I'm still here!!! Hectic, new job....lacking sleep with Alex (who is now a big 9 weeks old), and not having a PC at work, or much time at home. Hence my infrequent "hereness". I hope you're all well.

I'm getting a bit more connectivity and time. The netnanny at the new client allows MCiOS and here but not Orange. It also objects to some of the adverts carried by both Multimap & Streetmap, so I can get the map surrounded by bits of red threat screen. I feel like using the sites a lot in the hope of getting a call.

I just got a spam with the poetic subject heading: "Your money, pale-souled". It fired thoughts through my head, the image of money as a hollow souled entity... How do such poets reconcile their art with such a degrading way to earn a living? Does it give a spam composer a buzz just to know their words are read? Hmmm

Happy Birthday, pen!
[everyone else] There's a very large cake in the chatroom in MCIOS so please help yourselves ...

I think I killed Shakespeare.

Has Hide & Seek run its course now?

Dreams too?

And Factoids? Perhaps time for a clearout?

Cheddars too?

[Tuj] Why Cheddars? It seems quite active.

[Darren] It's just been fairly low-quality grammatically, bothers me *wink* Anyway, aren't we encouraged to do some purging rather than talking about it?

[Tuj] Well, I don't mind terminating games I've created myself, but I do like to ask first in the case of other people's games, especially where I haven't made many contributions! I've closed Hide and Seek. In the case of Dreams and Factoids, I don't really feel qualified to shut them down myself.

Shall I do the honours for Factoids?

I'm sure you would do so self-referentially, so I look forward to it.

[rab] I dreamt about you last night. Pen was also in the dream. I think we were in a sort-of Rugby Pilg scenario, only the hotel's layout was rather similar to the house in the current Big Brother. Weird. And a little disturbing.

Hmm... but what?

[Chalky] Hmmm... I have a vague feeling you were in my dreams too. Telepathy in action no doubt.

I wrote a Very Large Cheque today. It still makes me sweat thinking about it. Should be moving in next Friday, the existence of some building warrants permitting. Saw the deeds yesterday too; one of the clauses I am unable to parse, another one witters on about a "free ish". Hopefully the solicitor will explain to us what this actually means.

[rab] Good luck. Get used to writing big cheques... I'll be writing one next week, and I read through the deeds to the new bungalow this morning - fascinating set of records. Nice to know they've searched me for any record of bankruptcy and found nothing ... yet! :o)
I like the thought of being in someone else's dreams, it means I manage to get out a bit. I had a very weird one last night - dreamed I met a man who liked me (I mean really liked me, but I have no idea who he was) and we were riding polo ponies in South Africa.

I don't know why, but there is something ineffably funny about adding "dude" to a serious quotation. "If I should die, think only this of me, dudes, there is some corner....." etc. Is it worth a short game?

[Kim] Isn't that game already exhausted by the describing of it, dude?

[Raak] Wot, like the Pants game, you mean?

[Kim] I'm not so sure it's all that funny, anyway. It was kind of exhausted by Bill and Ted.

Maybe it's me, but I don't think it's especially amusing.

Might work; after all: There is nothing like a dude

[INJ] I think yours works because of the gender-bending it implies about the rest of the song. I'm gonna wash that dude right outta my hair, not so good. (However, I'm gonna wash that man right outta my dude sounds a little better.)

Yeah, why not give it a shot? Even if it only makes for a short game. Incidentally, I have a Flash animation somewhere called Star Dudes, which is an accurate reenactment of the first Star Wars film, with 'Dude!' as the only dialogue, yet faithful to the original in every detail. And only about 3 minutes long in its entirety. Hopefully Googling should find it somewhere Out There, if anyone's interested.

Shakespeare has shuffled off to create a new game slot

Today's the big day! We hope... there's talk of retaining some money from the seller on account of missing paperwork, but we hope that won't screw things up too much. These solicitors really like to leave everything to the last minute, it seems.

Good luck with the solicitors and the move.

Well, in the last 24 hours the retention has gone down from 15k to 500quid as the bits of paperwork have mysteriously appeared. Should be getting the keys "in the next hour or so". We'll see about that.

Any number of roulette party poker sports button joker game http://www.ambersells.com gross value bluff four?

I didn't follow any of that.

[p p] No, you took a wrong turning. Go back the way you came and follow the signs towards dev/null.

You take a turn, don't you, not a turning. You'd think I might know those things by now.

[Nea] Relax. 'A wrong turning' is a commonly-used idiom.

It's not an idiom, it's correct. 'Turning' is perfectly OK as a gerund. 'ing' appears in three places in Engish - as a gerund, as a progressive tense - both of which involve adding 'ing' to a verb, and as a noun-forming modifier for which I cannot find the correct terminology. The latter case involves adding 'ling' to a non-verb to produce a commonly-diminutive noun. Examples include underling, sapling, darling, sidling (which produced the verb sidle as a back formation). It used to be side-ling - i.e. someone who stands at your side as opposed to a subordinate under-ling. But of course given a variety of words ending in 'ing' it isn't always apparent that some were fromed from the 'ling'-route rather than the verbal 'ing'-route. The 'l' is a useful indicator, but not 100% reliable.

That was very interesting, and no sarcasm is intended although it's hard to prove that without the use of tone of voice or facial expression.

Well, it's gone like clockwork so far - all bar the phone line (again) so I may not be able to post much for a bit. Keys arrived, then a van of stuff (including a sofa) which was brought up the stairs by two burly Mancunians. Then a couple of car loads of stuff, followed by a bed, which was brought up the stairs by a burly Edinburgher and further assembled by him. Which was just as well, cos it would have taken us about five hours and we'd have done a really rubbish job of it too. Boxes of stuff still arriving in dribs and drabs, and we're slowly finding places to put all their contents. Nothing's yet come off in our hand or fallen off the wall or ceiling. The heating and shower works, the loo flushes... so pretty smooth so far I would say. I have, however, discovered muscles I never knew I had. Living on the top floor of a tenement block must be good for you, surely.

Oh, and we can't find the stopcock...

[rab] Good luck an' all in your new home. The loo *might* flush, but just check it. My mother discovered the loo in her new bungalow flushes with water from the hot water system. (Have I mentioned this before?)

(pen) Doesn't this tend to vapourise the ordures, the very thing one tries to avoid?

[Rosie] Quite. Bob the plumber is coming round to fix it.

We don't seem to have any team games on the go at the moment. Anyone up for a - let's say a three way split, he says, trying to second-guess the likely number of players. Puce - Green - Chartreuse are I believe the traditional colours for such a split.

I read the other day that "miniature" (and the "mini-" prefix) comes from "minium", Latin for red. This refers to the small red lettering on a miniature portrait or similar. I'm going to look this up now, just to check. Incidentally, that doesn't pardon 6 quiz teams of staff from our local primary school being unable to spell "minuscule", despite the fact that it was on my son's spelling list 2 years ago (aged 8). Not one team got "manoeuvre" right, either.

OK, I've looked it up, and: Yes, miniature does derive from miniare (to colour red), from minium (red lead). Mini- is listed, however, as deriving from miniature and minimum, from minimus (least).
I think I need to do more research to ease my troubled mind.

WHAT? None of them could spell 'minuscule' or 'manoeuvre'? There a load of idiot's.

Have we ever played 'Shipping Crescent, To The Ends of The Earth', with a winning move, Dogger? Faster play during good visibility, obviously, and headwinds take the LV equivalent down a notch. And watch out for those South East Iceland loops. Shipping areas here.

[Rosie] I think you mean 'lode'.

[Rosie] Indeed, not one team got those words correct. They did marginally better with "accommodation", "Massachusetts" and "knowledgeable". However, I think only 1 team got "diarrhoea" right. I've done much harder spelling rounds in the past; admittedly that was for quiz addicts, and once was deliberately written to prevent a certain team winning, because I knew they would play their joker on a spelling round. I put in words like "eschscholtzia", "waqf" etc. just to screw them up :-)

(SM) I do. Your right.

[Rosie] Write, shurely?

(Chalky) Surely, surely?

A mnemonic a teacher at school taught us several years ago:
Dashing In A Rush, Running Hard, Or Early Accident.
You'll never forget how to spell diarrhoea again!

'Diarrhoea': S-K-W-I-T-S That's my mum's mneonic, bless her.

My own Mum's prim version was "Air raid backwards". The opposite was "knobs". It was all "po". (SM) Yes, but what do S-K-W-I-T-S stand for? The SHITS, by the way, is a section of the band of the Irish Guards who call themselves the Society of Harmonious Irish Tunesmiths. This is true.

[Simons] I always thought it was "squits." That's how they spell it in Theme Hospital, too, so it must be right.

[Darren] That's what I thought too. But my mum does tend to take the path less travelled by, when it comes to spelling.

I defnatley have "squits" sometimes have "the trots" but mostly have diarrhoea

[Lib] You really need to see a doctor as soon as possible.

No mention yet of Montezuma's Revenge, The Bombay Trots or Delhi Belly?

Wow! rab's new flat is Edinburgh airport!

[Darren] No, it's been raining as heavily up there as down south. Never mind a raincoat, yesterday afternoon I wished I'd brought a bucket and spade to work.

I'm getting bored of saying this now. I have more free time than I know what to do with, but instead of doing something useful with it, like learn Russian, I'm going to play MC until I vomit. Hoorah!

OOOOPS. Sorry.

I can say 'Here is my passport' in russian.
... and 'How are your parents' in portuguese.
I'd do well if I was dropped in the middle of Europe wouldn't I?

Following on from the Eight Words Game, did anyone watch the '50 Greatest Comedy Sketches' programme a few days ago, and did it seem to anyone else that the funniest sketches were all 30 or 40 years old (Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise, Monty Python etc.)? I don't know who the public were that voted, but they didn't ask ME.