Hamilton Saint

'Twould be better if they were spherical, I reckon.

As a liturgical colour for the R.C. church, red symbolizes the Passion, blood, fire and martyrdom; white symbolizes light, innocence, purity, joy, triumph, and glory. White is used much more in the Catholic liturgy than any other colour. Red-and-white stripes, therefore, would be more versatile - would match the needs of many more days than a kit that is predominantly red.

Ron Davies.

Yes, if you turn the amp up to 10!

A big influence on Van Morrison! Turn On Your Love Light, I Pity The Fool, Ain't Nothing You Can Do. R.I.P. Bobby "Blue" Bland

The Beatles - Rubber Soul Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde Neil Young - After the Goldrush Frank Sinatra - In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning G. F. Handel - The Water Music

Chapel End Charlie wrote: "One of the many things I tend to keep quite about on here is that, although I was born in Dorset, there is actually plenty of Welsh blood flowing through my veins. Perhaps this genetic inheritance explains why the works of Dylan Thomas have long appealed to me ... or maybe it's just because the man was a bloody genius. In any case whether you hail from Swansea or Swindon, Dylan's wonderful prose style combined with Richard Burton's oh-so-perfect delivery results in something that is really rather special methinks" I love Dylan Thomas's work, too. Every Christmas season I listen to the great man himself reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales". Absolutely brilliant. My favourite poem of his is Fern Hill - another mesmerising depiction of his childhood. It is chockfull of references to the natural world. It's a portrait of a child enveloped by an almost holy awe for nature. Here's a YouTube video of Dylan Thomas reading the poem. His style of reading is completely idiosyncratic - sounding weird, at first, but then carrying you along with its perfect delivery. As close to singing as reading a poem can get, I reckon.

Nice! B&W beats colour any day!

Here is a poetic piece excerpted from Leonard Cohen's second novel Beautiful Losers read by the author himself in 1967. The Canadian folk-singer Buffy Ste. Marie later turned it into a song.

Roger McGough - as many of you probably know, but some may not - was a member of the 60s/70s band The Scaffold , along with John Gorman and Paul McCartney's brother (known then as Mike McGear).

Who are you? - who? who? (who? who?) Who are you? - who? who? (who? who?)

Not a lot of good English on here, mush, most of the time.

Non-locals would find the intense level of irony and ****-taking on here difficult to interpret much of the time.

My friends and I at university had a remark we used at least once a day: "I resemble that remark!"

Here are three aspects that tell part of the story: 1) the scapegoat factor - bullying behaviour intensifies when people smell blood; 2) the xenophobic factor - you might blame Fawlty Towers for this one!; 3) the tribal factor - some posters seemed to dislike his perceived presumptuousness (his "foreign" intensity and serious passion for the club ran counter to their banter-based, clannish insularity). As I say, that's only part of the story, but - as another "outsider" - that seemed to me to underpin some of the negativity.

"Afterwards" by Thomas Hardy

"Church Going" by Philip Larkin

Yes - time to brush up on my Latin!

I wasn't being "sneering and snidey" - I was just offering observations on what I see and hear. I don't know what parts of what I've said are "pathetic" and "moronic". You've been living in the US for three years? Well, I've been living close by to them - in southern Ontario - for almost 45 years, closely attuned to their culture and news media. Canadians are exposed to US media to a huge extent - but we also follow events in Europe and around the world. Americans do not pay attention to Canada to the slightest degree, even though many of them live very close by. They know virtually nothing about our history, geography and culture.

Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska, and the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, thought Africa was a country. So she was confused by the term South Africa - thinking it was a region of the country called Africa, rather than a separate country inside the African continent. She also could not name the three countries which had signed the North-American Free-Trade Agreement (the U.S., Canada, and Mexico). She was the Governor of her state, but had only a vague understanding of the division of powers between the federal, state and local levels of government. Dan Quayle, the Vice-President during George H.W. Bush's Presidency, thought that the term Latin America (often used in reference to South America) was employed because all the people who lived down there spoke Latin. The depth of ignorance down in the U.S. about the rest of the world can be quite astonishing - even amongst the so-called educated class. My impression (correct me, if I am wrong about this, anyone who is in a position to know) is that throughout their primary and secondary education, Americans learn only about American history (and not much of that, some times) and American geography. When I was a teenager, I was fascinated about the rest of the world. I read newspapers, watched the news, read books, perused encyclopaedias and atlases. I had a big interest in the world-at-large. I cared about what was then known as "general knowledge". American teenagers (and adults) live in what is essentially an anti-intellectual, philistine culture that has virtually no interest in such things. They are obsessed with popular culture - which seems to be nothing more than news about ignorant and misbehaving celebrities. And "news" about the world has morphed more and more into entertainment. And political comment and discussion has degenerated into ignorant loudmouths being paid millions of dollars to rant and yell. The epitome of this is approach Fox News; and the worst purveyor of their notion of Political commentary is Bill O'Reilly - a truly appalling individual. But I digress ...!

Do you think he's fulfilled his potential since he left Saints? If not, why is that, do you think?

Fair enough.

Fear and paranoia, indeed. 2996 people died because of the 9/11 terror attacks. In just five months since the massacre of those children in Newtown, Connecticut, 4499 people in the US have been killed by guns. The fall-out from the events of 9/11 have had an incalculable effect on the rights and privacy of citizens all over the globe. Obama's all-out effort to get some significant changes to gun laws achieved virtually nothing. People fear the perceived "enemy" without, but they do not see the real enemy within.

Am I the only one to think that WGS's "wit" is rather over-rated? The journalists are just trying to do their job. On some days, they might not be doing it particularly well - just like football players and football managers. It's easy to be a smart-arse. Most post-game interviews deliver little real insight. But given the choice between Nigel Adkins' earnest and repetitive talks, and Strachan's quick-to-the quip lips, I prefer the honest and respectful style of NA, over the glib entertainment of WGS's approach. It seems to me that the manager's first obligation, if they agree to do the interview, is to respond to the questions (as boring, clichéd, or inept as they might be), rather than to put the interviewer down.

Well, yes - "there was clearly a player there". But that just reinforces the point that there was a vast gap between our expectations of what he could do, with what he actually did. Very sad and disappointing.