I am sad about Hershey's practices. I just found out that they source their cocoa from cacao farms that use slave labor. Children are sold to farmers, never paid, are beaten . . . Mars and Nestle are not great, either. However, they promised to stop these practices by 2020. Cadbury for you brits is fine, but Hershey's distributes it in the United States.

[Kaggers] I suppose this is why it's important to check that Incidentally, we're Britons, not 'brits', pfffft. (And Norwegians, Australians, and residents of just about every country in between those two.)

Too much maybe?
Yeah.
O-Kaaaaaay

*slopes off*

[Chalks] It's not as if you do it every day, or even every week. Welcome back, missus!

[ChalkyPhilCdMIrach] Does anyone who contributed a line to the riddle glow-worm know what the answer was? I can only find one word that seems to satisfy all clues, are there others?

Hidden text

I can only find 'nerd'.

[Knobbly] That was all I found. I'd been staring at line 1 wanting to make the answer "Néa" but couldn't conjure a line 2 which would squeeze two accented words in.

[Knobbly] So it would seem.

Hidden text

"neon" would have been possible, prior to line 4

. A little apt, I suppose?

I didn't think of Néa when I posted Line 3 (I should have), so i was aiming for NERD at that point -- because, as Phil said, it seemed fitting.

I read the glow worms, but I missed the riddle. All this "line 1" talk is making me think poetry. I think you Britons *rolls eyes at self* might like this poem of mine: Bigfoot's Love Slave.

Gosh. I clicked. Powerful ending.

Making my name show on everything in the first box.

Back in NL. I have been hen-partied. :o/

I do hope you maintained your cool and didn't wear any fairy wings, pen.

[Softers] No way. We had a very sophisticated evening in a Greek restaurant, not even any plate-smashing. And today, my department at work threw a bash for me too - with a water-taxi down the Oude Maas to the Hotel New York in Rotterdam for afternoon tea, and back again. The weather cleared up spectacularly and it was wonderful. The poor old windy miller didn't get supper cooked for him tonight - I was still stuffed! (But I did cycle to the Chinese takeaway for him)

Saw the Staffordshire Hoard (or at least some of the finer pieces) on Saturday at Lichfield Cathedral - remarkable for its quality (gold filigree and cloisonné work, etc.). There's a moment in the video presentation where one of the experts says: "We get asked if this is the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever found - it's the ONLY Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard ever found". Also went to Wightwick (pronounced 'wittik') Manor, possibly the best William Morris house in the country. Morris never saw it, but it was entirely furnished from Morris's shop in Oxford Street by the Mander family of Mander's Paints.
Also had a quick look at CdM's childhood home.

[INJ] I'd love to see that. The hoard, not CdM's childhood home - I doubt it even has a blue plaque, does it?

[Pen] Not any more, it hasn't.

A week since the last post - anyone got anything interesting to report? This morning, I'm going to take my camera down to the windy miller's (non-functioning) mill at Maasdam, and take photos. One of his apprentices spent four days creating decorations for it for our wedding; buntings, 6ft carved initials painted red, and carved intertwined wedding rings, all strung between the tips of the sails and floodlit. He took us out to see it the night before we got married. *beams*

As usual at this time of year, spent in a friend's cottage in the North York Moors. Almost didn't make it along the track on Friday after torrential rain. After that fine walking in forest and over the largest expanse of heather moorland in the world - all bright purple and with a glorious sweet scent. Cold and windy, mind you.

[INJ] Excellent. A week on Sat, I'm off to Wensleydale, to play in the Hardraw Scaur Brass Band Contest. Also spending a week in Swaledale for half-term. Can't wait to get back up to North Yorkshire :-)

*yearns for a proper bit of Wensleydale* God I miss English cheese.

Ah, yes. The clog stuff is a bit waxy. Great for using one of those cheese slicers that they love, though.

Dutch cheese - always highly spoken of, but as far as I can make out (and I may have said this before elsewhere), there are only three varieties. However you can have them at any age you like. But until they get a couple of years old, there's no real taste, and no texture. And you can't grate it - ever. I think it's a bit arse-about-elbow to design the cheese to suit the cheese slicer, isn't it? And the cheese slicer/cheese scraper/cheese plane only works for about 40% of the truckle - it doesn't work once to get towards the edges of the cheese. Surprisingly inefficient for the Dutch. Rant over. Now bring me some proper cheese, please.

[pen] At least it's lower in fat than cheddar et al.

[pen] agreed about the slicer. Mine seem to go mad towards the edge; I'd thought it was just me.

My taste in cheese is not so sophisticated. *prepares for ostracism*. I don't like camembert or brie or veiny or runny or very hard very smelly cheese. I do like what is sold here as "Dutch smoked", whether it has anything to do with the Netherlands I'm not sure. Thinking about it, liking it might, in part, be due to growing up with Kraft processed cheddar (in the blue cardboard box, doesn't need refrigeration), which it does bear a passing resemblance to in texture. Not sure if that product ever got to the UK, i think it was a US thing that turned up here in the 40s or 50s. I haven't eaten the stuff for decades, I found a tin of it in Oman but wasn't game to actually eat more than a small wedge to confirm its identity.

Anyway, crumbly feta (not smooth, yuk) is good. A nice cottage cheese sometimes finds its way into my diet. Cheddar, well, what is sold here as cheddar, no idea if it is or not, is my main cheese, in a lower fat variety, not because I'm a low fat fanatic, but because this particular one just seems to be less greasy, especially when melted or grilled where it turns out beautifully, compared to some others.

And i will fight even my best friends and relations for haloumi. You have been warned :o)

[flerdle] Just buy double the amount. I like mine grilled with a sprinkling of fresh chopped mint and freshly-ground black pepper.

Nooooo, it's mine, all mine, i tell you.

Damn you. Now I'm checking out sausages punt en el and slavering over my desk. The sausagepalace is only about 7km from the windy miller's office. I can see I'll have to make a visit. (And then probably hate them and end up making my own with the new KitchenAid mixer-with-meat-grinder-attachment-and-sausage-stuffer-thingamebob that is about to be purchased with the wedding present money.)

I love cheese. Almost all varieties (only one I can think of that I don't like is cottage cheese). I like hard, soft, creamy, waxy, crumbly, mild, mature, sharp, sweet, blue, goat's, ewe's, cow's, flavoured and so on. Love 'em all.
However, I am on a self-imposed low saturated fat diet, so the only cheese I eat now (other than for a very rare treat) is low-fat cream cheese. Then again, I loved smoking, but I don't do that any more either.

Went to my first pub games last night (Sept. 7 - USA/Central time) so, like um, what 2am Friday for Brits? I forget . . .

It was at a Celtic Pub. I also had Bangers and Mash there. Different.

[KS] Kilts on ankles is fashionable? That would be one kilt per ankle I assume. That's a new one on me. On the other hand, kilts round ankles......

I'm trying to think of a kilt pun, but I'm failing.

[pen] It's for the best, the community frowns on puns here. Tell a bad one and you might get kilt.

[pen] I think Tuj may try to get a monopoly on the kilt puns, but I'll try to make sure he doesn't hog manay of them.

It's poor 'uns that we really frown upon.

You can make them more presentable by tartan them up.

It was from a game, basically "pin the tail on the donkey." It was "tape the kilt on the Scotsman, though." I ended up putting it on his ankle! I think a kilt on each ankle would be pretty cool - new fashion instead of bell bottoms!

As for puns, I have the BEST pun ever, but you have to know technical terms about the Christan fish and Swedish/Norwegian/ (thus, unfortunately sometimes) Lutheran cuisine.

I know an absolutely filthy pun in French. Only works in French though.

Does the pun involve a pullover, perchance?

[SM] Indeed :)

My pun does not involve a pullover and is in English. I might be able to read the French one, might not. I need to brush up on my French.

[Phil] So it's not the one about the vicar, the bicycle and the scouring powder?

I don't know if a technical issue with my hosts has affected this site but if you have noticed any outages it's due to "severe flapping of HSRP on customer vlans". I thought I should pass that on.

Huge Sheets of Rubberised Paper.