LadyinRetirement wrote:

I remember (vaguely) the Ewan McColl/Peggy Seeger "radio ballads" from the 1960s.  There was one called Singing The Fishing which chronicled fisher folk following the shoals of herring down the east coast of Scotland/England while the shoals of herring were moving. https://stromnessdragon.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/come-all-you-fisher-lassies/  Here are sisters Ray and Cilla Fisher (Ray sadly is no longer with us - it's coincidence but what an apt surname for singers of this song) singing The Song of The Fish Gutters.  I believe the song was written by Ewan McColl but it's very like a traditional song (to me anyway).  Did fisher folk move with shoals of fish along the coast of Belgium at all, Paul?

Thank you so much LiR for the link you mentioned. It remembers me of old days in the "vismijn" of Ostend. They translate I see now by "fish auction" and perhaps that's also right translation, but in Dutch: fish auction is "visveiling" (a "veiling" as on the "groentenveiling" (vegetable auction), but in my opinion that was one part of the fish market, while there were transfers on the same place between merchants too and there were "warehouses" too (pakhuizen). We hired also one after the death of the former hirer.

In your link I saw some words that are so familiar to me 
as we say the same in dialect "de vis gutten" (to gut the fish) 
and the women followed de "scholen" fish some with a "charabanc"
I see now for the first time in my life that it is in English something like this:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/charabanc



while our "char à bancs" pronounced in our Ostend dialect as "sarabang" with three times the clear French "a"...
And it was thrown with horses (all episodes from before my time)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_%C3%A0_bancs#/media/Fichier:HDHChar-%C3%A0-Bancs.jpg



But back to the women following the harbours where the boats sold their fish...

LiR, the Belgian coast only three harbours for fish (only 66 km coast) and the main is Ostend and then Zeebruges (Nieuport is only a minor one and more local). 
In my childhood (the Fifties) the fishermen of Zeebruges followed  also with their fish, where the highest price was given in the auction and that was Ostend. So the Z-number x (for instance the Z 58) from Zeebrugge went to the harbour of Ostend to unload their fish at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning and then got with a taxi at home in Zeebruges (some 25 km).

And yes as I read it my parents, especially my mother earned a lot of money by (we say "cleaning" the fish, that means preparing it till there are chunks of fish ready for consumption) cleaning cods (up to 7 kilo)
My mother had a method and a special knife to carve in the bone of the cod and although not a "costeau" (big strong one), she earned a lot as she was paid pro kilo and pro box.
And it were already the more modern boxes as this one:



Unbelievable I don't find anything anymore about the old "benne" (visbenne) (fish bin?) in reed...as on the photo of Ostend that I showed upstream and in the time there were thousands of it and when in the sun even cleaned with soap they had still a special fish   smell...
It is as if they don't exist anymore...unbelievable...I tried with all kind of wordcombinations on google...and "benne" seems to come from French:
https://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/ben



Not the "routine" by my mother of the ladies of your link gutting in seconds, (but it were only herrings and not cods)...
And thank you again for your link, which was of great interest to me...old memories from childhood...

Kind regards, Paul.

PS: For LiR: I just edited my text as for the weight of cod from 4 to 7:

"And yes as I read it my parents, especially my mother earned a lot of money by (we say "cleaning" the fish, that means preparing it till there are chunks of fish ready for consumption) cleaning cods (up to 7 kilo)
My mother had a method and a special knife to carve in the bone of the cod and although not a "costeau" (big strong one), she earned a lot as she was paid pro kilo and pro box."

As I read now that the Atlantic cod (especially from the "Witte Bank" (now the "German bight" (de duitse bocht) and from the fisherboats we called the "Icelanders") adult one could have a weight of 40 kilos (80 pounds)...I never saw such one in my life...
I just checked on the Ostend fishmarket and the most common one arriving in Ostend is the class 2: 4 à 7 kg...
https://lv.vlaanderen.be/nl/visserij/prijsnoteringen-en-publicaties/prijsnoteringen/2018

This should have been posted on Maundy Thursday but still:



"So, does everyone have sound? Then let's begin."

Wishing all a Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to you and yours, Vizzer - and to all fellow Res Historians (even if some of us butt heads at times - as the saying goes it would be a dull world if we all thought the same way).  I'm drinking a cafe latte (sorry don't know how to add the acute accents on this site though I can do so on Microsoft Word).

Vizzer wrote:

Maundy Thursday:

"So, does everyone have sound? Then let's begin."

Wishing all a Happy Easter!

 
Vizzer, 

I start with the end: the Happy Easter wishing; I join LiR with her formulation: "to you and yours". Here the overwhelming event seems to be  "de ronde van Vlaanderen"...gone the days of the mass in the church and all that, I am even not sure if the kids still have to search for chocolate eggs, hidden in the house and the garden (and annexes)...
https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20210330_93740444
And as I am not "that" interested in sport...even cycling...

And then to the top: "Maundy Thursday"...you don't believe it...after nearly twenty years on English language fora and reading all those novels in English and starting on the BBC forum in 2002...no, never heard about "maundy thursday" and indeed as I guessed it seems to be our "Witte Donderdag" (white thursday). And we learned it all thorougly in our catholic childhood school, as about the "hof van Olijven" (the garden of olives?)
http://vlaamseprimitieven.vlaamsekunstcollectie.be/nl/collectie/christus-in-de-hof-van-olijven-0
Today I learned that "maundy" comes from the Latin "mandatum"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maundy

And then the middle:
"So, does everyone have sound? Then let's begin."
Vizzer, I guess a Covid joke...but this stupid one from over the Channel didn't catch the "pointe"...so this one, even known overhere as not of the most clever one, was seeking for the sound... ...

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Happy Easter...to all fellow Res Historians...

 
The same to you too lady in retirement. I am happy to see you once more at the board. I know how difficult it is to make time for the board, even in retirement as you. I guess with the household and the additional work you told us lately, that to seek time for this board after your lessons on a French and a Spanish board, is still an additional workload...and for me it may even be gossip as we are used to in the Belgian "cafés" (pubs)...
And yes other "regulars" as for instance a GG and Vizzer, to call but two...with a household and perhaps extended family perhaps also calling for some part of the time... oops and I forgot MM with his B&B in the Pyrénées Orientales...

As I see that LiR is back on board, just a chat...and not earth-shaking news...just some subject in a café among all the other stories of no importance and between all the other gossip told "tussen pot and pint" (between pot and pint? having a nice chat behind your glass of beer)...

Sparked by what MM said about "linoleum" in his last message in:
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1626-transition-from-wooden-to-steel-ships 
I did some search about "our " "Balatum". Memories from our childhood: In our grandmother's home and even in our home at the Belgian coast, everywhere on the wooden floors of the upperstage there was "Balatum" (a kind of predecessor of the nowadays PVC (and other plastics). PVC linoleum that  I during my renovations of houses have that many times placed not only on wood but also on concrete floors.

Memories of the childhood I said, as the sitting on a "toilet bucket?" (tolletemmer), while during night one couldn't go to the toilet on the groundfloor and for which one had to go outside on the "cour" and in the cold...
And as my "bowel movement?" was many times difficult I watched the "balatum" with flower pictures on it, sometimes longer than wished...and I saw that on the edge as it became brittle with the age, was in pieces broken away from the edges...

And as I later helped to place it (we had it even on the kitchen tablets) I remember that it was brittle even from the new roll. And that roll had to have a bigger diameter than the later more flexible PVC floor linoleum, as it was that rigid that one couldn't curb it on a smaller diameter...

As I searched for it on the Google internet, I had not the impression that that rigidity was mentioned:

https://fondarch.lu/la-balatome-ou-balatum-avantages-et-inconvenients/
"C’est ainsi que le balatome se fit connaître et son succès fut davantage phénoménal après la 2de Guerre mondiale, pendant l’effort de reconstruction. Il était surtout très utilisé pour tapisser le sol des magasins et, un peu plus tard, pour le sol des maisons. Il séduisait surtout par son accessibilité, car il était très bon marché."
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balatum

Balatum is een gladde vloerbedekking opgebouwd uit met bitumen geïmpregneerd vilt en voorzien van een decoratief bedrukte slijtvaste bovenlaag. Het product werd in de jaren 1920 ontwikkeld en geproduceerd door de Manufacture du Nord Balatum te Baisieux in Noord-Frankrijk, opgericht in 1923 door drie industriëlen waaronder Auguste Lannoye, eigenaar van Papeteries de Genval. Product en naam werden door een patent beschermd. Balatum dat in rollen verkocht werd kende zijn grootste populariteit in het midden van de twintigste eeuw toen het een goedkoop en makkelijker aan te brengen alternatief vormde voor linoleum en andere vaste vloerbedekking.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Lannoye

Auguste Lannoye (1874-1938), was een Belgisch ingenieur, ondernemer en katholiek politicus. Hij was de oprichter van de papierfabrieken van Genval en Mont-Saint-Guibert en tussen 1926 en 1938 was hij burgemeester van de toen nog zelfstandige gemeente Genval.
Hij studeerde af als ingenieur aan de Katholieke Universiteit van Leuven en richtte in 1904 een papierfabriek op aan de Lasne nabij het station van Genval. Aanvankelijk werd een verpakkingspapier en behangpapier gemaakt. In 1907 nam Lannoye een patent op le triturateur Lannoye voor de productie van gekleurd papier en in 1911 kon hij een tweede fabriek openen in Mont-Saint-Guibert. In 1923 werd gestart met de productie van het succesvolle balatum op basis van een Engels patent dat werd geperfectioneerd en nog later met de productie van kraftpapier. Dit leverde de onderneming wereldwijde export op.
(Auguste Lannoye, Belgian engineer. Mont-Saint-Guibert in 1923 start production "balatum" on the base of an English patent)


So LiR I hope that you could go to the toilet "inside" in your childhood and had not that rigid and easy cracking balatum type floor covering in your parents home...

Paul : I think the "sound" gag was a reference to the Zoom "last supper".

I'm in my inter-birthday period now - between Easter Sunday and the calendar date. Well, I was born on Easter Sunday, thus Easter Sunday, it follows, logically, must be my birthday. Additionally, I was born on April 17th.

There now - you can calculate my possible ages, and deduce, I confidently expect, my actual age .....

So Gilgamesh like the Queen has two birthdays.  Well, hope you enjoyed your first one and will enjoy your second one on 17th, Gilgamesh.

Paul, I've 'lurked' here a few times but haven't signed in as I didn't have anything to post (or about which I wanted to pick someone's brains).

Green George wrote:

Paul : I think the "sound" gag was a reference to the Zoom "last supper".

I'm in my inter-birthday period now - between Easter Sunday and the calendar date. Well, I was born on Easter Sunday, thus Easter Sunday, it follows, logically, must be my birthday. Additionally, I was born on April 17th.

There now - you can calculate my possible ages, and deduce, I confidently expect, my actual age .....

 
Gil, thank you for your hint. And yes that calculation about your birthday I have to be able at least to do... ...
Best greetings to you and the mother of your "monsters" and perhaps already to the "extended" family...Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul, I've 'lurked' here a few times but haven't signed in as I didn't have anything to post (or about which I wanted to pick someone's brains).

LiR, I am constantly "pecking" (that was what my brain first picked up, when reading your word "picking") the brains overhere in whatever sense...
Perhaps I have learned more from this site in the nearly ten years of the existence than I contributed to it...?
Especially in etymology of words, and in Dutch, Dutch dialects, French and that mixture of both: English.
Take now my false reflex on "picking"? Seeing in it the Dutch "pikken"...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pikken
But also the same meaning in Dutch as in the English "steal": "pick pocket" (in our West and East Flemish : "pieken")
And in Northern Dutch and Hungarian I see now: "pik": vulgar for a male...(we have in southern Dutch dialects quite an amount of other words for it)

Does that exists "comparative etymology"? Or is it that what "wiktionary" does?

And up to the new past covid era now LiR. We, my partner and I, have now had our first jab some week ago...yes, yes I know England thanks to the clever Bojo...

Kind regards, Paul.

Pecking tends to be associated with birds and the word is closely related to picking. (A 'pecker' can refer to a bird's beak or sometimes is used as slang for a male member.)

There is the term 'pecking order' - i.e. the order of priority in which birds (or people) eat or do other things. In our garden, and despite being 9 miles from the sea, any bread put out for the birds tends to go down the following pecking order - seagulls, crows, jackdaws, magpies, woodpigeons, starlings, blackbirds, robins and tits. In the autumn and winter when the bird-feeders full of seeds and fat are put out, the Great Tit, has a cheeky trick it plays whereby it gives out a single high-pitched note which is an alarm call warning of an aerial predator such a sparrowhawk, kite or buzzard. This causes the other birds to scatter and take cover while the Great Tit then enjoys the feeder all to itself. One wonders how long it will take before the other birds wise up to this 'cry wolf' ruse.

At other times the Great Tit has a very distinctive song in the form of an iambic pentameter - di-doo, di-doo, di-doo, di-doo, di-doo. It's delivered at a much faster and higher-pitch than the call of the onomatopoeically-named cuckoo but, as with the cuckoo, the song of the Great Tit is also an unmistakable sound of spring.

Yes, Vizzer, you seems to have in English "peck" and "pick" (pecking of birds and "picking" stealing) and in Dutch: one has the two with "pikken"...
Can the relation between the two, both in English and in Dutch (for Germanic words are many times identical), be the gesture of "pecking" as choosing with the beak (bek) what the bird wants among the chaotic ordered diversity, and thus "picking" (stealing) it from between this quantity?

Vizzer, heavy workload today...I wanted still to reply to MM about the rivetting and something to LiR and about the "Castle gates", but it will be for tomorrow...

Kind regards, Paul.

Well, I'm drinking a non-alcoholic drink at present. Paul, I think you said you've had your first jab. I've  been given an  appointment for my second  one  - same place as before out in the country at the County Show ground. The local  bus that  goes past my house does go there but the timetable is somewhat infrequent so I've booked a cab.  The castle local to my town is a ruin now - I know that the present castle is on a different site to the original one  -  it was moved on to a hill for defence purposes but there was then a problem because there was a shortage of fresh water. I'll have to do some revision to get the full story.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Well, I'm drinking a non-alcoholic drink at present. Paul, I think you said you've had your first jab. I've  been given an  appointment for my second  one  - same place as before out in the country at the County Show ground. The local  bus that  goes past my house does go there but the timetable is somewhat infrequent so I've booked a cab.  The castle local to my town is a ruin now - I know that the present castle is on a different site to the original one  -  it was moved on to a hill for defence purposes but there was then a problem because there was a shortage of fresh water. I'll have to do some revision to get the full story.

LiR, for us the second jab will be in the middle of next month. But we will not yet have the full freedom as we can still pick up the Covid somewhere and transfer it to someone else without we being ill? I think? And yes "castles"...I am still challenged by Gilgamesh, when then the real stone Norman castle is emerged in history...
Kind regards from Paul, always in admiration for your high spirits in your modesty.

Vizzer wrote:

At other times the Great Tit has a very distinctive song in the form of an iambic pentameter - di-doo, di-doo, di-doo, di-doo, di-doo.

I always confuse the song of the great tit with that of the chiffchaff, not that they are particularly difficult to tell apart, it's just that I always forget which is which. There are also a lot of chaffinches at the moment with their lovely improvised, dancing verse of a dozen notes always ending with a theatrical flourish. But it's the nightingales and blackbirds here that are currently giving the best evening concerts. Meanwhile I heard my first cuckoo two weeks ago, so Spring has definitely sprung.

Yesterday was warm and sunny, so in preparation for planting out my courgettes and pumpkins etc, I removed the sheets of plastic (old compost bags and dog biscuit sacks, weighed down with bricks) that I'd used to cover the beds over winter to suppress the weeds. As I pulled the sheets off I uncovered about a dozen slow-worms underneath. By the time I'd fetched the camera they'd mostly buggered off, but a couple lived up to their supposed reputation for sluggishness and were still lolling around in the sun. Since they are voracious predators of slugs and other pests it was good to see such a healthy population and of different ages too (there were wee ones no bigger than a pencil but a couple were well over a foot long and almost as fat as my little finger) and that despite my having a couple of cats too.

Good photograph, MM. I know slow worms exist in the UK but I've never seen these lizards in real life. I'm not much of a gardener but I've had plants I've started indoors be reduced overnight to eaten stalks just a few inches high when I've transplanted them outside because slugs and snails have had a feast, so maybe some slow worms in the locality would be useful.  I found a dead rat in the back garden a few days ago. I wondered if someone in the neighbourhood had put down bait which was something of a concern in case the cat ate a mouse or rat that had been poisoned (and she has dodgy kidneys anyway).  I don't think she had touched the rat.  I put food out for the garden birds in autumn and winter and have still been doing so in spring though I think with May not being that far off I probably won't need to put stuff out much longer. I try to put food for the birds further down the garden away from the house so as not to risk encouraging pests.

However, what I came to ask (which resulted from reading the transition from wooden to steel ships which triggered a memory) was, does anyone know what materials the automata that were destroyed in Alexandria (nordmann mentioned such automata on the automata thread some time back) were made from?  Were they made of wood or metal or a combination? I'm here with my cup of tea. I have sometimes bought a tea or a coffee in a pub (pre-Covid) so I think it's okay to mention this subject in the bar.  Going back in time when I had a part-time job as a barmaid (1979) the customers talked about a wide variety of subjects. I know things have changed over the last forty-something years but I think folk discuss diverse matters at the pub still.

I don't know but I would imagine the mechanisms of the Alexandrian automata were most likely made from bronze, ie copper with typically about 10% of tin (and inevitably other impurities like arsenic and zinc), at least that was what the gear wheels of the Antikythera mechanism were all made of. Bronze would be sufficiently hard and strong to resist wear and bending in operation (unlike perhaps wood); was readily obtainable and easy enough to work with (shaped by a using the lost-wax casting technique); and wouldn't rust (unlike wrought iron). I suppose hard tropical woods, such as ebony, or maybe ivory might also have been suitable for some components. That's assuming these automata were mechanical and funtioned by using gears, levers, wheels and cogs. However weren't at least some of them supposed to have been powered by hydraulics? In that case, while bronze could be still be used for making the tubes, pipes and pistons, it might have been easier to make some of the pipes from lead or copper (Roman plumbing pipes were fabricated from flat lead sheet, rolled into a tube, and then the seam soldered with a lower melting tin-lead alloy). All these metals were readily available in ancient times.

Meles meles wrote:

I always confuse the song of the great tit with that of the chiffchaff, not that they are particularly difficult to tell apart, it's just that I always forget which is which. There are also a lot of chaffinches at the moment with their lovely improvised, dancing verse of a dozen notes always ending with a theatrical flourish. But it's the nightingales and blackbirds here that are currently giving the best evening concerts. Meanwhile I heard my first cuckoo two weeks ago, so Spring has definitely sprung.

In terms of sheer decibellage, then the Great Tit cuts above all others. For that reason it's a bit of marmite character when it comes to appreciating bird song. For some it's the star of the dawn and evening choruses, while for others it's an annoyance being compared to a car alarm. The Nightingale and the Blackbird make a super combination Meles rivalled only, perhaps, by the Song Thrush and the Wren for the loveliness of their singing.

Not about melodious birdsong I'm sorry.

If what nordmann says about 'vegetarian' cheese is true I guess I'll have to try to learn to like tofu.  It takes rather bland to me but it's improved with a marinade.

Edit: 'to learn to like tofu' not 'learn tofu'.

Breaking cover to bring disturbing Breaking News: Further to the anger and lawsuit barrage between M and S and Aldi over their identical Colin the Caterpillar and Cuthbert the Caterpillar cakes, Scotland is now dropping each in extra deep batter for deep fried Caterpillar cakes. It's a disgrace!
Nordman said the island would fall to bits - clearly it is. There must be rejoicing in Oslo.

Actually I find the chiff-chaff the most annoying "songster". In the far-off ays when I used to go match fishing, I've sat for the entire 6 hours listening to the incessant "chiff-chiff-chaff" on one sanguinary bird the whole time.

Re blackbirds - the story goes that "Blackbird" - the Beatles song - actually features a session songthrush not a blackbird.
Nightingale - and skylark - feature in a number of virelais.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIphM2-JlF0

Priscilla wrote:

Breaking cover to bring  disturbing Breaking News: Further to the anger  and lawsuit barrage between M and S and Aldi over their identical Colin the Caterpillar and Cuthbert the Caterpillar cakes, Scotland is now dropping each in extra deep batter for deep fried Caterpillar cakes. It's a disgrace!
Nordman said the island would fall to bits - clearly it is. There must be rejoicing in Oslo.

This is more than "a disgrace"; it is an act of war. It was bad enough the Germans attempting to crush us with their pathetic Aldi caterpillar Cuthbert (surely they should have called him Carl), but this latest Scots' attempt to destroy British morale ahead of the forthcoming elections by deep frying Colin in batter is outrageous. Such naked, unprovoked hostility by the Scots and the Germans against the British caterpillar cake will be regretted. No French caterpillar offering as yet, I see: no doubt one is planned.

Do your worst: rejoicing in Oslo or anywhere else is premature - we'll be back, as will the doughty Colin. We fully intend to take back control of our caterpillar cakes.

I have some elderflower flavoured* cider in the fridge but at present I only have a cup of tea at hand (though tea does contain caffeine). I'm disappointed because the Spanish group teacher had arranged for the group to meet in a cafe (socially distancing) but I've learned that a delivery that I thought was due tomorrow is coming today. The house on one side of me is unoccupied and on the other side my nice neighbours moved in January though the son is house-sitting until the property is sold. I'd say the chances are that if the delivery took place and I was out it would be safe but I'm overly cautious since I had the break-in so I'm loathe to leave the house pending delivery of the parcel.

Hopefully if the easing of restrictions related to the pandemic takes place I'll have other opportunities to go to cafes. Maybe later on I'll quaff my elderflower cider.

*It is in fact cider made from apples with some elderflower flavouring to give it something other than the generic cider taste.  It's not a cider type drink made entirely from elderflowers (thinking of perry often being called pear cider).

Truly sorry to read mention of a break in, LIR. personal space is so important to us all and violation of it disturbing. Awaiting parcel delivery is another trial  - we wait in too but often miss the soft tap on the door to find later the parcel left in full view.... for the delivery confirmation photo they now take. I am now considering a large box with a security system....... but for  packets of  40, 1 inch high pansies etc it seems a bit daft.

Just also posting here to say how much I am enjoying the exchange of  kerne posts. learning a lot. delighting in relevant  chunks of Shakespeare - what a smart arse he  was -  and the nature of the Res discussion which is how it used to be in the good ol' days. I post my praise here so as not to interrupt the flow of your erudition even though perhaps the topic is  now winding down.

To not disturb other fora overhere as Priscilla suggested. And as it is perhaps indeed more a subject for a "café" as overhere.

Today a lot of fuss, even in our Belgian papers about the Beeb and lady Diana...
And perhaps we, as oldies from the BBC forum...
As I understand it, a certain Martin Bashir used some "dirty" methods, not worth of a collaborator of an "institution" as the BBC...
More "riooljournalistiek" (they translate with: yellow press?)...genre "The Sun", "Bild" zeitung...

This evening I read a reaction from "our" BBC itself...
https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-57163815

What think British "insiders" of all this turmoil?

The break-in was more than a year ago Priscilla. I had some culpability because I hadn't locked the French window door properly though I'd tested it and thought it was properly shut but obviously I was wrong.  I was out when it happened - some neighbours said they had heard some lads running around and window smashing (which was in m kitchen). A laptop was taken but it didn't have anything confidential on it. The house next-door (the one attached as I live in a row of semi-detached 1930s houses) has been unoccupied for quite some time and I think the youngsters might have been "high" and seeing if they could steal anything from the empty house and twigged that I wasn't in. I'm recovered from the feeling of invasion but still a bit wary even after all this time.

Paul, I don't know if this will help but I'm linking to an article in The Guardian where an a journalist expresses some scepticism about the hypocrisy of the media generally about the revelations of Mr Bashir's shenanigans regarding the way he went about obtaining the interview with the late Princess Diana https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/21/tabloids-hurt-princess-diana-panorama-bbc-scapegoat   Mr Bashir and the BBC don't come out of this mess smelling of Chanel No. 5 though.

Lady in Retirement,

  Martin Bashir also made a documentary " Living with Michael Jackson" ( May 2002__ January 2003) which was aired on the 3rd February 2003 by ITV.

And this documentary was and still is also considered controversial/questionable.


Dirk

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul, I don't know if this will help but I'm linking to an article in The Guardian where an a journalist expresses some scepticism about the hypocrisy of the media generally about the revelations of Mr Bashir's shenanigans regarding the way he went about obtaining the interview with the late Princess Diana https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/21/tabloids-hurt-princess-diana-panorama-bbc-scapegoat   Mr Bashir and the BBC don't come out of this mess smelling of Chanel No. 5 though.

Thanks LiR for the URL. I learned from it. I had just to seek for the meaning of "shenanigans".

Today the royal Belgian family is "neutral" and well seen, even by Republicans (and there are only a few of them overhere).

There was a time when it was otherwise, as with the "king's question" after WWII
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Royal_Question
During riots "4 deaths at Grâce Berleur near Liège" and nearly a civil war between the Dutch speaking North and the French speaking South in Wallonia...1950...I was already able to read (learned to read by grandmother and mother in books and yes a bit at school too) a Socialist weekly ABC  https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(tijdschrift)

And even his son Baudouin with Lumumba's death:
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/magazine/50661/facing-the-truths-of-belgium-s-colonial-past-the-unresolved-case-of-patrice-lumumba-s-death/
 
Kind regards, Paul.

Temperance wrote:

This is more than "a disgrace"; it is an act of war. It was bad enough the Germans attempting to crush us with their pathetic Aldi caterpillar Cuthbert (surely they should have called him Carl), but this latest Scots' attempt to destroy British morale ahead of the forthcoming elections by deep frying Colin in batter is outrageous. Such naked, unprovoked hostility by the Scots and the Germans against the British caterpillar cake will be regretted. No French caterpillar offering as yet, I see: no doubt one is planned.

The UK's caterpillar cake wars have created much interest in France having even made it to French news channels:



Now, with post brexit supply problems to M&S Paris, local French pâtisseurs have started selling their own gâteaux Charles la Chenille: here's a particularly classy one languishing in a pot of lily-of-the-valley (the traditional floral gift for 1st May).



MIDI LIBRE: "Stéphanie Garcia présente le fameux gâteau, avec sa chenille qui grimpe sur le brin de muguet. Lequel pousse dans une coque en chocolat au lait, un croustillant et une mousse tiramisu. Voilà le dessert  gourmand, sucré et amusant qu'a créé pour ce 1er mai 2021."

Forget disagreements over fishing rights in the waters around the Channel Islands, l'affaire du gâteau la chenille surely has all the makings of a major diplomatic incident.

Sacré bleu - thank God we've left the EU.

This is just too much, MM - the British caterpillar is covered in lurid-coloured icing (which is guaranteed to have all the kids totally bonkers and hyper after one slice) and is plastered all over with Smarties for a  booster-bonkers effect. None of this "classy" French stuff with flowers!




PS I wonder what an Irish chocolate caterpillar cake would be called - Cathall the Caterpillar, or Cormac the Caterpillar, or some such ferocious-sounding thing, I suppose, meaning "he who is proud in battle" or "warrior caterpillar".

Ireland, like France, does not have caterpillars - it has "bolbaí", or simply "bolb" for one of them, or even "bolba" if you're going to go all genitive about it (which in Irish is actually necessary in this case). If you're also going for alliteration then you will probably find that you have far more scope if you presume your putative pubescent pupal butterfly to be of the female persuasion - there being far more girls' names starting with "B" than boys'. But if it must be male then "Breandán Bolba" would probably be about the extent of the linguistic imagination of most major retailers, with "Brian" and "Breffni" running a close second and third.

I imagine there's a small remnant brigade of the Provisional Irish Gastronomic Army working somewhere in the kitchen of a "safe house" near the South Armagh border ready to send a first wave of "Breandán Bolba" flooding into Norn Iron confectionery outlets as we speak. The name, incidentally, translates as "King of the Caterpillars" - so I assume this confectionery's job is not so much that of warrior as the cake that sits back while all the other sweetmeats are slugging it out and then steps naturally in to the best apportioned shelf in the supermarket once the others have all died noble retail deaths (I hear these will be increasingly common in a certain country as time goes on).

nordmann wrote:

The name, incidentally, translates as "King of the Caterpillars"...

Provocative and passive-aggressive in the extreme. The PICA obviously flourishing over there.

Fake Colin the Caterpillars spotted - brazenly offered on a stall in Barnsley market. The fraudulent caterpillar treats for the Yorkshire kids one could forgive in these hard times, but TWO apostrophe mistakes...







PS Lots of failed home-made Colins out there - this one looks rather like a Viking ship, not a caterpillar. Love the scary teeth.

Just one last comment about all this and then I shall shut up.

I had thought that Priscilla's comment about Colin being battered and deep-fried by our neighbours beyond the Wall was one of her jokes, but alas it seems not. Here is the horrible evidence of the atrocity - and proof ("FreeCuthbert") that the Scots are in cahoots with the Germans.

As if I would I would joke about so serious an event! But there I am always being misunderstood. I think I shall take media counselling. One can also try Yogi Bare - is that right? - would it alay the deep seated trauma of being so misunderstood. Then there is the nerve wracking worry about what one would serve with a deep dried Colin cake -chips with choc sauce?..... In our case it would have to be mushy P's.

I think I'll pass on the deep fried Colin Cake.  I'd heard of a Scots fish & chip shop deep frying Mars bars but Colin cake takes it up a few notches.  I wonder why M&S decided to go after Cuthbert when other supermarkets have had caterpillar cakes.

I cancelled my (lost or misplaced) debit card yesterday. I should have another one in about a week though of course I have to factor a bank holiday into that week. I was fortunate in that I was able to get a Tesco delivery for tomorrow and use my credit card (which I try not to use too much - in fact I can't remember my pin number as I usually use it for online transactions). I think there must have been a cancellation because the rest of tomorrow's delivery spots were taken.

It's been very quiet here of late, where is everybody?



Given the current restrictions on travel I rather doubt you're all off on your hols even if you could still get a San Francisco return flight for just £296. Perhaps everyone's just occupied with other things, as I've been. I have guests this weekend so need to get the place sorted, plus I urgently needed to complete my income tax declaration before Tuesday (the deadline), and then yesterday I had to go to Perpignan (an hour's drive away) to finalise my post-brext residence papers.

Perpignan is not a big city - you can walk across it from market gardens and vineyards on one side, right through the centre and then out into fields again on the other, in just a couple of hours - but I usually try to avoid going there. But yesterday there was no getting out of having to go right into the city centre. The office dealing with residence papers was in a narrow, crooked lane in the maze of medieval streets between the cathedral and the massive Castillet fortress/gatehouse; an area normally crammed with tourists and in summer disagreeably crowded, stuffy, dusty and smelly. But yesterday the mingled odours of ancient stonework, restaurants preparing for lunchtime, hot tarmac, pine trees, diesel fumes, fresh coffee and croissants, flowering geraniums and jasmine, sun-baked earth and with just a soupçon of drains, all pleasantly brought back memories of past visits to any number of old Mediterranean cities in Spain, France, Italy, Croatia or Greece. As I say I rarely go into Perpignan and indeed this fleeting visit was the furthest I'd been from home in about five years so perhaps I was just pleased by the change of scene. Nevertheless it was an unexpectedly pleasant little excursion, although I was undeniably happy to get back to the tranquility of the woods and hills around my home a few hours later, and I am heartily glad I don't live in Perpignan.

Anyway at the Prefecture it took just five minutes to confirm my identity and residence status, sign the papers and get my finger-prints taken. I am now legally resident in France and should get my identity card very soon. So, finally, that's another needless brexit hassle out of the way.

Alexander Johnson's nuptuals do have something of a Henrician whiff about them, don't they? He was baptised Catholic and so when he subsequently married, twice, under the auspices of the Anglican church, apparently these did not count as legal marriages in the eyes of the Catholic church, and hence when they both ended in divorces they only did so to the Church of England. Thus having returned to Catholicism and with his previous marriages and divorces apparently never having occurred, he could blithely marry his latest squeeze in England's premier Catholic Cathedral without the least impediment. A bit rough on his previous wives, and on his children by them who are now effectively illegitemate, but I doubt Johnson gave them a second thought.

Regarding the so-called sausage war, while many of us think back fondly to 'Yes Prime Minister' we should remember that it was a funny, witty and genteel satire of a government that was at least functional. For all their self-serving, their backroom shenanigans, their horse-trading among themselves, union leaders and the civil service, there was not a character there hell-bent on bringing the country to ruin. There were no plans afoot that knowingly and needlessly wrecked the economy or employment or security or international standing or loaded immense costs and losses onto Britain for zero gain. They all loved Britain, even if a bit a vaguely, arrogantly or stupidly especially when viewed through the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia. The government depicted in 'Yes Prime Minister' does not compare to now.

Hello all, I ventured out to do a bit of gardening (even if mainly of the spraying weedkiller about sort) and had a nasty bite from a flying insect (I don't know what sort but it brought out a nasty red lump for some days though going back to normal now).   I'm sipping nothing stronger than tea at present.  I have a small can of cider but I don't feel like it at present.  I also pulled a muscle in my lower back and the floor/ground seems a long way away. I might be able to work out a way whereby I can iron sitting down. For cleaning floors, I need a long-handled scrubbing brush (that you can use standing upright) but I can't see any either in 'real' shops or online.  I think they were called a 'serpillier' in France but I get 'mop' as the translation for 'serpillier'.  I can remember cleaning a floor in France with a floorcloth around a 'serpillier' which I suppose was a sort of mopping.   I have conventional scrubbing brushes but they involve bending or getting to floor level which is painful at present. Sorry if I sound a misery. I hope everyone is keeping well.  The weather is pleasant in my part of the world today, so that's one positive thing.  I do remember the episode about the British banger, Temperance.

Anyway, keep safe and well everyone and maybe I'll pop back in 'the bar' when I feel up to quaffing my cider.

Edit: 'pop back in' not 'mop back in'.

I did wonder about Boris de Piffle getting hitched in Westminster Cathedral.  I didn't realise he was a nominal Catholic. Sorry Temperance, I'd already mentioned the sausages before I realised you'd edited your post.

Crikey, is it really that bad? Oh dear. Then I am soundly rebuked, despite my placatory deletion. But then, I rather suspect nothing changes? At least, ruin or no ruin, we can still all laugh at ourselves here (in the UK, I mean). All we have left, or so it would seem to some.

Back to gardening now for me too, LiR. I bet it was a horsefly that gave you the nasty bite. I have always lived in dread of these horrible biting creatures - the nasty red lump they cause is horrendously itchy and doesn't subside for days. Slather it (the red lump, I mean, not the horsefly) with antihistamine cream from Boots.

EDIT: I am not allowed to drink any alcohol at the moment, not even good, (French), heart-healthy red wine. This means I must face the utter ruin of my country (that obviously you believe lies ahead) completely sober. No cheese either. A dismal prospect, you must admit; so you really must forgive my attempts to remember happier days when we all could have a good laugh. The caterpillar wars were funny, though - well, I thought so.


EDIT: I am confused about the sudden mention long-handled mops that occurs below - has there been a Brexit shortage of such useful items?

Looks like there may be some long-handled brushes/mops in existence - made of plastic (handle and bristles) rather than natural materias though.  Long Handle Brush Scrub Bathroom Tile Scrubber Brush Floors Cleaning Tool UK | eBay 

Re: horseflies.  There are cattle on the field behind the houses opposite me.  Despite two sizeable estates being built on green field sites further down the road the fields on the flood plain of the river haven't been built on.  A lady up the road also keeps her horse on a field a little way down. Long winded way of saying that there are animals in the vicinity that could attract horse flies though obviously a human will suffice if there's no horse at hand. I've probably mentioned before that the houses where I live and those opposite were built as ribbon development in the 1930s but the meadow behind the houses on my side of the road were built on in the mid to late 1960s/early 1970s.

Temperance wrote:

Back to gardening now for me too

I suspect that that's been the case for many of us over the last few weeks, hence the quietness here. The cool, wet May now seems like a long time ago. So warm has June been, that a crab apple tree which we have has today decided to offer a second blossoming as if to hail Midsummer's Eve. Normally it just blossoms once (late April to late May). Crab apples are even known to sometimes fail to blossom at all in some years - so a second flowering is truly quite odd. It's by no means a full profusion though, only about 5% of the coverage of a normal blossom but the new flowers which are on it are certainly whole and fresh.

From the film A Tale of Two Cities

Or from the bicentennial two-part film 'La Révolution Française' (1989), here's another cinematic take of the iconic 'Prise de la Bastille'. Although this film, which was specially commissioned by the French government to mark the bicenntenial and claimed to present the unbiased truth, still presented the history filtered through a 1980s establishment view of how the Revolution should be remembered and what it should represent for the modern French Republic. Nevertheless the film did depict the probable truth that the actual storming of the Bastille largely came about through a series of misunderstandings between the mob and their spokesmen, the representatives of the newly-formed National Assembly, the castle's governor, the commanding officer of the royalist troops who had been sent as reinforcements, and the more down-to-earth officers and men both of the castle's regular garrison and of the local militia. Everything seemed to have been heading gradually towards the Bastille's peaceful surrender ... until it suddenly all went wrong and everything kicked off.



And you know me, always a sucker for un beau soldat en uniforme moulant, I was pleased to see that the traditional Bastille Day military parade down the Champs-Elysées was essentially back to normal again this year (last year’s parade was cancelled and replaced by a very much smaller static ceremony held in the Place de la Concorde honouring healthcare workers who died fighting Covid-19).

A much bloodier event than the storming of the Bastille, the storming of the Tuileries Palace on the 10 August 1792. Louis XVI's Swiss Guard were massacred either on the day or later as prisoners.

Bit of a Swiss tradition as the Papal Swiss Guard were massacred during the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Another photo of today's Bastille Day; credit Christian Hartmann/ Reuters:

MM wrote:

And you know me, always a sucker for un beau soldat en uniforme moulant...

That made me smile, MM - and I love the way you, with great delicacy, switch into the more discreet French. I think you have altered that since I first read your post.  

Queen Victoria was rather more blunt than you - shockingly so!

"My dear Albert came in today from the rain; he looked so handsome in his white cashmere britches, with nothing on underneath."

I believe she was rather partial to her Albert in his  tight  "britches" with his boots.




Not sure what that feathery thing is - surely not his hat?


PS Nice to see Trike on board again. Hope others trickle back over the coming days/weeks. I'm sick of gardening now, so some history would be nice. I've just discovered The Last Kingdom on Netflix (several years after everyone else, of course) and, although there is an awful lot of fighting which I don't like, it's got me very interested in King Alfred and all those scary Danes. One football comment made me laugh - some English fan, rejoicing after our vanquishing of Denmark, declared it was "payback for 871" (Battle of Reading, which Danes won in extra time?). History -loving Italian fans noted last weekend ( a weekend best forgotten) that, as they had actually founded London, playing at Wembley was actually a home fixture. Oh dear, no answer to that. Long memories, these football people

I did carefully say sucker for, not of, and I changed it because I wasn't sure whether the uniform should be described as moulant or serré (French soldiers, at least the ones routinely patrolling Perpignan airport and railway station, do always seem to have the most incredibly tight, snug-fitting, and generally filled-to-capacity, uniforms). Actually those officer cadets pictured above are rather too fresh-faced and young for me ... I'd much prefer something more experienced, chunky and, ahem, hardened up a bit.    

No answer to that response, either!!!  Military display of assumed bodily prowess is all very interesting - psychologically speaking, I mean. Reminds me of that old book, The Naked Ape. Meant to intimidate rather than anything else, I suppose. It actually makes me want to laugh - all those silly helmets and what have you. Those jaunty little caps rather let down the French in your picture - they all look as if they are about to burst into song...

Not sure what effect the green and maroon berets, à la British army, is meant to have on us, but I found some interesting info from the site linked below.

I had no ideas there were so many different colours. The site below won't let me copy their "Blue Bonnet" paragraph, but apparently the military beret came from France via Scotland - originated as the famous "bonnet" worn by the Scottish fighters. Bonnet, rather than beret, is an odd word - can't imagine the SAS wearing green bonnets (with or without ribbons).

Army Berets


EDIT: This bunch simply look too nice and friendly - a happy bunch of lads in their colourful berets - but not sure they would strike terror into the hearts of the Taliban, or anyone else. But maybe that's the way forward for the world (well, one can only hope).