Three years ago, we were in Bilbao for the Challenge Cup final. What a difference a pandemic makes. Also, the sun was shining, at least in Spain.
Regarding the Little Cup, Flair99 says: “To find Montpellier there is quite stunning, they’re fighting to avoid relegation, and they’re certainly not pleasant to watch. How about Leicester?”
Same, Flair, same.
La Rochelle v Toulouse will undoubtedly be a more interesting match. I’m calling it for La Rochelle, because I would like them to win.
Onna telly this week
Friday 21st May
| Leicester v Montpellier | 20:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 22nd May
| Sharks v Stormers | 12:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Lions v Bulls | 14:30 | Premier Sports 2 |
| La Rochelle v Toulouse | 16:45 | BT Sport 2 |
Sunday 23rd May
| Nada |
Ovally Balls 
Dan Snow is another well connected pop historian. I like how he makes people think he’s a proper historian who has actually done some historical research rather than just landing a job at the BBC via his family.
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Jon Snow is another one who did quite well out of family connections despite being kicked out of university. He’s managed to re-write history himself about what went on during that time, by claiming it was all in the name of anti-apartheid. Most people who I know who were around at the time just remember a spoiled public schoolboy making a lot of racket and putting himself at the centre of attention. What Snow never mentions is that the real reason they were kicked out (temporarily in most cases) was because one of them pointed an imitation firearm at one of the professors who had come in to talk to them during their occupation of Senate House.
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We had a very good magazine edited by a guy who’s gone to big things in Ladybird books and the Framley Examiner and another who hit it big with data visualisation books. They published the OE’s article about the differences between Chelsea and Hampstead. When I read it, I asked the second one, who I was friendlier with, why because it was shit. He said something like, “32 pages and we can’t write them all. Where’s the thing you promised us?”
A few years later I was at a party with some friends from college and one friend and I got blanked by a woman we’d studied with. We found out 20 minutes later that one of us had been really rude to her the last time we’d met, which was news to both of us. 30 minutes later she came up and apologised saying it wasn’t either of us but the data visualisation guy who was the rude bastard. Phew! We got into a conversation about her recently published book about the woman who’d compiled the first London A to Z. I’d read it and said I enjoyed it well enough but it wasn’t as good as another London book I’d read recently. She called me a rude bastard and we haven’t spoken since.
Data visualisation guy and I had a long laugh about how I was now enemy number 1 the next time we saw each other. He claimed not to remember having been rude to her either but was pleased he was in her not so bad books.
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Jesus, this publishing malarkey is like an episode of Motherland.
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Yeah, that made my head spin.
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Posh guy = not very good, woman = ok not as good as another writer I’d read, first editor = funny, second editor = all right and a good lad.
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Think I’ll go back to farmers talking about sheep.
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Aye?
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Ayup.
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Boom! Britain bashes remote hijacking Belarussian bastards in the world ice hockey championships.
We’re up to 5th in our group ahead of the Swedes and the Czechs.
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I got my vaccine and I’m over 30.
*Blows Sag’s party squeaker thing*
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Aye?
Yep.
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A post that somehow didn’t get posted yesterday, in response to Chimpie’s outrageous assertion that I was being rude to Ticht and trying to row back on it:
Trying to suggest Ticht would fit in the back row, is more accurate. Gorgeous specimen that he is.
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Back rowers being the finest specimens onna rugby pitch after all.
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I’m concerned my youngest has distinct chippy scrum half tendencies though
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@Deebee – Pull yourself together man, you already protested too much.
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Obviously Ticht shouldn’t take being called a fat fuck lying down, especially from the Lunchington Lunchster himself, but let’s face it he’s probably too fat to get up and do anything about it.
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He’s taken to scoring things things his parents do. Yesterday’s breakfast toast got 4 / 10. Insufficient butter and not spread completely to the corners.
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That tale of publishing squabbles looks like it’s in need of an editor. Slaps all round for them if you ask me, however many of them there are and whatever they have or haven’t done.
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“Think I’ll go back to farmers talking about sheep.”
Even sheep talking about farmers would do.
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@Chimpie – A packed lunch I made got marked down for cutting a piece of bread and butter into two rather than four the other day.
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Well jeez, what an elementary error.
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I’ve been pulled up in the past for making messy sandwiches where ‘the ham is hanging out over the edge!’.
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Footage of TomP’s publishing party has emerged
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sandwiches cut into 4………………………on the diagonal or the square?
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.it’s important in these trying times…………….
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Premier Sports has picked up the rights to the Top14 for two years, it starts right away – this weekend’s games are to be shown and the deal will cover the 21/22 and 22/23 season
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The nun who was headteacher at my primary school had a go at me because nobody had thought to cut my buttie at all. Obviously marked me out as unrefined.
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I’d go for diagonal cuts personally. Square is a bit, well, square
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An un-cut buttie. The horror. 2 out of 10.
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Chimpie is Sister Mary Clare and I claim my five Hail Marys
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I’d say butties’re a subcategory of sandwiches.
Classic chip butty involves no slicing of the bread at all. Folding of the bread, yes. Slicing, no.
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4/10 is extremely generous for toast as described.
I am a fanatic about sandwiches. Everything must be perfectly evenly distributed to the edges of the bread. Nigel was right on this.
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sandwiches cut into 4………………………on the diagonal or the square?
Always the diagonal. It allows you to bite the corners off before the middle, thus lessening the chances of getting the filling all over your face. Square cut into fours does give you a point of entry too I suppose, but triangles give you three approaches to the unsuspecting bread.
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My car radio discovered a new channel for me yesterday – the superbly named “Absolute Country”. That’s what it says on the little screen anyway – when you listen to it (which I did so that Thaum doesn’t have to) they refer to it as Absolute Radio Country, which is probably for the best.
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The nun who was headteacher at my primary school had a go at me because nobody had thought to cut my buttie at all. Obviously marked me out as unrefined.
Maybe it was just the old ham that marked you out?
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It can depend on the size and shape of both the bread and the lunchbox being used. I cut a beef sandwich into thirds the week before last.
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“I am a fanatic about sandwiches.”
I am too, and the first and most important thing is good bread, this can change depending on mood but a reliable standard is a good French baguette.
From there you can go the full throttle cheese or ham or egg or falafel (trust me on this) or whatever plus all the salad plus mayo and mustard.
Or a simple but beautiful jambon beurre will do nicely.
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In fact Michel Roux jnr featured a jambon beurre sandwich in Paris on one of his tv shows where Fred wotshisface takes a chef and goes around the best restaurants in cities across Europe.
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Sticking with a French theme, we used to get Paris-based radio FIP here in Brighton. Some guy used to pick up and re-broadcast it as a pirate radio station.
Some of the more hip shops used to have it playing, and the station even sent DJs over to host weekends in clubs on the seafront.
“The man” closed him down a few times, I guess now with internet radio there isn’t the need to re-broadcast it, but it just seems less romantic than a pirate radio station, based in Paris, playing in Brighton taxies and shops and cafes etc.
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Growing up quite high above sea level we used to be able to get all the Welsh channels (BBC1 Wales, BBC2 Wales, HTV, and S4C). It meant we could get to see some things we wouldn’t usually see e.g. I saw Wales vs Scotland to qualify for the 86 World Cup and am pretty sure it wasn’t shown in England, and Pobol y Cwm.
Nobody thought to re-broadcast it though.
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Gloucester Rugby vs London Irish
15. Kyle Moyle
14. Louis Rees-Zammit *
13. Chris Harris
12. Mark Atkinson
11. Santiago Carreras
10. Billy Twelvetrees
9. Willi Heinz
1. Val Rapava-Ruskin
2. Jack Singleton
3. Fraser Balmain
4. Ed Slater
5. Alex Craig *
6. Ruan Ackermann
7. Lewis Ludlow (c) *
8. Ben Morgan
16. Santiago Socino
17. Jamal Ford-Robinson
18. Jack Stanley
19. Freddie Clarke *
20. Jack Clement *
21. Stephen Varney *
22. Lloyd Evans *
23. Ollie Thorley *
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Hey TomP, hows yer library size in Dublin ? Heading to Uk to clear some stuff out in a week or so, them programmes have resurfaced, apparently.
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OT, I watched the England – West Indies Oval Test in 1991 with cricket-fantatic family of mine just outside Cork. I was surprised they could get the BBC there and they told me they had an aerial to get the BBC but did I not know about the deflectors. The what I asked? The this they told me:
https://www.thejournal.ie/charles-haughey-deflectors-state-papers-4925303-Dec2019/
People even won election to the Dail on the issue:
https://irishelectionliterature.com/2011/12/18/leaflet-from-tom-gildea-tv-deflector-candidate-1999-local-elections-glenties/
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SBT, Limited but I have somewhere in the UK they can go to. Would be more than happy to give them a home.
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@tomp
That is glorious. No doubt the deflector group bunged Haughey a few quid to smooth things over.
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No one is ever beating this:
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@tomp
It was already magnificent until it got even better with this bit:
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