why is it an epic fail zokes?

I'm not into, never have been, getting pissed & being made a fool of, I can do that quite well without any assistance 😉

what's round & orange?
.
.
.
.
.
an orange

what do you call a man in a paper bag?
Russell

a bear walks into a bar. "I'll have a pint of lager and a……………………………………………………………………………………packet of crisps please"
Barman replies "why the big pause?"

I have a mate called Cosmo, he's in his 40's parents were 60's hippies. Its a cool name if you do not read women's crummy magazines.

or have a long memory – anyone remember a Les Dawson character called Cosmo Smallpiece?

Sabian? Parents into percussion by any chance?

anyway. Silly kids' names are nothing new. My sister was at school in the late 70s with a girl called Carmen. Family name "Gentle"

don't laugh – Adam & The Ants, Kings Of The Wild Frontier. this was their breakthrough album, and it's very good indeed

Am I the only person who's never been on a stag do? Not even my own, as I didn't have one

Meanwhile, in S France, Mandelieu-la-Napoule (near Cannes) is nice, as are Frejus & St Raphael

St Tropez is a pain to get to by car

We went to Lagos*, Algarve, Portugal. Not a 'resort' but a proper working town. Loved it

*never been to Lagos, Nigeria. Don't really fancy it

Ours is the same as Mastiles'

that's good of them

not

at 19 I was at uni, meeting lots of girls & watching lots of bands – and being in one too. The bands took over & I lost interest in the degree course.

Goth

little johnny here

I went to a fee paying independant single sex school. It has the words "Queen" "Elizabeth" and "Grammar" in its name; the word "boys" was omitted

It was OK

I left at 17 (a year early) with 10 O levels and 4 A levels. No fantastic grades, no bad ones either. Went to university and blobbed – too busy having fun with the old sex&drugs&rock'n'roll (well, not so much the drugs)

my parents split when I was 5, but my dad made the contributions to the fees. Elder sister went to a local state Grammar school, which was turned into a comp before I was due to go there; younger sister went to the female equivalent of my school, for which again my dad paid the fees

Did I get a better education than I would have got at a state school? Dunno
Did I suffer? not at the time, but afterwards, hell yes. Girls? f*** me they're aliens and they don't even speak English. Well, not as we boys knew it…

Made up for that in the next 6 years though!!!!

Would I send my own kids to such a school? No. not unless it had gone co-ed; IMO separating boys from girls to give them a better academic experience can backfire in the most spectacular way – all the A Levels & GCSEs in the world mean nothing if you can't communicate with 50% of the population

and now this – No Time To Cry (Sisters): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb07iZ4Uosc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l1fvMY9hvo

Kirk was the lead singer of Theatre Of Hate / Spear Of Destiny; I believe he has also had something to do with Dead Men Walking.

There was a misguided attempt by the far right to associate themselves with SOD (linked to Hitler's alleged fascination with the eponymous lance) after a visit by the band to Auschwitz while on tour in Poland – it did not go down well, IIRC

Don't know about anything else though

Panini footie stickers have always been up for "swapsies", but I think just swapping the whole lot in one fell swoop would leave me feeling, well, unsatisfied

has it also removed your fingerprints?

there's also a time zone to cross 😯

Ottowa to lake louise
that's some drive

BTW while we were there last summer they were doing a lot of work on Highway 1; between Banff & Lake Louise they were upgrading to dual carriageway with wildlife crossings, and again through the mountains near Kicking Horse Pass.
Not sure if it'll be finished yet but it's still way quicker moving than anything with roadworks that we have in the UK

shop at Morrisons supermarkets – they're giving them away with every £20 spent in store

Editors – The Back Room

I prefer their Victory Ale

when I had appendicitis, it started as a "stitch" in my left ribs, then moved across to the right side, before I started puking & it went further down and became tender to the touch

I was 11 at the time, next morning my mum took me to the GP who diagnosed it correctly. one ambulance ride to local hospital (1976, single parent, no car in case anyone feels like complaining about using valuable ambulance resources) and 24 hours later & it was out

should've had the SB before the beer 😉

right now, I have a Thwaites Liberation Ale. Very nice, and they donate to the Poppy appeal for every one you buy. next up appears to be an Old Speckled Hen

I had a Leeds Brewery Pale Ale at about 6pm, very nice it was too. And no, that's NOT Tetleys, there are other breweries in Leeds

in my head, these – Secret Circuits

Just got back from a gig supporting them in Leeds, they are very good

had a chat with them after their set & both the drummer & keyboard player have one of our songs in their heads, so that works out quite nicely.

we sound like this if anyone's interested

they tour quite regularly. not quite as much as my faves, New Model Army, but I don't honestly think anybody could tour more than that 😯

traffic – go several times, at different times of day, before you view, to check the traffic levels

neighbours & noise; is there an airport nearby?

nearby park/offie/pub combination – if there is one, that's where the scrotes will hang out. if it has a "no ball games" sign you can guarantee that's exactly what they'll do. Usually involving slamming a ball against a wall as hard and as frequently as possible for as long as possible

dogs

if all that doesn't put you off, check which way is south, and is it in the shade of a great leylandii hedge and/or skyscraper

if you have kids, where's the nearest school – preferably within "leave the mum-wagon at home" distance

Play around with car & home insurance quotes based on your current & proposed new postcode – if either goes up significantly, why?
Check http://www.upmystreet.com to see what they think of the area

how near is the nearest newsagent/convenience shop/post office/pub/takeaway etc? You don't want to have to get in the car just to fetch a pint of milk, do you?

s/h maybe

I think you're jumping the gun a bit Jeremy, he is only 8 after all 😉

But I agree, a 10W amp will not cut the mustard against a live acoustic drum kit in rehearsal room situations.

(on stage is a different beast as it will normally be mic'd up & sent through the PA for both FOH and on-stage monitoring)

there are 30W amps and there are 30W amps; not all are as big & bulky as an AC30.

But yeah, it's still too loud for an 8YO

except for phantasmagoria as it was a bit shite

Sanctum Sanctorum was pretty good though

My fave is The Black Album, although Strawberries & MGE are both very good too

once you have the video on a format you can import into the PC, use a video editing package such as Windows Moviemaker or the like.

Getting it onto a suitable media might be more of a challenge – when I did this I used my old VCR, a new DVD recorder, a SCART cable (although separate Phono cables would probably give a better result) and a lot of patience…

some of my pics (crowfoot glacier, crowfoot mountain, bow lake and the Athabasca glacier) are taken from the Icefield Parkway. Very impressive. We didn't do the trip onto the glacier as it was p&ssing it down at the time.

That's another thing – the weather in the mountains can be very changeable.

While we were in Canmore, there was at least one day when you couldn't see the tops of the mountains…

Lake Louise

more here[/url]

some in Alberta, some in BC

If you're going to Kamloops then Banff isn't that much further, but you will need permits to park in any of the National Parks – Banff is in one, Jasper another; I think they're $20 a day

We went last summer but in hindsight could have planned it better. We flew into Calgary, had 5 nights in Canmore, just outside the Banff NP so no permit needed. Then 2 nights in Calgary for a wedding, then we drove west. Overnight stop after about 6 hourd drive in Kamloops, then on to Vancouver for 3 nights. Returned via Lake Louise for the final overnight stop before flying back from Calgary

Calgary to Canmore is about an hour's drive; Banff is about 20 minutes further
Calgary to Kamloops was about 6 hours
Kamloops to Vancouver should've been abou 3-4 hours but I went the high plains route, which added about an hour
Vancouver to Lake Louise was about 9 hours
Lake Louise to Calgary 2 hours

we have 8 sites in France, some of the senior management and younger office based staff at various of the sites do speak English, others don't, so I wouldn't expect to be able to get by in English

If, on the other hand, you do get lucky, you'll probably find your fluency increasing pretty quickly…

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

nice DK lyric there, haven't heard Kill The Poor for ages

"unavoidable"?

I worked in Rozzendale for a while

local delicacies included:

pie IN soup
pie IN a barmcake
Hollands pies
black pudding

so good to be back in civilisation now 😉

funny about the fish cake thing. I work in Barnsley, where a "fishcake" is the funny little mashed potato patty, containing a hint of fish, and rolled in breadcrumbs; back in the land of the living, a "fishcake" is two slices of potato with a layer of fish in between, battered and deep fried. In Barnsley they call this a "fish scallop"

earthquakes are nowt to do with oil, or lack of it. Or coal, gas or any other natural resource.

Apologies if I oversimplify it, but I'm not a geologist…

the earth's crust is made up of lots of plates which move around over the hot bit, the mantle. What makes them move is the convection currents in the mantle. Some plates are moving apart, others are moving together, and some are sliding along parallel to each other.

Where the plates are moving apart, new crust comes up from the mantle in the form of lava. Best example is the mid-Atlantic ridge, where the North American plate and Eurasian plate are separating. The results here are mostly underwater, with the exception of Iceland and its many volcanoes.

The Hawaian islands are right in the middle of the Pacific plate, so you wouldn't expect any of this to affect them – except that there's a "hot spot" under the crust where magma bubbles up to the surface quite slowly (in comparison) to create "Shield volcanoes" like Kilaueia and Mauna Kea (sp!). This is how this particular island chain is being created

where the plates are moving together, one dives under the other – this is a subduction zone – occasionally "sticking". When they unstick, they do so very quickly, creating an earthquake. Further away from the subduction zone, the crust buckles up to form mountains. Sometimes in those mountains, the crust cracks right down to the mantle, allowing magma to seep to the surface to form a volcano like Mount St Helens, Vesuvius or Mt Etna.

Where the plates move parallel to each other, again they often stick, and when they unstick, you get an earthquake. I may be wrong but I think the San Andreas fault in California as an example of this

There are earthquakes & volcanoes happening all the time; it's just that these days with 24 hour multi-channel TV, we get to see more reports. No more or fewer than normal, they're just being reported more/better

There was once a 9 goal drubbing given out by ManU – Ipswich were on the receiving end, can't remember if it was 9-1 or 9-0, and I doubt there'll be too many Tractor Boys wanting to remind me