saintbletch

haste

Rich Tea played for Nettleton in the combined northern leagues in the late 80s. Fact. Can we combine the finger points to make a fist?

dawn

Nah, not for me. One is a slightly racist, overt nationalist....Oh, I see what you mean. No it wasn't genocide, as tpbury suggests below... ...I suspect he was just spending too much time indoors on warm summer days, writing frightening verse to buck-toothed girls in Luxembourg.

swag

I have a Costa addiction too. I buy the Costa Coffee beans from the shop (it's terrible value compared to other beans - but that's an addition for you) then my expresso machine grinds them and makes me Costa coffee any time I want it. When I'm not having a nice cup of tea that is.

shocker

This is true. And whilst vagina-flavoured crisps might be *OK*, my advice would be to avoid crisp-flavoured vaginas.

cracker

bell

maximise

Well I couldn't agree with you more 1976_Child. About Earl Grey and Yorkshire tea - not your window cleaner. But, have you tried a blend of Earl Grey and Yorkshire Gold? Pop one Earl Grey bag for each Yorkshire tea bag (assuming you're using bags) into a warmed tea pot, pour piping hot water over and then just a dash of skimmed milk in the cup. It's a lovely light cuppa on a warm day.

Well Trousers, I tried to hire Max Clifford to get my 'scoop' into the Sunday papers for a few quid. But it turns out having a room with a TV magnifying glass wasn't titillating enough. ;-) Funnily enough, I have some dim and distant memory of my boss saying that he had to sign the official secrets act. Can that be right? Perhaps I'm remembering that wrongly, but he used to visit a number of the royals at their residences so perhaps he was under closer scrutiny. He always said that Princess Anne was the best of the lot. Very down to earth and would sit down with a mug of tea and chat with him as he was working.

uranium

I didn't and don't blame him for being the way he is. He lives in an un-real bubble so how could he relate to 'normal' people? But you'll not convince me that he's 'brilliant' or 'sound as a pound' Dune. After meeting Prince Philip I went and had a beer with my boss who had accompanied me to the castle. We had a couple and then noticed that on the TV in the bar was live coverage from the Ascot races. The Queen and Prince Philip were sitting in a horse-drawn carriage in full formal wear being taken to open the Ascot races. I reflected that I'd just spent an hour and a half with that man and now, no more than a couple of hours later, millions of people were watching him on TV. It was quite unreal. It made me reflect that there was no way this man could be normal. His entire life in public 'service' meant he had such a skewed view of what is 'normal' that he couldn't respect the concept that he and I were equals. I also realised that having met him, I was prepared to be subservient and hold him as more than an equal myself. I felt a little hypocritical if I'm honest. His wife's face is on our stamps and coinage FFS. Anyway, one final fact from the visit. As you may know Buckingham Palace is for show and the Queen and Prince Philip 'live' at Windsor castle. His private quarters there (which he doesn't share with the Queen - scandal!) were like something out of the 70s. Very old fashioned. Not in a good, centuries old sort of way. But the furniture looked like it came from the 70s. I remember that he had a really old TV and that standing 3"-4" in front of the screen on a stand was a massive magnifying glass the size of the TV screen itself. I've never seen such a thing before or since. But perhaps the most revealing thing was his study desk. I set the computer up on his desk which was quite large and ornate. All around the edge of it were pictures. It was covered in personal 'family' photographs - perhaps 30 of them. There were pictures of the grand kids at a theme park and diving into a swimming pool. I remember that there was a nice picture of Di on her own which I thought was odd given the alleged bad feeling between the two. She was laughing hysterically and putting a hand towards the person taking the photograph as if to stop them from taking it. All of the other major royals were shown off duty, captured in mainly humorous poses. It was odd to see pictures of this family that I had never seen in the press and without their usual control and public stiff upper lip. It was quite a privilege actually.

turtle

I once met Prince Philip. Here's my anecdote for those that have that close season boredom... I was given the task of demonstrating the Internet to him in his private quarters at Windsor castle. This was back in the mid-nineties I guess. He'd been told about the WWF web site (The wildlife one not the wresting!) as he was a patron and wanted to see it. He is (was?) quite a keen computer user and the company I was working for had the royal warrant to supply him with hardware and software. I spent about an hour and a half with him. And in that time I found him to be very cold and distant and he made no effort to put me at my ease. He seemed to lack the common touch and he showed no personal warmth whatsoever. He's also much shorter than you'd think. I assumed he was taller because he's always shown next to the Queen who is really short. I'm 6'1" and I towered over him. Anyway I took a computer with me and hooked it up to his telephone line and used a Demon Internet dial-up to get online. I was briefed by his Equerry, who incidentally stank of scotch at 10am in the morning, on how to behave and what to say and what not say. I was told not to make any physical contact such as a hand-shake or a pat on the back. I was told to refer to him as Sir and to respect the fact that he was a member of the Royal family. The implication being that I was not worthy. It was quite daunting to be honest. Anyway, he'd been using a character-based operating system (BOS for those that know their COBOL) and hadn't had any experience with a mouse. I showed him Windows and demonstrated how the mouse worked and asked him if he wanted a go. He took the mouse in his hand but he had it round the wrong way. The cable of the mouse was pointing up his sleeve. He kept saying "It's really confusing isn't it. It appears to go in the opposite bloody direction". I wanted to reach out and turn the mouse round for him but with the Equerry's words ringing in my ears about formality and respecting his status I watched him struggle for a while because I was distracted be a caterpillar (see below). Eventually he mastered it - moving the mouse the opposite way to where he wanted to go and he said "Why do they make you go left instead of right and up instead of down?" and I sheepishly answered that "I think Sir would find it works better if Sir were to turn the mouse round the other way". To which he promptly put the mouse on its back with the trackball pointing at the ceiling. We got there in the end. Those of you old enough to remember the speed of the internet on 14.4K baud, and the lack of creativity in the early web sites can probably imagine how excruciating it was to sit next to the Queen's husband for 10 minutes trying painfully to make small talk as a ****ing great Panda was re-produced on the WWF web site home page, pixel by bloody pixel. Then we took another 10 minutes to get their contact details up. I think I must have single-handedly put him off the Internet for life. Finally, I had nightmares for days afterwards. You see as I was arriving at the castle in my car, I'd seen Prince Philip steering a horse-drawn cart up the avenue to the castle from the Great Park. When I met him inside he was still sweating and dressed in the same clothes that he'd worn whilst riding in amongst the trees. Well I noticed that along the top of his ear was a green caterpillar - a sort of tiny inch worm affair. I'd seen it climbing up his ear while he was struggling with the mouse and thought to myself what do you do? Knock it off with your hand? Say "Excuse me Queen's husband but you've got a bright green caterpillar on your ear". So I ignored it. When I later looked for it, it had disappeared. Well for a couple of nights afterwards I woke up thinking that the caterpillar had got into his ear. And every time I hear him make another gaff in the paper, I'm convinced it did.

stick

liquid

Well your Nan might have been a medium but I'm an extra-large and I'd suggest that there is no hidden or spiritual meaning behind paranormal activities. IMO - of course. We all see what we want to see in these things. One man's hair product spirited to the floor is another man's air currents or dodgy shelf. If your look into the statistical likelihood of paranormal events occurring, it would actually be more surprising if events like you've described didn't happen now and again with 6+Billion people on the planet. If, in the history of mankind a man's creams (not a euphemism) and hair products HADN'T fallen to the floor twice for no apparent reason, it would be truly odd.

inertia

gain

rapture

I've been outed.

Lovely song but for me it is Late for the Sky. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhUH_XrFseg&feature=related