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Ah, the days are getting longer...
[CdM] Ah yes, but are the nips getting bigger?
Britophile
[pen] Me, I like the abbreviation. :-)
Well, Midsummer went off without a hitch here, as it coincides with the annual Fête de la Musique. Lots of bands in the street, lots of alcohol consumed, lots of people absent at work the next day. Brilliant.
brile
[CdM] You're an economist. You like everything cut.
Has everyone had a nice weekend?
Something for the weekend
Saturday at a friend's 80th birthday party with excellent food and much music - impromptu and prepared - the majority of the guests were capable of sight-reading so we had a choir of about 40 in his (very large) garden.
Sunday at the Derbyshire County show - walking distance for us. A scorcher - drinks and ice-creams doing a roaring trade, but some pretty hot-looking sheep and bad-tempered cattle.
Friday at Hyde Park for great gig. Saturday was a wander around Windsor Castle (blagged a free ticket for daughter as she sang in the chapel there last year and didn't have time to do the tour). Sunday was a day of rest.
Tweaked a few pins and did a little repair work on the piano here. Perspired freely. Replaced lost fluid with a modest quantity of an available product, even at one in the morning. Was informed that the price difference between weak and strong beers as purchased by the pub is much greater than the difference in price at the bar. "Sensible" drinkers are subsidising piss-heads as it makes business sense.
(INJ) Hot-looking sheep? Please do not feed the Welsh jokes.
We managed a trip to the museum to meet some friends, and a pub lunch. Were very proud to have successfully left the house for an extended period. However, _ has been a bit unsettled since, so perhaps the experience left him in a state of shock.
His first decent excursion and you take him to a place full of dead things and then subject him to a pub? No wonder he's a bit grumpy. Poor _. ;)
Hot
Maximum temperature today (Monday) in the grounds of Maison Rosie was 30.7°C and pretty humid with it. Even more unusual was the previous night's minimum of 19.3°C, a record for June in nearly 30 years and nearly a record for any month. Bit sweaty during band rehearsal. Tuesday cooler and Wednesday cooler still, which is boring, but at least you feel less knackered,
And now, the weather
It depends on who you ask, but here in the European Capital of Traffic Jams that Don't Move At All, it was 36ishC yesterday, and 23 overnight. Sleep is but a distant memory, and I content myself with the fact that today I get to teach in an airconditioned conference room...
(nights) Paris, I presume.
[nights] (Maybe I already knew this, and I have forgotten.) What do you teach?
weather or not
[Rosie et al] We had this yesterday afternoon; it was quite spectacular.
[Rosie] Actually Strasbourg - like Paris, but smaller and much nicer.

[CdM] English as a Foreign Concept for business - so instead of "Brian is in the kitchen", it's "Mr Smith is in the conference room". And it's finally cooled down...
Antwarp
I was in Antwerp on Tuesday, here (very, very impressive building) where it was 36 or 37C. To my Former-flatmate-from-Hertfordshire-days-visiting-from-New-Zealand, the heat, after flying in from wintry Wellington, floored her. It almost floored me too. But the thunderstorms that night were spectacular. I've just put her on a train to Amsterdam (I can now drive round Rotterdam without getting lost, hurrah!), and today it's a very fresh and pleasant 20C.
[pen] Same here. Hoorah for continental microclimates!
Whoops, I think I pressed the wrong button and deleted everyone else. Forever alone.
where's the button for the restore point?
Back in the office after a week off. The nice thing is I nowhave the desk next to the window, so I have a view of the Erasmusbrug, the Willemsbrug, the old railway bridge AND the Unilever glass box among the skyscrapers of Rotterdam. Quaite naice.
Rooms with a view
Penelope, that reminds of my office of a few years (too many) ago. The fact that I was a significant contributor to the design layout of the place has nothing to do with this, of course. The department of the organisation in which I worked was situated on the 20th floor of a building which itself was positioned on a relatively high point of the City of Sydney. The windows rose from thigh height to the ceiling. The view took in the top of the Harbour Bridge, the buildings of the main CBD and then a panoramic sweep of Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson) all the way out to the harbour's heads. It really hurt, but I had to turn my back on it else I'd have done sweet nothing in the way of work.
Laundry
What do you lot do while doing laundry? I'm experimenting with brainstorming the week to come in a notebook while my smalls go around and around and around, and it works well.
Well, nights, I find that doing laundry is an exercise in concentration. Firstly it's getting the right temperature of the water in the copper. Then there's the right balance of water to cloth to consider. After that it's what, if any, domestic aids - such as soap - might be required. After those it becomes necessary to move the wooden dowel I use for agitation in such a manner as to effect the most efficient cleaning whirls and swirls. Whilst doing the latter my mind drifts to the mangling and then the efficacy of hanging the final product right-way-up or up-side-down. Laundry, nights, is an art and is not something that should be taken lightly. Anyway, your notebook will get wet.
[nights] I mostly sleep, having put the machine on to run overnight.
(Dujon) Do you have a coal fire under the copper or are you still using eucalyptus logs? Soda is very good, isn't it? I prefer wooden pegs, or pigs as they call them in NZ (and SA, it seems).
[Rosie] Gerroff! The wood of the eucalypti beneath the copper? That's reserved for the hot water heater and bushfires. Blimey, you Britons aren't half backward. Soda? Indeed; a tablespoon of bi-carb goes a long way when washing. Pegs/pigs/pugs around this wee bit of territory are not my responsibility but I do find that the plastic (non gypsy supplied) tend to snap all too often after being subjected to sunlight.
Being serious for a moment: Should I be required to buy a scuttleworth of coal for the fireplace that I don't have I have no idea as to where I might buy it.
Ash Google
[Dujon] That's what Google is for. Or, as it used to be called, the Yellow Pages. Or the small ads in the back of your local newspaper. Or ask at any house with a smoking chimney.
I am now virtually convinced that e-technology is ringing the death knell of common sense and 'nouse'
Trying to raise the pH
(Dujon) Bicarb's no good - you want proper soda, Na2CO3. Alkaline enough to dissolve aluminium. Try it in a saucepan with a bit of heat. It'll fizz nicely. Don't do it for too long or the pan will have a hole in its bottom which is all very well for us humans but not cooking vessels. As for coal, this can be obtained from any of Britain's many preserved steam railways and is of a quality high enough to be burned at the ferocious rate required in a locomotive firebox. Or you could get it direct from Poland as we don't have any mines left. About £80 a ton. With you on pegs. Use wooden dolly pegs; they last for ever.
(pen) esp. satnav. Recently someone was given several column-inches in the Grauniad Technology Section to describe how inadequate the device was because it had got her lost driving from Wolverhampton to Stoke and she nearly landed up in Shrewsbury. If that had happened to me I'd have kept very quiet about it, not wishing to appear a complete tosser, but you know what people are like these days. I won't say any more because I can get really sarky.
MapNav
Quite. I always like to have a lookie at a map before I set off, so at least I am informed about the route/heading/places en route. People who blindly trust a SatNav are eejuts.
Technology
When I taught engineering at night school I always told students that they had to know the answer before using a calculator. They used to laugh at this but I used to point out that you first had to estimate the decimal place otherwise the calculator answer could be orders of magnitude out. This principle applies to all technology, it is useful for accuracy but you need to know what you are doing before starting.
[penelope] Around my neck of the woods it would be hard to find a house with a chimney, never mind one with a proper coal burning hearth an 'ob and a couple of hunting dogs to keep one's feet warm. A few decades ago oil burners were all the rage but the cost of fuel seems to have put those foul things to rest - even the use of the common wood burning heaters seem to be well and truly on the decline. After your comment (mine was meant to be light hearted) I did look at Google and my local paper's classified advertisements. Unfortunately my common sense and nous came to naught. Should I ever need a scuttleworth of coal I shall be trawling the local railway lines for inadvertent sullage. :)
sullage
[Dujon] Apologies, I didn't mean my comment to sound so brusque, but where on earth do you live, you poor coal-less thing?!?! Next point: I don't think you mean 'sullage', unless you're burning cowpats and horse dung...
*chuckles*
No, penelope, I didn't. It was a slip of the brain or fingers. Please read the word as 'ullage'. On the coal question: Australia exports huge amounts of coal and uses various grades of coal in its power stations but I can quite honestly say that in my fifty-odd year sojourn in this country I have never seen coal being burned domestically. It sounds odd, but it's true, although it's impossible for me to say that it doesn't happen.
Sad about Hershey's practices
I am sad about Hershey's practices. I just found out that they source their cocoa from cacao farms that use slave labor. Children are sold to farmers, never paid, are beaten . . . Mars and Nestle are not great, either. However, they promised to stop these practices by 2020. Cadbury for you brits is fine, but Hershey's distributes it in the United States.
Chocolate is evil
[Kaggers] I suppose this is why it's important to check that Incidentally, we're Britons, not 'brits', pfffft. (And Norwegians, Australians, and residents of just about every country in between those two.)
*has made a move in every game*
Too much maybe?
Yeah.
O-Kaaaaaay

*slopes off*
seldom chalked
[Chalks] It's not as if you do it every day, or even every week. Welcome back, missus!
*waves from Bristol*
"white horses from Westbury"
[ChalkyPhilCdMIrach] Does anyone who contributed a line to the riddle glow-worm know what the answer was? I can only find one word that seems to satisfy all clues, are there others?
Hidden textI can only find 'nerd'.
[Knobbly] That was all I found. I'd been staring at line 1 wanting to make the answer "Néa" but couldn't conjure a line 2 which would squeeze two accented words in.
[Knobbly] So it would seem.
Hidden text"neon" would have been possible, prior to line 4
. A little apt, I suppose?
I didn't think of Néa when I posted Line 3 (I should have), so i was aiming for NERD at that point -- because, as Phil said, it seemed fitting.
Missed the riddle
I read the glow worms, but I missed the riddle. All this "line 1" talk is making me think poetry. I think you Britons *rolls eyes at self* might like this poem of mine: Bigfoot's Love Slave.
the KS poem
Gosh. I clicked. Powerful ending.
Making my name show on everything in the first box.
*foils Giertrud's diabolical plan*
T-11
Back in NL. I have been hen-partied. :o/
Girly-do
I do hope you maintained your cool and didn't wear any fairy wings, pen.
more girly goings-on...
[Softers] No way. We had a very sophisticated evening in a Greek restaurant, not even any plate-smashing. And today, my department at work threw a bash for me too - with a water-taxi down the Oude Maas to the Hotel New York in Rotterdam for afternoon tea, and back again. The weather cleared up spectacularly and it was wonderful. The poor old windy miller didn't get supper cooked for him tonight - I was still stuffed! (But I did cycle to the Chinese takeaway for him)
Weekendings
Saw the Staffordshire Hoard (or at least some of the finer pieces) on Saturday at Lichfield Cathedral - remarkable for its quality (gold filigree and cloisonné work, etc.). There's a moment in the video presentation where one of the experts says: "We get asked if this is the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever found - it's the ONLY Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever found". Also went to Wightwick (pronounced 'wittik') Manor, possibly the best William Morris house in the country. Morris never saw it, but it was entirely furnished from Morris's shop in Oxford Street by the Mander family of Mander's Paints.
Also had a quick look at CdM's childhood home.
Hoardings
[INJ] I'd love to see that. The hoard, not CdM's childhood home - I doubt it even has a blue plaque, does it?
Remove that plaque
[Pen] Not any more, it hasn't.
Week's ages
A week since the last post - anyone got anything interesting to report? This morning, I'm going to take my camera down to the windy miller's (non-functioning) mill at Maasdam, and take photos. One of his apprentices spent four days creating decorations for it for our wedding; buntings, 6ft carved initials painted red, and carved intertwined wedding rings, all strung between the tips of the sails and floodlit. He took us out to see it the night before we got married. *beams*
Long weekend
As usual at this time of year, spent in a friend's cottage in the North York Moors. Almost didn't make it along the track on Friday after torrential rain. After that fine walking in forest and over the largest expanse of heather moorland in the world - all bright purple and with a glorious sweet scent. Cold and windy, mind you.
[INJ] Excellent. A week on Sat, I'm off to Wensleydale, to play in the Hardraw Scaur Brass Band Contest. Also spending a week in Swaledale for half-term. Can't wait to get back up to North Yorkshire :-)
Cheese please
*yearns for a proper bit of Wensleydale* God I miss English cheese.
Cracking cheese Grommit
Ah, yes. The clog stuff is a bit waxy. Great for using one of those cheese slicers that they love, though.
waxy rubber and no taste
Dutch cheese - always highly spoken of, but as far as I can make out (and I may have said this before elsewhere), there are only three varieties. However you can have them at any age you like. But until they get a couple of years old, there's no real taste, and no texture. And you can't grate it - ever. I think it's a bit arse-about-elbow to design the cheese to suit the cheese slicer, isn't it? And the cheese slicer/cheese scraper/cheese plane only works for about 40% of the truckle - it doesn't work once to get towards the edges of the cheese. Surprisingly inefficient for the Dutch. Rant over. Now bring me some proper cheese, please.
Pass the Dutch-cheese on the left-hand side
[pen] At least it's lower in fat than cheddar et al.
alert: not at all posh sense of taste and style
[pen] agreed about the slicer. Mine seem to go mad towards the edge; I'd thought it was just me.

My taste in cheese is not so sophisticated. *prepares for ostracism*. I don't like camembert or brie or veiny or runny or very hard very smelly cheese. I do like what is sold here as "Dutch smoked", whether it has anything to do with the Netherlands I'm not sure. Thinking about it, liking it might, in part, be due to growing up with Kraft processed cheddar (in the blue cardboard box, doesn't need refrigeration), which it does bear a passing resemblance to in texture. Not sure if that product ever got to the UK, i think it was a US thing that turned up here in the 40s or 50s. I haven't eaten the stuff for decades, I found a tin of it in Oman but wasn't game to actually eat more than a small wedge to confirm its identity.

Anyway, crumbly feta (not smooth, yuk) is good. A nice cottage cheese sometimes finds its way into my diet. Cheddar, well, what is sold here as cheddar, no idea if it is or not, is my main cheese, in a lower fat variety, not because I'm a low fat fanatic, but because this particular one just seems to be less greasy, especially when melted or grilled where it turns out beautifully, compared to some others.

And i will fight even my best friends and relations for haloumi. You have been warned :o)

Do me a haloumi
[flerdle] Just buy double the amount. I like mine grilled with a sprinkling of fresh chopped mint and freshly-ground black pepper.
Grilled is obligatory, but you can keep the mint.
Nooooo, it's mine, all mine, i tell you.
feeding frenzy
Damn you. Now I'm checking out sausages punt en el and slavering over my desk. The sausagepalace is only about 7km from the windy miller's office. I can see I'll have to make a visit. (And then probably hate them and end up making my own with the new KitchenAid mixer-with-meat-grinder-attachment-and-sausage-stuffer-thingamebob that is about to be purchased with the wedding present money.)
It pains me...
I love cheese. Almost all varieties (only one I can think of that I don't like is cottage cheese). I like hard, soft, creamy, waxy, crumbly, mild, mature, sharp, sweet, blue, goat's, ewe's, cow's, flavoured and so on. Love 'em all.
However, I am on a self-imposed low saturated fat diet, so the only cheese I eat now (other than for a very rare treat) is low-fat cream cheese. Then again, I loved smoking, but I don't do that any more either.
Wearing kilts on ankles is now fashionable
Went to my first pub games last night (Sept. 7 - USA/Central time) so, like um, what 2am Friday for Brits? I forget . . .
Brit Food
It was at a Celtic Pub. I also had Bangers and Mash there. Different.
Fashion advice
[KS] Kilts on ankles is fashionable? That would be one kilt per ankle I assume. That's a new one on me. On the other hand, kilts round ankles......
tartanankles
I'm trying to think of a kilt pun, but I'm failing.
[pen] It's for the best, the community frowns on puns here. Tell a bad one and you might get kilt.
[pen] I think Tuj may try to get a monopoly on the kilt puns, but I'll try to make sure he doesn't hog manay of them.
It's poor 'uns that we really frown upon.
You can make them more presentable by tartan them up.
Yes, kilts on ankles
It was from a game, basically "pin the tail on the donkey." It was "tape the kilt on the Scotsman, though." I ended up putting it on his ankle! I think a kilt on each ankle would be pretty cool - new fashion instead of bell bottoms!
PUNishment
As for puns, I have the BEST pun ever, but you have to know technical terms about the Christan fish and Swedish/Norwegian/ (thus, unfortunately sometimes) Lutheran cuisine.
Puns
I know an absolutely filthy pun in French. Only works in French though.
Does the pun involve a pullover, perchance?
[SM] Indeed :)
Puns and French
My pun does not involve a pullover and is in English. I might be able to read the French one, might not. I need to brush up on my French.
French puns
[Phil] So it's not the one about the vicar, the bicycle and the scouring powder?
Flappy
I don't know if a technical issue with my hosts has affected this site but if you have noticed any outages it's due to "severe flapping of HSRP on customer vlans". I thought I should pass that on.
HSRP?
Huge Sheets of Rubberised Paper.
Surely they shouldn't be sending data around in vans these days.
Highly Spiced Rice Pudding?
streaking by
[CdM] I read that as 'High Speed Rice Pudding'. The pudding-mistakes compound themselves because I read Rab's post thinking of a Dutch dessert called 'vla' (basically cold custard), and a Limburgse tart called 'vlai'. And I'm bloomin' hungry this morning.
[INJ] Do not underestimate the bandwidth of a transit van full of DAT tapes.
(Packet rate's lousy though.)
[Simons] Reminds me of A Fire Upon the Deep, where the protagonists get transport on a spaceship whose "cargo" is a one-third xor of a one-time pad.
Desserts
Oh, come on, I know y'all are just PUDDING on a show of your favorite puns!
I read "vla" as "via" and thought of a company called Viasat and thus, thought of pudding being sent through outer space.
[Kag] And what if I gave a tart response denying that claim? ...Oh, bugger.
Sticky end to pudding puns
Well that ended very messily, didn't it? Is anythinjg nice happening this weekend? I have to admit, I'm bored, bored, bored, this weekend and not even entertained by the thought that I can actually hang washing outside today. Roll on work on Monday.
slow weekend.
[pen] No work for me for quite a while, either domestic or paid; I'll be lucky to know what day it is. But anyway, people visiting, catching up on reading, and finishing decorating my crutches.
Spent Friday to Sunday in the South-West supporting 'The Prince's Trust Wild UK Challenge' sponsored by Capgemini. I took part last year but once was enough. So 3 days of camping, manning checkpoints, lugging gear around and clapping and cheering. A successful event - plenty of money raised and only 2 competitors hospitalised after coming off bikes (neither seriously injured).
[flerdle] Well, that sounds like a plan that takes into account the circumstances. I hope it mends like what it's supposed to.
Well, my weekend improved. Making something always improves my mood, so the construction of seven jars of marmalade before breakfast on Sunday, followed by a couple of hours out on the bikes with the windy miller in the glorious late-summer weather did wonders. Today, I'm not officially at work, so plan to splend some time writing up a review of the one-day course on writing for SEO (last Friday, Utrecht), an hour getting a bit further with writing up a report from the mini-conference/debate on private equity (last Thursday night, Amsterdam), and three hours ironing (my living room, in front of the TV, tonight.)
[pen] Quite right: who'd want a wrinkly living room?
To be filed under "Fire, baptisms thereof"
Well, I just did my first ever TV interview. Live. On national TV.
[CdM] Did it go well? Is there somewhere online one might be able to see it?
[flerdle] Please explain how you will be decorating your crutch? While you were in getting the leg fixed did you have some more intimate operations performed? Perhaps a spot of vagazzling? Oh, sorry, plural, my mistake, carry on. Coat!
[Phil] Thanks for asking. I guess it went OK, given that they have asked me back. On the other hand, I really don't want to become a pundit. On the other other hand, the pen-equivalent at my institution is constantly pushing me to do this sort of stuff. Can it be seen online? I certainly hope not. :-)
penequivalent
I don't do PR anymore! I'm just English Editor.... and I sneak in marketing advice at the same time.
cooking
I want to write a cookbook. Of course, all my measures are American. I wonder if I should find British equivalents and published a British edition, too.
What size are your cups?
[KS] If you want to publish in the UK (and this will probably also be the case for places like Australia), you'll certainly have to change the measurements, but you should also get someone to check over the names of ingredients and their availability as well as possible substitutes unless you want to confine your readership to people who live in the major English cities. For example, I live in a small city of about 250,000 people with all the major supermarket chains but the nearest source of buckwheat flour for me would be a 90 minutes round trip.
It's a source of constant irritation to me that any internet search for a recipe draws you to lists of ingredients in US imperial units, mostly because I can never remember what a cup is. One gotcha to be aware of is that US pints are smaller than UK pints (16floz instead of 20floz).

For ingredient substitutions my procedure is the following. First, look for something in your cupboard that you think tastes like the missing ingredient. If that fails, look for something that looks like the missing ingredient. If even that fails, look for something that sounds like the missing ingredient.

My gelignite-based desserts have made many a dinner party go with a bang. (Although they do have the advantage of being strictly vegetarian).

One size fits all
[KS] don't change the measurements! Just include imperial and metric along with US cup measurements... Lots of recipe books and websites do this. Then you only have to produce one version.
[INJ] Try your local windmill for buckwheat. Alternatively, I can bring you 5kg next Saturday. The buckwheat is free but it'll cost you merely the price of the ferry ticket.
buckwheat
[Pen] That's the distance to the watermill who make the flour I usually use for breadmaking. I can buy the normal white, wholemeal and malted grain from my local butchers, but more specialist stuff is only sold at the mill.
sorry for not looking in here earlier
I meant to add...
[INJ] Doesn't your mill supply any other shops? Poor you. I think even though I complain about the paucity of food here, (no big chunks of meat, for a start - there's nothing to roast in this bit of the Netherlands) I can actually get a lot of local produce, and just have to cut my culinary cloth accordingly.
*waves from Beijing*
[Pen] It might do, but I haven't found it yet.
This weekend, I am mostly...
making sandwiches to feed 50 new volunteers at three windmills on the island. I volunteer that I am a complete idiot.
Never volunteer
[pen] You must be using yards of Edam and spek.
[Softers] Metres. There's still several decimetres of it left in the fridge, dammit. Tasteless cheese. But no-one can say I'm not inburgering into my new life here.
MKS
[pen] as an engineer I seriously slipped up there.
Plea
I posted this on MCIOS as well: Anyone in the Morniverse know of a suitable family for an Italian language student in or near Hastings? She is a charming young lady mid 20s and she stayed with Mrs Software and I for a month this summer.
finding ingredients
[rab] finding ingredients that way sounds dangerous. Taste? I can see how that would work. However, looking alike, I think could get really confusing! My sister says I should give this link to show how that could be dangerous. Though, I'm not sure that you'd have a lot of these in your house. Now, I just need to find the metric equivalents to US - I'm sure they're online - just gotta get going in a bit. I'll bother y'all about ingredients over times, maybe ;) I don't think I'll be using too much different, though - baking powder, sugar, flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, butter . . . things off the top of my head that I'll be using at times.
gelignite
I hope no one had too much of a fire in their belly...
Is it me?
Am I being over-sensitive, or has the tone of the Limerick Game taken a slide down a particularly sexist hill this week? Kagome Shuko provided a dreadful first line, so I *ahem* said something. And now I find the next line refers to 'a prude'. I don't think I'm being a prude, but I do like to see standards maintained, and I think there are plenty of alternatives first lines that don't include referring to women with tits like melons. That's not a limerick I would enjoy contributing to. And I'm sure some of the chaps here similarly would avoid contributing to limericks about everyman's small cocks, erectile dysfunction and disappointing conjugal performance - and all the other male foibles and deficiences. The MC community has never felt the need to scrape the bottom of this particular barrel before (although there are plenty of other barrels that everyone enjoys delving deep into), so why now?
By limerick standards our output is exceptionally clean. I think the occasional dive into the depths of depravity is necessary and indeed unavoidable. Citations:

[1.] The lim'rick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

[2.] Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene, and cites similar opinions by Arnold Bennett and George Bernard Shaw, describing the clean limerick as a periodic fad and object of magazine contests, rarely rising above mediocrity.

That said, I don't think an excess of filth, whether or not it's folklorically accurate, is particularly funny either. One, or, perhaps I should say 'the MC community' needs mostly clean stuff to throw the filth into sharper relief. So I think my conclusion is to bring on the odd willy joke, and not to start complaining until we've had several in succession.

[Pen] I was about to agree wholeheartedly (and indeed KS's first line was singularly juvenile), but I went to the game and in fact there aren't any crude limericks currently on the top page. So, although I agree with your sentiment, you may actually be overstating the issue. Actually, I think we went through a dip into the area where saucy starts bordering on filthy a couple of weeks ago and have climbed out again.
continuing
Maybe you're influenced by the output on MCiOS - but I wouldn't class any of the currently visible lot as more than saucy.
Addendum
Also, I don't actually think tits do like melons.
I'm with penelope in this instance. That line was pathetic, and completely out of keeping with the tone of the website.
More generally [SM] I believe your example #1 shows the type of limerick many of us prefer. The form may have its root in ribaldry, but there's a clear market for amusing rhymes and syllabic dexterity rather than innuendo.
*waves from Strasbourg* Well, I've emerged victorious from my part 1 exams - what are we all up to this weekend?
Weekend
I'll be drumming at this event on Saturday. Have spent this morning sanding down a batch of new bachi.
My son turns 16 tomorrow ("arrrghhh, not more fireworks, Dad!!!!"). Having family & friends round on Sunday to celebrate. Can't do tomorrow as it's the school open day.
Next Friday is more interesting, as I'll be playing The Last Post, alone, at Beaumont Leys Shopping Centre (which covers 7 acres (2.8ha), as I presume you've never been). Never played it in public before, so I'm somewhat "bricking it".
I'm 6 hours behind...
Happy Guy Fawkes Day/Night!
breaking radio silence
Making an official request for a new round of Clerihew poems. Always liked the metrical freedom they afforded me as a rookie MC'er.
Come rhyme with me
[Juxtapose] Given the glacial pace of game turnover here, I feel obliged to point you gently in the direction of a Clerihew game currently taking place over at Orange.
slow madness
You know you've been in a brace for too long when you reach for the velcro strap to haul your other (unbound, uninjured) leg around too.

Only two more days, i hope.

Fingers crossed for you, flerdle.
Fingers also crossed, flerdle.

Things are incredibly dangerous around here - a thick fog has enveloped the city and driving is an exciting adventure in remembering which is your exit as the signs have disappeared in the mist. Oh well.
arrow_circle_down
Want to play? Online Crescenteering lives on at Discord