Halo Stickman

Chrimble cum-covered word-games, eh Fowllyd? Damn, I’ve got Bletch the same present. Still, one can never have too many Chrimble cum-covered word-games, I suppose. On second thoughts, maybe you can in Bletch’s case.

You’re right, when things become personal 'human rights all men are equal, this is wrong' ******** is normally one of the first things to be jettisoned on the long descent into the abyss. No credible government or their agencies personalise issues such as torture.

That card you made for me dear Bletch I promise that I’ll treasure I will keep it by my bed And use it to self-pleasure

Bletch is a wordsmith Who we all adore Except for Toke, Bear and Halo Who say he is a bore

Happy Christmas Bletch, Muppet Master-General. Bletch is a wordsmith Whom we all adore Except for Toke and Bear Who says he is a bore

Fucking frustrating, but only got ourselves to blame. Two pieces of poor defending and at least two pieces of poor finishing. This is why I'm glad we took the League Cup seriously - hopefully we can use that to help kick-start our season again.

Excellent back-up with an excellent attitude, imo.

I dropped a b0llock with one of my presents to Mrs Stickman a few years back. I bought her a digital photo frame and spent ages scanning in photos from about 25 years worth of albums featuring our lives together. At first, I was quite selective choosing which photos to scan, but I quickly discovered it was easier just to scan the whole lot. Eventually, I ended up with a couple of thousand photos on about a four hour loop. Anyway, Mrs Stickman was quite pleased with it at first, but I noticed after a short while she became luke-warm towards it, and it wasn’t long before she switched it off altogether. On asking her why, she replied: 1/ I find it depressing to watch 25 years of my life go by in 4 hours. 2/ I find it sad to see photos of people like my dad who are no longer alive. 3/ I find it annoying to see photos of your bloody mother every five minutes.

I found Sliding On The Snow Stone by Andy Szpuk – the true story of the author’s Ukrainian father’s family living under first the Soviets and then the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s – to be a very well-written and truly gripping read. It also gave an interesting insight into some of the historical tensions currently afflicting that region.

I’ve got a mate who bought his girlfriend an electrolysis kit for removing facial hair. True Story. Amazingly, they’re still together – although that was definitely a present that failed to guarantee he got his leg over on Christmas Day.

Don’t credit me; I just googled the photo.

Last Christmas I bought Mrs Stickman a Fortnum & Mason’s hamper. Now, I appreciate there will be some on here that will frown at me for buying gifts from such an establishment; suffice it to say, Mrs Stickman liked it. A few years back I gave her something that cost me nothing – well, at least not in financial terms. I brought back a section of sycamore tree from a chainsaw course I’d attended; allowed it to season for a year or so; sawed, chiselled, sandpapered and polished it into a heart shape; drilled a hole in the top just the right diameter to take a tea-light candle; and carved a soppy inscription on the back. It took for-fucking-ever. Hope that helps.

Cricket - very definitely both. Someone has to make the sandwiches for the tea interval, ffs.

Meanwhile, the 2015 'Exotic Miss Pompey' calendar selects January’s model.

Good point. I believe this can be an issue up to 12 hours after drinking.

I started driving in the 1970s when drink driving was fairly common – how else did rural pubs that didn’t sell food manage to survive? It makes me shudder to reflect on how reckless I was as a young driver who liked a drink or several – heaven only knows how I didn’t end up killing myself or, even worse, someone else. Nowadays, I won’t drive if I’ve had even a single drop of alcohol because I know that if I was involved in an accident I would never be able to live with the thought that I might have avoided it if I’d been stone cold sober. So, yeah, if it were up to me I’d probably set the limit at zero, or pretty near to it so as to avoid the fermenting fruit or alcoholic mouthwash or whatever issue. Having said all this, I do agree that some people on or around the limit may well be better drivers than some of the completely sober idiots on the road, but that’s a separate issue, imo.

"Disease of choice", says one of you. "Assuming that Aids ever was the trendy 'must-have' disease of 1980s' fashionistas …", says another. Sorry, I was being sarcastic and mistakenly thought it wasn’t necessary to add “which it obviously wasn’t!”

****ing gutted with that result. Forster excellent.

That young lady needs to open the following link: http://small-penis-facts.com/?page_id=19

Assuming that Aids ever was the trendy ‘must-have’ disease of 1980s’ fashionistas then this strange attitude echoes the early nineteenth-century Romantic notion that tuberculosis selected its victims by virtue of their youth, vitality, beauty and artistic ability; whereas, in reality – as is the case with Aids and TB today – the majority of consumptives were common-or-garden members of civilisation’s less privileged strata. Crikey, that was a mouthful.

I agree with the above posters who’ve said that the bouncer is a legitimate part of a bowler's armoury; therefore, I’d prefer to see improvement in helmets rather than the outlawing of short balls. Besides, even if they were banned, bouncers could still be bowled inadvertently – like the outlawed beamer that occasionally slips through a bowler’s fingers – or a good length ball could unexpectedly rear up after hitting a crack in the wicket etc. At the end of the day, no sport can ever be made completely safe. I haven’t seen any statistics on this but I would imagine cricket must be relatively low on the lists of sports resulting in serious injuries or deaths, which, in some respects, makes Phil Hughes’s death even more shocking and tragic.

Good point. There are in fact plenty of sports where I prefer to watch the women’s version – topless darts, naked mud wrestling and tennis are just three of them.

Apologies for the hurried nature of this reply – I’m about to set off on a long weekend. Yes, essentially, I agree with everything you say there, Pap – normally I’d be wary to align myself with Icke’s site, but I’m happy to accept the people-morphing-into-reptiles stuff as a metaphorical device; and credit where credit’s due, Icke ran with the Savile story long before the mainstream media found the balls to do so. Was Savile acting alone and simply cultivating the Establishment as a means of influence and protection, or was he part of a network that extended into the Establishment? Was he fulfilling a procurement role? These remain key questions, imo. The Express article from 2008 (see below) – written 4 years before he was outed in the mainstream – has possibly already been discussed in the Saville thread; nevertheless, I’ve linked it again as an example of Savile’s (claimed or real?) connections. Also, I think it’s interesting to look back on these articles, knowing what we now know about Savile. His cryptic phraseology can easily (justifiable or not?) be given a more sinister interpretation with the benefit of hindsight. One could easily think that he was toying with the media at times, imo. Incidentally, the passage about Mountbatten awarding the coveted green beret to Savile in 1966 – the first civilian ever to receive one – is interesting, not least because there seems to be some ambiguity as to when Savile actually completed the required 30 mile Marine assault course – some sources state that it wasn’t until the 1970s, yet the official citation confirms that he received the award in 1966, apparently. http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/43798/How-Jim-really-did-fix-it

Oh yes, I agree that this was a terribly freakish and tragic accident. I recall that you’re a doctor, so you will obviously know better than any of us how unlucky Phil Hughes was to be hit in that particular spot. The point I was making was that there is a school of thought – I don’t necessarily subscribe to it, btw – that before the introduction of helmets etc batsmen were less likely to be hit because they would spend hours practising how to spot bouncers early and take avoiding action – their only form of protection. A batsman in the days before helmets was taught to keep an eye on the ball at all times and never, never turn his back on it.

I’ve heard pundits argue that the introduction of helmets and extra padding etc. has led to a form of complacency within batsmen in the respect that, these days, batsmen are more likely to allow the ball to hit them and are no longer as adept at ducking to avoid bouncers, although this argument never applied to Brian Close – like you say, he allowed the ball to hit him regardless. RIP Phil Hughes.