Posted by Jock on March 17, 2006 at 17:41:39 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
In Reply to: Blackett posted by John on March 17, 2006 at 16:58:17:
Oh dear, hear I go again...
Jock: I do not ramble.
Not in the American sense perhaps, but in the positive English sense of the word. I was once asked by a kind lady whether I wanted a demonstration, the civil protest kind of demo, I hasten to add. I was trying to save a branch railway at the time (the sort that the Swallows would have taken on their pre-Lake holidays) and the nasty men in suits had decided to stop me in my tracks by lifting the rails. The kind lady was the secretary of the local branch of the Ramblers Association. The RA is a very nice bunch of chaps who fight nasty landowners and keep footpaths open. Anyway, to get back to my story. I said, "Yes, please". (I was young and naive at the time.) A bunch of dear grannys turned up and offered to sit on the track, the track lifters took a day off and I was filed as a 'threat to Parliamentary democracy' and had my phone tapped. I have a soft spot for Ramblers.
Of course there are the women in my life.
I seem to have spent most of my life looking for a Nancy Blackett. (BTW is it OK to discuss the ones love life on Tarboard?)
Dickens is better than the other crap.
I asked 'a perfect English gentleman' to be the chairman of the railway's local residents' support group. After several years he confessed to being an exile from Czechoslovakia. I asked him where he acquired such a perfect grasp of the English language. He replied, "By reading the books of Dickens and listening to the BBC Home Service."