Meenzer

one day we might have a society with no coppers and everybody will behave like lovely little boys. And we can all get on with attacking straw men undisturbed.

fuck aye

My mate and his gang are already in the car back home - tents are ruined and all, so not much point in sticking around. I get the impression the Belgian mobile network is totally overloaded at the minute (for obvious reasons), hence it taking a while to hear from him, so hopefully you'll get word from your lot soon

Relieved - mate of mine who's at that Belgian festival is fine, couldn't get through to him earlier on. Obviously a minimal statistical chance of him being caught up in it all, but he's the sort of daft bastard (and shortarse) who'd usually be up front and first in line for a good chunk of scaffolding through the skull, so good news all the same.

Cheeseburger Tyrant

Crisps: Tempting.

Presumably, though, you'd still rather hire a uni grad who's keen to learn than an A level student who knows nowt? Or do you really think that a university education makes everyone dumber and a worse human being to boot?

Chunky Troll

But they couldn't have got there without what went before, surely? Same as I learned more about translation in the first six months of my first job than I did at uni, but I wouldn't have been in that job if I hadn't learned German in the first place.

The uni course I did required decent A-levels in the languages concerned. But if you're doing something more obscure - my better half, for example, studied Serbian and Croatian for some reason or other - then you can start from scratch at degree level as long as you've demonstrated proficiency in languages generally. That said, it's not like you need a degree in a language to go down that kind of career route - a Welsh mate of mine from my Mainz days moved to Germany with nothing but a beer belly and the number of a good dealer, worked night security jobs for a few years, learned the language as he went, and ended up heading up the security team at the US Consulate in Frankfurt. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge and accept the inherent risks. Mind, he's unemployed and living in a granny flat in Knutsford now, but there you go.

Collins > Tchaikovsky

I mainly glot German, but there's some residual French and Swedish kicking about in there too.

Calorie Traitor

There's a halfway house depending on what kind of thing you're studying. I did languages because I knew I wanted to go into a career involving languages, I just didn't know what yet. But obviously that doesn't work with a lot of degree paths.

There's always Oxford

Including yourself. CT letting the water in now. Retention?

"Rention" Didn't he insist on referring to the ginger ninja as Gemmial Rention, Gemmial and manc-foplite. I'd forgotten how obsessed he was with that. There's three whole pages of search hits for "foplite".

On a similar note, the superb Horniman Museum (titter, etc.) here in Sahf Lahndan has a huge walrus in one of its rooms that was prepared for show by someone who hadn't seen one before, so it's absolutely overstuffed to the point of bursting.

I'd say so, but then I worship the ground he walks on. It's theatrical, difficult, almost a bit darkly camp in places (if that's something you can ever say about Waits), so you probably have to be in the mood for it. Give it a go some time though. One could easily say that about Waits' work, just listen to his earlier releases like Small Change or Swordfishtrombone and there is at least one track that is full of dark camp theatre. Aye, I'm just cautious about using the c-word considering I come from a world of things like this.

what you have are some older posters who used to watch ossie lead out teams of mascots in front of 14,000 or so fans and younger posters who grew up in the Keegan days. Had I grew up in the Keegan days I would probably be equally negative. Right, so that would make Leazes in his 20s/early 30s, no? 'Team negative' is in fact inherently positive about the potential of the club, whereas you think we'll be lucky to ever break the top 6 again. No, not ever again. But under Ashley given his mindset and the money available to others I cant see it happening. So negative. Thats you not getting home quickly after the run I now have visions of being trapped in a jam on the Felling bypass with my legs cramping up while you wax lyrical about Rob Elliot being the next Gordon Banks

Sorry, badly timed tactical delete there. I do get your point, Ossie just seemed like an odd choice if your points of reference are Beardsley/Waddle/Gazza, given he was such a nothing in the grand scheme of things.