SimonM

HP Sauce is good, but Branston Fruity sauce even better! I prefer my corned beef ready sliced at the supermarket (oddly, EDD seem not to stock it...), as corned beef cans and their keys never agree with me.... And Aran is just as good as Fair Isle dammit!

WR -> Sparkes is not an ecomomy at all WR -> a Peckham butchers might be!

I used to love spam fritters and chips - every greasy spoon used to do them!

>>Corned beef, Simon? Now that's sad.<< Hey, you eat your lunch your way, I'll eat mine, mine! :))

1) Buy yourself a scrumptious bagutte for only ?1.50 from Cafe 2050 on Forest Hill Road. These are a little on the small side but perfect for 1 large, 2 smaller portions. 2) If you are famished, slice it lengthways in half and generously butter both pieces. (I recommend a viewing of "Diva" to see the correct technique for this). If only moderately starving use half the loaf, save the remainder for the evening. Do not take it to the park to feed the ducks with. This may well be excellent dispacement activity but you should be back working and anyway bread is bad for ducks... 3) generously lay (see here how I cunningly sustain the carnal theme so repugnantly commenced by other saddos in here) your choice of filling - it may be hot bacon and HP sauce, corned beef and Branston pickle, ham and mustard....jam if you are economising. 4) Eat

I suspect your cat was put off by a combination of the workers in your flat and your own absence, rather than the unwelcome new visitor. A week is worrying but not that uncommon for a cat and he may yet just wander back in.

Is it that time of year already? The Annual(seemingly!) Residents-Parking-Permits-for-ED debate? A thousand times NO!

>> Sadly, SimonM, it's not just the owner's garden that a cat has access to.<< When you have foxes living wild in neighbouring gardens, cats' lavatorial habits are the least of your problems. In any case simply keeping them in at night is not going to stop them wandering around during the daytime. Our cats are free to come and go as they please...and choose to spend 95% of their time indoors. I'd not dream of buying litter trays unless a cat was sick or new to us.

>>Does this mean that cat owners do not buy litter trays as a matter of course? << Of course not - if the cat(s) has/have acceess to the garden at all times.

"Mona Lisa" - quite famously

>So forgive me if I don't take too much notice of whay lovable old Arfur claimed< His ludicrous politics in no way invalidate what I said about the truth of his accurate assertions regarding the Thatcher Government's plans for the Coal Industry. They denied having a hit-list for pit closures whereas they did indeed have such a list. The new pay/productivity scheme the Bosses were trying to put across was indeed divisive, as was intended, as it benefitted the miners in the "easy" coalfields of Nottinghamshire. Ut was classic divide and rule Thatcher was motivated more by revenge on the NUM for the way the Heath Government had been outmanoeuvred in the previous strike, more than any noble purpose of refloating the Good Ship Britain. Scargill was tactically naive and got up a lot of people's backs, but rightly or wrongly he was supported enthuastically by the bulk of his members. The damage done to these communities by treating them like rebel outposts to be out down by overpaid, vicious bussed-in members of the Met Cavalry has never been repaired.

Think how much more demoralising it would have been with a 20p piece though...::o

Mulled Port sounds wonderful! Recipe? >:D

Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, The Inkspots, The Mills Brothers, Glenn Miller.... I think I may possibly be the winner here! :))

Blackburn 2 Newcastle 2 Bolton 1 Man Utd 0 Chelsea 3 Stoke 1 (Beatty - spit!) Hull 0 Arsenal 2 Man City 1 Wigan 2 Sunderland 1 Aston Villa 2 West Brom 1 Middlesbrough 2 Tottenham 3 Portsmouth 1 West Ham 1 Fulham 2 Liverpool 1 Everton 0 SimonM

*thunderous applause to the previous post*

Only St John's do Roast Swan, as everyone surely knows :))

It's not "The Man Who Loved Women" by any chance? I only saw the Truffaut original and not the re-make...

Not white-hot poker to hand....tried it with the red hot variety but the petals just got soggy and fell off...

>>At Christmas I bought a mulled wine spice packet from Franklins Farm Shop for ?1.49. I then found exactly the same product in the wonderful SMBS for ?0.99.:D<. Such an agreeable way to acquire a warm inner glow (partly from the wine, partly from self-righteousness) on a cold day....

Not read "The Knife that Killed Me" but the first two you name are both set in the Cambridge of about 35 years ago. So there's your answer! >:D

Wailing women in black sounds like an Italian film...

I grew up in a succession of houses owned by the NCB. As long as your "Most Miners" are Nottinghamshire ones you are probably right. The fact is everything Scargill claimed the Thatcher government was secretly planning with the coal mines turned out to be absolutely accurate.

Yeah....she put all them miners out of work....idle bastards the lot of them...(6) As for well-paid, minimum overtime, stress-free jobs, in an adjoing thread a gentleman is reported as having just turned down a job paying ?500,000 a week....

Surely her "kids" are all grown up now?? Could these have been *gasp* "grand-kids"?!