AnneMarriott

I have just learned that the Post Office in Eton (actually it's a counter in the local Budgens) has closed "temporarily due to operational reasons".  As far as I can tell the operational reasons are that it had never operated properly since it was moved three years ago to Budgens from Eton Stationers, where we enjoyed excellent service for decades.  When it moved to Budgens we were promised extended opening hours and additional services.  Out of four attempts to carry out a transaction there I succeeded just once, to post a card to Australia.  The extended opening hours remained a pipe dream, ("we're trying to work towards it", said the manager) the computer crashed and "there's no-one who knows how to do that" were reasons for the three unsuccessful attempts.  The post office in Datchet is now closed for the second time in three years.  The one in London Road Langley closed months ago and there's no sign of a replacement.  So now residents of Eton have the choice of Windsor, Eton Wick or Slough High Street.  None of them far but only Windsor is walking distance and only that for the very fit.  Public transport thin on the ground and parking a nightmare everywhere.  Not happy!

As far as punctuation is concerned, it may be that your friend's keyboard has the apostrophe on a different page from the comma.  She may use the comma to avoid the inconvenience of navigating between pages.  Is that the only punctuation error?  Or does she use a comma where there should be a full stop or put an apostrophe before the 's' in a plural?  'are' instead of 'our' sounds like a different matter - more a question of mentally "speaking" what she is writing.  Whether you should speak to her about this is a tricky question, but I'm a bit surprised that the education authorities are not overseeing this home schooling to ensure that the educator is suitably equipped to do the job.

Saturday 2 June SCS D3 any good?

5 hours ago, Amelia said:

 

I just looked at the website -- the tickets are not on sale until 4th April.

Apologies - I was logged in as a Friend and forgot public booking wasn't yet open.  And all the SCS tickets disappeared pretty quickly in any case.  Hope you are lucky on April 4th!

A tiny sprinkling of Stalls Circle Standing tickets have appeared on the ROH website for some dates, mostly Osipova/Ball.  Other lower-priced tickets tickets also available. 

Placard in the window of a hairdressing salon:  "Hair cut while you wait".  Is there any other way?

Final act of Romeo and Juliet at ROH, can't remember when:  Romeo rushing into the crypt still in the jogging pants he had worn in the interval.  I hope I don't mis-remember but I think it was Stuart Cassidy.  Of course he was on stage for the entire act so had to manage the fight with Paris, the heart-rending attempts to revive Juliet and his own suicide while dressed as if for a work-out.  

1 hour ago, Timmie said:

 

Thank-you so much to all the mods for the hard-work, and from a personal point of view, making it my favourite place on the internet .

 

Re the messages, I am both disappointed and astonished .

Alas I am not astonished.  It is one of the reasons Bruce M. found running the original Balletco too unrewarding to continue.  The unpleasantness revealed on the Internet makes me fearful of a future without civility or self-control. 

On 2/7/2018 at 16:56, Saodan said:

I was at the Royal Albert Hall a few weeks ago to see Cirque du Soleil.

 

When the lights went down, a message was played telling us that “our performers love to have their picture taken. Please feel free to snap away during the performance and record short videos to share on social media using our hashtag.”

 

A vision of the future?

Isn't intended as irony?  I'm sure I've heard similar announcements elsewhere, greeted with knowing chuckles by the audience.

21 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

When you swim in the sea

And an eel bites your knee

 

That's a moray

 

 

That's been going round in my brain since the weekend!!!!

Well at least these lyrics make sense, unlike the original ...

3 hours ago, zxDaveM said:

 

Monty don would have you collecting up those leaves to make leaf mould to mulch the flower beds with! :-)

 

Yes, and I do - but there are too many!  And oak leaves take several years to rot down into usable leaf mould and I have the last five years' worth still stacked up in black bags by the compost bin!

There's a small area of woodland opposite our house, mainly oak trees.  The council sends the street sweeper along at about 7.30 am on a random day of their choosing.  Needless to say all the residents' cars are still parked so the sweeper drives along the middle of the road sweeping up nothing at all.  Even if one neighbour rushes out to move a car the sweeper can't get to the kerb to clear their little space.  Now the leaves have accumulated into a blanket so thick that we can't see the kerb at all.  I've tried to clear my front and back garden in order to stop the lawn being swamped but every time there's a puff of wind or someone moves their car all the leaves just blow about and resettle where I've cleared them.  Maddening!  

9 hours ago, Quintus said:

 

Given a significant chunk of the population is now self-employed in one way or another, bank holidays are for many people a direct and painful strike to the wallet - a day with no pay. I can't  think of any impending national event where I would to sacrifice a day's revenue!

For those working in the NHS, police, emergency services and many other sectors, a bank holiday is a chance for extra pay, as I remember only too well from my cash-strapped student nurse days!

6 hours ago, alison said:

And hence why we shouldn't get an additional bank holiday for it, in that case.

Boo!

The kindness of strangers - namely the young man who patiently helped me get my parking ticket validated at the supermarket when the machine wouldn't read the bar code and I couldn't find my glasses to key in the relevant numbers.

1 hour ago, alison said:

 

Oh dear, guess I must have missed it then.  I was battling recalcitrant software and a major deadline ...

Don't worry - I'm sure there will be more coverage for a day or two ...

1 hour ago, Melody said:

So it's finally happened.

 

Are people over there interested? Of course it's news over here, with Meghan Markle being American and all, but I'm not seeing much interest among Facebook friends other than in specific royalty groups.

I don't know if people are interested but the BBC has been giving it a lot of coverage.  I wish them well - fingers crossed the media leave them alone once the initial frenzy subsides.

12 hours ago, Quintus said:

 

 

 

 

As a trivial aside, I can't quite get my head around how everything on Svetlana appears so very long - logically if you have either long legs or a long back then the other should appear at least 'normal' to compensate as there's only so much body to divide up, but she seems to have both a very long back and very long legs (and arms!).  Must be some kind of optical/ psychological effect based on how our eyes and brains perceive relative proportions from particular cue points; for example a small head relative to the body or 'short' pelvis area?

 

 

The El Greco effect?

Isn't it all part of the social history phenomenon that has seen the decline in domestic knowledge and skills?  It seems we no longer have domestic science (or cookery as it was called in my school days) but "food technology" or some such - designing a takeaway pizza box being so much more educationally valid than learning how to cook a meal for a family.  And without a family background in which such skills are passed on we now have parents raising families, and therefore being responsible for shopping and catering, lacking  the skills which were once part and parcel of growing up.  Add to that the contemporary view that children are incapable of eating smaller portions of what the adults are eating and must have their own choice of meals which seem to consist of chicken nuggets, fish fingers, chips and fizzy drinks.  Add into this toxic mix the need for both parents, or increasingly the single parent, to work long hours just to earn enough to afford mortgage/rent, utilities and so on and the "time poor"  generation can be forgiven for relying on expensive convenience food and takeaways.  Heaven knows, even as a vegetarian retired person I don't actually enjoy  the time spent every day peeling and chopping vegetables and I'm pretty sure if I still worked full time I'd be grateful to perforate the clingfilm on a microwaveable ready-meal once in a while.   But the fact remains that it doesn't take an age to compile a week's shopping list and take note of how much it costs when you've done the shopping.

7 hours ago, RuthE said:

Sorry if I've missed a thread on this elsewhere. The most recent programme in the series featured a woman who was RBS Upper School trained and is now a single parent with one daughter, running a dance school somewhere in Buckinghamshire.  She was enormously overspending on convenience food (I mean, HOW do people on normal incomes not notice when they're spending literally thousands more than they need to?) and was really receptive to the suggestions made about positive ways to change.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09dhf9l

 

I don't really want to comment a lot about this, because I genuinely don't wish to be judgemental about somebody's choices, and of course I've got no knowledge of how she got into pointless, expensive habits.  But I suppose I was a little surprised by someone who trained as an elite dancer being so disorganised about nutrition...

I saw this programme too and share your surprise, both at this one example of a family's choices and at the enormous amounts of money people spend on food.  Does no-one now work out a rough week's menus, make a matching shopping list, checking what's already in the cupboard, and then go and buy what's on the list?  It's nice to see how the supermarket own-brand swaps are received by families who wouldn't normally consider anything but their favourite expensive brands, but I do wonder how many of them will subsequently be prepared to trail round several supermarkets in search of a single own-brand item they have agreed to swap.

On 10/16/2017 at 20:19, toursenlair said:

 

even then it shouldn't make a difference. We are speaking ENGLISH. Bravo is an ENGLISH word. Just like pizza is an English word. Does anyone order "two pizze"? NOPE.

10 hours ago, invisiblecircus said:

 

I do

Well, when in Rome (or Milan) ...

7 hours ago, ballettaxi said:

Yikes Anne - what on earth have I taken on???  So far Clover hasn't shown any fondness for water  - in fact she hates going out for a walk in the rain even with her raincoat on.  Plus side - we don't have to go for long walks in the pouring rain / Down side - she still has all that energy to burn off / Result - Springer running in circles round the house for a few hours!!

 

Also I thought Spaniels were supposed to be intelligent - maybe it's because she's still a puppy but she does the most stupid things at time.  i.e. running in circles until she's so dizzy that she walks into walls or tries to walk away and thumps her head on door frames or simply falls over and lays on her back for a few minutes until she can focus again.  Then there's the fact that she doesn't understand that momentum will keep her moving - so when she's out running and decides to grab hold of a branch (that's still attached to a tree/bush) not realising that the rest of her body will keep moving and spin her around.  So the look of bewilderment on her face every time this happens to her is hilarious.

 

Or my personal favourite - where she grabs something she's not supposed to have and tries to drag it into her crate, but can't fathom why she can't get it through the door so just keeps ramming against it, thinking that if she runs at it she'll be able to force it in!  I let her do it a few times and then take it from her and give her something that will fit AND that she's allowed to have.

You seem to have taken on a pretty typical Springer.  I wish you lots of luck - but the rewards really do outweigh the disadvantages.  They are such lovely merry little dogs.

40 minutes ago, ballettaxi said:

 

 

  I've been told she'll eventually calm down - in about 6 or 7 years!

Don't you believe it!  Paddy, our Springer was quite mature when we took him over from my in-laws who found him too much of a handful.  Our garden backed onto school playing fields and he used to fly over the fence and run to join in with the netball.  I'd have to wave his lead and shout "walkies".  He'd run to jump back over the fence and then of course I'd have to take him for a walk.  He never tired.  Then there was his taste for swimming in stagnant water, the smellier the better, but I won't go on - I don't want to worry you ...

9 hours ago, Pas de Quatre said:

So sorry to hear of your misfortune Anne.  We have always had Collie crosses since my husband and I moved out of London, two or sometimes three at a time with overlap!  Currently we have one aged 12 who was billed as Collie x Lab, but we think there must be some whippet in there as he has a deep rib cage and slim waist.  The new one we have had only ten days.  He is now just over nine weeks old, Collie x Springer Spaniel.   So you can imagine how lively he is and definitely a trip hazard! 

"Lively" must be the understatement of the decade.  Having had a Springer in the past, and having witnessed the energy displayed by various Collies, I can only think "turbo-charged" is a more accurate description of your Collie Cross.

4 hours ago, Colman said:

 

Our St Bernard managed to knock/drag my wife over into the bumper of a parked car and - horror of horrors - hurt her back badly enough that she had to skip ballet class for some weeks. 

9 hours ago, taxi4ballet said:

My neighbour's dog managed to trip her up when they were out for a walk. She fell down a ditch, broke her ankle really badly and was in hospital for weeks. These canines have a lot to answer for!

I now realise I got off lightly!