mike carey

I may have mentioned it before: Dull, in Scotland is partnered with the town of Boring in Oregon and the Bland Shire in SW NSW. I would note the unfortunate omission of any of the villages in the Piddle Valley in Dorset that have the word piddle in their names.

Large splash of course is a technical culinary term.

Others have mentioned rhubarb and strawberries as a filling. I found a recipe for a rhubarb and strawberry crumble a few years ago which I made to considerable acclaim. My sister-in-law mentioned it years later. A mistake I made was cooking the strawberries before making it. The rhubarb needs to be stewed but the strawberries should be added uncooked, the time in the oven was enough. The only other ingredient that I can remember, and I suspect it was critical, was a large splash of cointreau in the fruit.

A pie that's tart. Well done, you!

I'll have just arrived home from a trip to Aotearoa, so I'm afraid I must send my regrets. Have a great get-together.

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Expatriate Australian writer, poet and broadcaster Clive James has died in England at 80. He was diagnosed with leukaemia about 10 years ago. He has spent the years since then reflecting on his life and death. His 2014 poem is one poignant meditation on his impending death. 'Japanese Maple’ Your death, near now, is of an easy sort. So slow a fading out brings no real pain. Breath growing short Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain Of energy, but thought and sight remain: Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls On that small tree And saturates your brick back garden walls, So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls? Ever more lavish as the dusk descends This glistening illuminates the air. It never ends. Whenever the rain comes it will be there, Beyond my time, but now I take my share. My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new. Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame. What I must do Is live to see that. That will end the game For me, though life continues all the same: Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes, A final flood of colours will live on As my mind dies, Burned by my vision of a world that shone So brightly at the last, and then was gone. He had been a literary critic at The Observer and in that capacity he wrote of a biography of Brezhnev: On Brezhnev - A Short Biography: "Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead."

Yes, have a great Thanksgiving (whatever that is*) to all of you below the 49th*. I read today that the authoritative correct time to have the Thanksgiving meal is at 2pm. My considered opinion on that, based on Christmases past, is that the correct time is when the turkey is cooked and not a moment earlier. Any delays are easily ameliorated by copious amounts of champagne*. (* That was a joke, don't @ me, or send me wiki links explaining the holiday. * And above the Rio Bravo del Norte * Or other sparkling wine. An Australian sparkling shiraz would be delightful)

I've met Russ, and this is not an image of him that rings true. I have no idea if he's used steroids, but he isn't a 'roid rage' guy. He couldn't have been more obliging and engaging, but he is a bit reserved. Any issues I had were of my own making not his. As with any companion, you need to say what you want, some will push the envelope, others will wait for your lead. Russ has a great body and I loved being enveloped by it.

I couldn't possibly comment on which was the 'correct date'. My original comment was an oblique way of saying we don't do Thanksgiving, not a challenge to those who do.

I think there is a broader underlying question. 'Porn' is a subset of erotica, and we don't need to assume that the visual aspect is the important one. I consume both porn and erotic literature, and I don't assume that one is superior to the other.

I was not. I know there is a correct date in North America, and the 'other date' in some parts of the continent.

The secret of this event's success is that it has a small number of dedicated organisers who do the hard work every year to make it happen. Even other attempts to have similar events elsewhere in the US haven't shared the success of the Palm Springs weekend. The only other one that has any traction is a gathering in Washington over the Martin Luther King Day long weekend in January, and it is less well attended and hasn't happened every year. (The likelihood of below zero weather [that's below freezing in American temperatures] probably doesn't help.) Two other factors in its success are that it is a known quantity—people know that it's fun and presents a great opportunity to meet other forum participants (and hire some of them)—and that there is a critical mass of forum members for whom it's a realistic weekend trip. There is unlikely to be such a critical mass of forum members for whom a weekend in the Med would be compelling (even if it were combined with a week or so elsewhere in the area), so this might not be the best place to organise such an event.

What is this 'Thanksgiving' of which you speak?

He should have been a singular twink. https://rent.men/Luxury_XLtwink/

My problem is I haven't yet worked out what I am an expert in!

Possibly (if 852 is indeed a NY phone code, and it's not in the Wiki list of that state,s codes), and it seems odd that this guy has a Hong Kong phone number. That said, HK has 8-digit phone numbers and numbers beginning with 6 are allocated to mobile phones.

Sorry for having been imprecise. I meant that once I had been authorised to access semi-private photos they all appeared together with the 'public' photos.

For the fuel efficiency reason, and because it's uncomfortable to have open windows at speed, I drive with the windows up on the open road. I sometimes wind* them down when the speed limit is 50 or 60 km/h. Today I was driving from Melbourne to my small home town, about seven hours, and when I stopped for a sandwich and coffee I wound both front windows down while I was parked and eating. I didn't have the engine running, just the key* in the ignition turned to the first stop so the radio worked. * Yes, I know they are electric, so I don't actually 'wind' them down. * None of this new fangled proximity 'key' stuff in my 10 year old car.

In my experience it has always worked that way.

I have an unfair advantage on that, the main ferry wharves in Sydney are at Circular Quay. Which isn't circular or even an arc of one.

A river-front public development in Perth is called Elizabeth Quay. It is often referred to as Betty's Jetty.

Yep, we are. I suspect we see the 'landscape' in this question differently and our views are in part a product of our healthcare 'environments'. For me the government part of healthcare is much larger, and the government health bureaucracy (that sees my GP visits and any tests they order because if funds them, at least in part) looks more like 'healthcare' than 'government'. The part that is purely government differs between our countries too. The county clinic referred to in the OP is a small government run facility answerable to a county government so its purpose in asking the question is not clear. There is no analogue to that in this country. Here, it would be NGO run (say, the AIDS Council perhaps with some government funding) or a sexual health clinic overseen by the state health department and you would assume, probably correctly, that the data was being collected for a genuinely health related purpose.