Walsingham

ROFL @ Monte

The diet is going rather spiffingly, this cooking malarkey quite complicated currently though, not used to doing anything more complicated than toast. I'm getting there slowly, however. Be a kitchen God in no time Good man! If you come up with anything particularly good, let us all know. I'd love to try. Very bad reports from home. My mother's kidneys and liver are failing from the pressure of metabolising all the crap from the cancer. I'm going down Monday to rally her if possible.

You get a lot of semi-precious stones down south, don't you? Plus they do great silverwork. Try to hedge her that way. Far better than just a pretty piece of glass-looking nonsense. Keep the reports coming!

I mean the subtle collective bullying by the group, mainly. Exclusion, mocking. Can't expel a whole year. On the other hand there's a limit to what you can expect from lads in their teens. I don't lose sleep over it. I took my share and did my share. Might as well lose sleep over how cold it is in Russia. However, persistent persecution of one boy, trashing his kit, never letting him speak, hitting him regularly. That wasn't tolerated for long once it became known. A big part of that of course is good prefects. If the prefects went bad it became a lot harder. ~~~ Back on topic I'm not averse to people customising the language a little. In my opinion it's one of the beauties of English that it does get bent and misused. I dated a couple of girls from Yorkshire and I still love the little turns of phrase. When I taught English I tried to get my students to make the language their own. However, as I say, I am averse to customising for the purpose of dumbing down. Of excluding or showing up. So I suppose on reflection I also get annoyed when it is toned UP for the same purpose. As I did when Lord of the Flies started quoting Latin. On balance I regard the Queen's English as a useful standard. Anyone can use it, unlike patois or street slang. It doesn't change so you can't get caught out or excluded.

Love thy neighbour? Turn the other cheek? Alms to the poor? Oh yes, makes no bloody sense at all.

Do it nekkid? Then your singing would the last thing in their minds. And in mine

You'd have to choose Buddhism. I mean, given the choice of trips, do you want to go to freaking Tibet, or Mecca (no disrespect to the spiritual component)? Mecca's a mass of gimcrack hotels and religious police. I still don't see why believing in God means you have to worship the bugger. I believe in my uncle Wally. But i don't worship him.

most of what i know about America south of Detroit comes from the Preacher graphic novels. So you will need guns. Lots of guns.

Dark Rising Shadow sounds like the coolest CIA plan ever.

I'm absolutely cacking it about going on stage tomorrow. I'm going to be singing with this arrangement, and I mean I've been having enough lessons, but I'm not nearly good enough to warrant people paying to hear me. I just hope people are warmed up by the preceding acts and feeling forgiving.

I mean there was subtle bullying. But as soon as it got to the point where someone was being seriuosly affected then it got dealt with, by and large... I mean... actually OK there were a couple of cases of it being mores serious, but they did eventually get handled.

The only way that dream could be improved upon was if said model were wealthy and her father owned a liquor store. I'm not greedy tho. Not even in dreams.

Well, I'm not sure I did much more than read what I had to at school. ...Actually, on reflection thats a total lie. I'd usually have about two other books on the go, and of course we got taken to debates, and family dinners were always rather highbrow. I really do stand by my earlier comment that schools do not offer enough protection for anyone who stands out. We had bullying, but on the whole we got tremendous support from staff, who could and did remove boys who were (in retrospect) very mild bullies. As a consequence we had scads of free intellectuals - and I mean far above my standard. Friends who teach government schools say that they have no power or time to devote to this, and as a consequence there is an exaggerated tendency for kids to dumb themselves down to fit in with the lowest common (aggressive) denominator.

Well, yeah. I was expecting the debate to raise good points on both sides. the problem as I understand it is that human rights legislation currently draws no distinction between circumstance. So, for example recent ruling effectively mean that soldiers have the same rights on the battlefield as off it. Which I, and a huge number of others consider totally unworkable. I'm not saying soldiers shouldn't be treated decently. But they are required to do things that would be totally unreasonable of a civilian. It seems that the same underlying issue is present here. A prisoner cannot abrogate their right to privacy. yet how could one run a prison in the first place without that right being surrendered? I would not be averse to the legislation being cleared up, but I think a more sensible option would be a return to intent based legislation. I've mentioned this before, and refer to comments made in the House of Lords that legislation used to state the reason for which it had been written. To protect the weak or what have you. A judge could refer to that intent in his or her ruling. But this practice has declined, for what reason I do not know.

you wouldn't happen to have his number would you...? You steer well clear of it, mate. I'm sure you could find someone who'd do it locally, but I don't think you'd really be the same person afterwards. If you have to risk going to jail over it I think you'd personally better do it in person, if you follow me. Not that I am recommending that course of action. A friend's son did something similar and in the end it was HIM who wound up in jail. Sorry to hear about your girlfriend, GD. But I'm glad to hear you're on an even keel about it. There will be more ladies eventually. Gravity of the above notwithstanding, I'm in a good mood today. I had the best dream ever. Due to a chance overheard conversation and a chance remark I had to fight a lying government contractor to death, whereupon I was made a major and given command of a company of conscripted hippy academics. Adventurous fighting ensued, during which I met and pulled a stunningly clever raven haired nude model whose favourite hobbies were playing computer games and me! Which is now what I shall expect every night. You hear me, brain?

Don't get me wrong, man. I get incredibly violent when people threaten people I care about. I just .. I don't know. Years ago I knew a gangster who would arrange vengeance in cases like this for a few hundred pounds. But enough of that. Fwiiw, i hope she recovers well. Some people do.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...acy-rights.html Prisoners on the run are not named, because it would breach their right to privacy. Seriously. Now, I acept that legal obligations are legal obligations, but I think the point is that the legal obligations are clearly wrong. It is not the case that all rights are always present. We need far smarter and far more open debate on what we are going to accept and what we will give up.

A female friend of mine said on one occasion that the best thing you can do as a friend is to heal your friend, not hurt her enemy. I'm not sure I agree, but i figure you may as well hear the view.

It's always weird when someone you care about has that happen. Boils my blood, frankly. No chance of getting the cops in?

Reese's anything. Followed by licorice.

I think it's funny that my parents rebelled by taking drugs. I rebelled by NOT taking drugs. Of course I also had about four kinds of brain fever.... Do you not think it is unfortunate that this was a real man, no worse than you or I, yet his suspicious death will almost certainly never get dealt with.?

I was raised in a truly archaic style. As in "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. "

Bittersweet memory for me. We celebrated the fact that we were going to get married, but couldn't yet for financial reasons. So sure of our love that marriage seemed a step down.

A quango headed by Munchkeeen sounds good. Nice thinking.

Sorry to hear about your cousin, Arch. She sounds like a good person to have known.