Ted Max

Nope. It's culinary. As is the needle upthread. (that's for injecting marinades and such into meat. You can have that for free.)

What is this used for? http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_AGm7EQe9boE/SbDzxH-rKfI/AAAAAAAADvY/n71coqWfaTg/s400/IMG_4525.jpg

http://www.kitchencontraptions.com/archives/pictures/d_855.jpg

http://www.camillasring.co.uk/SPONG%20MINCER.jpg

It's a dark world, the cucumber subculture. Not everyone can handle it. Witness the cucumber screw. http://www.kitchenaria.com/images/uploads/cucumber_spiral_cutter.jpg

I know. The tasteless little oiks.

The thing about cucumber relish is maintaining the textural integrity of the cucumber, against the mush-inducing salt and tang of the vinegar and onion. I have no idea who or what Bix was, but if they managed that in a commercial product then I mourn their passing as I would that of a friend's beloved aunt that I have never personally met. But rethinking this, given this is your brain we're talking about Hona (85% rock 'n' roll, 15% "something in the rag trade", 5% Peroni) I'd recommend something milder. Perhaps a soothing raita.

Head cheese. 2. Rinse the pig's head under a tap, and brush away any dirt from the nostrils and teeth. http://uktv.co.uk/images/standarditem/L1/535161_L1.jpg

I'm not speaking up for anyone. I'm giving you my opinion. In my opinion, having read her post, and noted the lack of emoticons, Moos thinks you are a sadist with a penchant for human brain fritters. (try them with cucumber relish)

Well, either it was a joke Tony, or Moos actually thinks you are a sadist with a collection of human house pets. I'm going for B. It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

http://i39.tinypic.com/33urakp.gif Habitat. 1. The de-cluttered "clutter" 2. The fresh herbs with a stool each, taking up a whole window. 3. The home baking montage in the foreground, complete with bulky, inconvenient-to-store scales, (and huge pan, not often used in baking). 4. The box of veg against the wall. 5. The spotless prop of a bike 6. The wine-destroying location of the display wine rack. 7. That pepper grinder A discreetly pink, relaxed, loft-lite vibe. Yours at 20% off. Buy a chair, at least, and take it home. Place it in your scratchy, low-ceilinged, kitchen. Sit in it and weep.

Still here - I seem not to have ceased upon the midnight. In honour of Carol Ann Duffy's recent appointment. Includes a line you could die happy to have written. "Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls a child's name as though they named their loss." That's the stuff we're after. Prayer Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift. Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train. Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls a child's name as though they named their loss. Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer - Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Good shout ???? and Moos. This is the thread for sweet, sweet sorrow. Eviscerating emotional rawness is that way ----->>>>>>>>

Nice choices all. Moos, do you remember the Jameson's campaign which contrasted Yeats with Burns, using the tagline "The smoother the Irish"? Glad to see you sticking to the Scotch, though. I feel the self-indulgent thrill once more. But I'm off for a kip. Or as Prospero might say: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

Here's Arnold who turns a calm evening night listening to the waves on Dover Beach into this happy ditty. Note another use of "darkling". You've got to hand it to these lads. --------- The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

It's always poetry week, ????. Keats wrote in a letter (to his brother, I think) that he'd got a black eye playing cricket on the Heath. This is good going considering they'd have been bowling underarm.

To avoid ruining the Epitaph thread, where Moos has started things off, I feel it's time to break out the nightshade, and snuggle Lethewards in a cosy blanket of melancholia. Who do you go to when nothing but a bit of metaphorical knee-hugging will do? Cricket playing, radical consumptive John Keats is often good out of the blocks. Here he is enjoying the uplifting sound of a nightingale in full song. O for a beaker full of the warm south, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stain?d mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim - Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. ------------------------------------------------ Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mus?d rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -- To thy high requiem become a sod.

It's a right tear jerker, isn't it? (Always felt Alfie's Ulysses gives the missus short thrift, though. Not to mention poor old plodding Telemachus, who rather has to pick up the pieces. Still, what a way to go.)

Innit. Forth he fared at the fated moment, sturdy Scyld to the shelter of God. Then they bore him over to ocean's billow, loving clansmen, as late he charged them, while wielded words the winsome Scyld, the leader beloved who long had ruled.... In the roadstead rocked a ring-dight vessel, ice-flecked, outbound, atheling's barge: there laid they down their darling lord on the breast of the boat, the breaker-of-rings, by the mast the mighty one. Many a treasure fetched from far was freighted with him. No ship have I known so nobly dight with weapons of war and weeds of battle, with breastplate and blade: on his bosom lay a heaped hoard that hence should go far o'er the flood with him floating away. No less these loaded the lordly gifts, thanes' huge treasure, than those had done who in former time forth had sent him sole on the seas, a suckling child. High o'er his head they hoist the standard, a gold-wove banner; let billows take him, gave him to ocean. Grave were their spirits, mournful their mood. No man is able to say in sooth, no son of the halls, no hero 'neath heaven, -- who harbored that freight! PS - Just to avoid accusations of plagiarism, I am happy to attribute this to its rightful author - Mr Ray Winstone.

"Deleted User - Admin"

Have you printed any posters up yet, Louisa?

I'm assuming they got the standard five minutes on your likely shared ancestral history, the irony of them thinking you English, with associated follow-up reading recommendations.

I?m going to be using this for months to come. In the bank is it? Good lad.

Happy Birthday, Tony.

One of the things the planners didn't realise was the importance of "the street". By having the humans up in the sky, and the cars all down at ground level, they were trying to create an improved environment for both. But they ended denying people the interaction they were trying to create - the sheer daily "how do you do" of buying a paper, walking to the bus stop etc. The sort of social breakdown you describe has too many causes to lay at this one door, but it's an acknowledged factor. What I was trying to get at was if the planners' post-war enthusiasm, naivety, patrician scheming (call it what you will) was shared in any sense by the residents at the time. You suggest not - which is a big lesson for the current plans. (Southwark claims it has 75% resident apporval for its schemes, I think).