I’ll forgive The Guardian anything - they got Lou’s obituary right. (OK, only because they asked TFD to write it, but still.)
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Crikey, I just went to look and it’s still there online. I wonder if it’ll be there forever and ever…
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I think it may be, yes.
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Gosh! What a thought.
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I think the illegitimate one for my father (who forbade obituaries) is still out there somewhere, like the factually accurate and completely wrong wiki page.
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“Yours, Jim Lloyd, professor emeritus, Stirling University”
Well, that explains Jim all right and tight. The “emeritus” thing is something no professor I have known would have signed him or her self; actual professors are simply eg “Professor Kermode” after they retire. Well, in his case Prof. Sir Frank Kermode FBA.
Did Kermode ever actually retire? No idea. John Burrow was Professor John Burrow to the day of his death, and no blasted “emeritus” about it, even though he had technically retired and only went into the Department once a week or so, gave very few lectures, used the Faculty’s resources – and personnel – when he was writing a book…
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I have always assumed that Jim got a nice send-off from the Department, who then quietly changed the locks and said “thank goodness, now we can try to rebuild our reputation”.
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See, I reckon there’s an important difference between model railways and superhero figures. With model railways you do something: you decide what sort of layout you want, you get the bits for it from various different places, you make things yourself when the exact right bit isn’t available, and at the end you have your specific layout that isn’t quite like anybody else’s.
With superhero figures you line them up and count them. (There are wargames that use them, but you wouldn’t call that “collecting figures”.)
And I bet the scripties wouldn’t understand that difference.
Here is the youtube channel of a chap who races die-cast cars. With commentary track. It’s remarkably enjoyable.
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Huh. Slaw just means salad; it’s the cole bit that means it’s made of or at least with cabbage.
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2021-07-06T08:00:22Z
Shades of EastEnders in the village this month, with the first bisexual in Borsetshire, sexathons and drugs before teatime
Ambridge underwent a mystical union with Walford this month. “Just leave it, Brian!” urged Jennifer. “Yeah, just leave it,” repeated their daughter Alice, venomously. Brian was advising alcoholic Alice to recall her marriage vows after she’d picked up some guy whose name she couldn’t remember, which, as she pointed out, was a bit rich coming from the adulterer-in-chief himself. In fact, the entire shaky Aldridge edifice looks like it’s in slow-motion collapse: its complicated web of children, stepchildren and out-of-wedlock children is going to make the inheritance question in King Lear look positively straightforward. Borsetshire’s landscape does not tend heathwards, blasted or otherwise, but expect Brian to be rampaging around Lakey Hill soon, calling upon thought-executing fires to singe his white head.
Ruairi – the out-of-wedlock child in question – has announced himself as Ambridge’s first bisexual, and he is clearly having a lot of fun with Troy, his friend-with-benefits. Also having that kind of fun are Vince and Elizabeth, the only people in Britain to be using the word “staycation” to mean “having a holiday at home” rather than “having a holiday somewhere in the UK”, an accurate usage of which village pedant Jim Lloyd would no doubt approve. But Lily Pargetter has outdone them all with her “sexathon” with her workmate Solly, causing an unfamiliar emotion to rise in the breast of this listener, at least – pity for her boyfriend, creepy Russ. Lily is another one of those characters who has been compelled back to Ambridge either by its invisible forcefield or by the requirements of the scriptwriters, when, by rights, she should really be doing a degree at Manchester. Someone – perhaps those indefatigable researchers into Ambridge, Academic Archers – should do a study into troubling university drop-out rates in rural Borsetshire.
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Hello Robot and welcome
It is usual to offer a wee small huge drink to welcome folk here so my card is behind the bar
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That’ll be a pint of 10W40, then…
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Or for serious celebrations the vintage stuff, WD40?
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That’s for polishing the metal skin.
(I’ve seen this being done to a Lightning…)
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I think Castrol R is the best
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2021-08-31T08:26:27Z
Making a celebrity appearance at the village fete, the viral star of the Handforth parish council meeting proves she really has the authority as she out-Archers the Archers
The scene: a spare bedroom in Amy Franks’ flat, Nottingham. At first we do not recognise who lies immobile beneath the duvet. The air is thick with the stench of stale alcohol. Detritus lies around the bed, Tracey Emin-style: empty bottles of corner-shop vodka, take-out cartons crusted with half-consumed food, jeans and underwear tangled in a grubby heap. Then, with a sigh, the figure turns and we see that it is Ambridge alcoholic Alice Carter – asleep or, more properly, passed out.
Cut to a montage of images as they pass through her mind in dizzying progression: in one crazed vignette, Shula Hebden Lloyd screams as she’s tossed from her pony. A moment later, the heavy figure of Neil Carter lumbers towards her prone body and cradles her mournfully. Next, Shula is back home from hospital, her arm in a sling; Neil has arrived, bearing a dish of lasagne, but testily she sends him away. A third hallucination: Shula receives another visitor, this time her recent ex-husband, Alistair Lloyd, in whom she confides she is in love with her erstwhile rescuer, Ambridge’s premier pigman, Neil Carter himself.
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Apologies for the repeated posts; the Grauniad is messing about with its RSS feeds.
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2021-10-05T10:58:48Z
Disaster at the wheel, divorce, and impressive vegetables … it’s suddenly all happening in Ambridge
Absolutely nothing happened in The Archers this month, until it all happened at once: a car crash (adding to the village’s frankly appalling road-safety statistics); Chris and Alice getting a divorce (noooo!); the possible sale of Home Farm; the return of a crucial lost character; and the first words of Chelsea Horrobin, who, like Ruairi Donovan and Ben Archer before her, magically found her tongue, aged 17, behind the wheel of a car. According to her mother, the estimable Tracy Horrobin, she’s a marvellous driver, despite actually running a man over on her third lesson.
This was all after a slightly implausible series of events during which Joy, peering out through her nets from behind her African violets, spotted a Mysterious Man lurking around the Beechwood estate. Rather than ask her what he looked like – was he, for instance, a dastardly Max Cady sort of a chap wearing red trousers, a check shirt and a waxed jacket, or, perhaps, a homeless waif with a serious back problem? Helen and Lee decided it must be that destroying angel, Helen’s ex-husband Rob Titchener, back in Ambridge to snatch little Jack. The family decamped to safety and Bridge Farm – I imagine Pat in her rocking chair, Lillian Gish-style, cradling a rifle. Naturally the interloper turned out to be the abject Blake, formerly enslaved by Kirsty’s estranged husband, builder Philip Moss, who then, in his misery and panic, hurled himself beneath Chelsea’s wheels.
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