Couple of quizzes to keep you entertained. There are no real rules; I will post the answers after a suitable period of time. Discussion is permitted.
Cwiz 1: Prisons
1. In which novel did Edmond Nantes escape from the Chateau d’If?
2. In which prison was the Marquis de Sade incarcerated?
3. Which South African prison was named after the Afrikaans word for seal?
4. Which Cavalier poet wrote, “Stone walls do not a prison make”?
5. Which US prison took its name from pelicans?
6. Who wrote
I never saw a man who looked,
With such a wistful eye,
Upon that little tent of blue,
Which prisoners call the sky.
7. Tartarus was a dungeon in Greek myth; for whom was it built?
8. Frank Darabont directed which prison movie?
9. Which isolated UK prison opened in 1809 to house Napoleonic War prisoners?
10. In 1952, the Kray twins were held in which historic prison?
This cwiz is courtesy of ProfessorPineapple
Cwiz 2: Scrambled Plays
1. Forgoing toadwit
2. Meth cab
3. Née in lewd farmyards
4. Limp agony
5. Anal seas fathomed
6. Sex up or die
7. A Leo knocking bar
8. See earthling games
9. I scorn hero
10. Sole had soul
Ovally Balls 
Not in Swindon, only in the two homes in Wroughton. Christ knows how many deaths in the whole of Swindon’s care homes.
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Swindon kills blog. Almost as evil as the All Blacks.
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It was that bugger Dave wot did it.
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Lots of Kiwis called Dave.
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Only one Dave From Swindon, though.
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Surely Dave from New Zealand is pie-faced doughboy the shorter?
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The main ‘Dave’ I know from NZ is ‘Laughing’ Dave Rennie, former Glasgow coach. He’ll no be bloody laughing when he starts coaching Australia…
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You sure Dave from Swindon wasn’t a Kiwi? I have my suspicions.
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Think the original Dave was some syntish guy that worked with one of the AoDers.
There was also a Jim From Swindon that always seemed to be near the top of any quizzes that we did, but didn’t seem to post?
May be misremembering that.
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Jim Hamilton was born in Swindon
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The original Dave from Swindon was a (former?) colleague of Yosoy.
I used to try to provoke Jim from Swindon into posting as he was usually fairly high up the cwis tables and when he came top of a cwis that was about something he was actually interested in he did post for a few days I think.
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*Good article by Nick Cohen alert.*
Just read a good article by Nick Cohen. There we are then.
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TomP – did you know you’d been ‘invaded’?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53034930
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Yes, BB, my missus was telling me about that last week. The colleague she shares an office with is from near the border and was incensed by it. But it wasn’t a big story in the press here. She even asked the Polish desk at their work and they didn’t know much more than what was in that local paper.
Their boss said, “OK. We’ll take all of Těšín”, which is a reference to the 1919 War between Czechoslovakia and Poland. ( english.radio.cz/czechoslovak-polish-war-january-1919-a-brief-clash-lasting-consequences-8139977 ).
Czech friends who are from that way aren’t overly enamoured by the Poles and there’s a fair bit of antipathy on both sides. I teach a couple of Poles here. One of them says she gets poor treatment in restaurants when she and her family speak Polish.
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Everybody been invaded?
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Or listening to the B-side of a Prog album.
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There’s an American actor/comedian called Pete Davidson. He’s got loads of tattoos, like 104 or something. and the good people at https://bodyartguru.com/pete-davidson-tattoos/ have gone through each tattoo and explained the meanings. This is my favourite:
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Looks like everybody’s listening to Side C, Track 2.3, Part XI, Sections 1 to 5 of Ik’s latest Prog album, “Tales Of Heidelbergian Beavers On The Dark Side Of Selling Aqualung By The Pound”.
Or queuing to get into shops….
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Afternoon all! Wasn’t it fabulous to see all the fans in the grounds in New Zealand over the weekend? Golf back (not that it gets much attention here), football re-emerging across Europe, cricket on the horizon – it’s not all bad news out there.
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Now caught up on the highlights of the only rugby action since March. Tempted fling some money around just a bit of a live fix.
40k+ people at a match isn’t a bad turnout for Avs’ blues game. And they won.
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Stupid kiwis and their absence of covid.
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Just been for my daily walk and realised that there are going to be some new houses being built on land a street or so away from me. It will be called “Baron’s Grove” apparently, even though it isn’t a grove and there won’t have been any barons near the place for a few hundred years. Still, suppose it sounds better than “Overpriced Houses On A Bit Of Derelict Land Near An Industrial Estate Off Wright Street”.
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Using the word “Baron” is as clear a marker that they’re seeking gentrification by will power.
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Well, there is apparently a Baron of Renfrew….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_of_Renfrew_(title)
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Read that as Baron’s Gove and almost pulled the plug on the UK completely.
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Looks like someone beat me to it.
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Or are you all out having long lunches whilst we shiver down here with threats of snow and icy rain? Been in minuses at night and in the mornings here in sunny South Africa.
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There’s a good book by a fella called Michael Murray about Deebee’s stomping ground. He mentions how a lot of the residential developments have European names such as Siempre La Serena, Il Villagio, and Quinta do Lago. Not sure if that’s still the fashion but certainly was a few years back around the time of this
“,,, at Villa Carrara in Melrose Estate … homeowners can enjoy “La Vita Bella”, a “lifestyle renaissance development”where prospective buyers can “choose this sanctuary of elegant but simple, grand old Tuscan architecture reminiscent of the Italian renaissance” and where a resident “can soothe (one’s) soul in a harmony of earthy Tuscan style, excellent taste and vibrant charm.”
BO – as I believe the youth say – AK.
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TomP, still loads of crap faux-Tuscan crap in Joburg. Our complex has an Italian name, as do the two on either side designed by the same firm of ‘architects’. Brother-in-law lives in one with a Greek name, evoking scenes of luxurious island villa life, but closer to a Mama Mia set in a ghetto. Anything with a vaguely African name is so overpriced that only foreigners and those with access to dollars can afford them. Aluta Continua!
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TomP – you will perhaps have heard of Grosse Pointe, a wealthy (white) suburb of Detroit on Lake St Clair. Detroit was of course settled by the French, hence the name, and so many towns and ‘cities’ have Frenchified names, usually the more expensive ones. While I was living there and working with a load of French people, they built a new development in a more northern suburb, near the place of work, that they called Grosse Pines, in their wisdom. (It means ‘large penises’ in French.)
Needless to say, the actual French were not tempted to make that their return address.
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Grosse Pointe? No drawing a blank.
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That’s the one!
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The part of Pretoria I lived in was called Brooklyn , Not after the hipster-friendly NYC borough but after the bloke who surveyed the land there.
The next suburb to the east was Menlo Park, reportedly named after the town in California.
There’s also a suburb called Murrayfield and one called Waverley.
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Talk of Pretoria suburbs causes total blog failure. Bit like their rugby.
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Just checking on Super Rugby champions from South Africa.
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And living in the past, like most Pretorians. You need to get out more!
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Hmm.
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Sounds like Grayling special, that
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Tomp – did they have £1.019bn in assets and £1bn in liabilities though?
Or was it a start up with £19k from kickstarter?
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, Pestfix fwhich has 16 staff and is based in Littlehampton in Sussex, was given the contract in early April to provide items such as gowns and face masks to the NHS.
Pestfix is the company. The records at Company House show they were a dormant company until 2018. However, there is a PestFix Contracts, which didn’t have assets of £1.019bn in assets and £1bn in liabilities in the account statement for last year, which was presented on April 30th this year:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08603791/filing-history
Crisp Websites is a linked company. There’s more money around there: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04600829/filing-history
Also, £1.019bn (in assets) – £1bn (in liabilities ) isn’t £19,000, is it?
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No, I buggered up the decimal place a tad. Like all good accountants.
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It’s just that net assets without context isn’t enough information. Does sound too small though.
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The report in FT says they were the only company that put in for the contract, but it’s not clear where the contract was advertised.
I’m probably being too suspicious. Likely there’re logical reasons for their winning the contract.
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Tomp – it gets better. As of 31/07 last year they had net liabilities of ~6.6k.
Fixed assets (I.e. Computers or machines) – 2.8k
Money – 46k
Current liabilities* (due in one year) – 56k
So I’m guessing that up until the lovely £108m they weren’t a going concern. Most worrying from a wider perspective is that they don’t appear to have enough fixed assets to role out large scale ppe. This is pretty outrageous tbh**.
*I’m guessing this is some kind of directors loan or maybe a private loan. As they are so small they are not required to say.
** that’s my opinion as an ACA. You can have it for free this time around.
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One of the owners was featured in an article in the FT a few years back:
https://www.ft.com/content/3f82ef76-efc7-11e2-8229-00144feabdc0
Looks as if CJ missed out.
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Tomp – I know a few recruitment types who operate as one man bands who could probably find the time to clean up bird shit.
They are generally very good to know as they spend a great deal of time prepping candidates for interviews rather than the rapid fire cattle spray the larger companies use.
Recruitment types* also tend to be arseholes. Not always, but if I had to pick an industry outside of estate agents and bankers with an over representation of arseholes it would be them.
I once voluntary ended an interview due to the creativity the agent had used when translating my cv into the company format.
* Soz to estate agents, recruitment consultants, bankers and other arseholes of the blog.
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Apology accepted.
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Arsehole.
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Hahahahahahahaha
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If they weren’t so dangerous, Tories would be very funny:
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