Btd] You weren't near Boscastle at all, were you...?

I was about 70 miles from Boscastle (near Lands End) on the day of the flood. Oddly enough that day we had very bright sunshine (the best we had for the whole fortnight). We spent the day on a beach. We have a friend in Sennen Cove who told us that during the day 30 cars and two houses had been washed away in Boscastle - but we didn't know whether to believe him due to the as the Cornish habit of telling tall stories - especially to gullible emmets like us. It was after that day that the weather got worse. It was not all bad but we has the tail end of three hurricanes and at least one gale. We didn't get much sleep.

Free Cornish pasty to whoever spots the superfluous "as the" in the above. Pasty may be slightly damp - no refunds or cash equivalent.

does anyone know " which band claims one of their dads was a pirate?" any help would be greatfully recieved

Bob the dog] Between "the" and "Cornish", in line 4. Do you want to give it to me in person or by post? ;)
pen] Ah yes, for I am a mysterious shady figure... (oh, and I don't have any motorbike leathers actually... there is a hedge trimmer in the shed somewhere though...)
grunt] Nope.
Bullocks] Aaaargh!

That'll be Frankie Poullain, bass player in The Darkness IIRC. A West Indian pirate, I believe

Can I just pop in briefly to say that comma splicing should be a crime punishable by death? Thank you.

[BM] What is 'comma splicing'? Perhaps I know it as something else. I probably do it all the time but need to know in case I'm about to be punished in a terminal sort of way.

Comma splicing is the ULTIMATE SIN, whereby two sentences are mashed brutally together using a comma rather than a conjunction. It makes you look illiterate. It really gets on my nerves. For instance, if I'd replaced the full stop between 'illiterate' and 'it' with a comma, that'd be an example. One of the worst cases is the use of 'however' mid-sentence, which is nearly always wrong.

I do not enjoy the over use of acronyms, capital letters, smileys and most of all - jargon.
Tuj] I tried to write your address on the damp pasty but the pen sank into the waterlogged pastry. Fancy a damp steak and Bic doughy object instead?

Jargon is necessary to keep the riff-raff out. One thing that really gets my goat is getting the subjunctive wrong (eg. "if I was" instead of "if I were"). Midge Ure was particularly annoying in this respect.