Jill Sparrow

We'll be toasty!

I'll burn mine next Christmas....if I receive one!

You look too prosperous, Letsavagoo. Next time, tie some string round your trousers and wear odd socks and shoes.

Congratulations!! Many more to come.

Half an hour of JSB will sort that for you, Loppy. My BP tends to be too low but that's genetic. My mother, grandmother and great grandmother all had low blood pressure and often fainted. My great grandmother's death certificate actually mentions the term syncope.

Yes, I saw The Changeling some years ago and it was good. George C Scott always gives a good performance.

One of the best films in that genre,in my opinion, was Night of the Demon, shot in the 1950s in black and white. Directed by Val Lewton. It is sometimes known as Curse of the Demon. Based (very loosely) on the M R James short story, Casting the Runes. It's available on internet archive. Also worth a watch is The Uninvited, (based on the novel Uneasy Freehold) with Ray Milland. Both old films but far more frightening than more up to date stuff.

The River Amber is looking dangerously high and the Derwent at Matlock looks likely to exceed its 1965 record, according to the news. Lots of houses which have been built on known flood plains in recent years will face a stiff test with this volume of water.

Yes it is. Congratulations, Mr and Mrs PP. Such a shame the foul weather has spoiled your day.

I'll be quids in next winter then, when I qualify and Mr Starkers is in number 10.

As long as I don't have to go back to school!

Don't try dancing in them now! I still have some blocks but no longer have the strength in my legs to do Pointe work. Old age!

We did have standards!!

As with @The Pianomanlast year, I don't qualify as I'm born after the September watershed! At least he will get his this year!

This dates from 1956. It is, supposedly, Berridge Senior Boys' School. I've asked PP to look at it as I'm not sure about the blazer badges. Some look like the Berridge badges whilst others look different. It's a concert of some kind, clearly. The stage may be the one Letsavagoo remembers from the upper hall. I do remember it vaguely, as I cavorted about on it in the first year juniors wearing my pink party frock, pink satin ballet shoes and performing my Sugar Plum Fairy dance at Christmas. I also recall the headmaster, Jack Baugh, speaking to us in assembly from an elevated position at that

I don't know, CT, but I will ask his sister and advise you of the answer. It is a pretty unusual name. Having checked the birth records, I can't find anyone else with that name, so you're almost certainly correct.

Thanks to Letsavagoo for posting this interesting photo from around 1954. An old classmate of mine had two much older brothers at Berridge and the younger of the two sent her a couple of his old photos. This photo shows the penultimate year for those born in 1944/5. My friend's brother Markham (Mark) Handfield is on the front row, third from the left. We are still compiling a list of names and I'll post these shortly. This photo is taken at a strange angle in what looks like a corner of the hall.

I once taught a child whose mother was grossly overweight and had tried everything to lose a few stones. In desperation, she announced that she was going to have her jaw wired together to prevent her eating foods she shouldn't have. She had this procedure carried out privately but still didn't seem to lose any weight. Some weeks later, she announced that she'd had the wiring removed. I commiserated that it hadn't achieved the desired effect. She agreed that it hadn't... because she was liquidising fish and chips, pizzas and all sorts of other stuff and drinking them through a straw! She went

Pleased to hear that all went well at Kings Mill, Ben, and a few laughs were to be had. Humour and colonoscopy make strange bedfellows but if anyone can reconcile the two of them, it's you!

Hope all is going well for Ben down at Kings Mill Hospital today. If he dislikes that place as much as I do, he'll be gritting his teeth every time he drives past but, Ben being Ben, he'll have them dancing in the aisles and laughing. Laughter truly is the best medicine.

I don't know about you but I always get out of the same side of the bed and rarely in a patronising frame of mind. It could be argued that permitting yourself to be portrayed on tabloid front pages most days of the week, dressed in sequins and grinning at the press photographers might encourage those perverted individuals who are so minded to develop unhealthy obsessions such as stalking. The oxygen of publicity has much to answer for. Many there are who seem to revel in it until it turns on them as it invariably does.

Given the horrendous mess the world is in at present, who cares what some simpering, blonde haired bimbo is doing. I don't like the expression 'bimbo' but, for goodness sake, do we really need images of her inane grin, clad in sequins on every front page? There are far more serious things to write about, surely.

Sounds like front page news. Tomorrow's fish and chip wrappings!

That's not going to curry favour with the owner. What happened to their (mushy) peas and queues?

Make hay while the sun shines!