Image by oosp via Flickr

The Great British fried breakfast, as found in London cafés, airport restaurants and English bars in tourist areas, is fast becoming the trendy way to start your day in New York, according to the New York Magazine. They describe it as a

classic full English breakfast, consisting of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, and lots of toast

However, the UK newspaper The Guardian doesn’t agree:

Are New Yorkers traducing the name of our national breakfast? Can it be a fry-up without a fried slice, toast under the egg and a big plate of chips on the side?

We can only hope that Gordon Brown and Barack Obama manage to see eye to eye on such a delicate issue; perhaps a breakfast meeting is in order?

Original article

The Guardian food blog comment

While I’ve been slacking in the blogging department, my soon-to-be-flatmate (which I can say because he’s English) S____ has been a blog-posting dynamo.  Latest in his descriptive and tinged with questionable limey wit posts is the tale of our new abode in Dushanbe.

The new place -- across the street from the Health Ministry!

As you’ll see in S____’s post that’s linked above, he and his girlfriend C___ took the brunt of the house hunting, while I globetrotted and only deigned to visit places that they felt were up to snuff.  After looking at almost two dozen houses, and blowing through several “realtors” (the scare quotes are intentional, because there aren’t organized, official, competent rental agencies in Tajikistan), we found the above little gem.

Although smaller and narrower than many places we looked at, and though it reminds me a bit of a shotgun house, the lay out is much more conducive for flatmates as there is actually a hallway and you don’t have to travel through each room to get to the next.  Further, the front room, which will shortly become my bedroom, is nice and big and has A/C.  The house has great little yards front and back, and unlike so many Dushanbe compounds, has a post fence that lets you look onto the street and get to know your neighbors.  Finally, we have a sauna, and, as the owner stressed to us, it has three different heat sources — so that when the electric and gas go out, we have a wood-fired backup.

Once I move in, which will be in the first week of October, I’ll post some video.

Pretend to be Welsh by putting coal dust behind your ears, talking gibberish and singing all the time

I am Sweetie and I do not feel like blogging today.  I have been shedding a lot.  Mommy is mad at me because I tried to bury my breakfast.  I am sick of Tuna and Egg.  Besides I worry about my cholesterol because I am 11 years old and not getting any younger.  Mommy does not understand that when a cat looks like it is burying the food, it is the only way we can let them know that we are not happy with our meal.  This is because humans refuse to try and learn our language which is called “Meowan’.  They want us in their houses but expect us to learn their language which is called English even though we live in America.  I like English people because everything they say sounds very nice.  I will blog soon.  I am sorry I did not feel like blogging today. I am Sweetie.

Her Body’s a Temple
Patrick O’Malley hoisted his beer and said: “Here’s to spending the rest of me life between the legs of me wife!” – and he took home the top prize for the best toast of the night.

In bed later that night, he told his wife: “Mary, I won the prize for the best toast of the night.” She said, “Aye, Paddy, what was your toast?”

So he told her: “Here’s to spending the rest of me life sitting in church beside me wife.”

“Oh,” she said, “that is very nice, dear.”

The next day, Mary ran into one of Paddy’s drinking partners in the street. Mischievously, the man said: “Did you hear about your husband winning a prize in the pub the other night for a toast about you, Mary?”

She replied: “Aye – and I was a bit surprised. Till now, he’s only been down there twice. Once he fell asleep, and the other time I had to pull him by the ears to make him come”.

Copyright © 2002 – 2009 Irish Jokes. All Rights Reserved | Links

Married Life
Two married friends are out drinking…
One says to the other: “I can never sneak into the house after I’ve been drinking. I’ve tried everything. I turn the headlights off before I go up the drive. I shut off the engine and coast into the garage. I take my shoes off and creep upstairs. I get undressed in the bathroom. I do everything, but then my wife still wakes up and yells at me for staying out late.”

His friend replies: “Do what I do. I screech into the driveway, slam the front door, storm up the steps, throw my shoes into the closet, jump into bed, slap my wife’s bottom and say, “How about a blow job?” She always pretends she’s asleep.”

Copyright © 2002 – 2009 Irish Jokes. All Rights Reserved | Links

Confessions
The priest was waiting on Saturday afternoon for his usual parade of people coming to confession. In comes a man so drunk, he is stumbling down the aisle, bouncing from pew to pew. Finally he finds the confessional, goes in, and shuts the door.

The priest goes in his side and waits. Nothing happens. He clears his throat so the fellow might know he is there and ready. No reaction. Finally, he starts losing his patience and bangs sharply on the wall three times.

The drunk fellow in the confessional says, “It’s no use knockin’…There’s no paper in here either!”

Copyright © 2002 – 2009 Irish Jokes. All Rights Reserved | Links

Brains
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman were reading a newspaper article about which nationalities’ brains were for sale for transplant purposes. An Irishman’s or a Scotsman’s brain could be bought for £500 but an Englishman’s brain cost £10,000. That proves,’ said The Englishman, ‘that Englishmen are much cleverer than Irishmen or Scotsmen.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ said The Irishman, ‘it just means that an Englishman’s brain has never been used.’

Copyright © 2002 – 2009 Irish Jokes. All Rights Reserved | Links

Took the kids and went shopping today. Nothing unusual in that.

But once again I was witness to a strange phenomenon that I seem to come across on a regular basis. It’s not something that happens just in supermarkets, it could be the doctors waiting room, the mairie, in the queue for the bingo machine in the bank…

It’s the strange phenomenon of  ‘we know you’re English and we know you know we’re English but we’re going to completely blank you’.

It goes something like this:

• you become aware that there is an English couple  in the queue…maybe the way they look, or a snippet of conversation
• they become aware that you are English
• they instantly stop talking to each other or just utter a few whispered words
• their body language changes…shifty, uncomfortable stance, eye contact stops,both with you and with each other, a definate negative vibe is exhuded…
• this is enough to prevent any attempt at pleasantry or chit-chat
• if you do something such as pass them the ‘next customer’ thing, they reply in French….’mersea’…very begrudingly, without a flicker of warmth 
• then in the car-park, both parties are aware of each others presence without obviously looking
• they check out your number plate…to see if you are a ‘proper’ resident or a ‘visitor’

I’ve noticed this since I arrived last year and it has been a constant source of amusement. I find myself  challenging them to a smile, trying to catch their eye, babbling away nonchalantly with the kids in defiance of their self-imposed verbal shut-down.

But, I must admit at times, it has really niggled me….is it me or is it rude? And then I find myself trying to analyse this…to my mind anyway!…weird behaviour.

Is it a quintessentially English thing? Would, for example, Irish or Spanish people do this? I can’t imagine they would. Or do English expats living in Spain or Italy do it?  Is it specific to this little part of France? Is it acceptable because we don’t know each other and have never been formally introduced? Should I in fact congratulate them on their attempts to fully integrate? Does it show weak moral fibre, on my behalf, that I haven’t ignored their brick-wall body language and not just said a cheery  ’ Hello!’?

Ah well, it’s all very fascinating behaviour and would maybe make a good study for someone that way inclined.

In the meantime, I shall look forward to my next encounter and file them in the ’miserable bastard’ section!

Just read this through and realise I’ve missed one potential cause. Maybe it’s just us! After all, I don’t tend to ‘dress up’ to do the shopping and wellie boots are the ordre du jour here at Beauregard, we wouldn’t exactly get first prize for the  ’Best Turned Out Family’, I tend to get nervous in public which accentuates my tick and sweating problem.(I jest…no, really!) So maybe I am being too harsh on these people!!

By the way, next weeks special offers at Lidl are wooden stakes, garlic and Crucifixes…

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David Davis

All this backs up Sean Gabb’s thesis, which is that while the EU is “a” problem, both for libertarianism and for English Liberalism, it is not really “the” problem. Today’s news re-inforces my own thesis that, for libertarianism to succeed, it must be first allied to English Nationalism.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1020524/Sinister-secrets-dustbin-Nazis.html

LET’S RE-BOMB DRESDEN. And this time, for the right reasons; and this time, ”ground-zero” is the “university” of “technology”. With a cruise missile, in which the embedded-40-MHz-386 knows the location of the toilets, and also precisely when the EU-bureaucratchiks, who came up with this nonsense, are having a slash. Read Richard Littlejohn (for Prime Minister) and you’ll see exactly why.

We’ll leave the Frauenkirche alone this time, honest, guv. Anyway, we’ve been lambasted enough by now, for destroying it on Stalin’s orders, and we even gave you a new Cross. My generation of liberal English People, whose fathers did the right thing, does not want to share Stalin’s guilt any more, no, not.

Here are some choice quotes form the EU, no less, to back up what goes on here:-

“Councils should set up a ‘police department’ to sift through rubbish to search for the addresses of ‘offenders’ in discarded mail, and issue fines of up to £400.”

“The Eurocrats admit bin charges are a ‘ politically sensitive issue’, and warn of ‘uncertain and perhaps uncontrollable citizens’ response’. But the handbook stresses ‘this lack of consensus should not be allowed to intimidate us into avoiding innovation’.”

Although these only have the status of “directives”, which is to say that other European nations interpret them freely and quite liberally, they are actually enforced rigorously here in the UK.

and here’s what I got from elsewhere:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1020524/Sinister-secrets-dustbin-Nazis.html

Many of you will have seen today’s Daily Mail and an article by Richard Littlejohn.  In view of his “capacity to colour his writing” (as somebody has said to me)  I hope it will be examined at leisure and critically. 

To me this looks like another instance of domestic overkill!   You’ll notice that the directive quoted has been around for 13 years  already.  Also directives are not laws they are statements of policy aims and subject to local interpretation.  All countries except Britain usually adapt these to local conditions.  Our civil servants do the opposite – treat them as law and then strengthen them.    The remedy to THAT is a domestic one.

 I THINK - I may be wrong – that this is another “conspiracy’ dreamt up to agitate us,  There are elements of truth in it of course but I suspect much of it is an attempt to use the antagonism to Brussels as a tool to stop this.  In wehich case it cxould bac-fire for the remedy is closer at hand!  there is also some kite-flying.  

Right here where I live we have no wheelie bins.  We put out black sacks in a heap for about 8 houses.  The paper/plastic/foil/cardboard boxes are well used.  Garden refuse has its own sacks.  There are also kitchen waste (which, because I have virtually none) I ignore.  I haven’t room indoors for another container.  It all works efficiently and smoothly and everyone is happy.   In fact my black sack only goes out every other week now as I recycle so much more.  Plastic was filling it up before!

They have no means of enforcing anything and our newly elected Tory council (plus the two neighbouring ones) have all said they are not going to waste money giving us all wheelie bins.  Apart from those who suffer from age and infirmity there is no way they could get a wheelie bin up steps and stairs into their flats, round all the corners in it, down a high step to the gate.  

I think I’ll let it run a bit longer before jumping on this particular bandwagon!

Christina 

Living away from home can make it easier to recognise the values of your own culture. And one thing I wouldn’t have noticed in the old days when I took everything that English people do for granted is that English people are so nice.

When I took Vlad out on its first outing on boxing day, I stopped to photograph a church in Edale. A couple walking up the road approached, stopped and asked if I had started filming yet. I liked that they thought my Hasselblad was an old fashioned cine camera, but more than that I was shocked by how nice they were being. If I had started filming, I’m sure they would have waited until I’d got my scene.

And on this trip to the UK at Easter I smiled to myself every time a walker passed and said “good morning”. It never happens out in the dunes in Holland. It was a busy day. I smiled a lot. No one passed by without acknowledging us.

And later when I set up my tripod and rolled out my 20 foot cable release across the footpath, the other hikers just smiled politely and gave me a wide berth so they wouldn’t disturb my shot.

My blogging has been slowing down a bit due to work on my story (Historiae Regnorum) and on a script I’m working on for a homemade film (Impressions.) I’m in the last stages of writing my story, and am trying to plan the final climatic battle in the end. Just a question to you all, what type of battle would you think would fit best? Something out of Braveheart / Narnia, where two opposing armies meet in a giant field, or something out of Gladiator, where they have a giant battle in the forest? I’m thinking of there being three battles, two taking place at the same time; Edward confronting Muradin’s forces in the North, and Richard, while riding to Edward’s aid, comes upon a portion of Muradin’s army which plans on flanking Edward. The two engagements would be going on at the same time, and towards the end, Richard would be victorious in crushing the would-be flankers, while Muradin gets the upper hand against Edward, and the knight is forced to retreat across the river. Muradin knows he will be able to crush Edward’s army once and for all, so he marches after Edward across the river, but Richard makes a surprising appearance along with the Knights of the Holy Cross to change the battle. The above image is a map of the Kingdom, you can click it to see a larger version, along with the details of the battle plans and such.

One of my latest works in the homemade film genre is Impressions. I did have plans on doing The Crusader’s Tale, but since there are a lack of actors to constantly work on the filming and such, I’ve decided to put it off until later. Impressions is a humorous parody based off of Jane Austen’s works, namely Pride and Prejudice. Since the books basically revolve around the issue of life in Classical England, and Marriage, I’ve classified them as ‘girl books’ and the gist of the film is to have a boy read it. *cough* Yeah, that would be me. As the story goes along, the characters from the book begin coming to life before the person’s eyes. So it is going to be rather fun making, since we’ve got all the props necessary. (I.E., dresses from the 1800’s, suit coats, bushy sideburns! ) I am trying to don a proper English accent for my intentional appearance as Mr. Darcy. There is the possibility of me sticking a fencing bout in there, between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham, who are adversaries in the book. I have plans on dragging Marc in on the fun as a Mr. Bingley, Gabrielle as Mrs. Bennet and then as Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Colin as Mr. Collinns (Yes, the character’s actual name in the book ), my brother as possibly Mr. Bennet, and maybe even as Wickham, since I need someone my height for the duel if I get casted as Darcy. All in all, this sounds extremely ridiculous, but I just want to let you all know, it’s not as ridiculous as one of our last films, The Bug…