07 September 2009

Daily Chat 07/09/09


Roman troops led by General Titus plundered Jerusalem in 70. Richard I defeated Saladin in 1191. British expatriates founded the Genoa Cricket and Football Club in 1893. It is the oldest football club in the Italian league today. The first games of the Northern Rugby Football Union (which became the Rugby Football League) were played in 1895. The first Miss America pageant was held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1921. London endured the first of what would be 57 consecutive nights of Nazi bombing in 1940. Desmond Tutu became the first black Archbishop of the Anglican Church in South Africa in 1986. And an earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale ruptured a previously unknown fault and shook Athens in 1999.

Famous births: Elizabeth I (1533), Grandma Moses (1860), Elia Kazan (1909), Julie Kavner (1950) and Chrissie Hynde (1951). It is Labor Day in the US and Labour Day in Canada.

73 comments:

  1. You know that line in Fawlty Towers when Basil says: "Don't mention the war"?

    Nowadays it's more a case of "Don't mention the Crusades." (because some people are still fighting them).

    Hope all is cleaned up after that party.....

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  2. AC Milan was founded as a cricket club a bit later in 1899!

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  3. Is it just me or is the whole Blair thread (down, Jay, down) being pre-moderated?

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  4. @Edwin:

    Which reminds me - after Jay's recommending Rain Men by Marcus Berkman, I read Harry Thompson's book Penguins Stopped Play. Makes reference to playing cricket, in the rain, in Milan.

    Thompson died shortly after the book was published, which was a shame.

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  5. Morning all. Deano I left an answer (very late I am afraid) re my dogs on yesterdays thread.
    Brussels - I think that thejackstraw is indeed a troll and judging by that chick lit thread a pretty amusing one too. She/he might get old though.
    Hope the party went well Montana.

    I cant believe the Blair thread is being pre-modded. Hope my little contribution to the great man is not turned down.

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  6. Swifty, thanks for the reminder, I still haven't read Penguins Stopped Play. Have you read Bob Crampsey's The Run-Out? An entertaining book albeit with one of the most embarrassing sex scenes in a sports novel.

    My favourite sports novel is the glorious How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup - I had a first edition and someone borrowed it, never got it back.

    Re Blair I remember Matt Seaton getting all annoyed with us for having a go on an earlier Blair post. Think I was deleted three times. I thought it had been put up as a sort of bonding exercise so we could all - from our diverse positions - have a whack at Devil Eyes, bit no they really expected us to be nice to him.

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  7. It appears that the Blair thread has been removed. Bizarre.

    I imagine every comment they got was abusive, maybe they figured it would have no cred if posted without anything below it. CiF do seem to be fucking up everything right now - they're as clueless as Gordon.

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  8. Hi Frank. I didn't go to see it, I rarely look at Cif and never comment if I do.

    Amazing that they didn't know what was going to happen.

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  9. @Edwin:

    Worth reading, Penguins Stopped Play, if only to provide a bit of context for Berkman's book. Thompson comes out of it the more likeable man, IMHO.

    I'm currently reading the first volume of Jean Moorcroft Wilson's biog of Siegfried Sassoon. Rather a good read so far, I have to say.

    The TB piece is back, with 54 comments so far. Not that I'll be reading it.

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  10. Morning All,

    Anyone read the Gypsy article? Very interesting.

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  11. Tone's article is just the usual handwringing pap - nowhere near as offensive as Sunny Hundal's "we must destroy liberalism in order to save it" crap.

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  12. @thauma:

    Gypsies, eh? Was the article for 'em, or agin 'em?

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  13. @thauma:

    Hmm. What an odd article.

    Hmm.

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  14. Could this be Roxy Freeman, 'journalist' - another book-plug?

    link

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  15. @scherfers:

    I do believe it could, mate. And in case you missed this in her review of Koba on her page (eaterie in Brighton, natch):

    "needless to say I was eager to try the place out so with an internship at The Guardian on the horizon and my sister nearing the end of her degree we decided to celebrate..."

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  16. Yeah, she seems quite keen on eating out in fine restaurants. She'll fit right in with the rest of Grauniad staff. I wonder if she's ever eaten hedgehog, encased in mud and baked in the camp-fire?

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  17. The HR dept at the Graun must have given fulsome thanks indeed to whatever deity they worship, the day Roxy's CV landed in the in-tray.

    Minority? Tick. Woman? Tick and tick. Lives in Brighton? Tick tick and tick. Victim of casual discrimination at some point in the past? "Tick machine" explodes...

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  18. I regret the hedgehog comment. I should perhaps have asked about that traditional old Romany dish - 'The Brochette of sea scallops with leek fondue & truffle oil dressing is out of this world while the duck breast with sweet potato and mango Dauphinois is surely concocted by the gods, oh and did I mention the Assiette gourmande?'

    Blimey! Sounds good, Roxy. Can I have chips with that? (Sorry about the casual discrimination btw)

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  19. I imagine her well-heeled colleagues will be all agog at this "romantic" newcomer and will be falling over themselves to patronise her and introduce her to the marvellous social whirl that is the Guardian dinner-party scene.

    "Alan, this is Roxy, she used to live in a caravan when she was a child, just fancy! But she's normal now and wants to be a journalist (without compromising her restless, rootless principles. In Brighton.)!!"

    "How darling! Does she know Rumer Godden, I loved that BBC series about didikoi when I was younger..."

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  20. Oh you are a cynical lot. I enjoyed the article. Although when she writes there's a widely held view that everyone who lives in a caravan or on the road is a dirty, thieving Gypsy, never contributing to society while living for free on land that doesn't belong to them, she doesn't actually refute the not-contributing and living-on-others'-land.

    Besides, anyone who loves flamenco can't be all bad.

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  21. Can't wait for her forthcoming autobiography. I hope it goes right up to 'the Guardian months' (an outsider's hilarious but razor-sharp and brutally accurate portrayal of the glittering, chattering litterati) and doesn't just focus on cold, hunger, poverty, discrimination, flamenco-dancing and the Open University.

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  22. @scherfers:

    Faint hope, I reckon, old son. She may like to trough like the Galloping Gourmet, but even she's not going to tuck into the hand that feeds her...

    More's the pity, obviously, because I would like to read more about what her colleague Rowenna Davis does on her days off. I reckon there's a dark heart beating under that prissy Head Girl exterior...

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  23. @ PCC
    Caught your note this am - we both seemed to have made last posts at exactly the same time.

    Wasn't surprised to read you were a dog nut too -I think it's a common trait among you Sheffield girls who post here (and quite a lot of the civilised folk from outside Yorks too). The more you read here you will 'sense' the non dog fans.

    Sorry to read that you have an illness hope it's gone soon - sure the dogs you have will help. As you say/hint the world here in the UK might be different if they were on prescription.

    @ UT


    Oh fuck Blair he really is `tedious twot - cunt par excellence etc .....

    I'm much more interested in the babe in the photo above - her name is Margaret Gorman and she was from Washington DC. My hope is that her life was as much fun as her smile and posture suggest it should have been...

    My machine is having periodic fits - thus some of you will pleased to read that this is likely to by my last post for this week. As ever I will be able to read here even when I can't post. I intend to enjoy my coming week and hope you all have a fine one too.

    Now the question is can I bounce this post off a passing cloud in an otherwise lovely late summer day in Yorkshire.

    Swifty Boy we all need the latin for cunt par excellence if you please??

    Regards to all.

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  24. @ Thaum

    "there's a widely held view that everyone who lives in a caravan or on the road is a dirty, thieving Gypsy, never contributing to society while living for free on land that doesn't belong to them .."

    That's a downright clarion to torch deano30!!

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  25. @deano:

    Cunnissimus? Cunnus inter cunni?

    Here's a handy wiki page if you're ever stuck in a lift with a bunch of rowdy Roman soldiers and want to know what they're talking about...

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  26. Oh no Deano, who would look after the dogs? ;-)

    Have made 2 attempts to post on the TB thread and despite very carefully not calling him a c*nt, nor using any other bad language, they are not getting through! Apparently the words 'warmonger' and 'hypocrisy' are not allowed.

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  27. @thauma:

    What you need is an acrostic making up the words "Tony is a cunt", or similar. There must be hundreds out there. Scherfers is good at them, he may be able to oblige. I'll have a stab as well if you want.

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  28. Swifty - good idea!

    Hmm

    TONY
    Imagines
    Social
    Amelioration
    Coming
    Under
    New
    Theism

    It's a go!

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  29. @thaum:

    Tony, I sense a come-uppance next Thursday.

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  30. Wa-hey, a slightly modified version made it through!

    Swifty, yours is much less obvious than mine, good one!

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  31. 'Come-uppance' is a nice touch too! :-D

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  32. Dot did one about the cult-that-isn't-a-cult, no siree Bob not a cult at all, a while ago, which was very nasty to L Ron Hubbard as I recall.

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  33. @ SwiftyBoy

    Cheers Bro - loved the wiki and will enjoy it at my leisure.

    I am now having to rethink my origins 'cos whilst I had always intuitively believed myself to be Viking in origin the evidence of my errant gene seems to be that I may not be so simply found.

    No matter how blathered I get I invariably burble something remarkably close to "Cunnissimus? Cunnus inter cunni" whenever a delight passes my eye.

    Plainly since I am a secondary modern boy without a sniff of Latin in my education thus the natural/intuitive gurgiling in my head of "Cunnus inter cunni" (I wish I could get this machine to write in italics) when I am the presence of desire - leads me to the conclusion that I must be the far flung offspring of a roman grunt.

    Perhaps, just perhaps, mixed with a Viking lady's genes. We must all travel hopefully.

    Ladies, quite properly, always feel reassured when I tell them that they are safe in my presences because I am blind in one eye and thus can see only half of them.

    @ Thaum - have one on me on the Blair try something to the effect of...

    "........Mr Blair is , as his eminence the Pope would have properly said, Cunnissmus - Cunnus inter cunni..."

    I know that you my friend have the ability to italicise the Latin.

    Best Wishes

    Now can I catch the last cloud of the day??

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  34. @deano:

    Well, if you are the offspring of a comitatensis Romanus, then you may be better protected than you think...

    Although it seems that, in fact, it might have been a disease carried by the soldiers which wiped out those carrying a gene which later might have raised their susceptibility to HIV. If you follow me...

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  35. Hello all!

    Just a random-ish question- what is ultimathule's malfunction?

    I just wandered by a recent thread- the one on Nanny's- women's work and saw that, after I had left she went off on one. At the end of the thread she was talking about how she felt sorry for british people and british children "maybe you feel like you're a powerful nation so you can waste your children, we Finns don't feel like that".

    Man...

    Incidentally she implied I was pulling your leg at some point princesschipchops (I wasn't).

    She must be a laugh to wind up. But she seems so aggressive. She made most of the posts on the second half of the thread...

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  36. If you didn't have Ultima you'd have to invent her - she's so (unwittingly) entertaining.

    She's the one who called Carla Bruni a slut but admits to having three or four toyboys on the go.

    And I'm sure Jay would miss her if she left CiF.

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  37. I must confess, I never read a word ultimathule says.

    It's a peculiarity of mine, admittedly.

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  38. Oh Bru I was in love with you till you said that.

    A lass who is (unwittingly) entertaining is sometimes other time called a female child.

    I will recover from my recoil - I still just want to laen against you....

    comitatensis Romanus,

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  39. I shall try to keep my bullying instincts under control :)

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  40. I think CiF is about to go tits up again, folks.

    May have to gather round the piano for a good old sing song like we did in the days before the Graun invented it.

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  41. And deano:

    I should have written cunnus inter cunnos.

    Shades of Romanes eunt domus, I'm afraid.

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  42. @ Swifty - (I don't just post back for any smart soul that I admire) consider yoursen blessed.

    Never mind your (domus - sleeping head, - domicile home?)

    I naturally could never sleep without adding an " s " to mine object desire

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  43. @ Mr SwiftyBoy

    Oh you delightful guy - you pulled me onto that delicate but informative punch of yours..

    Bet you wish you wasn't now in londinium but like your dad a schooly - you would have been(still can be) fucking great.

    I know about these things..

    d.

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  44. Ah Deano I will keep my senses on guard - for I do not trust those who do not like the hounds.

    Hi okeliedokelie (hope I spelt that right) like the name!

    Thaumaturge re Blair- I manged to get a post in that used the word hypocricy I think it was the word warmonger that pushed them over the edge. Weirdly my first post - full of praise for meester Blair, stating he is a fine humanitarian who due to his conversion may now be sainted - did not. I liked it when the Guardian writer came on to tell anyone off and ask if anyone had a question for the nice Mr. Blair.

    I have decided that the 'thelastjackstraw' poster may be some sort of genius. Their posts on that chick lit thread were funny.

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  45. God just spelt hypocrisy wrong. I cant get a spell check on this net book and it is doing my head in - cause I cant spell.

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  46. hmmmm....


    okeliedokelie?

    Was certainly an affectionate greeting/aside in my part of Yorkshire circa 1950+


    That don't mean it weren't imported by much loved Geordie cousins ?

    d.

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  47. I guess that what I heard as a youngster was more like......


    oak le de' oak le

    But that's not far from our new friend..

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  48. I'm not very good at this

    Try...........

    Oak lee d'oak lee.

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  49. Jesus Christ. Who the hell is furmonator?! I made a joke about the beaker people on Sunny's BNP thing and he's gone furminator's apeshit at me.

    Just a feeling, but I do wonder sometimes if some of these BNP-ers are a bit thick ...

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  50. Just had a look Bitterweed. I think it's agreed that the Beaker people didn't exist they all sourced their pots from the same place.

    Re Morris Dancing, my wife's cousin ofetn goes off to do Morris dancing all over England - he lives on Skye!

    As for folk singing, the English scene has always been gleefully embracing: I was once told (by an Irish singer) that Irish travellers often found the English scene more welcoming than the Irish one.

    I think there is great stuff on the English scene. I'm essentially a Radio 3 man myself, but one night I heard this captivating song when I switched on - it was Steve Knightley, fab.

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  51. Anonymous @ 16.07 (deano?):

    I’m pretty sure I welcomed okeliedokelie when he/she was here recently, but I’ll happily do so again.

    Welcome to The Untrusted, okeliedokelie.

    As far as rules go (don’t know why I’m the one selected to tell you this), we don’t really have any. We try to rely on people’s common sense and common courtesy, and generally that works pretty well.

    Pleased to see you picked up traneroundthebanned’s comment on AllyF’s thread about the importance of that paragraph referring to the

    *clear implication that male victimisation, even when it involves severe physical injury, being of little significance*

    and that

    *this is depressingly reminiscent of the dismissal, denial and downplaying of women’s experience of DV in the pre-feminist era*

    If I were still posting on Cif, I would have made that exact same point ;-)

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  52. And for the many who have mentioned Tony Blair today:

    Don’t know why you’re even vaguely interested in him.

    Some poster called JayReilly (whatever happened to him, BTW?) said everything that needed to be said about Blair some time ago.

    Time to move on...

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  53. @ BW

    "Just a feeling, but I do wonder sometimes if some of these BNP-ers are a bit thick ."

    My friend and comrade do not ever under estimate these BNP twats.

    A significant part of my life was spent teaching the awkward squad (shop stewards).

    These (in every generation) naturally self selecting (ignorant but passionately enquiring) decent justice minded folk,the major part of what I call the working class were............ sharp.............angry....................nativeclever. Folk just like me and yours...

    These are the guys and girls that the BNP are courting from the post Thatcher/Blair generation.

    The bastards` won a swathe of minds here in Yorks much to my shame. What ever they are brother they ain't thick.

    I know that you are not soft in the head and thus will recognise that I'm consitutionally incapable of patronising any living soul

    deano.

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  54. Edwin Moore
    Yes, indeed, my whole post was a joke, a tease really. And yes, Knightly is superb, as are Show of Hands.

    Deano
    I know... but some of the lads posting on CiF *are* pretty thick. But agreed, it's not a useful position to just to try to wave them off as dunderheads. They are not. No indeedy.

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  55. Oh I knew you knew BW but worth saying - it's only a few years since their existence was a given!

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  56. @ Edwin Moore

    My slow brain missed the beat - giz a reference please?

    "......but one night I heard this captivating song when I switched on - it was Steve Knightley, fab...."

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  59. @ andy

    Sorry Bro - twas me but you are so much better at welcome than anybody else I know.

    deano.

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  60. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    said d.

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  63. No sign of Anneten42 for several days now - you who are her friends reassure me.

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  64. Anon,
    Composing a scorcher of an ATL piece I expect.

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  65. more interested in the babe in the photo above - her name is Margaret Gorman and she was from Washington DC. My hope is that her life was as much fun as her smile and posture suggest it should have been...

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  67. Deano,
    A comment I made a couple days ago came out nastier than I ever intended. I plead drunkeness and the 'eadaches.

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  68. And stop removing your bloody posts.

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  69. I'm still here been a bit busy in the last few days.

    Currently wandering around with a remote heart monitor wired to strategic points on my chest!

    Can remove said apparatus at 9:20 this morning and then have to go to the hospital to return it.

    Its nothing to worry about - they are just giving my heart an 'MOT' :)

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  70. annetan,
    You certainly know how to put paid to silly speculation my dear. Hope all is well.

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