irnbru

[quote user="Cassis"]Oh dear.  Was that the slippery sox episode? [/quote] Good grief, for one brief moment I misread that and wondered what steamy posting I had missed.  [:$]

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There was some discussion of this in the Anglophone-direct forum. http://forum.anglophone-direct.com/setopic_1159-lord.html+dance ...sorry - don't know why that hasn't come up as a hyperlink.

I wanted to be a carpet fitter, but I didn't have the flair for it.

Too many years as an English teacher renders me incapable of sending an e-mail that I haven't proof-read and corrected. But then I am a sad type who spells out every word in full in a text message - and puts in all the punctuation.

I don't believe that this business of bikers sticking out their leg is to say thank you. I reckon it is just because it is uncomfortable on these seats and they stick their leg out to ease the twisting of their knickers round their bits and pieces.

[quote user="Department71"]I remember when I was a kid (years ago) JW's called and asked my dad "have you found Jesus" his reply, "No have you lost him". Then told them to go away. Think it worked.   Steve [/quote] That's as bad as the comedian Chic Murray's story of being in London when someone seeking directions asked him, "Do you know the Battersea Dogs' Home?"  "No," replied Chic, "I didn't know it had left."

Pickles is absolutely right. Never ever reply to spam or click on any of the links in them. One way to get ahead of spam is to open two new e-mail addresses: Use one for any internet transactions and set your preferences to put mail from anyone other than senders already in your address book into the Junk folder. That way you can delete junk without even opening the messages (which is also a bad thing to do). Use the other for personal stuff - friends, family etc - and never use it for internet transactions. This account should remain fairly spam free. Also, never put your full address on a forum, bulletin board or any other webpage. If you have to post your address, disguise its e-mail pattern by putting in words for @ and . eg johnsmithAThotmailDOTcom One way addresses are gathered is by robots which search for the patterns of dots and @, so by using words your address is disguised ..... or so I understand.

I have flown 3 times Glasgow to Boston albeit the last time was 3 years ago. Excellent service and on the 3rd occasion the stopover in Reykjavik included a free coach to the Blue Lagoon where the time passed very agreeably in the thermal waters.

Michael O'Leary has a great penchant for any publicity opportunity but why did he have the Winston Churchill look-alike?  It took  something away from the serious points he did have to make.   Pretty good look-alike, though. By the way,  doesn't Mr O'L look as if he has a leprachaun in his ancestry?

[quote user="alnmike"]I've done a search of this forum, and also BF website, but don't seem  to be able to get the information! Can you carry new, sealed tins of paint in a car/van on the ferry? Thanks [/quote] Not to be sidetracked by discussions of browsers, I come back to my original curiosity.  Wouldn't it be quicker to ask the ferry company if you can carry paint than to browse   forums for an answer?  Maybe I am just being a boring old fart to suggest the horse's mouth as a source of info.[:'(]

[quote user="Cassis"] What's the betting your browser is IE7? [/quote] You lose your shirt.  I was using Safari.  This attempt is on Netscape which has given a better message form with a menu bar. [:)][:D][8-|]

Well, now. DIdn't i do well with the quote facility. Can't get the smilies to work either. I'm definitely missing something. A brain is a possibility.

[quote user="alnmike"]I've done a search of this forum, and also BF website, but don't seem to be able to get the information! Can you carry new, sealed tins of paint in a car/van on the ferry? Thanks [/quote] I've only caught up with this thread. A simple question comes to mind: if you want to know what a ferry company allows you to carry, why not ask the ferry company? Or am I missing something here?

What do John Prescott and Brazil's very own Ronaldo have in common? Both are over-the-hill, overweight and overpaid .... but can still manage to score.

A gale blowing and rain driving almost horizontally, so no golf this evening ......suppose I'll just fill up a glass of wine and see how the South Britons get on.

There are similar cows throughout Edinburgh at the moment. It fairly brightens up the place and brings out a smile.

Further on the matter of "North Britain" referred to by Dick Smith  (stay with me, we will be on topic shortly), this was a term popularised for a while by Hanoverian Scots after the Act of Union combined the parliaments of Scotland and England.  I see that our Chancellor proposes minting a £2 coin to commemorate the 300th anniversary of this Union of the Parliaments - an idea none too popular with those who don't reckon on commemorating an occasion when Scotland lost its independence.  Logically, though, it was an occasion on which England simultaneously lost its independence from Scotland so I would like to commiserate with Dick and my other English neighbours for having suffered this loss for nearly 300 years - and, unlike us, for still not having their own parliament . At the same time (I told you I would get on topic) I would like to offer my genuine good wishes to the South British football team in the next stages of the World Cup

Sorry I'm not managing the "quote" facility very well, so here is what Dick Smith wrote many postings ago (ok so I’m a slow reader): ." North Britain. I was making an oblique reference to the period after the Highland Clearances, when the clans and the tartans were suppressed and the name 'Scotland' was expunged from the map, at pain of prison, and replaced with 'North Britain'. For some time after the phrase was used by the more effete of London society, which I was ironically copying. Hence, 'North British' = 'Scottish'. At Waterloo the Scots Greys were known as the North British Dragoons, in order to deny their Scots provenance. It is only done now by people who are making jokes. . " (End of quotation) Now I’m all for a bit of anglo-scottish rivalry/banter/winding-up but let’s at least keep it tolerably accurate. The wearing of Highland dress was proscribed in the Dress Act of 1746 following the Jacobite Rebellion not the Clearances which came a bit later. It was part of a vicious repression of the Highlands and destruction of the clan system at this time to ensure no further Jacobite threats to the Hanoverian throne. The Jacobite uprising of 1745 was no simple England v Scotland affair: the Government order of battle at Culloden included The Royal Scots Regiment of Foot and the Royal Scots Fusilier Regiment. This was a British civil war in which many parts of Scotland were staunchly Hanoverian and in which there were also English Jacobites. The subsequent repression was of the Highlands and the clans, not of Scotland as a whole. During the proscription, military tartans were exempt - as in the Black Watch (the first Highland regiment in the British Army, raised in 1729 to police the Highlands. That’s right, a Scottish regiment raised to control parts of Scotland. The Dress Act was repealed in 1782. The Highland Clearances were post-1745 with large-scale emigration starting in the 1760s. But it was in the next century that some of the worst excesses of people being forcibly removed from their burning homes are seen. For instance, the infamous Patrick Selllars was at work in 1812 - 30 years after the repeal of the Dress Act. During this period there was the threat to the UK from revolutionary and the Napoleonic France. Far from the Scots and tartans being suppressed, we see for example a new regiment raised at the government’s request by the Duke of Gordon to help meet this threat. In 1794, the Gordon Highlanders were formed and were clothed in .....that’s right a new tartan. The “ Scots Greys” at Waterloo were officially the 2nd (Royal North British) Regiment of Dragoons, a name they were given in 1707 (which pre-dates both the Jacobite rebellions and the Clearances) . They were also acceptably known from the start by their unofficial nickname The Scots Greys which was eventually brought into the regiment’s official title the 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys) in 1877. Also at Waterloo were the aforementioned Gordon Highlanders (should it not have been the Gordon North Britons in order to "deny their Scottish provenance"?) who famously caught hold of the stirrups of the Scots Greys and charged through a French division . They were clothed, yes in their Gordon tartan kilts. Oh and the Scots Guards were there as well, not the North British Guards. Meanwhile, back home, Sir Walter Scott was scribbling away furiously to produce the Waverley Novels in which he romanticised and popularised the Scottish Highlands. He stage-managed the visit of George IV to Scotland in 1822 , an affair of much pomp and tartanry. The King himself wore an outrageous tartan outfit: if you want to know if a king wears anything under his kilt, the answer on this occasion was yes - pink tights would you believe. After that comes Victoria’s love affair with Scotland, but enough’s enough. Hardly a sign of expunging Scotland’s name from the map. And where did that idea of expunging Scotland’s name from the map at pain of imprisonment come from? I’d be really interested in any historical sources for that one. Let’s have the banter: call me a haggis-eater if you want - I’ll just throw haggises at you until you cry surrender! Let’s have good-humoured anglo-scottish slagging, but let’s not peddle wobbly history.

I don 't see why you are apologising for your "jaundiced" critique of teachers, JohnM. Seems to me a perceptive and generally appreciative view of teachers as such. How you feel about them as patients is another matter!

I have used a " buche cheminée" which you burn in the hearth/stove and which cleans by some chemical process. It comes with a card which you fill in sign and send off to register that you have used it. According to the info, this is adequate for your insurance company. You can find them in the supermarkets. Thankfully this has not been put to the test

"There are over 500,000 words in current use in the English language and only 100,000 in French, quite a difference! " Phew! Only 99,950 French words to go and I have the complete vocabulary.

As someone once said, "It's incredible! It's absolutely incredible! In fact, it's so incredible it's almost unbelievable." At 1537 today, i asked (quite genuinely) how some common understanding of "netiquette" had grown within the anarchy of the web. Now, some 9 hours later, I find I have provoked 4 pages of ....well, tosh really. Entertaining, surely, but tosh nonetheless. And I'm none the wiser about the evolution of netiquette!

I am fascinated by the recent thread being locked because "netiquette" determines that one does not discuss another forum. I presume there wll be other matters of understanding and protocol in this "netiquette". In the remarkable anarchy of the web, how did such protocol get arrived at? I guess there has been a gradual organic growth. Has understanding of what is on and not on spread by some strange process of cyber osmosis? And how is one supposed to know what the rules are? Quite fascinating I ask out of academic curiosity and also in case there are international conferences of forum admins and moderators and I am missing out on a good hooley. (Tried to put a smiley here but it didn't work)