Losing members

[Hugh Weldon]

"Stone throwing? Amphetamines? I think I might need to pay SOTW another visit."

[ritchie]

ah the type of friend I like. Trouble with buying from the USof A is I keep getting hit for duty .... big time, so I'm having to kurb my enthusiasm.

I'm not throwing stones at anyone

Don't talk about the war

[Nigel w]

how do you clever people paste pictures in to these posts? As a total computer ignoramus I've no idea and my two (adult) sons aren't around at the moment to show me!

I found a picture last night of Violet Elizabeth Bott (whose 'thkweam and thweam..' was quoted by Ian in the English folk thread) from the Just William stories and wanted to post it but hadn't got a clue how to do it

Yours thickly... NIgel W

[Rob Hall]

One problem with posting these pictures is when they link to a third-party site and are, thus, subject to someone else removing them unexpectedly, leaving us on this forum with a broken link (usually seen as a little box with a cross in it). A way around this is to link to an image on a site that you are in control of - one of the many that offer image hosting such as Photobucket (which is what Dayna uses). Having said that, I am not currently able to view Dayna's pictures because I am at work and access to her image hosting site is blocked by my company's network.

[That Was Jonathan E. Then]

Sorry to bring this up everybody, but I've noticed that Des has returned to the Forum with a couple of innocuous posts buried within some of the less obvious sections. I've responded within those topics, but I wish to point out here, where the matter really belongs, that I am firmly of the opinion that Des owes Nikki an apology for his excessively rude remark towards her and his general insensitivity to her expressed feelings about "Brown Sugar." Perhaps he has made one in private, but I feel it would be gracious if he were also to make one to Charlie for an abuse of Charlie's hospitality, particularly after Charlie had made a point of defending some of Des' peculiarities. Perhaps he has done such a thing in private — but I also feel that he was somewhat contemptuous of many of us in that Brown Sugar topic, so many of us that he might as well just issue a general and public apology for acting out his peculiarities in such a tasteless and childish way. Among other things, the solipsism he himself displayed in his last posting before his temporary absence in which he more or less attacked us all as spineless "white liberals" was quite extraordinary. I commented earlier that his postings were "inexcusable" rather than "unforgivable." I still feel that way. He'd get forgiven with an offered apology, but to attempt to creep back into the forum through the back entrance like this without any acknowledgment of the multiple offenses he was responsible for is chickenshit in the extreme. That's just how I feel about it.

[ritchie]

I can imagine Kenneth Wolstenholme just looking down or up at us now and thinking "Some people are on the pitch. They think it's all over .....,"

This thread is starting to remind me of when my kids tried to grow some tulips.

I remember when I was a kid someone gave my Dad a hamster. We only had it for a week and it died. The person who gave it to my dad said that he should boil it, add sugar and make 'hamster jam'. So he did but because he did n't put enough sugar in with it, it tasted horrid. He was advised to spread it on the garden as manure.

When we woke up next day the garden was covered in tulips ...well everyone knows you get ......














"Tulips from hamster jam"

[That Was Jonathan E. Then]

Once I had a cat called Tulip. I rescued her from some dump I lived in on Talbot Road. It was just before I left for the States. I took her out to Mersea Island where my mother had just moved. She spent all her time curled around the dustbins — Tulip, not my mother. She couldn't stand walking on the grass. Anyway, she didn't last long. She was a sick cat. This was quite a few years after my brother's hamster had accompanied us on holiday to Cornwall and famously disappeared into a rockery. Well, famously in our family anyway. He came back after a couple of hours, but we never forgot the upset. Being a hamster of course he didn't live all that long anyway. We didn't have a recipe in our family for hamster jam so I'm not sure what happened to him after he passed. He was called Humpy but I expect you already guessed that, didn't you? Anyway, even though my mother moved to Mersea about ten years after Humpy disappeared for the afternoon, I'll bet she still had his cage. "Just in case it comes in useful."

[Rob Hall]

Ah, Grasshopper: those on the outside of cages can be just as much the captives of the bars that separate them from those on the inside.

[ritchie]

Ah, Grasshopper: those on the outside of cages can be just as much the captives of the bars that separate them from those on the inside.

Rob, hic, I resemble that remark,hic.

Nice quote, obviously from the book "How to keep Hamsters at home . vol. 1" another must for my desert island choice.

[Tom H]

It would feel heavy handed to say to particular people, "please either tone down your remarks or go away and stop spoiling things."

I don't think it would be heavy handed at all. If you run a message board, surely it is your duty to moderate it, or I assume you could end up being sued as a carrier of libel in extreme cases.

I only usually lurk here, but I have found some of the recent schoolboy point scoring very offputting. I get the impression that you only have about 20 core posters, and a couple of them seem to automatically disagree with others that they obviously dislike and are always determined to have the last word. At times it has been worse than petty internal political party squabbling, and point scoring with a smidgin of "my dad is bigger than your dad" thrown in.

Better to have you moderate it behind the scenes than have it aired in public as is currently happening. I didn't read what "Des" was supposed to have said to upset "Nikki" so all this hot air and shouting made me go looking for it. Better to have intervened, quietened it down and removed the offending post, I'd say.

A little bit of light policing is better than total anarchy. The last few weeks on this Forum has resembled the aftermath of a plane crash whereas maybe there could have been a soft emergency landing if the pilot hadn't been on automatic.

[Alannah]

Tom - I can't agree with you more

[ritchie]

you know as tenuous and tiresome this subject is becoming it's only a forum for goodness sake ... does it matter? does it really matter?

I know from the tone of peoples comments, who I have time for and who I have n't but I bet if we were ever to meet up perhaps my opinions would change.

I value every single contribution on this site, good or bad. but it's not my life.

Let's not spoil it with petty squables, let's try and keep it to the spirit for which it was intended.

I tend to deal with things in what perhaps appears in print, in a rather flippant manner, that's my style, I don't want to upset or cause any hurt to anyone but I bet I could .... here's some more advice .... don't say anything that will not do you any good.... honest it works .... try it .... don't leave the forum ... don't stop contributing .... just give it a try ..... and if that fails .... buy a ukulele .....,

[will vine]

Yes, to all the above.