jonab

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Posts posted by jonab

  1. Yates's used to sell white port by the jug. There was also a special type supposedly only sold on the original Yates' birthday. 

     

    I have never been able to drink port (of any shade) since drinking that stuff.

     

    I still enjoy a good Stilton though but it's VERY expensive down here.

     

    Have you tried Beauvale from Cropwell Bishop? I was given a half cheese last year by one of my English visitors. Very nice indeed!!!!!

  2. Do this week's developments signal the beginning of the end of the malfunctioning regime supposedly in charge of the UK?

     

    I don't quite know how BoJo's rule is seen from his home ground but here it is considered, both by the French and by exPats, akin to a Feydeau farce - where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

     

    OK, the current French system is little, if any, better  but it doesn't have the bungling, blustering  comedic element of total incompetence as is being demonstrated and now coming to a head in the UK.

    • Like 1
  3. Brenda, that clip genuinely made me cry.

     

    It is particularly poignant to me as my villa used to belong to a prima ballerina. I bought it at a knockdown price from her estate and the sale included many of her personal belongings - most of which I donated to museums and ballet schools but I did keep a few items, including her piano and her costume and circlet from one of her Swan Lake performances.

     

    I feel a little bit guilty sometimes as the current market price for the piano alone is more than the total amount I paid for the villa - althought it was pretty much derelict when I bought it.

  4. Roger Moore used to live in the grounds around Newstead Abbey when he was married to Dorothy Squires. Their raucous relationship was well known to their neighbours, one of whom was Geoff Wakefield of Wakefield's Chemists.

  5. I sometimes watch BBC World News via satellite and noticed very recently that they are now employing AMERICAN female newreaders. I don't mean English newsreaders in the USA but the ones reading the general news bulletins. 

     

    I detest the whining twang of the general female American voice and I think that having it thrust at me like that is just not on.

     

    Aren't there any English newsreaders waiting on the sidelines to take over if/when there is a shortage?

     

    Another objection I have is the reporting of personal and private information regarding the various presenters e.g the difficulties of a newsreader (and wife) in becoming pregnant and their spending of tens and tens of thousands of ££££ on IVF.

  6. Just opened it and can see it. I am using a proxy server.

     

    "A film of market day in an old Nottinghamshire town. The roads are full of traffic, of country people bringing their cattle,
    poultry, fruit and vegetables. Farmers show each other samples of grain; they crowd the cattle market. A market town is the
    centre of the life of the surrounding countryside."

  7. My dad had TB and was incarcerated in Newstead Hospital for about six months during which time I was reluctantly taken to the chest clinic, Forest Dene, on Gregory Boulevard for investigation as to whether I had the disease and to have the BCG if I was clear.

     

    What a creepy place Forest Dene was. I imagined it as Frankensteins Castle but full of mad scientists in white coats inflicting untold terrors on anyone brave enough to pass through its doors. I had to go there multiple times for X-rays, Mantoux tests (several as they couldn't decide on the results they were getting) and eventually have the injection itself. That was far from straightforward as an abcess formed at the injection site which issued foul smelling pus for months. They didn't seem to want to do anything about the abcess other than put a dressing on it and to go back in a month.

     

    It did clear up eventually but there is still a large scar on my arm. Matches the smallpox vaccination scar on my other arm though.