Finally, we are getting some warm weather. Well, warmish: 21°. Yay sun.

My first Dutch lesson tonight, with a new teacher. This batch should be more effective than the first lot, which I did when I was still in England and not hearing Dutch every day.

(pen) How are your gghhhutterals?

[Rosie] Loosening up nicely. All I need really is a heavy cold.
A propos something else, I think I just persuaded the global director of Shell to stand in front of my video camera and give me his opinion on ethical management. My job amazes me sometimes.

(pen) Do they give you a Welsh primer? If you can pronounce Machynlleth correctly you will have problem with any language anywhere in the known Universe, except possibly Xhosa and Scouse.

"problem" = "no problem"

[Rosie] The trouble with Machynlleth (with the lisping 'L' like Sister Wendy's, is that right?) is there is no R in it. In Dutch, the Gs are gagging, as are the aitches, the Rs are rolled, the emphasis comes just about every other syllable and there are usually at least five syllables per word. Nouns like 'verzekering' (insurance, with the emphasis on the 'zek', pron. 'zay') are compounded from all kinds of words mulched together. It all takes an awful lot of effort for a poor Anglo-Saxon speaking accustomed to putting together one syllable at a time.

speaking = speaker, toch?

[pen] When I worked in Hilversum my team leader used to speak Dutch with a Cockney accent. He got by, though - even married a nice Dutch lady.

(pen) Maybe Welsh not the best idea, then, though the gutturals are splendid. Try chwech ( = six). Vowel is "ä." The Welsh "r" and the breathy unvoiced "rh" are rolled but too short and front-of mouth for Dutch, if my hearing is correct. Isn't the Dutch "v" often pronounced "f"? In Welsh the "f" is always pronounced "v". Not much help there, then.
Couldn't hear any double-L in Sister Wendy's speech. It's a non-plosive hiss from the sides of the tongue about halfway back ("voiceless lateral fricative" apparently). Don't spoil it by following it with an ordinary "L". Dead easy. :-)

This old place still exists. Horrah!

[Boolbar] Horrah! You're back!
...as you once said yourself!

I'm sailing over to the UK on Sunday night - hurrah! I love sleeping on ships.

Rotterdam-Harwich? Hope its not rough ;o)

[Softers] Rotterdam-Hull. Some parts of Hull are very rough indeed, but I shall keep the car doors locked when I disembark ;o)

I know it was a terrible joke, but three days of silent protest is enough. I'm sorry, OK?

Not your fault I sure, pen ;o)

*waves from England, for a change*
Had a surprisingly calm North Sea crossing last night, despite driving to the port in gales and lashing rain. The geordies complaining this morning that 'the curtains were moving' made me giggle though.

[Knobbly] I know the feeling!
[pen] Welcome back! Hope we've managed to keep it much as you left it.

[pen] Shurely an oxymoron?

(Softers) Can happen, like a dry day in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

[Rab] Good, bad or indifferent?

Aren't all the electronics made in the same place now anyway?

[rab] What's the secret of good comedy?

[CdM] Is this a reverse chat game now?
I was wondering earlier what a game of Reverse Reverse MC would look like. Any thoughts?

Anybody got any new game ideas? Tuj?

[Raak] Good to see you back. i was just thinking today that you hadn't posted for a while (whether that "while" is a few days or longer I didn't check, but I was aware that you were missing...).

[CdM] That's odd, I haven't been away much, although by chance I might not have posted on mc5 for a few days.

[CdM] Nearly as good as your waiting for T comment on the MCiOS chat =D

Not that anyone will will notice... but there will be a brief outage on Thursday night when the Powers That Be perform a memory upgrade ('bout 9ish or thereabouts).

[Raak] Ah well. I guess your contributions are just always so good that even a few days absence is noteworthy!

I'd always wanted to try Cheddar Gorge Haiku... perhaps too similar to what we've got going now. I also thought it'd be good fun to write a play one line / stage direction / light cue at a time.

[Knobbly] If you do 'view source', however that works on your particular browser, nested in amongst all the HTML muck you'll see a hidden line 4 and line 5 that occurred to me. Why I didn't use the HIDE tags is beyond me. I must have thought we were temporarily back in 1998 or something.