mc5 - The Banter Page

[UK] First time I read "UK" in flerdle's post I thought of you rather than the country I'm in - the rampant effect of context I assume!

[Tuj] Similarly, I wondered what flerdle might want with me late, possibly in the winter. Moving swiftly along.

It seems MCiOS is down.

[Rosie] It was probably asleep like everyone else at that time of night ;o)

I went to MC⁵ today; it was shut.

It's up but I rarely go there anyway.

Is everyone on holiday? Everyone here in NL is on hols - there's no traffic on the motorways and I can leave home for work 20 minutes later than normal. But the weather here has been lovely (if a little hot at times) and the mosquito population is thriving in the dykes :o(

Factory holidays, love 'em. When I lived in Hilversum it was the same. I was required to take only 2 weeks during July/August which meant that trips to the coast were really easy on the weekends.

Back at work

Well - I've been on holiday for 11 days, but nothing's changed. Can I go away again?

[INJ] If when you come back your desk is still there, then it's a result. Quit complaining.

Yes, but

[Softers] I was borrowing a desk when I went on holiday. I came back to find everyone else had moved to a different building, but my monitor and docking station hadn't been moved. I don't know if that's a result or not - given that something usually gets lost if you let 'facilities' move it for you.

And furthermore

(Softers) I always regard it as a result if on returning to my car after the pub I find it is still there. On only one occasion has this not been the case and it was recovered about 6 hours later with a seriously damaged steering lock.

[INJ] That little remark is a great example of life mimicking art - have you seen the film 'Office Space'? Just beware when your desk is moved to the basement.

Or the men's room.

pssst... anyone here?

Not me...

...busy listening to the cricket.

Ah, it's finished now. I'm here then. Anyone else?

I am but I'm just about to go out for a summer evening walk. And maybe a beer on the way back.

Back now. What have I missed?

*Waves from Thun*

[Kim] Don't fall off any Alps.

I haven't been abroad for years and years. Which is green of me, I suppose, but dull.

xUjQfARW

lPTVUPFN

Hi! RjdBkz

Just back from the North York Moors - staying in a cottage belonging to friends. End of a multiply-gated track a mile from the road, no phone, no TV, nearest pub or shops half an hour away. No choice but to relax.

*down from alps*

This is just to say that, if anyone has any new game ideas, I am not averse to the closure of the Harvard game. A month has passed since any new elements were discovered there. Some clever person might come up with an element that incorporates the winning move.

New Game

"Late For The Ball"? I always enjoyed that on "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue".

North York Moors

[ImNotJohn] Batteries went dead in the old PPS then?

Can I just say that the Tesco's 'Three Bean Salad' represents excellent value for money? The one I just ate contained more like two hundred beans in it rather than just three.

Whereas I just had Thousand Island dressing on my salad and there wasn't a single island in it as far as I could tell.

[SMs] Skim-reading I thought Sierra Mike had quadruple-posted! But you both made me smile.

Server issues

Hello there. I'm occasionally finding that this site doesn't load - I get a 'cannot connect to the website' message (or 'connection refused'), despite the fact that as far as I know, the server is running properly at the remote end. This has happened to me from two different networks, so I'd be interested to know if anyone else is experiencing this before I investigate further. It's quite sporadic, so you may not notice anything amiss.

Connection refused

I'm seeing it. About 15% of the time, at a guess.

Me too.

Right - that points to some kind of server problem.

I've seen it as well, in the last week.

Me too, occasionally, recently.

Support tell me it should now be fixed. Let me know if it happens again.

No problem this morning. I'm here, aren't I?

Not bitter

I've got a bottle of Angostura bitters. With roughly four dashes used so far, which leaves about a millennium's supply remaining. Does anyone actually use this stuff?? If so, what for? And how often? I'm wondering if Mr Angostura and company have a real racket going here, or if they're actually doing themselves a disservice by selling their customers centuries worth of their product in a single hit. Perhaps their sales would be better if they sold it in the same size bottle as, say, Tabasco or something. Just idle speculation as the chat here seems otherwise quiet…

(SM) It's like pepper. Get a jar of it and it lasts for ever. I had a girlfriend who was very keen on the said bitters whereas I preferred bitter. I had a sip of her drink once - it was vile.

[SM] Have you got a bottle of gin handy? Add a couple of dashes to a G & T and you get pink gin. Used to be very popular in the '60s when I used to work behind a bar.

Pink gin

Gin could be arranged, although it's not something I normally drink. But plainly I could buy a couple of crates of gin and the bitters would still outlast them. And a bottle of gin would lakst me 3-6 months. Y'know, I was viewing using up this bottle of bitters as a challenge, but unless I really go for it, which is sort of cheating, I don't think I'm going to manage it in my remaining lifespan.

Pink gin and water is also nice. 2 or 3 drops added to a ginger beer is one of my favourite very, very low alcohol drinks. Oh, and one of the several versions of rock shandy is 50/50 ginger ale and soda water, with a few drops of bitters.
A bit of searching and I've found culinary uses at this site

Bitters added to lemonade cuts some of the sweetness and makes a nice summer garden drink.

gin clear

Is it any good for cleaning shower heads?

[pen] Only if it can dissolve the dead spiders.

That 'Shakespeare in Crescent' game we've just had brought to our notice was pretty good. We must do that again.

[Simons Mith] When I was a student, one of the drinks of choice at the time was a long vodka which consisted of a few drops of bitters smeared round a highball glass, ice, a shot of vodka, a dash of lime and topped up with soda water. A bit girly but very drinkable.

Poncy booze

(nfras) How does that help achieve the main objective of student drinking which is to get pissed as quickly and cheaply as possible, then as now?

[INJ] I'll second anything in iambic pentameter!

[Rosie] Well, it's a cheap drink. No charge for bitters or soda, normally. When my dad was in the Royal Navy, it was traditional for midshipmen, and some other low-ranking officers, to drink pink gin, as all you paid for was the gin - hence it was the cheapest drink in the Officers' Mess - because midshipmen were so lowly paid.

(Phil) Didn't they have grog? Maybe not often enough. When I was a student we only drank spirits if we were deliberately trying to get as pissed as possible because in those days a shot of spirits was nearly twice the price of a pint of beer. In today's money I'd estimate the prices as £2 and £3.50.

When I was at Uni (mid-late 90s) my University Union used to do a happy hour. 50p a pint (the usual price at the time in a pub was £1-£1.25 depending on the brand). At about quarter to seven you'd see the bar packed with students buying 4 or 6 pints at a time. They would take them back to their table and drink them over the next couple of hours. You might think that the beer tasted awful after sitting in a glass for over an hour, and you'd be right. But it was cheap.

[Rosie] Yes, they did have rum until July 1970 (one eighth of a pint per day), which I think was issued as two-water grog (watered-down 2 parts water to 1 part rum). Pusser's Rum has been made since about 1980 to the old Admiralty recipe and a donation goes to the Royal Navy Sailor's Fund from every bottle sold. I have some of the blue label, bottled at 54%abv, and it's quite a fierce nip if you don't water it down at all.
However, when the officers gathered for a social in their mess, the poor midshipmen (officer cadets, essentially) would have to join in, and behave like an officer, while on a phenomenally meagre wage, hence the most popular cheap, "sophisticated" drink for them (i.e. not neat spirits or beer) was pink gin.

Naval drinks

[Phil] You may have just enlightened me. I've heard my father (who was in the Navy), talk about 'Pussers Kai'. I thought, in the context, it was cocoa with a slug of rum. This now looks likely and a quick google supports that. However this was a long time before 1980.

According to a relative, the grog ration, at least for the CPOs, was issued as a mess bar credit in the 60s and 70s.

"Mug of Kye, Sir?"

[INJ] Ah, Kye (the spelling I've grown up with)! I've found some web sites that describe it as thick cocoa made with condensed milk, but according to my RN dad, it was cocoa made with water and no milk at all. As he's a hardy soul, that's still how my dad makes cocoa. It takes some getting used to, but it's OK.

Did the disappearance from the Tube Map of the River Thames pass unnoticed within the Morningverse?

ImnotJohn

[Kim] Why do you think it was re-instated so quickly? Of course Boris took the credit, but we have our people in the right places.
It is believed that the disappearance was as as a result of a misfiled email from one of CAMREC's more obscure sub-committees which was looking at the possible effects of global warming on the great game. That, together with an excess of zeal in the TfL publications department caused this somewhat embarrassing episode.
No long-term harm done, although there has been an official protest against the result of the Harlesden MCC vs Leytonstone Strilers 3rd Division top of the table clash on Tuesday evening. Rodney (Bridges Up!) Spurlington, lost his board 3 clash against the up-and-coming Shane Clotswold and blamed it on an inability to use the tactic which earned him his nickname. This one could run and run.

CAMREC?

I googled CAMREC but nothing I got there deciphered the acronym in a meaningful context (which I assume is involved with games of Mornington Crescent). Could someone let me in on what it stands for? I very rarely get to listen to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, so if I'm asking about something well-known I apologise for not having the faintest. Thanks.

What is CAMREC

[SM] You need the Encylopaedia Morningtonia

*waves from Vancouver*. Where I have been talking about eggs. As one does.

[CdM] Olé

Or, to steal a prior joke of Dan's, perhaps that should have been *huevos from Vancouver*

(CdM) Can't follow that. Nor, it seems, can anyone else as it has now been a week.

To be fair, Rosie, I've been away!! I feels sometimes I chitter incessantly on here...

I was thinking of a new game: Wizards' Duel. You have two teams of wizards. In order to make a move you must change shape into a creature or thing that beats, defeats or otherwise trumps whetever the other side has just changed into. So you might get a sequence like

Wizards: Elephant
Witches: Mouse
Wizards: Cat
Witches: Dog
Wizards: B - A - T - H
Witches: Telephone

at which point I have to admit I'm stumped so presumably the witches win that round. We'd have to kill off news Has Come to Harvard, but I believe that game's only hanging on while we await a replacement anyway.

[SM] Done.

[pen] Anywhere nice/interesting?

Normandie sur mer

[Softers] Down the coast - eating our way around Normandy! Marvellous thank you - perfect weather too.

[pen] Watch out for those dodgy moules ;o)

Am I the only person in the world who doesn't like seafood? I love fish, but if it comes out of the sea it's got to have a backbone if I'm going to eat it. The windy miller is the same. I wish I did like seafood, because so many other people seem to enjoy it so much.

[pen] My reaction to mussels is a reboot of the digestive system from both ends. Fish that looks like fish is fine, and prawns and shrimps are ok, but I'm wary of anything else from the sea. I wonder what these are like to eat?

[pen] Shame, the French love their moule et frites and it is standard fare everywhere.

Marine mouthfuls

(pen, Raak) With you on that. I'd rather eat Co-op Fish Fingers, let alone the real thing, than fancy stuff you have to pick at. What other people like doesn't bother me; I'm not a social eater, or a particularly elegant one.

Something fishy

[Raak & penelope & Software] I have tried eating (or swallowing) oysters but, regrettably, have yet to manage ingesting one. The same applies to asparagus. I suspect that it's something to do with the smell of them but have no solid evidence to support the hypothesis.
[Rosie] Whilst I do like fish meals, at least the ones I cook myself, I find they become cold long before I've managed to scoff the lot. When it comes to fine-boned fish I tend to your approach as it really is, unless one is starving, not worth the effort.
[All] Don't get me started on calamari. Maybe it is my aging teeth or the manner in which the samples to which I have been subjected have been cooked, but I'd rather try to eat a standard primary school 'rubber'.

Swimmingly

[Duj] Ditto calamari. It's just fried rubber bands, innit? And Aspragus... anything that makes your wee smell so bad can't be good for you, can it? Sadly, the Dutch here go a bundle over it, and I have to eat it to be polite. What's worse, they like the fat, white ones that have lived in the dark (like forced rhubarb), which are bigger than the small green shoots you get in Engeland.
Rhubarb, on the other hand, treated the proper way (plenty of sugar, and paired with either ginger or strawberries) is yummy. Fooled, crumbled or just stewed.

Stinky wee

[pen] Asparagus does have that strange effect but it is delicious. But I am with you all the way with rhubarb as long as there is cream, ice cream (the Belgian/Dutch way) or custard.

I have eaten plenty of asparagus, but I don't sniff my wee, so I've never noticed the oft-claimed effect.
Calamari (or squid, if we're not going to be all precious about it) is blummin' gorgeous in my opinion. Deep fried in a light batter (50/50 self-rasing and cornflour), it should be light and lovely. If it's rubbery it has been over-cooked.
I've had oysters, but I'm not as impressed as I thought I ought to be. Sweetbreads though are another contentious foodstuff that I love.

I have seen oysters eaten, whole and raw. That's quite enough for me.

Oysters

Are overrated in my opinion. Back in the 19th century they were poor peoples food.

I'm with Phil on this. Asparagus - delicious when fresh and in season (and the after-odour isn't that unpleasant or strong IMO). Calamari - rubbery = overcooked, properly cooked and fresh they almost melt and taste lovely. Oysters - nice - taste of the sea - but too expensive for what they are. In fact I like most molluscs and crustacea (though it's hard to do much with whelks).
We need to take some lessons from the chinese - Sour is as good a flavour as sweet and slimy is as good a mouth sensation as crunchy - just different.

[INJ] Have you tried sour beers (i.e. Belgian Lambics)? Fantastic once you eradicate the "beer shouldn't be sour" conditioning from your head.

Aerial oxidation

(Phil) How does that differ in principle from eradicating the "butter shouldn't be rancid" conditioning from your head? Sour beer tastes awful, like vinegar, which is what it is, at least partly.

[Rosie] Start with something like Hoegarden which is a wheat beer and has a slightly sour note. It's made with a sort of wheat porridge that gives it a great cloudy appearance and the orange and cardamon notes give it a spicy aroma. Once you have developed a taste for that the leap to things like the Lambics is not so great.

[Phil et al] I am rather partial to Franziskaner on a warm day. This is a wheat beer with an interesting smoky flavour. In fact around Munich there are many microbreweries that offer similar smoky beers.

Purveyors of sour beer

[Phil] I don't think I've tried Lambics. I've had plenty of wheat beers, including Hoegaarden and don't mind the slight sour edge to them. Whether I'd like anything further down that line will have to be determined by experiment.
BTW if you're ever in Derby you might like to visit what used to be a fairly unpleasant and run-down pub called 'The Royal Standard', now taken over by CAMRA and revived as The Brewery Tap. At quiet times they do a 'tasting tray' consisting of 3 or 4 different beers - about 1/3 pint of each.
On which thought, will you be serving in 2/3 pint measures?

[Rosie] Think of sour sweets, like fizzy-cola-bottle-type things. Or a really crisp granny smith apple. That sort of sour, not vinegar. I have a few bottles of Mort Subite Gueuze (which is a fairly easy entry point to the world of lambics) lying around, and may have one with my dinner tonight, now that my mind is on the subject.

[Software] Have you ever tried the Bamberg-brewed Schlenkerla Rauchbier. "Smoky" would be a massive understatement for it. Again, a shocking flavour and aroma at first, but it is truly wonderful once you get past that.
[CdM] A pub run by CAMRA? I shudder to think. It reminds me of the car that Homer Simpson designed.
More seriously, I hope their tasting tray is exactly a third of a pint of each (unlike the glasses CAMRA provided at the Derby beer festival, and at least one other I know of, where the third-pint line was at 0.3pints, instead of 0.33pints, meaning CAMRA themselves were selling 10% short measures). And I shan't be bothering with stocking 2/3pt glasses, if the legislation ever comes in. I don't do 1/3pt at present anyway, but 2/3 just seems silly to me.

(Phil) Aye, mebbe. I've had sour beer once or twice, the difference being it had gone off as opposed to being deliberately sour.

[Phil] I've not tried the Bamberg but it sounds interesting. Why does the government not grasp the bull by the horns and dump all imperial measures for good and just get on with what was started half-heartedly 40 years ago.

[Software] If we abandon the pint, what measures would you permit, or would you allow any size measure to be used?

[Phil] 25cl, 33cl, 50cl 1l

Hello again everybody. Turns out that I'd totally forgotten how to operate a keyboard. How are we all?

[INJ] I can appreciate your thinking, although I think a litre is a bit big for responsible consumption of draught beer. I don't want the law to change for a few reasons. One of which is that I seem resistant to change in general and I "like" pints. Also, I'll (probably) have to re-stock all my beer glasses, which could cost me over 500 quid.
It's currently a little frustrating that I can't sell a pint or half-pint of lemonade. I can sell a "large" or "small" lemonade, in pint and half-pint glasses. Or I can sell "568ml" or "284ml" in the same glasses. As far as I know, only beer, cider and milk can be legally be sold in pints in the UK, although there is no such restriction throughout the rest of Europe, where it is perfectly legal to use Imperial measures for anything.
Curiously "shandy and any other beverage of which beer is a constituent part" counts as beer for the Weights and Measures (Beer and Cider) Act 1998. So anything with a bit of draught beer in it, should be served in thirds or multiples of halves. How odd. I have in mind things like the Irish method of serving a Black Russian (with a Guinness head on it). Sorry, I've started thinking out loud now.

How rude

[nights] Hi ! :-)

[Phil] I did not say abandon the pint glass in pubs, the continentals do use them but you never actually get a pint in them - they do like their froth. What I was alluding to was the indecision of whether we are a metric or imperial nation. At the moment it is a=half cocked with some things sold in imperial and some in metric (metric martyrs in the marketplace for example). There needs to be clear leadership. As for selling liquids in taverns the UK still has a half-cocked approach. Spirits are metric; beer is imperial. While I agree that spirits should be sold in standard sizes (many continentals have a relaxed view on what constitutes a measure) I think that draught beer could be sold in whatever size glass that the licensee chooses - provided that it is priced accordingly and clearly stated.

Softers) Uniformity of units is not necessary except to the tidy-minded. All you need to know is what you're getting and for all users to be familiar with those units. A pub that sold beer in metric units would very likely lose a lot of customers. If it is not necessary to change it is necessary not to change. A pint glass of whatever style is a very familiar object (shut up at the back). This keeps people happier except for the aforesaid tidy-minded commitee members and they are very few in number. Actually we should use cubic attoparsecs (19.34 to the pint).

I've written about this before, but beer sizes in Australia are weird and wonderful.
In Melbourne the standard drink is a pot, which is 285ml. In Sydney this same measure is called a middy, in Hobart a ten and in Darwin a handle, while in Adelaide it is called a schooner (or even an up-sized schooner as the old schooner was 255ml or 9 fl oz), however, asking for a schooner in any other city will get you 425ml. If you want 425ml in Adelaide you will need to ask for a pint, but if you ask for a pint in any other city you get 570ml. To get this size of drink in Adelaide you need to ask for an Imperial Pint. In Darwin and north Queensland (where men are men and sheep are worried) you also get a 7, which is 200ml (probably because a small measure of beer stays cold, while a big beer goes warm over time - not because they like drinking girl sizes).
It makes travelling in Australia more adventurous.

Physics

(nfras) How can a small measure stay colder for longer than a large one? It doesn't; you drink it quicker. The small Queensland measures wouldn't go down too well in Carshalton (London Borough of Sutton) where not only are men men but women are as well.

[Rosie] He didn't say it stays colder for longer. He said it "stays cold" -- presumably for the period while you're drinking it. And there's no assumption that you drink it quicker; you drink it at the same rate :-) </outpedanting>

Blinks

[Phil] Is it really true that our friends on the continent can use imperial measures? I'd not heard that before, but I can believe it on the general observation that UK governments tend to believe that they must follow EU rules, whereas other European governments (notably France and Germany) know that nothing bad will happen if they don't.

Uncle Korky

I saw the moons of Jupiter last night, and very nice they were too - four of them, strung out in a line... didn't appear to be tied down at all...

[rab] It is UK legislation that has specifically outlawed imperial measures. There is no specific EU legislation to the same effect. So it is not the case that France and Germany et al have not applied EU legislation to the same extent as the UK, but that we have created extra legislation to deal with our own indecision.
This is what I have been told by someone I believe. I await correction though :-)

Pint

[Rosie] It would make no difference if beer were sold in either provided they were uniform and priced pro rata. Anyway, it would give unscrupulous barmen/maids the opportunity to short measure even more. [Phil/Rosie] my rant was about the indecision of government to go properly metric. Selling beer is pretty small beer (if you excuse the pun) it is the other nonsense that gets to me. Supermarket solids packaged in metric, liquid sold in imperial; Petrol sold in litres; building standards metric, distances measured in miles; temperature still given in Fahrenheit as well as Centigrade; metric taught at school and public weighing machines in imperial (my son was taught metric at school and does not understand pounds and ounces); the list of confusion goes on.

Furlong/elephant/fortnight

(Softers) Internally, railways still use chains and I don't mean the bit joining old loose-coupled goods wagons. I think we should remain Imperial because the words are part of the language and culture. Sixteen tonnes and what do you get? Deserved mockery.

[Software] Deep down, I know that standardisation is right, but I just simply love old Imperial measures (and coinage). A friend of mine who runs a flower wholesale outlet spent an entire day last week quoting all prices in old money, for fun. He didn't restrict himself to pounds, shillings and pence, oh no...tanners, florins, guineas, crowns, half-crowns and farthings were all brought into play. It made his day go by much faster.
There's a wonderful list of unusual units of measurement at one of my favourite websites, Phrontistery, which includes the dalton, the darcy, the footlambert and the face-cord. For sheer frivolity, I try to incorporate some of the words from that site into conversation, so I think it's quite easy to see why I want to cling on to Imperial measures.

The sins of omission

(Phil) What about the threepenny bit, everyone's favourite coin in those days? There's even a building named after it.

My thrupence-worth

My infant school, which was attached to the junior school I also attended (built in the 60s, I think) had a hall shaped like a 'thrupenny bit' and was known locally, for a time as 'The Thrupenny Bit School' to differentiate it from the junior school buildings, although there's no reference to it on Google, as far as I can find. It was Lacey Gardens Infant School, if anyone is interested...

[Rosie/Phil] Despite over two centuries of metrication the French still use old measures if you are worried about their eradication from the culture. They often use puce for inch, livre for pound (weight) and of course the demi for a half (pint).

[Software] Indeed, on a few occasions in France I've forgotten about that and have asked for a demi when I wanted a half-litre of beer.

(Softers) I know. Did you mean pouce? :-)

[Rosie] Oui.

Threp'ny Bit

[penelope] A pre WWII threepenny bit, or a post-blackout one?

Dodecagons

(SM) Few people, even of my age, have seen the silver threepenny bit. I was once given one as change by a bus conductor about 1953 but had to spend it to get home, or walk two miles. I have found another one (1920) in my heap of old coins. They're tiddlers, 5/8" across. The chunky version was around in 1940, as I have one, and two more from the sixties. They're nice. Equivalent in the fifties to about 30p in today's money.

Ag 3d

My mum used to have a few for sprinkling in the Christmas pud; although I can't remember ever seeing them in circulation. Here in the Channel Islands we had our own 3d bits. In Guernsey they were nickel silver with a scalloped edge and in Jersey they were round. The latter reason was why we never had 3d slots on our pay-on-answer paypghones.

Another broken tooth

I can just recall the silver threepenny bit in the Christmas pudding, but I think they'd all been lost by my adolescence. I don't know about the buying power of the dodecagonal version, but I can remember being able to buy a poke of chips for 3d around 1960.

In my young days...

In 1960, 3d was the standard child fare on an Edinburgh bus, 6d for adults. I remember my grandmother once showed me a silver thruppence, but I don't remember what it looked like. But here's a site with more info.

Boose fare? Ye 'ad boose fare?

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a silver 1.25p piece when I was very young, but I don't think we still had them for the Christmas pudding. I expect INJ had eaten them all.

CdM, you just made milk come out of my nose. I wouldn't have minded so much, but some of the cornflakes I was eating as I read took the same route.

Uncle Korky

[SM] I'm re-assured that you were eating cornflakes at the time. I'd be worried if this was a phenomenon that could occur spontaneously.

flerdle

*wanders out into the back garden with a book and a drink*

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

Autumnal evening classes...

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?

gggghhhastly

[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.

Cockup

"problem" = "no problem"

prrrroblems

[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.

cok op

speaking = speaker, toch?

Gegokoop

[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. :-)

*wipes keyboard with damp cloth*

Boolbar

Blimey!

This old place still exists. Horrah!

Hail Boolbar!

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

Sailing

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)

enough silence

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

Forgiven

Not your fault I sure, pen ;o)

hasn't thought of anything witty and amusing to add to any games recently.

*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.

Calm Nordsee Crossing?

[pen] Shurely an oxymoron?

Meteorological orthodoxy

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

Timing

ticker ticker Timex

[Rab] Good, bad or indifferent?

Time

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

Which reminds me

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!

Juxtapose

game idea?

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.

Obviously still too new... What does Simons Mith mean in the limerick game by 'see comments'? Where do I look for comments?

[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.

backetry

Back. Ferry apparently headed back towards the English coast in the middle of the night so some poor chap with fits could be helicoptered orf. After all the fuss was over, I got up at 6am and went out on deck with a huge cup of tea and a piece of my mum's neighbour's best fruitcake for breakfast expecting to see the lights on Rotterdam and we were still in the middle of the black North Sea. Quelle disappointment. However, all was well. The customs people didn't object to the vintage stationary engine I had stashed in the boot, and the trousers I bought for the windy miller fit like a charm.

Trousers

[penelope] You bribed the customs officers with trousers?

This weekend I will be mostly...

we're leaving the mill on Saturday lunchtime and heading back to Blighty via Dover for a wedding near Bath on Sunday. And then dashing back to NL. This time, the windy miller is coming with me - hurrah!

Huwelijk

Dat is groot. Veilige reis!

HQcSHWag

OzjYFXdF

Hi! crEgCiaE

Great, now we've got Klingons as well as Dutchmen.

So we have double dutch?

I believe Klingon is actually a 70-30 mix of Polish and 133t-sp33k

Gormless old git

(SM) Can't figure out what 133t-sp33k is. Something to do with teaspoons, 133 of them?

[Rosie] Something along those lines. And good afternoon everybody.

It's a count of the average number of grains of demerara sugar. 133 teaspoons hold 33,000. Obvious really.

That's a mere 225 grains per teaspoon, which doesn't seem quite enough. It all depends on de size of dem grains. Is there an EU standard?

It's a level teaspoonful.

That means about 22 mg per grain, which is probably about right. If it were cyanide or nicotine you be approximately 50% dead.

[Rosie] Interesting coincidence, work today has had a similar effect on me.

*waved from Palma de Mallorca, message delayed in transmission*

It was surprisingly nice there.

I hestitate to mention it...

... but here in sunny Strasbourg, Christmas is upon us, with the opening of the annual Christmas markets. How are things looking elsewhere in the Morniverse?

Bah humbug... or pepernoten

Here in the Netherlands, Sintaklaas (December 5) is more important than Christmas. His arrival from Spain, as documented on national TV, was dogged by bad weather, but he is already out and about with his blacked-out moorish assistants, strangely all called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) and gathering information about how good the children have been. Children leave their shoes out overnight in the hope of having them filled with sweets (snoepjes) if they've been good, and a lump of coal is they haven't. Traditional sweets are particular to Dutch tastes - pepernoten which looks like earwax and tastes of aniseed, and strange crunchy things that look like dog meal and taste of aniseed. I'm not fond of aniseed...

Pelargonia

I made some pelargonium cuttings earlier in the year - far more than I could ever possibly use. Enough to start a small nursery, in point of fact. And of course, as I didn't really care whether they lived or died, most of the little blighters have survived. So what shall I do with 'em all now? I've got dozens and dozens! Any suggestions? Anyone want a few pot plants?

Oh, they're Mabel Grey. Small, pretty purple flowers, but their main schtick is that their leaves smell of lemon sherbert.

gerania

[Simons] Give them away as Christmas presents or let a a charity market stall sell them? I'd have a few for my purple patch - they sound nice.

OK, it just took me about 45 minutes to cross the city centre on my bike, versus the usual 15. The markets are beginning to annoy me.

(nights) Which city? Truro? Los Angeles?

[Rosie] Strasbourg, capital of overpriced tat - at the moment at least. Oh, the tourists.

Invading markets

[nights] I shouldn't worry too much, at least not just yet. I think the plan is to do England first.

Blue geese

[Simons Mith] I knew it. I knew all that money and time wasn't being expended for the simple reason of spreading holiday cheer and joy.

Surfing archives elsewhere...

Next time there's a slot open, I vote we use the team colours option for a game of "Eamon the Chivalrous".

[Tuj] What's that, then?

Such a ladies' man, so he is.

(nights) Good question. I Think We Should Be Told.

A rather schizophrenic MC variant I noticed high up the lists in the archives at MCiOS and Orange. And I'm very much a fan of the team colour options rab gave us.

[Eamon the Chivalrous] I like it, a lot.

quietly now... someone might be reading this

*whispers* It's my last official day in the office before Crimbo. I'm only coming in tomorrow (a 70km round trip, btw) to collect my Christmas box! Below freezing all day today in Rotterdam. Nearly -5C this morning as I got into the car - and surprisingly as I reached the campus too.

Brass Monkey

Chilly this morning although no frost, the air was surprisingly dry and pretty well no wind here on the island. I think it felt colder yesterday because of the wind chill. [pen] if you are on yers 'ols you can maybe squeeze in some practice for the canal skating ;0)

More brass monkey

It's been snowing here since 11.30 a.m. and has just about stopped now. Total less than an inch. Temperature zero and last night it went down to -7°. (Top right-hand bit of Surrey).

We had a high of -1 here in Strasbourg, and a few snowflakes. Météo France are promising a lot of snow this weekend, but frankly, I don't trust any organisation that insists its name is written in print in ALL CAPS.

Happiness is

[Rosie] Twenty minutes ago the temperature at my humpy was 40.3ºC. It has now dropped by nearly a degree. I'm ever so happy. ;)

Megathermality

(Dujon) You're welcome to that even though I see from the latest Richmond AFB METAR that the humidity is quite low. Highest ever (i.e. since 1983) at Hughes Hall is 35.9°C, 10 Aug '03. Interesting, but I are a sweaty little f****r and don't want too much of it. 30°C is all right every now and then but we haven't even reached that in the last 3 years.

[Rosie] I assume you'll have got the snowshoes out to ensure that you get snowed in at the pub, rather than at the Hughes residence tonight, what with 20cm forecast for your area.

Bah! Its rain again today here. Still chilly, though.

A light covering of snow here, but a very slow thaw at between 0 and +1C. Grey and overcast though, so useless for taking photos. More snow later!

flerdle

variable

It was 39°C here yesterday. I did not sweat, but many others on the trams looked very hot and bothered. Now it is 15°C and raining.

The last few days can be seen here (it refreshes and will scroll off in a couple of days).

(INJ) I'm just beginning to think they've overdone it for this particular area because the wind is too northerly whereas it needs to be north-east for us to get a good dumping when the snow is generated by convection over the North Sea, which is still surprisingly warm. East Anglia and north Kent will get it but I'm probably just too far west, even allowing for the altitude (560 ft). Verification time (as they call it) will be tomorrow afternoon. There won't be much after that.

Snow

3 inches so far and not much more to come, I reckon. The newsgroup (uk.sci.weather) are absolutely wetting themselves but many of them seem to have little other life than weather + computers.

Juxtapose

No relevance, I just really quite liked this sentence.

The visiting fans were aghast when she blatantly snorted a powdery substance up her nose and nearly cause a large scale riot but although she stopped play and quickly looked in her rule-book, just because an uppity linesman stated that Thomas Cech definitely was offside, an official spokesman snorted and stated sarcastically that such a strange combination of circumstances would hardly explain how the former mistress of the Compte de Bergerac was magnificent but forever embarrassed that her sinuous proboscis protruded into the area.

I thought it was supposed to be summer

I caught the Great Melbourne Run on Sky Sports last night in my hotel room. I'd rather be in Leeds - torrential rain and a grey sky down there, when we'd had mostly cold & clear.

Oh, and about 2 inches of snow in the evening and overnight - roads clear, pavements tricky.

it sneeuwt

-4°C outside the house and -6°C outside the village, plus a couple of inches of snow. It all looks very nice indeed.

After a 20 minute flurry yesterday which left very unrealistic-looking white powder on my garden, which melted a bit, then froze solid, it's snowing again now. It's settling nicely too. Lovely weather for the funeral party who will be arriving in 90 minutes

[Phil] Yes, if one of them were to fall and hurt themselves it would cast a bit of a gloom across the proceedings.

Verification time

3 inches of snow (8 cm). Rainfall equivalent 8.3 mm after I'd melted and measured it. This is just slightly more than the normal amount for such a depth. In February I got 28 cm (11") snow from 21.3 mm rainfall equivalent.
(INJ) You are a very naughty boy.

[INJ] One of the funeral (cremation) party commented that at least the departed ended the day warmer than they did. He didn't say this to the bereaved family though.

It's snowing again in Leicester, with plenty forecast (or not, depending on whose forecast you believe) overnight.

Here for the duration

6 inches of snow since last night - Coniston in the Southern Lake District.
I haven't brought my power supply for my laptop, so this is probably my last communication for a week. I'll therefore be the first to say Merry Christmas to all of you. Have a really good break and may you all receive what you would have hoped for.

Well, the snow didn't arrive. So we have now had the sum total of about half an inch over a period of 3 days. We do have very, very icy roads though, so at least I can have some fun.

(Phil) Handbrake turns at your age? I dunno.
(INJ) Cheers, and may your stocking contain an adaptor.
I sent a card to my newsagent for delivering my paper every day, having all the stuff I want etc etc. But I'd bought the card there. Is there a term for this?

[Rosie] Yes - agedness.

[Rosie] Driving is one of the few pleasures left in my life....

Donuts (or doughnuts)

It appears that many regions of the U.K. are experiencing rather cold weather. As I type there is a cyclone banging around and about the northwestern bit of Australia. Now, just about anyone who lives here would tell you that Marble Bar is hot and could possibly be nominated as the hottest location in the country. The said cyclone has just clipped Marble Bar.
So I had a little bit of a look at Marble Bar. Even though I live here and know its reputation I didn't know this little bit of information relative to the town.
"It is known as 'the hottest town in Australia' a fact which is still recorded by the Guinness Book of Records. For 161 consecutive days to 20 April 1924 the temperature in the town never dropped below 100°F (37.8°C)."
I do so hope that that bit of trivia will make you feel a wee bit warmer. ;(

(Dujon) Doesn't the record actually say that the maximum temperature each day reached 100°F for 161 consecutive days. I can't believe that it stayed above 100°F all night, every night. That has happened very occasionally in the Sahara (and probably elsewhere) in high summer but is very rare.
At the moment a temperature of 5°C would be nice. It hasn't been that high since last Sunday week and it's been down to -7°. White Christmas? No thank you. That white stuff is cold and stops you getting about.

Bing Crosby

[Rosie] As usual here in the channel we have missed the worst of it. A sprinkling last Thursday which caused mayhem on the roads and now the sun is shining and its about 7C.

Yeah. White (near-)Christmases aren't all they're cracked up to be. Though we've had some crunchy goodness here, so I've not been sliding around too much on it.

[Rosie] Possibly so, but I don't really know and thus accept the data. In Dec./Jan. 1988/9 or thereabouts I spent four or five weeks in a place called Hillston. That was a dreadful period. At a guess I'd say that I experienced 14 days of overnight temperature above 100ºF. I shall check and report back should I find any objective observations.

Desert songs

(Dujon) I looked at OZBOM, an excellent site, and it confirmed that it was the maxima that were all over 100°F. I suspect the minima were mostly 25° to 30°. In the last few years Adelaide has had a record high minimum of 34°C. To get a minimum of 100°F (37.8°C) you really need quite a stiff breeze to stop the lowest layers cooling and becoming decoupled from the circulation. You get a sandstorm thrown in for good measure, of course. The only place that doesn't seem to need this condition is Death Valley, where there have been several well-authenticated instances of the night minimum being above 110°F. Glad I'm not the weather observer there, or in Ojmjakon, Siberia, January mean -50°C. Yes, fifty. Wrap up well, as my Mum used to say.

Chalky

the season

Festive Fun wishes to all x

No sweat

[Rosie] Thank you. I must have missed that information, thanks for the clarification. As far as wrapping up well is concerned your Mum's advice sounds like it should have been originally decreed by one of those pesky Yorkshire men (before they subsisted on gravel, of course). ;)

Happy Christmas, whether you believe in anything or not. I like Dec 25th - probably my happiest day of the year.

Juxtapose

Merry Christmas from your friends in the States. Today in Seattle (where it is still the 24th for another few hours) the weather was truly lovely - a Christmas oddity since we usually receive rain every December.
Thanks for inventing MC, and then for letting us with no Tubes play too. =)

Ching

Merry Chingmas!

Happy Non-Demominational Generic Winter Season Festival, everyone. (I'm told Hannukah is still on back order.)

Hakunnah? True, there's none in the shops here either, SM. I blame the Buying Department.

Looking back, if that was my happiest day of the year, the rest must be bloody miserable.

Wow!

Well - the finest winter week I've had in Britain for many a year. Most days crisp and clear, some snowfall most nights to top up any thaw and to keep it all looking nice. Plenty of fairly low-level walks with stunning views of the Lake District tops. It was real picture postcards stuff. Temperatures at valley floor level 0-2 during the day going down to -4 or -5 overnight. Got up to about 500m one day but just too much snow - breaking trail and post-holing to mid-thigh has me knackered after about 10 minutes these days.
A recommendation: try the Church House Inn in Torver - 5 locally brewed real ales and a chef who really knows how to cook.

[INJ] Sounds wonderful. I've just caught Julia whatserface doing one of Wainwright's walks on the BBC this mrorning - in summer, I presume - and I can imagine it was an uplifting Xmas week for you. Here in Zuid Holland, we're back to the dim, dank 2-degrees-and-withering-damp weather that eats your core. Yuk.

Happy New Year

Farewell the noughties, hail the new and sparkling teens.

(Softers) Well, at least the sun has come out. Well, I presume it's the sun.

I take it all back. Minus 5 degrees, dry, cold and clear-ish, with plenty of snow at ours, much less in the centre of Rotterdam and mostly clear roads. There was a lovely red sunrise this morning as I drove (late) to work because the car needed scraping free of ice a second time after the windy miller did it for me earlier. And a lovely street party last night with the neighbours - pea soup, rokeworst, rum punch and a brazier. And a enlarged version of a board+puck game similar to shove-ha'penny, at which I did not suck. Hurrah!

If anyone's interested - it's not gone above zero here in Strasbourg since I got back, heavy snow and wind shut the trams down for a bit on Friday night, and everyone's just getting on with their lives. It doesn't, however, stop me cursing the security guard at work's name up and down when he won't open the building at 7h45 instead of 8h. Grr.

[nights] Getting on with it? Whatever next!

I Say, Porter!

[nights] Let's all sing together, shall we: "Jobsworth, jobsworth, it's more than me jobsworth". Blimey where did I drag that one up from.

"I don't care, rain or snow,
Whatever you want, the answer's no."
Is that as old as TW3 - I have an image of Lance Percival singing it.

I always thought it was a Jeremy Taylor song; certainly I remember him singing it, and I always assumed he wrote it. Now I must go to the google.

Looks like you're right, but that's not the context in which I remember it. It's definitely in black and white in my memory.
[IS,P] Did you spend any time in South Africa?

Whoever sang it, I would love to teach it to the people of France. However I've yet to find a good translation for "jobsworth". But yes, people are just dealing with the cold - the phrase "Keep Calm and Carry On" seems apposite.

Jobsworth

Looks like it's probably 'That's Life' I remember it from.

The Jobsworth Song

I don't know that song, but in my head as I read the words they fitted themselves to the tune of christmas carol 'Torches'.

Hellooooo?

It's been very quiet in here for the past week.