Posted by Robert Dilley on August 10, 2000 at 17:21:31 from 205.189.37.81:
In Reply to: Re: Picts and Martyrs Oddities posted by Ed Kiser on August 08, 2000 at 05:13:35:
I am reminded of a news item from many years ago -- perhaps when US Cruise Missiles were being introduced to the UK. A demonstration was held outside the US Embassy in London, which was joined by a US Serviceman in uniform, who happily borrowed a sign reading "Yankees Go Home". When asked by a reporter about this, he replied in an impeccable Southern drawl: "Ma'am, I'm from Georgia, and we've been saying that for over a century".
A couple of other points (sorry, I've been very busy and joined this thread late). SAGO comes from the heart of the sago palm (old Goon Show joke: "How do you start a pudding race? ... Say go." TAPIOCA comes from the root cassava. Both are insipid. Like Alan Hakim, extended exposure to both at boarding school have made me unable to face either now.
Having walked, biked and driven extensively in both the Lake District and Devon I find little to choose between their roads for narrowness. Devon roads tend to be deep-sunken, Lake District ones to have stone walls on each side. For the benefit of North Americans, neither have anything that may be called a "shoulder" -- the tarred surface, narrow as it is, goes right up the the bank/wall. If you meet another vehicle, one or other has to back to a passing place. Particularly challenging is the road over Hardknott and Wrynose passes in the Lake District. It is one lane wide with occasional passing places, averages 30% slope over the passes, and most of the way has no shoulder, wall or hedge. We traversed in when our girls were small with two sitting in a rear-facing child seat in a Volvo station wagon (estate car) and on some of the sharper bends the kids were suspended over thin air. My girls still refer to that experience with a shudder.