[Juxtapose] Brilliant!

I'm giggling at players in Each Move Must Consist of Precisely Eight Words who are currently attempting to pick up the game and move it along...

[Softers] Oh shit. How old is the cat?

Has no-one said anything over Easter? I've been away for five days travelling beyond these horizons, climbed more stairs and ladders in more windmills, and become frozen in the process than I care to admit (oh, all right then - three. Two corn mills and a polder (drainage) mill), seen Zuid-Holland covered in snow and had the plane de-iced before taking off to come home, and still you lot are keeping quiet. What's going on?

[pen] OK, we're back. What?

[penelope] Your elipsis (four moves back) left us thinking you'd simply popped out to take the kettle off the stove. Everyone was afraid of interrupting you and looking rude.

[SM] oops. And I thought we were all quiet waiting for more news of Softer's cat...

I hope it stands a better chance than Schrödinger's.

*peeks*. Why? It looks fine to me.

[ImNotJohn] I'm not so sure.

Belatedly testing that I can actually post via proxy. Don't mind me. Sorry, was that your foot?

That's quite funky, though going a bit around the houses...

I've never seen anything like it!

[flerdle and nfras] Sorry to be slow on the uptake - I have only just returned from my travels afar to catch up with the Morniverse. I was in Melbourne myself at the time of your postings, for the Grand Prix. I thought the Friday (the day of the school fete) and the following Monday were the hottest, both nudging forty degrees C. Mind you I'm not complaining, back in Bristol and freezing my proverbials!

I just thought I'd mention; assuming we want the actual Polish pronunciation of £ódŸ (something approaching "wooj"), as a Southerner with Hertfordshire vowels I have all but been locked out of that limerick.

Goodness me... I typed Lodz with a bar on the L and an accent on the z and it went all funny.

Well, I've just taken the only rhyme I can think of for "woodge".

If you're struggling, some people like to pronounce my name to rhyme with that. I don't, but then I'm a Southerner too.

Nah, we've just got to work it around to the winter olympics in lines three and four.

Yes, sorry about that, folks. Too late I realised it would be confined to them as resides north o't' 53rd parallel, except for an Underground station, rather awkwardly. There could be a reference to ursine defaecators, stretching a point.

[Bigsmith] Be glad you're not here now

[flerdle]Crikey. I visited Mornington briefly on a trip down the peninsula to Arthur's Seat and Cape Schanck. Beautiful part of the world (I was staying with friends in Cheltenham just off Nepean Highway).

OK, so I'm finished stage managing the amateur production and nearly back to normal. I had no Easter to speak of, having spent all of Easter Sunday and Monday saying "No, you don't have time to go out for a smoke". How is everyone then?

Just reaching the slump of the year, when the excitement of new year is over, and warmer weather isn't arriving as fast as I'd like. And the clocks changing forward to BST have done me in... I overselpt this morning :o)

Has anything been heard from Chalky since she called in sick on the AVMA?

Also, [flerdle], I'm glad we missed that...

(flerdle) I see that the train passengers were "forced to evacuate". I think in those circumstances I'd have shit myself without asking.

[penelope] We still have daylight saving until this weekend, which is stupid because it's so dark in the mornings that the lights go on...

[CdM, Rosie] Indeed.

It was remarkably warm throughout the day, but the light was very strange. I only went out (to the city: frogstar's birthday) when it was mostly over. There are some more details here and some good pictures of the effects of the storm in the photo galleries. I particularly like one of two surfers with a boat in the background. It was all over by evening (apart from the transport disruption, which wasn't too bad in my direction). It's pretty quiet now, but who knows what will happen in 10 minutes.

[flerdle] eep.

[CdM] Yay. Functioning normally again. Thanks for the thought.

[Chalky] Yay! I was getting seriously concerned about you. I figured you had to be very ill to be staying away from here. :-)

...whereas others would express the view one would have to be rather sick to hang around here in the first place...

(Tuj) After looking at uk.sci.weather I come here for intelligence, sanity and humour. Although mostly amateurs they tend to talk about "severe rainfall events" and put their back-garden weather observations into one of the various meterological codes. Thus we see "SHRAGS", which means a shower of rain and hail. It's going to get a lot colder over the weekend so you'd better watch out for them shrags.

They sound more like giant hairy beasties that crawl through the countryside at night and pretend to be overgrown boulders by day.

Bloomin' heck. I've got my first free weekend at home for about 6 weeks, and I really should cut the grass - mine is the scruffiest on the entire street at the moment. I was going to do it this weekend. But I'm not doing it if it's snowing.
And in other news, I've joined an organic veg box scheme, and have been very impressed with the contents... except the two heads of swiss chard. Any ideas as to what to do with them?