THE BRITISH THREAD II

Crikey!!

Somebody has appeared on A2K with a glimmer of intelligence.

It must be wonderful to have never read Michael Holroyd's fabulous biography and still have it all to come.

Have a great summer BT.

Hey-those are the acronym of British Telecoooooomunications!!! I'll have you know.

And from the windswept moors where my darling Emily pined away.

"She was born in spring/And I was born too late
Blame it on the simple twist of fate."

Bob Dylan.

I made a pilgrimage to Haworth once.

You wouldn't believe what they have done done to her memory.

I noticed in The Telegraph earlier to-day, some chap is offering £7..00 and hour for a companion to go into a pub with his eighty odd year old father! Apparently nobody visitis pubs any longer.

I just thought it might suit you that Spendi?

Obviously it also occurred to me that only eighty odd year olds go to English pubs nowadays.

Is that correct?

Octogenarian then are you Spendi?

It wouldn't surprise me with your antiquated views on life..

Spendy might be ahead of his time.
Don't travel, don't eat foreign foods, live near your pub, stay in and read books.
Charm your friends on the Internet instead.
This might be a glimpse of the future.

The Telegraph is a newspaper popular with old folks. Everybody knows that.

It's likely the story was made up in the DT's offices to provide those who don't go in pubs, which are of course the last bastion of freedom, with reassurance because all editors like to chuck their readers under the chin so they can believe that it's the pubs that are no good and avoid facing the facts that they are scared of pubs and are probably under doctor's orders to avoid alcohol and any sign of situations which they can't control and thus enable themselves to get tucked up in bed by 22.00 hrs after an evening of watching the idiot box, a government approved activity for obvious reasons, and looking through their holiday snaps showing them being strapped safely into safety harnesses by safety officers in a theme park specially designed to provide those who are **** scared of pubs and freewheeling with opportunities to pretend they are tough and brave and with a photographic record of somesuch with which to bore everybody to flipping death.

I don't recall seeing anyone who looked over eighty in my pub. I would put the average age at about 30-35. And lower than that on gig nights when a range of scantily dressed babes usually turn up of the sort that Telegraph reader's wives don't like their dear husbands to look at when they are cavourting to the beat and who inspire the sort of conversation that these elderly ladies would not wish their henpecked spouses to be exposed to.

Such ladies, the Telegraph reader's wives I mean, not the babes who will not even know that the Telegraph exists, such is their determination to live it up, will encourage their spouses to study gardening catalogues, travel brochures and soft furnishing suggestions so that they never get any funny ideas and are kept well under control and away from any mischief.

But it is a fact that pubs are under attack, not least from fears of a recession, and you are to be commended old boy for being an unwitting and unpaid agent of government policy to prevent men meeting and discussing the daily affairs of the nation and I'm sure that the politically correct denizens of the Telegraph, and feminists, will applaud your remarks and maybe invite you to their coffee mornings as the token tough guy.

You could probably do with a six month tour with the Marines in Helmand province and having a rest from the overweening, matronly, babification which is the lot of men who have gone from Mummy to Wifey in a seamless transformation in which Sgt Growler and Cpl Snot played no part.

The question Mac is not "Don't travel" it is "Why travel?" Pub men don't give out instructions to their fellow topers.

There can only be one reason to travel; boredom with where you live. Boredom with your friends and relations and lifestyle and when the trouble and expense and risks are placed on one side of the scales it is quite obvious that the boredom is severe. In fact, I would say, that long expensive holidays to out of the way places where civilised standards are non-operative is a certain sign that the boredom is intolerable and there is a good chance it is self-inflicted.

Same with food. Not "Don't eat it" but "Why eat it?" Food is food. When you have to check labels and seals on water bottles when the stuff in the taps here has been certified clean and pure you are in a place only very stupid people would dream of visiting which must be why so few people visit such dumps and the idea that because so few people visit such dumps they have cachet is too ridiculous to discuss.

But living within walking distance of a pub is mandatory and a fascination with the world's best literature is a sure antidote to boredom and narcissism, which is well known to be dangerous, and makes notions of packing a suitcase and going through the rigours of travelling unthinkable. I would want 2 grand a week, plus expenses, to even consider going to the borders of Laos with a rucksack on my back and with an elderly lady in tow. On second thoughts 4 grand.

I knew I'd be wasting my time with Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, Julio Cortazar, Jack London and akins...

I think travel narrows the mind. Travellers are constantly preoccupied with themselves and their doings. Right from the start. From the idea I mean. Where should I go? That takes a bit to decide. Then, when it is decided, the arrangements. The innoculations, the passport, for which one has to be photographed and have some personal details filed away, the itinerary, the suitcase/s which might never be seen again and if they are have been rooted through, the paying out at every stage, the detailed discussions about what to take, the creams, the Imoden and Senekod, the money, the insurance, the airport nightmare, the flight horrorshow, the landing, the airport nightmare again, the heat, the stinging insects, the hotel, the dislocations of time and diet, the shite, the dust, the morons, the photoshoots, the gawpings, the cops, the period out of the loop and then all done again in reverse until some semblance of sanity is restored with the cliched-"Oh-my own bed at last".

And all the while Frank Harris's My Life and Loves remains unread, the Cheltenham Festival hasn't happened, great Test matches have gone un-noticed and you've missed the Budget speech.

You have been focussed on yourself from beginning to end and that is so boring and debilitating that the only relief is to start planning the next trip.

What I can't understand about the coverage of the Zimbabwe elections is why our media is not mentioning that there are two distinct tribes there; the Shona and the Matebele. Mr Mugabe is chief of one of them. He got rid of the chief of the other one (Joshua Nkomo) after they had defeated Ian Smith as allies.

It is, it seems to me, the key factor in the story and why it is not being mentioned I can't imagine. We do need an explanation of why a man who has presided over such a mess got nearly 50% of the vote.

Some time ago when **** for Brains was going on similar wobblers, I likened him to a woman with menopause problems.

I was wrong, and must apologise to the female sex for this error in my accusations.

He is without doubt a Kathoey!

It would liberate the Kathoey greatly if he were able to travel, as it is beyond him we see for ourselves the total narrow mindedness, the self opinionated, self righteous, self conceited, stubborn attitude he takes towards anything he is unable to accomplish himself.

If he rejects the food, ignores the customs, fears the religion and avoids the people, he is far better placed staying at home on his couch awaiting the budget news and similar.

Lets face it, if he did go travelling, he wouldn't come back a man, it would be rather akin to sending a Protestant to Rome and expecting him to return a Catholic Priest.

Mark Twain once said:- Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Broad wholesome charitable views of men and things can never be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all our lifetime.

Nothing so liberalises a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kinds of people.

There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land (and work) again after a cheerful careless voyage.

________________________________

So don't try and tell me how educated you think you are , tell me how much you travelled.


Without new experiences in life, you will remain sleeping on your couch, it's time you woke up.


My wife, by the way, does not consider herself to be an elderly lady, nor do I, she is in the prime of life as she approaches her 63rd birthday this June.

We are thinking of doing a double drop in a barrel over Niagra Falls in a big barrel for our 70th.

No doubt The Kathoey will be watching a game of cricket on ITV for his next birthday as he appears to have done for all the previous.

What an interesting and vibrant character he is!





Well I must get back to my thread

A Brit in The Orient..

Surely you don't think I rate Mark Twain do you?

My travels took place before I was 21 and they taught me everything I need to know about travelling. And if I related my experiences on here I would get banned.

You are welcome to your contacts with "other peoples". I hope you don't bring any of their habits back here. Most of them would give their eye teeth to wash pots in this green and pleasant land. We have to fight them off such is their eagerness to get here and I don't blame them for it.

Without shooting you down in flames Kathoey, we have heard all your crap about yester-year and that is all it is..Come on show us something. I'm still waiting to see the pictures you were promising of the lady bus driver from your fictitious pub! That must be twelve month overdue and I'm being liberal at that.

You know the one were you play with a semi stiffy as you disgustingly put it, at the end of the snooker table, whilst ogling young ladies in low cut blouses and short skirts!

You sad oink.

I doubted then there was a pub with a snooker table and you still haven't sent a photograph of that!

Billy Liar doesn't come into the equation in your book does he?

Walter Mitty will never be dead whilst your around, that's for sure.

Anyhow, I might just have a game of snooker myself tonight on my three quarter sized personal table in my games room.

If you want a picture of that, just say so Kathoey, I'll sort it for you.

Twenty one eh... One wouldn't need an 11 plus pass to work that particular posting out, would one!

Look spendius, they're looking for you here....



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/7328410.stm

What do I need with £7 an hour?

I can't spend what I'm making, never mind what I've already made, on account of it being such hard work. Such torture. And so humiliating as well. No self respecting microbe would hand money over without feeling humiliated. That's why I'm so humble.

Reading the bank statements is bad enough.

The old fart should move to the vicinity of my pub. I'll talk to anybody for free. Charging would get my IRS inspector sniffing and that's the last thing I want.

Have you ever had an IRS Inspector called Halsall, who played left-back for his local team in all weathers on Sunday mornings rather than go to church or losack in the pit and whose vanity was evident in every accoutrement of his dress and genreal demeanour, scrutinising your every transaction with the mantra "not a penny more and not a penny less".

It's a nuisance. Steer round it.

No I haven't had that experience. I was PAYE myself, so no threequarters size snooker tables, games rooms or Bentleys for me, and damn few pints of John Smith's Extra Smooth.

Why does that remind me of Watneys Draught Red Barrel? In Manchester we have quite a few acceptable local brews, and there's always the guest ales. We're spoilt for choice, really.

I went to Haworth last August with the my family. Lovely vicarge there and found a great tea shop that allowed us to take the dogs in and they gave them toast. We walked the dales and moors. I have very fond memories and photos and would post them if I could get my head round posting them.

What, you don't know how to post pics?
I was like that once, I'm kind of techno-phobic, but it's not too difficult really.

You have to put them on another website first, a so-called "host". There are several, but I use Photobucket and it suits me quite well. (It's free, too)

Go to your chosen host site, and they will tell you how to download your chosen pictures into a personal "album". It's quite simple.

Then you will notice when you do that, each photo has been given a url (or identity) number.

That's the number you use to post a picture on A2K. You "cut & paste" it into your A2K reply, using the [img]****[/img] command.

It's easier to do than to describe....don't be put off, give it a go.

Presumably then you lot are in favour of noise pollution and idiots being able to ruin the scene for others.

I don't like motorboats on lakes either. Put them in disused docks, or out at sea where hopefully they might drown their occupants.

The earl's daughter, the taxi and a Bridge too far.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/04/5

those new-fangled devices can screw things up for sure .