach the place beyond thoughts, the only thing you'll find is love and the only purpose of life becomes to ease the suffering of others.
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Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 15:28 - Oct 23 with 699 views
Similar to above, bought a running machine and set it up in the garage. The kids loved using it and thought maybe I ought to give it a go. Probably due to my build and weight, the thing had a penchant for stalling mid run, especially if you picked up speed, which is a great recipe for pulling a groin muscle.
Anyway, gave that up, kids went off to uni, and due to its sheer weight, has sat in the same spot, unused for nigh on 20 years.
I’m still working out how to get rid without the council changing me 125 quid to take it away.
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Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 15:49 - Oct 23 with 619 views
Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 15:28 - Oct 23 by Paddyhoops
Try’d that years ago . Got a dog instead . It is boring
beat this one
anyone remmber them fake horse riding machine which were the rage for a few years ? think it was called the I RIDER not a big piece of kit but the seat was shaped like a saddle , cushoined and the idea was to sit on it and improve your core ,arse etc ,used to ride a horse as did the wife so was a great idea in trying to keep fit at home , cost when new prob £500 quid , bought a second hand one for a couple of hundred , best clothes horse ever Invented , think it was used once as the action was no where near the action of riding a horse an u felt sick within 5 mins being sat in it.
sold it an bought a decent cycling machine yep also used a few times and now being used as a slightly bigger clothes horse .
Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 15:45 - Oct 23 by stevec
Similar to above, bought a running machine and set it up in the garage. The kids loved using it and thought maybe I ought to give it a go. Probably due to my build and weight, the thing had a penchant for stalling mid run, especially if you picked up speed, which is a great recipe for pulling a groin muscle.
Anyway, gave that up, kids went off to uni, and due to its sheer weight, has sat in the same spot, unused for nigh on 20 years.
I’m still working out how to get rid without the council changing me 125 quid to take it away.
I bought a treadmill from jd sports about 10 years ago when I was training for the Great North Run.About 5 years ago it stopped working as the motor had burnt out and they wanted almost as much for a replacement motor as the whole thing cost me new.I decided to take it all apart and scrap it that way,or I would’ve had to pay them to take it away. Maybe yours comes apart the same way as it’s much easier to take the smaller pieces to the dump in your car. I then bought a cycle trainer which has sat idle for the last 4 1/2 years.It comes in handy for hanging QPR shirts on though.
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Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 17:36 - Oct 23 with 428 views
I loved my Etch-A-Sketch. Took a long time but I could eventually get something worth presenting in a meeting. I fell out of love with it when I tripped over a kerb on the way to the meeting.
Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 16:59 - Oct 23 by stowmarketrange
I bought a treadmill from jd sports about 10 years ago when I was training for the Great North Run.About 5 years ago it stopped working as the motor had burnt out and they wanted almost as much for a replacement motor as the whole thing cost me new.I decided to take it all apart and scrap it that way,or I would’ve had to pay them to take it away. Maybe yours comes apart the same way as it’s much easier to take the smaller pieces to the dump in your car. I then bought a cycle trainer which has sat idle for the last 4 1/2 years.It comes in handy for hanging QPR shirts on though.
You’re dead right, I try to pretend it’s not really there these days. When it gets warmer I think I’ll have a go at dismantling it. No doubt I’ll start with a screwdriver and end up with a sledgehammer!
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Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 20:42 - Oct 23 with 181 views
Gadgets you fell in and out of love with on 20:47 - Oct 23 by Stanisgod
Bullworker ! Ruined many a good doorframe with one. Got rid when it sprang back and nearly decapitated me one day.
Ah, the Bullworker. Sort of evolved from strongman Charles Atlas’s ‘Dynamic Tension’ 11-part mail order course originally created in the 1920’s (‘Turns Weaklings Into Men!’)
Found the full set in the attic following my Dad’s passing three years ago. Not entirely sure they’d ever been opened.
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