THE BRITISH THREAD II

Spendy's pub is a LOCAL pub for LOCAL people. All inbred I expect.

Spendi, your speeling a load of bollock brained twaddle as usual.


The pubs are dead, you my dear friend will have to go out and sit in a tent or an old bus without an engine to have a woodbine with your pint very soon now.


Mac, I couldn't agree with you more!

Spendi wanted to marry a girl
And then settle down,
Buy a little house on the north side of town,
Spendi tells his mummy,
His mummy say no!
That girl is your sister
But your daddy don't know.

Mathos-

This is inconsistent



with this-



I don't know how you arrive at that naive production as a response to my remarks unless, of course, the idea interests you.

And pubs are not dead. They are having a bit of restructuring. I'm going to stand for election on a free beer and cakes platform. When I win, as I obviously will, pubs will pick up. I'll let them have dancing girls. Karaoke Can-can.

You must be joking, the places are being boarded up, knocked down, turned into flats and mini-markets.

Karaoke ???? That is an oriental invention and obsession, I thought you had no time for 'eastern delights'

Can can dancing?????????????? You must have been talking to Francis.

Pubs my dear boy are finished... It's all in house entertainment now and if Mr Blair tells the bobbies to lock up anyone on the streets after 8pm you will spend the rest of your natural days in Wakefield Nick or Strangeways.

I'm all for it, pubs were always doss houses for trouble causers and scroungers!

What you gonna do when your local is forced to seal it's doors. There are three in my area boarded up, six for sale, and the others are offering up to four Sunday Roast dinners for the price of two?

The bar staff are no longer real, they wear unifporms and have to call you 'Sir' and nobody in my location has been knighted.

pubs then, if what you say is true Mathos, are going the same direction as" road houses" or "Biker bars" here in the states. Everything that serves on-tap has been converted to a "fern restaurant" or bulldozed for a Wallmart
We used to have great boiled crab bars on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake BAy. It was always a treat to spend a Saturday with friends , picking crabs , and drinking National Bohemian on tap. Now, all these places from Elkton to Salisbury, have either disappeared orl become "smoke Free,- bring the kids,- we serve two kinds of esspresso, "howd you like your crab bisque"-joints for weenies . Why its so bad that you cant even get the shoaling news from the old watermen, and theres more minivans than Harleys out on the lot.

It's called "gentrification" fm.

Rendering the whole population into one mass of tweeters who cause no trouble. It's a scientific approach to social engineering using the price mechanism to adjust us all to a mutually agreed norm. Like you and me.

Dadpad dadpad lives In Australia.

Hello Farmer,

It's often said, What America does today, we will do tomorrow!

Pubs in England used to be great fun, a few still are, village problems could be sorted out over a frothy pint or two and weekend fun days arranged.

My local, fortunately keeps traditional but it's going to turn eventually. The roof needs re-thatching, the Environmental Officer is putting pressure on the 'Oldish Landlord' and his once handsomely busted wife to replace the kitchen with more modern expensive equipment re-tile floor to ceiling. He's not making that kind of money, and simply knocks up a few sandwiches nowadays. He's being forced out.

There was a big change in the late 70's early 80's, they started turning them all into dining places, it was chic to go for lunch and have a couple of pints. They started slipping the odd penny or two onto each pint and a couple of shillings on a short. With the cost of living really starting to climb at this time, (we had to pay for The Falklands War) people started to pack their own lunches again. Petrol (gas) stations began building convenience stores, selling fags, sandwiches, crisps and bottled water etc. Everything was premium priced (it still is) but the convenience factor with more demand from the employer for multi-tasking on staff members meant speed was essential. The police were under instruction to breathalyse anybody and everybody, there were numerous convictions in those days, especially at 7 am of a morning when the guy who had six pints and a couple of whiskies the night before was still over the limit. It became part of life, resisting the pub attraction, the bobbies always made courtesy visits and that stopped. This produced a wild element of society, fights were common, the police came when it was over and done with, just to do the mopping up. Pubs in general became scruffy, managers replaced the real Landlords, costs spiralled, it's about £2..00 a pint now maybe more. I hardly go in myself, so I'm out of touch. I got fed up of quiz nights and bingo. The flash guys tried everything even lap dancing, that perked it up for a bit but again the costs made it more prohibitive.

There are plenty of dives left, (I bet Spendi knows plenty of dives) ripped upholstery, burnt carpets, broken chairs and tossers behind the bar. The big no smoking ban is virtually in, and some landlords are creating alternative separate drinking venues on the car parks or in the gardens, tents, old banger vehicles, silly attempts to get round the law, they'll put a stop to that though.

The generation before us, who fought in WW2 would never have let it come to this. There would have been bloody riots. These days the population in general is conditioned to obey, and they do. They can't win if they revolt, might is right.

Oh no it isn't.

It's the solution of premature and easy conclusions admittedly but it isn't right. Woe betide us if it should ever become so.

I think Mathos' point is that woe has already betided us, isn't it?

But I don't agree.

Incidentally there are several goodish pubs near here, all different, none fitting Mathos' generalised descriptions above, although one might hope for a better clientele :wink:

Was the sun blood red where you were last night at 7.30.

It was amazing.

I had been to visit someone in hospital and the route back had a long downhill winding character with this red ball in among some distant trees not yet leafed.

So as I descended so the sun seemed to do and it moved from side to side as well. It was wierd.

The downward movement made palpable the feeling of riding over it and I also felt that I knew what 93 million miles looked like.

I'm hoping it's the same tonight.

Glad to see you're all still in good(ish) humour.

Welcome back from the East, Mathos. I'm just back from a week in the Alps and was lucky enought to find snow and sun. Unfortunately, my girlfriend was ill for 3 days of the week and myself for 1 but we had a good time anyway, on the whole.

Prague now looks spring-like and the magnolia in the garden I overlook from my bedroom window is in full bloom. So ephemeral, yet beautiful in their delicate hue!

Belated happy birthday to DP - glad you had a good time.

KP

Since I can watch Premier League now, KP, ...

Not even Shalke 04 could resist the primeval force which is Peter Crouch in full cry. :wink:

Hey KP speaking of magnolias and their delicate hughes, I bought a magnolia bush from B&Q last month and I'm well pleased with it. It's flowered a bluey-pink colour, rather unusual I think.

You should take care when buying bushes Mac. From B&Q or anywhere else. Especially Church bazaars.

If you don't prune them properly they have a tendency to start "wilding" and I wouldn't wish that on anybody apart from the bourgeoise saps who don't know any better.

I found that out when a viburnum and a neighbouring berberis got very tall but we had the room and it didn't really matter. As long as they're happy. They are both more than 26 years old now, so fair play to them, they've done well.

How fantastic, nature is a wonderful part of our lives, pruning for the gardening and social aspects as you rightly say Spendi is important. I like to see the trees and bushes growing wild as well, especially Rhododendron, there are numerous in a park close by which is not maintained with regards to regular pruning and they are beautiful to look at, absolutely enormous and spread well. I notice the same grow better where the land is boggy or close to a brook or river, so they evidently thrive from these conditions.

Hello (KP) Pete, nice to see you, sorry to hear about your girlfriend and self being ill, trust all is ok now. I actually had an accident to my foot whilst away, (stood on something I shouldn't have done whilst climbing out of a lagoon following a swim) I was spending a few days in Khao Sak National Park at the time living in a very old tree house complete with hosts, squirrels, ants spiders, monkeys, barking deer, wild boar and other delightful creatures. We had spent a bit of time on the lake of Ratchaprapha Dam (a sensational place) and there was no medical assistance in the vicinity. An employee of the Tree House Resort, being a kindly fellow brought a local 'shaman' to look at my injury, this resulted in a hard suck on the foreign body, followed by a chicken having it's throat cut he wanted to rub the blood onto the same (which I declined). My foot became extremely swollen during the night and the following morning I thought it was an elephants foot attached to my leg. My wife said, 'You had better get some proper attention to that' We packed our rucksacks (I drove with mine between my legs) started the motorcycle and drove the 200km to Khao Lak. It is a beautiful drive, fantastic scenery mountains, wild life etc. However, it took about four hours, no room or safe areas to really speed and tis better to drive safely and get there. I reached Khao Lak mid afternoon and visited a clinic, (no hospitals in the area). The Dr. stated she would have to do a small operation on my foot and gave me an injection which froze the same but hurt like hell going in. I jumped, and said 'Ouch' she laughed and said, 'You try having baby, that the time to go ouch.' There were several locals looking through the windows, laughing and she invited my wife in to take photographs, which she did, and eventually made an incision, cut out the foreign object and patched me up quite good. She gave me a course of anti-biotics and a bill for approximately £7..00 not even worth making an insurance claim for. All in all it was good service. When I get around to doing my write up I will let you have sight of the pics etc. The Doctor was quite a looker too!

Mathos wrote-



I've met a few ladies who told me it was as easy as going to the toilet. Perhaps the ones who have pain are tense from being exposed to talk such as that reported.

There's a Russian proverb which says that the more people that know about a confinement and flutter around its periphery the more pain the delivery will entail.

To just claim that childbirth is painful when it doesn't make sense that it is, and animals simply plop them out, may well be a self-fulfilling prophesy as it ratchets up the nervous tension into a sort of severe stage-fright with obvious contraction of the musclature.