JonM

Just watched the 1988 3rd test, with the Lions beating Australia in Sydney. One notable thing (apart from what a miserable person Jack Gibson was) is that it's like a home game for GB. Very hard to imagine 10k+ GB fans at a game on the tour this year.

It's been standard practice on websites since the web began in the early/mid 1990s - amazed you've never seen it before.

The Oxford English Dictionary credits T S Eliot with the first use of the word ###### in print. I.e. that smelly substance which is deposited by male cattle.

True, it seems - and the same thing happened in French. Numpire, napron and nadder went in the other direction. Flutterby turning into Butterfly seems not to be true though.

Makes sense, as sweet oranges came from China originally. Naranja in Spanish, Orange in French, Oren in Welsh. Quick look on Wikipedia which says that the word orange comes originally from Tamil, reaching Europe via Sanskrit, Persian & Arabic. And languages from different families round the Balkans (Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian) call them by words that mean "Portugese" because merchants from there were the ones who brought them.

My wife went to university in Amsterdam for a year. The only Dutch she knows is Goede Dag and Sinaasappelsap, which she knows because she thought it was funny that an orange is a sin aas apple.

Duolingo mostly seems to teach the old system in the context of telling time. And yer basic mutations are mostly different for each different number. Soft mutation for un, but for feminine nouns only, aspirate mutation after tri, nasal mutation for the words for day or year after pum or wyth etc. etc. Still makes Dutch look consistent and logical ?

If it's anything like the cats in our garden, they'd all be sat staring silently for hours trying to psych each other out.

Cough. Am I right in remembering that you studied Welsh? A language which has different words for two, three and four (but not any other numbers) depending on gender? A language which has a mix of base-10, base-15 and base-20 counting systems? Where some numbers change the first consonant of the word that follows, in ways which are different for 1, 2, 3, and 6 the same for 5, 7 and 8, but 4, 9 and 10 don't have any effect? E.g. Un gath ar bymtheg ar hugain (one cat on fifteen on twenty) = thirty six cats

Parking at both Ealing & Skolars is way easier than many northern grounds. Don't remember the details, but weren't Haringey Council looking to offload New River a few years back? A site like that where you can never, ever build housing, or where the council retains ownership but you have a long-term lease might be a lot more affordable.

This was one of the main reasons why I decided to stop working for a couple of years - really enjoyed the work, but started to resent this kind of travel. The first few times you go to Japan, or India or wherever, it's interesting, but it's mostly exactly as you describe. I remember one of my former colleagues saying that he'd got to the point where if there was a volcano exploding outside the hotel window, he probably wouldn't bother to open the curtains to have a look

They have to sand them down and wrap string round the handle and paint them. Once you've demonstrated that they snap in two if you hit something hard, they tend to stick to waving them about rather than hitting each other. No worse than playing with sticks really. In all the years I've being helping, all of the worst accidents have come from cricket or football. You would think cooking stuff over the fire or climbing trees or whatever are more dangerous, but no. We did have a near miss with a snake once.

Excellent. One of our leaders used to turn up with a lathe and generator and the like. You want 25 curved pirate's swords carved out of wood, a set of wooden shields, or some wooden boats to assemble? No problem.... I reckon I might need a word with him about pizzas.

You obviously run your cub camps better than us. I find I eat constantly (fried breakfast, big meals, lots of cake in between) but the running round after children all day and doing all the activities takes it out of me. Certainly never gained weight from it.

I have a Franco biography - "Congo Colossus: The Life and Legacy of Franco & OK Jazz" - very interesting read. Did a couple of trips to Paris specifically to buy Soukous records in the late eighties.

I think he moved to Australia a few years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/picture/2016/jun/30/david-squires-on-australian-rugby-leagues-super-league-war https://www.theguardian.com/sport/picture/2016/may/12/david-squires-on-the-kangaroos-first-tour-to-great-britain-in-1908 (In fairness, his job title is something like "football cartoonist")

? I realise you're carrying a bit more mass around than I am, but running a marathon only comes in at around 3300 kcal for me. So I assume you've been doing something to get Mr. Fitbit excited even if he hasn't got his numbers exactly right?

Nations League fever gripping the country I see. England in the semi-final tomorrow.

Generally reckoned to be round about 2% per 3 pounds lost (assuming no muscle lost) so two stone is getting on for a 20% improvement in race times. I've always found training for a marathon brings down times across the board even without losing any weight.

Last year against Roma in the QF - won 4-1 at home, lost 3-0 in Rome and went out on away goals.

Chance of getting into London through the lottery is about 1 in 10 now. Brighton sells out pretty quickly IIRC. I did Boston (Lincs) at the start of April. £30 entry, including a very nice t-shirt. Flat, extremely well-organised and supported. You can enter within a few days of the race - none of this lottery nonsense. Admittedly, it's 26 miles round the turnip fields of England's dullest county and there's a wind off the north sea throughout. I did Barcelona marathon a few years back (also in April) having worked out that it was cheaper and nicer than doing Manchester marathon the same day.

Any other time of the year, tens of thousands of British people chasing half a dozen Kenyans through the streets of London would be frowned upon.

Probably told this story on here before. I was travelling in Indonesia 25+ years ago. The railway line got washed away by a landslide and I ended up having to kill most of a day at a bus station. This was a time and place where white people were still pretty unusual and kids would be touching my hand to make sure I was real. Anyway, got talking to some local youths. Their English was a few words, my bahasa indonesia also a few words. After a while, we established that I was from England. Turns out the only famous "Englishman" they knew was Eric Cantona.

The Gaumont-Pathe archives have a lot of news reel clips of French RL from the 1940s and 1950s, including internationals, world cup games and league finals (e.g Paris Celtic vs Lyon, Roanne winning at the Parc des Princes). "Great Britain" were billed as "Empire Brittanique" when they played in France at that time, rather than GB or England, which may explain the different colours.