I have more contact with bus drivers than is good... too much public transport usage! And a "cheers" or "thanks" usually suffices, 'cause generally they're very moody. I've only ever met one nice one, and he was actually a scheduler/office worker or summat who'd been drafted in to drive the last bus of the day. Still, he gave me a lift about 8 miles off-route and didn't crash into anything, so I'm not complaining.

I once got on a local bus in Pontypridd, driven by the usual driver, who was very nice ordinarily. Unfortunately he had just broken up with his girlfriend and seemed to have a deathwish - as we drove along some roads with very steep drops without stopping the whole trip it was a wee bit scary..

In Edinburgh the whole 'to-thank-or-not-to-thank' dilemma is solved by having exit doors in the middle of the bus. Communication with the drivers seems to be strictly discouraged, in fact, by virtue of them sitting in a perspex isobooth. Your fare is poured into a slot, whereupon the driver presses a button to signal its descent down the chute of destiny into the locked safe of eternity (they don't, famously, give change). The ticket appears from a hole in the wall. The whole thing works so that even eye contact with the driver is a near impossibility... I quite like it that way.

In a more civilised and less cost-conscious world we'd have bus conductors and the driver could get on with his job undistracted, and undelayed.

I had the eerie experience last night of travelling on a coach whose driver had the exact same name as me. I'd never met anyone else with my name before. It's decidedly creepy.

My colleagues googled me and discovered someone with my name that they claim also looks exactly like me. I dispute this (not only because he's over 50 and American). But I'm still slightly disturbed.

Someone with my name draws Harry Potter fan art. Someone else is a pop star. And another one is head of a Meat Board (?) or something, if I remember correctly. But I'm the best one. :)

Whereas I (as could a great many people I suspect) can be fairly sure that my name is unique, even if we discount my middle name. Anybody with my surname is a member of my father's-side family and due to cultural/ethnic reasons, the probability of any of them sharing my first name is extremely low.

According to google, I have one phonetic namesake (ie her name is spelled wrong) who's a successful college runner in the US. Anyone who knows me will know she's not me as I'm crap at running, whereas I am rather brilliant at writing - she doesn't have any google-indexed articles published on the Institute of Biology's website.

[LotUS] Are they all Lords of the Under-Stairs?

[auto-googling] - I'm a professor in Vermont. What's slightly more surprising is that I'm female.

I'm not going to bother googling - there are at least three more of me who work for the same company as I do (and the bastards never forward me messages or post they get by mistake). On another subject I've started this last week or so re-playing my old collection of CD singles in alphabetical order. The batch in hand currently are by Claytown Troupe, Close to the Hype, a couple by Marc Cohn, and Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers. Happy memories....

One of my old piano teachers claimed to have *another* student also called Jonathan Ellis...

However, he lacked (1) the same middle name as me, and more importantly (2) the ability to learn something such as Chopin's Polonaise in A flat in less than a week, be able to hack the second half of Rachmaninov's cello sonata in four days or - as happened today - when accompanying a baroque-music oboe class in which the student was playing on a modern instrument and the teacher on a Baroque instrument which was tuned a semitone flatter - to sight-read the same piece both in the original A minor and transposed into A flat minor, switching between them every two minutes depending on which one of the two was playing which instrument at the time.

Which is why I make a reasonably survivable living that pays the bills and mortgage working freelance at the RNCM: whereas he gave up the piano completely, went to study law, and had two houses and no mortgages within the first four years after completing his studies... *sigh*

I'm pretty good at some things as well.

Especially creating confusion in the Mini Cheddars game.

actually I think I had a hand in that. ooops.

[JLE] *empathetic sigh*
well, I'm hopeless at handstands but quite good at Guinness casseroles

(nights) Can't see anything wrong with your contribution. :-)

Hello. On one of my occasional wander-throughs I noted that the lost consonants game is now a year old. I thought things were looking a little dusty around here, but I didn't realise that dusty. I moot a winter clean, and the start of, at least, a team game since I went to the trouble of writing the team-colours strap-on. Only thing holding me back is that I'm currently an active participant in practically zero of the games, so who am I to say anything?

[rab] seconded. lost consonants has been discussing its own end lately - why not put it out of its misery.

Lost Consonants must be retied! I want to lay a new game!

Well, I've just made some space by taking advantage of poor defending at Here and There. So Lost Consonants may still have some tim to save itself.

[INJ] That's the spirit!

So, anyone up for a spot of tag wrestling?

[rab]Strap-on? Thank you for an interesting mental image on a boring (ie nothing whatsoever to do) work day. ;)

So no tag game then...

Inkers] Personally I'm very much up for it, though wondering how many teams we'll have. Has the mising consonants game received a stay of execution? Unless his rabness just wishes to make the tag game because it has already entailed some effort... ;]

< moan > In the past, new games have been launched AFTER consultation [however brief] in here. Seems as though the latest three have appeared without a by-your-leave. I'm all for following up rab's hard work with a Team Colours Tag Game but just wish I could be here when a slot appears. < /moan >
Perhaps a bout of serial killing is called for ...

*Offers Chalky a silver hammer*

[Chalky] Thank you for saying what I wanted to say, but declined for fear of appearing overly heavy-handed. In fact I've half a mind to kill all the games, and start afresh...

[rab] Seeking a feeling of freshness? Try changing your underpants!
naaah, I'm all for a few changes. Go ahead. Cull a few.

Email just received: "I have mail for Dr. Factory Mallard. Please email me, his room number or department."

[pen] May I assure you that my gussets are always lemon-fresh.

I agree with everybody. a fresh start is a scary prospect, but quite an attractive one I'll admit. kill some things that seem twisted and nasty, and plant some fresh young vibrant things. or start a new game, whichever you prefer.

The Furcation Game is an undoubted work of art, but the last serious move [Tuj] was 4 months ago and it seems to be in a sufficient state of decay to be attracting the local graffiti artists. Is anyone planning another megapost, or should it quietly pass into history?

I vote for putting it below the line. It can always be reinstated on special occasions, monarch's birthdays and the like as required. Except I'll have to do this 'behind the scenes' as the game is, in fact, unwinnable. One more vote (from someone like Tuj, Martha or matt) and I'll do it.

Oh, and can I suggest that for Tag Wrestling, the two team colours be navy and crimson?

Bags I be Crimson - [navy don't look much different on my browser]- please someone start the game - haven't even got time to look back and see what we consenced on ... never mind compose a suitably beguiling, witty pre-match talk ...

OK, how about cornflower blue instead?

Lovely, petal :-)

Who's in which team?

I guess you join the team who's turn it is by making a move.

rab] Or the cornflower team if you want to win, of course.
Re: the games crisis (or not), I'm of course staunchly in favour of keeping the Furcation Game going, which hopefully doesn't make me unique... unless you want to cryogenically freeze it (with its own special not-quite-in-the-archives bit on the games list, o' coruse) - provided something similarly gargantuan is put up in its stead, like Acre Street or a Long Winded Variant. Just to discourage the itninerant game starters Chalky moaned about (seconded). And what exactly has been got into with the "what have i got myself into" game? Its ugly unpunctuated appearance on the page angers me...

"O' coruse" is ancient Gaelic for "naturally". That did affect the punctuation of that sentence too...

Blimey Tuj - such erudition! But glad you're still speaking to me :-) [clue = Scissor Sisters]

I'll be brutally honest, I've never understood the furcation game, so it's passing is no great worry to me.

I wish I could look at the rest of the site but I have printing to do so it'll have to wait until lunchtime now. bother.

I think a special status for the Furcation Game would be appropriate... I'll just have to think a little about what that would actually mean.

I vote special status for the Furc Game. So there :oP

And that might just be the fillip I need to get cracking with a new move over the Christmas break.

it's a sad state of affairs when I'm on campus from 08h45, and my first opportunity to check these boards is now, 17h07. today, however, has been an exceptionally busy day. grr.

Students working... whatever next?

rab] Good luck with Fillip. And was that really Martha Farquar?

[tuj] crikey I hadn't noticed... hello Martha!
[rab] oh hee hee, yes we're all awfully lazy, we never work, etc etc...

[nights] Who said Uni. wasn't a good training ground for a 9 to 5 job? Welcome to the real world, sir. The world where such hours are considered to be short and there's no student union available for cheap beer and there's no lovely undergraduates gracing the premises and where everyone grows old and where ... *sobs*

That should have read: " . . . no intelligent . . . "

(Duj) So what are you doing in here during working hours? We know where you live. :-)

Trawling for intelligent undergraduates, Rosie. I thought that was obvious. .   ;-)

Yeah, 'n mi 'ouse is allus open for them I just said, rite?

[nights] That was a tongue-in-cheek comment.

But what's going on here? Why was the Tag Wrestling just killed like that instead of having another round? Why are other games that should have been killed twenty years ago still limping on with festering wounds and a slightly disgusting smell? Why do I bother?

[rab] sorry I don't think my eyes were focusing. looking at it now you were being quite clearly humourous, and my brain just didn't process it. It's doing that a worrying amount. gaaah. I'll not bring up university again.
and I'm not sure why you bother, but I really am glad you do, as it gives largely computer illiterate buffoons like me the chance to have a bit of a laugh on a daily basis, and that's something to be pleased with, I think.

[Dujon] it's ok, I know full well what 9 to 5 is like, I do it most summers (well, the last two anyway) at our local council as an admin assistant. unlike a lot of students, I do actually know what work IS (moan moan moan, grumble, shake wiggle wiggle - I'll shut up now.)

Sorry if I seem grumpy today - the reason being that I am. A slight hangover is not helping the fact that due to a "system error" (aka fuckup) I've not been paid. And since I've not yet had any opportunity to hand anyone my P45, I expect that when the 'emergency payment' is made on Monday (assuming no further fuckups) it'll be taxed to buggery as well and take about six months to sort itself out. I really have no idea why we pay these people.

Perhaps they haven't been paid either :-)

(rab) Are you a victim of Capita, or Crapita as Private Eye calls them? Why do we pay these people? Because they're cheap and nasty and cheapness is all that matters. Chalky's suggestion, though a comfort, is implausible.

(Takes deep breath before launching into boring story of evil ex-boss) Let me tell you about my evil ex-boss. He was the most evil and deeply twisted person I have ever imagined (apart from my sister, obviously). He trusted nobody. Thus, my immediate boss was in charge of the company's finances, but he couldn't sign cheques. Only Bob (EE-B) could do that. And if Bob didn't want to sign a cheque, he wouldn't. Thus, cheques that had been written to pay bills were rudely returned to us if the bill had not already gone beyond the second warning and become a lawyer's letter setting a date for the court action ("ONLY AN IDIOT PAYS A BILL WHEN IT ARRIVES!"). This principle extended to employees' wages, which were also all paid by cheque. If Bob was in a bad mood (which was pretty much all the time) he would simply not sign them and we would all have to wait indefinitely for our money. What of our contracts? Ha, we didn't have any, because Bob didn't like contracts. Why did anyone work there? People either left within a couple of days or had their spirits utterly broken and became trapped. I escaped after seven months. I would further list Bob's other charming characteristics (his habit of chain-smoking cheap American cigars, his casual racism and sexism, his astonishing right-wing views, his incomprehensibility, owing to a combination of an American accent with the effects of having chain-smoked said cigars for, apparently, several centuries) but I won't. The point is: we considered ourselves lucky if we got paid at all.

My boss is great, honestly. Sorry. Anyway, shouldn't we be enjoying ISAHAC on the airwaves about now? Or have I missed it?

The new series beings on 06/12/04 with Linda Smith joining the regulars at the Anvil Theatre, Basingstoke. Andy Hamilton will be guesting at the New Theatre, Hull, followed by a Best of the Year show on 27/12/04. After that I'm not sure

new series of ISIHAC? martha you've made me the happiest man in the south west. off to the pub to celebrate - watch out for drunken postings later on!

Hamish and Dougal's Hogmanay, featuring an all-star cast and copious tea-drinking, on New Year's Eve at 11.20pm. And there's a News Quiz of the Year. And the rest of the Xmas TV schedule sucks

Radio, I meant. And the TV schedule succks too, but that goes without saying

Zhooomph!!

I don't know, it went without saying

[Martha] Many thanks for the information.

6 games below the line... And the Furcation Game to sort of so on the line... and I have half a mind to give "what have i got myself into" the euthanasia treatment... Exciting times. New tag variant very good.

Hmm, put a rogue "so" in there. No idea why.