SimonM

>>Remember me to your mum" I know that used to be common, but it just sounds so wrong<< Oh it is! especially when you remember the Ernest Heningway/Spanish variation - "Remmeber me to that whore, thy mother"!

>> went from Smith (which I loved) to Fowler. Didnt think I could get a more common name than Smith!!<< "EastEnders" has such a lot to answer for! :))

What preposterous nonsense! There's long been a custom for women to tip their hairdressers because, more often than not, their hair has been done by a young woman paid a pittance by the salons' - ahem - madame. Blokes should not tip barbers - ever - it is both unmanly and insulting. The guys - usually self-employed - post a list of charges for various services and if more is expected on top of those charges than that then the carte should be redrafted... I recall the old (and I do mean old) Jimmy Tarbuck joke - "I went to me barbers for an 'aircut: the sign said "cuts 1/6d, shaves 1/- - so I told 'im the shave me 'ead..." Tipping! Huh! Hoity-toity poncey southern ways... >:D<

>>I have heard say by RSPB types that the jay is quite uncommon away from woodlands, and is not that visible even in the parks around here<< The people we bought this house from o Underhill Road proudly told us they often saw a jay on the garden - and sure enough we have spotted one a couple of times a year every year since. Surely it cannot be the same one each year? ;-)

>>I shall take my back protector, chaps and crop out of the garage forthwith.:D

..."train station"...

>>There aren't many words which I actually find offensive. I can only really think of 'nigger' and 'faggot'.<< "spaz", "crip", "muffdiver", "chav" as well as the words you cite, are all apparently in this weird category of words that are offensive unless used self-descriptively. I have never been happy with this new phenonemenon (at least I think it is new) of worda that have a kind of two-tier offensiveness rating.

>>Posh people with ferocious dogs? This isn't a phenomenon I have encountered, to be honest.<< They wear red coats and ride horses.... But, as the Council has denied there's any truth to the issue the petition seeks to address, hasn't this whole thread become redundant? (?)

Well I thought that was Michael Barrymore on the cover of the new "Radio Times" but then I looked more closely and....:-S

>>> their 'competative'<<< Ummm....? :))

It was probably done by White Stuff themselves, after the sympathy vote B)

And see http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007260339,00.html

>>That's great and better than the service I had in my search for 'morels' as featured in Gordon's F word recipe last week. Here are my findings:<< ?5.49 for a 20gram packet at Sainsbury's :)) (But we are lurching off-thread and I hear the heavy, lurching tread of Admin....)

>>>To contradict you a wee bit Simon, Lordship Lane is oft compared on here to Eccie Rd Sheffield (long a home to a White Stuff) so not sure I agree it's totally unsuited <<< Ah the dear old Eccleshall Road. I did use to know it very well (my mother even had a clothes shop on Abbeydale Road for a time!) but have little idea how it is now. I do recall though seeing a White Stuff in the middle of Harrogate's main shopping area only a few weeks ago, and thought then how much such an area suited it, and how incongruous it would seem on LL. And I don't just mean the prices either: it seems to me that a shop like "White Stuff" is just more suited to an area wher people make a day/half day of clothes shopping and like to try several shops/several similar garments in different shops before actually buying. But we shall see (Still cannot forgive them for "neighborhood" though - didn't their researchers cotton on to the fact that one of the main attractions to (younger?) families in ED and its environs and purlieus is the quality of the various local education establishments?:)) )

>>A completely super place to visit, shop, eat and drink though, so unpretentious. << I think I can agree with that, although these days am slightly more hesitant about describing it as "unpretentious" :))

>>'The White Stuff has landed, there goes the neighbourhood!'...nothing like a quite entrance into LL is there?!<< Uh no....what the signs/posters actually say is "There goes the neighborhood". As if being a very ordinary chain plonked down in an area totally unsuited to this kind of shop were not enough, they then go and rub salt in the wound by inflicting an american spelling within a trite though strangely accurate slogan....

Oh wonderful! >:D

Has she been spayed?

You have to remember DulwichMum is not really "leafy East Dulwich", but an ornamnent of the gentry in even leafier West Dulwich. Her de haut en bas pronouncements - be they on the subject of nannies or shoe-shopping - are very much those of the Lady Bountiful slumming it a bit, but gosh had I a forleock I'd willingly be tugging it! >:D

>>I don't think there's much demand for public transport down in the Village. ;)<< Tsk! How are the cleaners, chamber-maids and under-gardeners supposed to get ro work from Brixton, Peckham etc?! :))

Well Frank the incredibly friendly Anterior Trading dog is still around. I gather from the lady in the shop that the business had already been sold on to someone else, so perhaps it has indeed closed but carried on its new incarnation without skipping a beat?

Myself I found the the very title of the thread nasty and patronising. Surely instead of merely dumping them on tips we should be thinking of recycling the little sweethearts? B)

I like no.3 as well....but have you seen the fabulous William Rose jute bags? :))

<< My guess would be "Windsor", formerly "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha".....and who could blame them for the new coinage?

Well either a lakeside village in the Bernese Oberland, or a village in the Yorkshide Dales within delivery range of the Harrogate Waitrose :-$