*Bob*

I agree, except that 'value for money' and 'level of excellence' go hand in hand, do they not? At the current level of excellence, the pricing seemed a bit out to me. That's all..

I hope others agree with you, Lizzie, because I do want the place to do well. For my part, I can only concur with a previous poster, in that a tenner for some couscous, 4 chipolatas and some leaves does not represent value for money. I like almost everything else about the place though.

I might have played at my funeral.

AFN, with this sort of enthusiasm and conviction, you could really get the Nunhead Forum off the ground.

Have you seen 'Turner and Hooch', Jeremy? That could be the one for you.

You're lucky you managed to get into the bogs at Maccy D's.. without having to ask a drone to unlock them for you first.

KalamityKel Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I think if you were to make a regular thing of > dining at the Mag then yes.. I think you have fingered the very nub of my gripe, Kel. The point it - yes, I do want to make a regular thing of it - and I expect they want me to make a regular thing of it too. The food is unpretentious and well-cooked.. but it's not a 'treat'. It's a good example of what decent (modern) pub food ought to be, but if you have to spend getting-on for ?15 each to (nearly) sate your appetite (main and a side - the portions are decidedly small) then the price doesn't quite match-up to what's on the plate. You can get something pretty special for ?15 these days. You can get something amazing for ?30. You can get something unpretentious and well-cooked for around ?8, and a healthy portion of it too. Based on what we saw, the food on offer falls between two stools, being neither a restaurant you can't wait to go back to nor a good place to drop-in for a no-fuss tasty bite to eat. Anyway - early days. If it's jam-packed with diners on a nightly basis then they've got it right - and I'm talking out of my ring.

I've been pretty positive on the new Mag so far, I reckon it's fair I follow-up with something of gripe about the food. Or the food pricing, to be more specific. In short: it costs too much. It's not that the food wasn't good (it was). It's just that the price didn't quite seem right. Instead of coming away saying "that was nice, let's go back" we came away saying "that was nice but it cost a bit too much - maybe we won't". Trivial though it seems, a couple of quid less and we thought would never have crossed our mind, but it did - so here it is.

If it must be 'bought bread', then it must be Warburtons bread. The bread that laughs in the face of other breads. Bread. Bread. Bread.

I wish I could say that B&Q have a team of highly-trained paint mixers wearing lab coats and carrying clipboards but unfortunately - even there - your paint will be mixed by the same aged computer system (with broken keys) and operated by a sulking teenager who can't wait to get out the door. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere that mixes paint who'd offer to do anything more than replace the tin (and perhaps give you a ?10 tin of gloss!)

I've only ever had good service from the dudes and dude-ess in The Plough. And friendly faces too - pretty much all of them, whenever I've been, busy shop, empty shop.. whatever. It's a crappy situation you find youself in, but I have to say there's no way I'd hand a tin of shop-mixed paint over to a decorator without lifting the lid and checking it first.

I'm sure the reasons were many and varied, depending on what phase the war was in. Queen and country? Sense of duty? A grand adventure? Not wanting to miss-out? Peer pressure? Conscription? "A moral crusade with right on your side"? Pretty far down the list. Here's guessing the percentage of current 'remembrance' content (Iraq, Afghanistan) we see this year will be greater than it ever has been in the past - where it used to be a battle in itself to get any sort of respectable mention of soliders post-WW2. Pressure from the public / the Legion has played its part for sure, but I also see a slightly distasteful rebranding of 'Remembrance' in some parts of the media and government: using the conflicts of the past to give some to sort of mispaced legitimacy to the ones of the present. And future, no doubt. Just an opinion.

That's a bizarre connection, Sue. Most of the participants in WW1 had no idea what they were fighting for.

Be thankful for it. If the French have their way and manage to push through this new EU directive, time will instead be measured in units of 'onions'. And instead of the clocks going backward and forward, Britons will be required to spend two hours per year smoking, shrugging and eating the parts of animals that most right-minded people discard.

Careful, Kel. Tony is trying to work his irresistable magic on you. He's warming-up the cherry wine and Sade LP as we speak.

Where's this Nunhead place again?

A dash of zopiclone in the milk and job's a good un

The Beeb have gone and got themselves a fancy-pants new RECESSION graphic! Here it is.. it's called 'The Downturn'. Personally I would have put a sad face on it, or perhaps had the arrow plunging dramatically into a bucket of shit.. think they missed a trick there. Today's scientific lunchtime snapshot of RECESSION BRITAIN including a man in Derby who reckoned it wouldn't be as bad a last time, some shoppers at a shopping centre who weren't changing their shopping habits, and Penzance - where all 108 of the population are really feeling the pinch. More news as it happens - watch THIS SPACE

'Miss SE22'?

Indeed. As Mark Twain famously observed.. "Golf is a shit game, played by men in silly trousers"

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Reminds me of the final scene of Blackadder Goes > Forth. Comedies somehow shouldn't leave you > wanting to cry, but that had to be one of the > finest 10 seconds of television made. Once they decided to remove the laughter track - present in the first airing.

I'm afraid not, Citzen.. I was merely unfortunate enough to catch a segment of it whilst brewing the dinner. Which is a shame, as I'm dying to now how it ended (though I think it would probably be something along the lines of 'change your supplier regularly and try not to waste energy')

'Peace and Love' = 'Peace Off'

I think it stands for 'Eejit'

It's always best to attend private members clubs as the guest of someone else. That way you can enjoy any benefits but still slag it off with a clear conscience when you leave.