Ted Max

Ted Max (Maxy) does not live there, but has walked out the Woods that way many times. Ted Max used to live on MaxTed road - hence the name.

Ted Max thinks it's on the corner of Crescent Wood Road and Sydenham Hill. Is Maxy right? Yes, he is.

The Kent marshes. On a converted Thames sailing barge. Below decks, below land, below a weeping sky. Washed out greys, browns and grey-browns. For company only the curlew and the sandpiper, the teal and the shoveler. Empty masts ghosted through raised reed beds, the only verticals in that crushed space between earth and heaven. Inspired, we mused on the relation of the horizontal to the perpendicular. Several times. After, I took her in my arms and said, "We'll need to get to Spar before 8:30, or we'll have no milk for the morning."

This butter knife's no good for opening a vein. I'm going to try a discrete jab with a corkscrew under table. A combination of these Egyptian cotton napkins and my moleskin breeks should keep a good bit of the blood off the white floorboards.

Can it really be five years?

I seen Admin in the pub giving it the large one trying to impress the fit barkeep. But what you going to do? She's Admin. Her rules.

Why don't you make the gap smaller?

Love some, Quids, but the missus is hoofing a hole in my shin under your Habitat oak veneer extender so I'd better say no. Plus, I'm on the early shift tomorrow taking the twins to their circus skills class. Also, I plan on killing myself tomorrow so it'd only be a waste of your Cockburn.

We're not even at pudding yet and the wine's running out. Wake me up when it's time for the unsatisfactory snog with the hostess at the base of the stairs.

Yes, RosieH, Parky's never giving it the rest on the lost art of interviewing, ignoring his own hopelessness in the face of anything other than a willing act with a hatful of anecdotes. Ask Mitchum or Ryan about his interview technique. He's had about 25 seasons, on two channels, to show us his versatility. "You share/don't share my working clas background" "You like the shagging, tell us about the shagging" "Share the anecdote of the time Garbo knocked on your hotel door" etc...

I think Quids is anti-Twitter, but one useful purpose it serves is that it is quite good at exposing celeb chippiness. Am not talking about understandable reactions to outright abuse, but those who are clearly unused to ever being disagreed with or challenged, especially by the little people. Alan Sugar, although Twitter was hardly required to illustrate his incapacity to think outside of a bubble extending 6 inches from his own person, would be a prime example. But the Grace Dent/ India Knight/ Emma Freud circle is pretty good at it too - drawing up the wagons at the slightest sign of dissension from the virtual group hug.

Michael "Parky" Parkinson. On telly for decades reading prepared questions off a clipboard to actors with something to sell; lengthy dial-it-in career as a columnist for the Telegraph; nestled firmly in the bosom of the establishment, never out of a box at Lords or Wimbledon, but is somehow riddled with "in my dayism" and the sense that unspecified powers-that-be are forever not appreciative enough of his special brand of greatness. Chippy. PS RosieH - Is it not that Jonathan Rhys Thingy who was Henry VIII. Tom Hardy was Dudley from off of the Virgin Queen. Only I need to know which one is chippy? Or perhaps both?

I wore my grandfather's fringed, white satin evening scarf when I went on a date with D**** L*****, as I thought it would make me look a little bit like Morten Harket. We went to Wimpy and to see Beverley Hills Cop. I did not get in to Beverley Hills Cop as it was a 15. Karen called her dad to come and get her. She did not have change for the payphone so I gave her 10p. I remember when I handed the coin to her it was boiling hot from having been in the pocket of my flecked, polyester trousers. She looked at me with what I now understand to be sympathy, but which I mistook at the time for disgust. A fine line, I suppose. I still have the scarf (but not the trousers).

Brilliant, giggirl, thanks. The best seats left for ?10 are those in the 2nd circle (again, don't know what it's called) on the arms of the circle. Saw those. Good to know. I'm actually a bit meh-ish about the programme, to be fair. But for a tenner, it's no risk really. For me, ?27.50 cranks it up to "better be worth it".

?10 tickets are for top deck. Anyone know what that's like at the Noel C/Albury? Don't mind being up top, but not too keen if restricted to a view of Judi Dench's bald patch - even for a tenner.

Cheers, the Pibe. Katy T, I actually script Nick Knowles' banter on DIY SOS.

Inside 72 = Pistols at Free Trade Hall.

(Adjusts Italian scarf) I'll admit when this thread started out I worried that it was, well, a trifle workaday, a trifle bland. But as the thread has progressed something rather different has taken shape because what we have here is not just a thread, but rather a... (pretends to struggle for correct, pre-scripted word) ...remimagining of that relationship between intention and outcome, between human being and human landscape. What started out as one person's vision has become instead a statement about the conversations a community has with itself. And that, of course, is what great thread design, and great thread architecture, is all about. And who wouldn't want some of that? (Picks up cheque)

Genuine arf at that, *Bob*.

2005 - Bogged down in Basra, Tony's third term, Pink Motorola RAZR, Jackson on trial, Buncefield refinery explosion, 7/7, Jean Charles de Menezes, The Ashes. Not necessarily in that order.

Patriotic duty on this weekend of all weekends. Last year's pressing, bit raw but doing the job. GOD BLESS ALL OUR DRIVERS (BUT NOT THOSE ONES)

I DON"T READ THREADS BEFORE COMMENTING IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE

WHY HAS NOONE MENTIONED THE RACE OF THE DRIVERS IN QUESTION?

I've been pratising the right amount of ironic detachment, "can't deny the kids a sight of history - and it's on their doorstep" position. This seems to be the correct compromise to make. But I can't promise some emotion won't sneak in when I see that great armada go past. I always wanted a boat.