I asked the landlord once before when times were hard - he said we wouldn't even get a tanner for ours. (that's a joke in old money)

Wouldn't that be 'alf a bob?

Nielsen wrote:

Wouldn't that be 'alf a bob?

Indeed, which brings a whole new meaning to the expression "a bob a job".

The contents of cesspits were a very valuable source of saltpeter (ammonium and sodium nitrate) which was used in the manufacture of gunpowder. In England the government could demand householders to allow their pits to be dug out by government contractors for the extraction of this "nightsoil" to supply the munitions industry. The government contractors did not generally do a clean job and often left buildings seriously undermined and unstable, and accordingly they were universally hated. The saltpeter was also of value for the dyeing and tanning industries, and of course simply as a general fertilizer. When Roger the Raker drowned in his own excrement it was probably his because he'd collected it and was storing it for sale, rather than it all being of his own personal production.

Hatsheput and LiR,

excuses, for some reason I hadn't seen your messages:
"My husband had three boxes of Meccano...
"I haven't seen the Sandhamm murders, Paul...
Thank you so much for sharing all this with me...each day one learns something new overhere...take now for example the word "syder" from Vizzer, which is new to me...someone, who takes sides...?


Kind regards to both from Paul.

Vizzer wrote:

No truces or non-aggression pacts or agreeing to disagree etc please - we're Res Historicans. 

I assert that the August Bank Holiday weekend is a time for syder.

Vizzer,

glad to see you once again overhere. 
"a time for syder"
As I didn't know the word I put it with "" into the mighty Google and see it said it was Danish
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/syder
and from that:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sider#Middle_English
and from that:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sider
A Kid on the internet who usually gets butthurt when you [url=https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=try and]try and[/url] hurt his ego.

Kind regards from Paul.

Dog manure - "pure" - was the most highly esteemed by the tannery trade.

In the 1990s when I went work in London I initially stayed with some friends who had a copy each of London's Poor and London's Underworld.  I remember reading about a poor woman who was I think getting on in age who had applied for some financial assistance but made a bit of a living by collecting dog droppings from the streets for tanners.  Going from memory I think people asked why she needed more money if she was already getting something (it was a pittance) from collecting dog droppings.  I'll have to see if I can find the reference on archive.org which does have some out of copyright books recorded there.  There was a TV series from about 1997 Drovers' Gold - I don't remember it awfully well but some drovers were being given a hard time by their landlord and decided to drive their cattle to London to try and get a better deal than in the local markets.  Towards the end of the series a young boy pushed someone who was having a go at one of his friends or relations.  The baddy fell downstairs and I can't remember whether he was injured or killed.  The boy ran away and ended up living on the streets of London and was befriended by a young girl of around his own age who was foraging for dog droppings who told him that in a posher part of London "You get a better class of dog".

PaulRyckier wrote:

"a time for syder"
As I didn't know the word I put it with "" into the mighty Google and see it said it was Danish

Yes - it's one of the many alternative spellings for ceydre, saedyr etc. The Danish connection is spot on though as Kent has a link with that country via Old Jutish. The language is said to survive in pockets in the North Downs as well as in a smattering of hamlets (sic) in Jutland. For example visitors from the Little Scandinavian Peninsular when arriving on British shores at, say, Dover will l find the signs saying 'Lynx Pharen' easily recognisable.

The signs, of course, refer to the local big cats whose sudden appearance can sometimes startle drivers not used to British roads. Samuel Johnson believed that the word 'pharen' meant 'majestic attitude' and was derived from the name of the rulers of ancient Egypt. In other words the lynx think that they own the road. James Bothwell, however, suggested that pharen came from the Old Norse 'fær' meaning sheep as in the Faroe Islands and that the lynx were as big as sheep and/or preyed upon them. Other etymologists have dismissed that interpretation too and have suggested that pharen comes from the Old Celtic 'fearrann' meaning land or manor etc. In other words it's the lynx' gaff and don't you forget it. So maybe Johnson was on the right track (or should that be the left track) after all.

For the benefit of those who don't read Old Jutish then an Italian version of the sign reads: 'Attenzione! Circolazione stradale - guida a sinistra.' With my dog Latin then I'd translate that as saying something link 'Take Care! Your circulation will become sinister.' Which might suggest that the sight of the proud feline on the side of the road at dusk could make one's blood run cold.

Vizzer after Gil, now you...hein...

"links fahren"

I see now that the English subtitles are gone. But I had them by clicking on the "wheel" they are rather well, I suppose the Latin and Albanese subtitles are less recognizable even for native speakers...


And those Lynx in Britain, I thought it was a joke but see
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/21/plan-to-return-lynx-to-uk-receives-fresh-boost

And we? We have wolves...hein...in comparison with a lynx...hein...
https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/56874/another-wolf-spotted-in-belgium/

Kind regards from Paul.

Common warning sign in this area.

This thread goes all over the place, from bruising to warships and their names to cesspits to dog-droppings etc (what has happened to trebuchets and gannets etc) but I felt sure in the last two pages someone had mentioned the cricket. If I am mistaken and they haven't well, it's just another sidetrack to go on. But what an amazing result. Everyone has been praising Ben Stokes (I typed in Strokes which would have been appropriate but incorrect) but I found the man at the other end equally deserving of praise. Anyway it's hard for a NZer not to think of Stokes as a traitor! Even though he has lived in England the best part of 20 years.

It was I who mentioned cricket, Caro, noting that the dismal truth was at last dawning on an exhausted and disillusioned nation. But then a hero arose!

Perhaps we should send Stokes and his trusty bat to Biarritz. Boris is certainly bowling a fair few googlies over there, but we need more than that.

As ever, the Sun speaks for our great nation:


CRICKET fans called on Ben Stokes to be knighted – and made Prime Minister – after his Ashes miracle innings.
Stokes bashed the Aussies for 135 runs that gave England a scarcely believable victory in the Third Test at Headingley.

PS Do you have to be born here to get to be Prime Minister (as in USA?) - I suppose Stokes would not qualify? But I'm sure we could change the rules, if such a rule does apply. The circumstances are exceptional.


EDIT: Boris Johnson was, of course, born in New York to Englsih parents, but renounced his US citizenship. Good grief - had he not done so, could Boris have run for President? The mind boggles.

EDIT2: The US were going to hit him with a tax bill!

Boris Renounces US Citizenship

According to the Electoral Commission, the requirements for someone to become UK Prime Minister are that they firstly be a member of the UK Parliament. To be able to stand as a candidate at a UK Parliamentary general election you must, on the day you are nominated and on polling day, be at least 18 years old and "either a British citizen, a citizen of the Republic of Ireland or an eligible Commonwealth citizen. Citizens of other countries (including EU member states other than the UK, Republic of Ireland, Cyprus and Malta) are not eligible to become a Member of the UK Parliament."

Andrew Bonar Law (PM 23 October 1922 – 20 May 1923) was born in New Brunswick in 1858, which is now a province of Canada but was then a British colony. Bonar Law left Canada for Scotland with his family in 1870, which was three years after the Canadian Confederation had been formed. Accordingly he was a Canadian citizen and I don't think he ever relinquished his Canadian citizenship throughout his career in British politics.

Decided to relegate this one to the Res Hiss septic tank. Possibly was not tactful to mention the Duke of Wellington in the present political climate.

Worried that post-Brexit the French Forumotion authorities will put a 10% tariff on every deleted post in the pit. I could end up owing a small fortune.

The man who designed Wellington's famous footwear, an adaptation of the Hessian boot which used softer leather and was "tailored to the calf", was a Capel Street shoemaker, James Tandy. The Tandy's shod all the Wellesley clan, and while it might appear that such a business relationship favoured the Tandy's over the Wellesley's, a huge attraction for the Wellesley's - a family fallen on quite hard times financially - in employing the Tandy's for this purpose was the latter's willingness to run a "slate", one which grew in length prodigiously as young Wellesley's career advanced and the promises to "fix up once we get rich again" for once seemed to at least have some chance of being little more than wishful thinking on everyone's part.

By the time of Waterloo Tandy reckoned he had already hand-crafted and delivered about 40 pairs of this not inexpensive vanity to young Wellesley, with payment outstanding on all but the first pair (Wellesley's poor mother had paid for them under instruction from her young ensign son at the time).  Letters to the increasingly prestigious general and later field marshal begging for at least some small token of remuneration went unanswered, and even his mother's written entreaties not to piss off the Tandy's merely earned rebuke from the young sod reminding her of the class to which she now belonged thanks to his regular promotions compared to that in which Tandy most definitely belonged.

Eventually Tandy solicited the help of an Irish MP to "confidentially broach" the subject with the general at the London club to which both belonged. When Wellesley heard the now considerable bill that was owed he did what any true blue blooded member of the English gentry would also do. He switched his custom to the shoemaker Hoby of St James Street in London, allowed Hoby to take credit for the design and to use the relationship in all advertisements for the firm (something Tandy had been too civilised to do considering the delicacy of the situation regarding the Wellesley family's finances in a gossipy village of a capital such as Dublin in which news that one member of the family was still getting regular supplies of swanky boots would immediately alert every other creditor to go on the warpath). On the basis of Hoby's publicity the boots rapidly acquired the status of high fashion and became the footwear of choice for every dandy and wannabe upper-cruster in society London. Hoby, along with several other English bootmakers, made a fortune.

On the promotion of the now Duke of Wellington to Prime Minister in 1828 a very aged James Tandy was approached by a reporter from the Dublin Journal to express how he felt that such an esteemed ex-customer and an Irishman to boot (pardon the pun) had now reached so exalted an office (in Dublin everyone knew the famous boots had been a local man's original innovation, though up to now unaware of the fact that Tandy had loyally provided so many pairs of the design to his less than reliable customer). It was at this moment Tandy decided enough was enough and to make public the fact that the "great general and honourable statesman" was rather less than he seemed in the honour department. He brokered this sentiment to the reporter upon being solicited a reaction to the Prime Ministerial appointment with the immortal words, "Well, we'd always known in this house he was a treacherous little shit, but now he's gone to such extraordinary lengths to prove to the rest of Ireland that he is one too".

To be fair to the journalistic integrity of the Dublin Journal (the "Irish" Times before there was ever an "Irish Times"), they quoted the man with only slight modification - they replaced "shit" with "cack" so as not to offend the unilingual.

Petty was the great grandson of the "original" William Petty, the half blind self-taught surgeon (at 15 years of age) who arrived in Ireland patching up Cromwell's troops, amputating limbs, flushing out bowels, and all the other marvellous things military medics got up to in those days (probably same as now, just with one hacksaw and a scrubbing brush). As a reward he received a huge amount of confiscated land which, to his credit, he did voluntarily give a large portion of back to its original owners when Ormonde later took charge after the Restoration and introduced an Act of Restitution. Given that he was very much a Cromwell man, not a good start to one's citizenship in the fair isle, he became actually a very popular figure in Ireland, not least because he became the "National Nutty Professor" and was hugely entertaining as he designed and built giant catamarans, brought dead maidservants back to life on the autopsy table, electrocuted cats and sheep, and various other things that always attracted a lot of attention and often huge audiences. He sealed his popularity by ultimately refusing elevation to the Shelbourne title, though he did allow his son to adopt this rank once he himself was safely dead.

The lad you refer to grew up in England (though held these Irish titles), and other than regular rent payments coming into his London bank accounts from his great grandfather's estates probably would have been hard pressed to remember what or where Ireland might in fact be. If he was feted as the first Irishman to be appointed PM then I reckon it was as big a surprise to him as it would have been to most Irish people (who had presumed the Petty's safely out from under their feet for yonks).

He had a nice wife, though. Sofia, besides giving him the Lansdowne title and two kids, was also a pretty good painter and a sort of "one woman National Trust", using the Granville money she inherited to purchase tracts of woodland and convert them into "public parks".  She died all too young, and Petty married an inferior model alas, Louisa, though she at least was genuinely Irish and allowed Petty to pretty much embezzle and squander what remained of the ancient Ossory fortune she'd brought with her into the marriage. Fair to say that Petty may be remembered in Ireland, but more for being an opportunistic thieving little git than as any source of misplaced national pride.

He's already incurred my displeasure because of the cats.

While we are on the subject of felines, Paul if you read this I think it was a joke about the lynxes though it's true there is some debate as to whether lynxes should be re-introduced into the UK as per the Guardian article referred.

And here I was thinking that the text 'Lynx pharen' referred to an alternative of German 'Links fahren' meaning 'drive on the left side'.

Nielsen wrote:

And here I was thinking that the text 'Lynx pharen' referred to an alternative of German 'Links fahren' meaning 'drive on the left side'.

I'm sure you're right, Nielsen but there was a bit of joking going on too - there may be some dialects in Kent which are descended from the ancient speech of the Jutes but I'm pretty sure there aren't any villages which actually speak in that language currently.

Caro wrote:

This thread goes all over the place, from bruising to warships and their names to cesspits to dog-droppings etc (what has happened to trebuchets and gannets etc)  

Caro,

"trebuchets" that is in my humble opinion something "honourable" although a siege instrument...



But gannets, Caro, did you hear about the treatment...
I mentioned this upstream to Gil (GG) on 11 August:
"GG,
Enmerkar that sounds, better than Ziusudra, that difficult to pronounce (at least to me ) (of course "as I know you now a bit longer than today" I did some quick research on Wiki...you never know......with you)
"pickled gannets"...as I am always a bit cautious with that "English stuff" I did never in the last 7 years some search about what "it" was...but now once and for all because you adressed it...and unbelievable and not expected...I thought about some special pickled harengs, as MM and I described it in a thread...But see:
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/gannet-chick-eating-championships-provoke-anger-from-wildlife-lovers-9027056.html
and even my partner's favourite Gordon Ramsey...
"The first “world championship” for eating pickled baby gannets, known as “guga”, has sparked new calls for a total ban on the Hebridean tradition of hunting chicks by clubbing  them with sticks.The inaugural world guga-eating contest takes place tonight at Ness Football Club on the Isle of Lewis. Its social club is staging the competition despite opposition from animal rights campaigners, who claim the hunting method is cruel. Twenty contestants will race to eat half a gannet chick with a side dish of potatoes in the quickest time.The birds are hunted on Sula Sgeir, a rocky, uninhabited islet 40 miles north of Lewis. It takes the first part of its name from the old Norse word for gannet, and residents of Ness district are awarded a special licence to cull 2,000 gannets each year. It is the only place in Britain that hunting seabirds is still allowed after a ban was introduced in 1954.

And I wasn't aware that those young gannets, were "our": John of Ghents or was it John of Gaunts about that son a Ghent butcher (gossip)...

Kind regards from Paul.

Yes Paul, I understand that a gannet (ie the seabird, Morus bassanus) is indeed known colloquially in Flemish/Dutch as a Jan-van-gent, ie a John of Gent/Ghent/Gaunt ... but does that refer to the actual 14th century John of Gaunt, the son of Edward III, or just any old Ghentish Johnny? Surely of more interest is exactly why the bird - which is not a particulary common seabird off the shallow, sandy, low-lying coasts of the Low Countries - has acquired that particular name. Is there any particular legend or history associating them, similar perhaps to that linking St Peter with the John Dory (Zeus faber), aka in English St Peter's fish, un St Pierre in French, or a Zonnevisor in Dutch? Or is it just a simple corruption of the name from another language, perhaps again like the John Dory whose name in English may - it's by no means certain - be simply derived from the French jaune dorée, referring to its golden yellow colour?

MM,

" John of Gaunts about that son a Ghent butcher (gossip)..."
Yes MM, it is not worth of me  teasing those poor English, who have already that much "kopzorgen" (they translate with headaches, but also worries. I think "worries" is more appropriate in this context... But yes in that John of Gaunt it is really Ghent...
I think that my teasing is genetically from father's family, certainly not from mother's...
And perhaps the link that I "extracted" from Vizzer's message was right: when then teased from the other side...
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sider


But for "penitence" (so we Roman-Catholics can do and all our sins are forgiven) I found the origin of the name
https://www.natuurpunt.be/nieuws/wat-heeft-jan-met-gent-te-maken-20131113
What has Jan to do with Ghent
Conclusion: nothing
"Jan-van-Gent vindt zijn intrigerende oorsprong in de oude Engelse naam Bass Goose. Deze zeevogel is genoemd naar de sinds 1447 bekende broedplaats in Scholtand: Bass Rock, een oude vulkanische rots in zee, circa 30 km ten noordoosten van Edinburgh. Bass Goose werd in het Nederlands Bassaangans. Het Engelse Gannet weerspiegelt de ganzenlink: het middelengelse ‘ganet’ gaat immers terug op het oudengelse ‘ganot’ wat op zijn beurt dan weer verwant is met ‘gos’ en dat betekent ‘gans’. Hoe Gannet werd omgetoverd tot Gent is niet meteen duidelijk. Bassaan werd mogelijk voor de lol maar vermoedelijk eerder uit onbegrip vervangen door ‘Jan van’."

Bass Goose...Goose from the breeding ground in Bass Rock vulcanic rock some 30 km North-East of  Edinburgh...from that in Dutch "bassaan gans" 
Gannet...middle english ganet...from the old english ganot related to "gos" in Dutch: "gans"
Gannet...gent
perhaps by ignorance they made from "bassaan"...janvan?...


Kind regards from Paul.

Thanks for that, Paul, now I understand ... so the name gannet is related to goose/gander (the Old English ganot ultimately means "strong or masculine", hence gander, ie a male goose) and hence the bass goose, or bassaan ganot, became corrupted into jan-van gent, probably, as your Dutch explanation says, simply through incomprehension. So it is indeed a bit like John Dory/jaune dorée.

Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth is still home to the largest breeding colony of northern gannets (with other large colonies on St Kilda and Ailsa Craig) and this is reflected in the Latin name for the species, Morus bassanus. The morus bit is derived from Ancient Greek, μωρός, meaning "foolish", due to the lack of fear shown by young gannets, which allowed them to be easily killed and thus made into pickled gannets (guga).

Bass Rock viewed from North Berwick and coloured white by centuries of gannet guano:

Their austral relatives, the Boobies, are thought to derive their name from the Spanish "bobo" from the ease with which they were caught and eaten, notably by Lt Bligh and his men during their epic voyage to Timor.

I'm never quite sure when you are being serious, Gilgamesh.  I see however (google can be helpful sometimes) that there are indeed some birds called boobies.  For a minute I thought of The Bumblies by Michael Bentine on TV in my departed childhood.  The clip is not of very good quality but it is from a long time ago.

As this is a fact over fiction site I'll link a video of the blue footed booby (well a few actually).  The commentary is annoying though.

Thanks for the Bumblies clip! Loved them and Bentine's other stuff - remember "Square World"? Of course the military approached Bentine over the control system he had devised for the Bumblies (pneumatic iirc) as they wanted to use it in missile controls.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

As this is a fact over fiction site I'll link a video of the blue footed booby (well a few actually.  ...

LiR, you are aware of this being the Tumbleweed Suite, I mean err, 'fact over fiction'?

Honestly, there have been a time or two where truth have been a sparce commodity.

And what would be the matter with pickled gannets?
There are still plenty of barrels of those down in the transferable cellars of this establishment of repute, stored in the armoury's section for biological weaponry, and not far from the trebuchets which were used to sling them against t'enemies of the pubs.

That was done back in the Beeb days, when Caro was an admirable forward observer, and an entire allotment garden was sowed over with pickled gannets, slightly over-ripe but not very far from the 'sell by' date - what's a couple of years or so?

Warning, the rum that used to be stored in the neighbourhood of the gannets has been moved due to the ripeness of the gannets.

PaulRyckier wrote:

when then teased from the other side...

No tease Paul. I was confident that your linguistic agility would easily overcome that orthographical slight of hand. What's interesting is just how different the words for 'left' are in Western European languages:

English - left
French - gauche
Dutch - links
Danish - venstre
Italian - sinistra
Spanish - izquierdo  

The word 'right' on the other hand is much more uniform and/or similar:

English - right
French - droite
Dutch - rechts
Danish - ret
Italian - destra
Spanish - derecho

Here's a map showing which side of the road different European countries drove on in 1922:



Not sure exactly how 'mixed' worked though. Probably something like:

Caro, I use this thread as my place to post if I don't know where to post and I'm not sure whether a matter merits its own thread.

About driving on the left or the right I posted a video about Sweden's changeover from left to right in 1967 a while back but it didn't interest anyone else.  Here is another video about the same subject - this is different because it is someone talking about the changeover.  

Nielsen, with regard to the the truth being a scarce commodity here at times, when I referred to facts over fiction I was thinking of when we are being serious rather than when we are joking (and I've had my leg pulled a few times).  I guess there can be times when people dispute "facts" - I know it's gone quiet now but the "Princes in the Tower" subject went on for some considerable time because there was dispute as to whether King Richard III was a goody or a baddy (or somewhere in between) and I don't think it was ever settled one way or the other.

Lady in Retirement<

About your"with regard to the the truth being a scarce commodity here at times".

But is truth something that really does not exist and therefore can't ever really be known?


Dirk

Vizzer,

I think Paul Ryckier is too serious thinking and by that is an easy prey  for guys as Gil and Viz...the said Paul Ryckier was seeking for "lynx" and "pharen" in old Jutish and didn't find only "fahren" in Hochdeutsch with a Dehnungs H...perhaps the said Paul didn't catch the pointe  ...

PS: Lost nearly one hour to connect to Passion Histoire, being there since 2008. (I feel with Gilgamesh)...although it was al the right stuff, the robot said you are wrong and then too many trials and then after resubscription with PaulRyckier2 the robot said you used an e-mail alreday in use on the forum...lucky you can write via e-mail to the direction and lucky again I saw that my subscription to the Salon Geopolitique still worked, so I could "moan"   overthere...

Kind regards from Paul.

LIR, it was Vanuatu where I took a bus and was not certain which side of the road they drove on, so erratic was it. Mind you, the lady I was sitting next to did tell me she had come over to visit her brother-in-law and the very next day he was badly injured in a motor accident, so she was staying on indefinitely to look after him. 
Vanuatu is a curious mix of French and English which might explain the driving.

Is Vanuatu what used to be Tonga, Caro?  I'm just old enough to remember going to my Mum's friends house to watch Elizabeth II's coronation - now I don't remember Queen Salote of Tonga standing up in the rain but remember relations telling me she did so and she made quite a good impression.

To things mundane - I went out in the garden when it was hot yesterday and did some "gardening" after the fashion of spraying weedkiller on some of the more awkward weeds.  Then the weather changed and there was some rain which of course will have washed the weedkiller away!

Wrongly attributed to Noel Coward is a quotation about the Queen of Tonga. He is alleged to have been sitting under cover from the heavy rain with Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent at the Coronation in London in 1953. Opposite them was the vast Queen Salote of Tonga. Princess Marina is supposed to have asked "Noel, who is that little man sheltering under Queen Salote's umbrella?" Coward is said to have peered through the rain and said "Oh, her lunch, my dear." In a later interview with Walter Harris, Coward revealed it had been said by someone at White's Club and was immediately attributed to Coward. "It was very flattering of course, except that I had intended to visit Tonga the following winter, and after that of course it was quite impossible."
Vanuatu was formerly an Anglo-French condominium (as "New Hebrides") so confusion of the side to drive on might be understandable.

I don't think you'll ever be at a loss if you want to make conversation, Gilgamesh, you know so many amusing facts.

I haven't seen anything from Trike of late.  He could post things which could raise a chuckle from me.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I haven't seen anything from Trike of late.  He could post things which could raise a chuckle from me.

 
Lady,

Triceratops is still on Historum. I see him there from time to time, when he posts a message. I check everyday the General History and the European one, but only sporadic edit a message overthere, as for instance lately the one about the existence of a kind of Belgium from 1620 on during the Eighty Years War.
Its up to Trike, to decide, when he wants to come back overhere again. Perhaps he has no time anymore, while he is since recently in retirement (a bit as I was busy from my preretirement at Fifty, till yesterday, as I mentioned to you and Hatsheput...

Kind regards from Paul.

PS: Up to now I have always trouble with the correct connotation of "edit"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/edit
When I first saw the term on this board: "two times edited" I thought it was two times removed and changed by another, what it was indeed, when I see now the cambridge...
When I use the term "edit" it is more as in "construct, compose a message" while I continuously correct my message add new words remove sentences, have a look to translations of some words and correct them immediately and many times end still with not "real" English sentences...
And in that sense I think I can rightly say in my former paragraph that I "edit" a message, a hundred times in preview and then after half an hour, an hour push the "send" button...and not too long otherwise I have two or three similar messages...

Paul. edit also means cut out the unnecessary guff. Over writing is a sin of my own, so I lnow.

Just putting this here.  I think I will take a temporary break from Res Historica.  There are "real life" things which need to be done.  The dodgy windows in my house will be replaced in September and I need to do some proper tidying up of the house before the team come to do the replacements.  I need to spend less time "surfing the internet" in general.  I may still "lurk" and read threads but may not contribute.  As I say, I intend this to be a temporary break.  It rather depends how long it takes me to get "up to speed"  on my neglected household chores.

I can publish the site in sound format for you, LiR, so you can keep up to date with all the latest cut'n'thrust through your earphones while still going about your domestic duties.

I'm undecided though who should "be" me in the audio version. Torn between Mark Rylance, Patrick Stewart or maybe Whoopi Goldberg. Tough choice ...

I've a few suggestions for other contributors here as well, though maybe it'd be safer to let everyone choose their own narrator. Remember folks - money's no object here and we'll even resuscitate a few dead elocutionists if necessary ...

This is me channeling Mark Rylance's impersonation of Burton via Sellers as I recall my favourite Wobbleweapon soliloquy shamefully ripped off by those four scallywags from the 'Pool ...

I know you are joking, nordmann.  I only had the email that the windows were ready for fitting today (not that they are going to be fitted today) and looking round me realised I can't continue procrastinating. I felt lousy on Wednesday and Thursday so spent much of those days in bed and surfed the internet on my laptop.  I only mentioned breaking from the site because sometimes when I have not commented for a while I have received the occasional private message from concerned fellow Res Historians so I thought I'd mention in advance I'd be absent from the board for a while.

Is it ok if I hire in Prunella Scales in your temporary absence? Just trying to keep things as seamless as possible ...

(sorry - but just had a very strong recollection of this as you described your recent supinity with laptop ...)

Since some members of this board appear to consider me a dullard and a lackwit and a tedious one at that I think it's best I cease contribution to Res Historica.

Not me at any rate ....

Nor me LiR. 


I hope the window improvements go smoothly for you. We are struggling with ours as we need bi-fold doors and triple glazed windows and the architect has stipulated a value of .8 to meet current Build Regs. 

The glaziers say it can't be done without huge unnecessary expense, so we are currently in limbo.

Nor me, when I don't reply directly it's generally because it's a subject where I realise that I cannot contribute sensibly.*
*This and other bars are exempt from the above.

I hadn't meant to comment again.  There was reference on the "Who Built the Pyramids" thread to silly content in boring posts.  It wasn't specifically directed at me.  I know that what is interesting varies from person to person - I hate watching football but most of the men I know and some of the women really enjoy watching that game.  I know some comments I make may "die on the vine" - I guess that's true of anyone's comments.  Some of the membership here clearly finds at least some of my comments irksome and inane so I think it's best I absent myself from the great minds - maybe it will be temporary, I'm not sure.  I'm an adult and part of being an adult means being to take criticism so people don't need to rush to say they don't consider my comments asinine.  So, I'll leave the great brains here to conduct profound discussion amongst themselves without any mundane prattling from Sincerely Thine at least for the time being - the information about the windows was true but maybe members of the board didn't need to hear that.