Arthur Marshall

I was younger then... But it was a truly dreadful production. University experimental drama... at the strangling scene they got the bed stuck in the scenery and Othello, Iago, Emilia and Desdemona all had to stop acting to help drag it onto the stage. The director should have been strangled instead.

I went to an amateur performance of Othello once that was so indescribably awful that when the cast came out for their bow the entire audience apart from me and my girlfriend had left. We'd been eating oranges, so we threw the peel at them and left too. I've noticed in the folk clubs that these days people clap everything politely, and there seems to be no difference in level between their appreciation of genius or total crap. All very odd and rather depressing.

Same here, only one of my four has my genes, I got two at age of four after the messy bit was over and one gloriously bolshie twelve year old. No such thing as a stepchild or step parent. Kids are just kids.

If I remember another thread about this, Excel is a cheap mixture of what's available, so the quality is quite variable. I've had the fire alight through June and July some years!

The Otterbury Incident was one of my alltime favourites. My first copy got read so often it fell to bits. And there it is on the shelf, Puffin, 40p, 1976 edition. I appear to have read it in the bath, probably more than once. Glorious little book.

If its anything like the places I've moored at, half the boats never move off their moorings anyway and some never appear to be visited except to stick a new licence in the window. Lockdown makes no difference to them and the marina would see no reason to offer a reduction.

I've got a nurse, a professor, an invalid and a drummer. Best part of my life was the time spent growing them. One of 'em must be able to sort the world out. Sod it, let's stop talking politics and tell each other about our kids.

My bass player insisted he was actually a skilled low note operative. I did the same civil service job for about thirty years in the same department and the job title seemed to change every other year to something less and less descriptive of what I actually did. Re manipulating the market, most right wing economists believe the market is self regulating, although I agree that everyone apart from economists (of any bent) know this is nonsense. I don't think stratification is a good idea - but we've always had this in the UK. Low valued jobs are often the essential ones, it's the perception of that that maybe has to change. And WelshC may be right in that the sudden lack of people to do those jobs will change that perception, though it will possibly have wrecked the economy and our culture in the process. At 70, can't say I care that much, my kids can sort it out, though none of them seem that bothered either!

I finally succumbed and bought a big Kobo ereader. A friend steered me to a huge free resource for ebooks, which I can't share as I haven't a clue how it works, but that added to the real ones in the house is keeping me going. Trouble is, I spend most of the year I'm not on the boat trawling for a few hundred new ones to take away in the summer, and I've read them all now apart from Perfidious Albion and Transcription. Discovered I liked Carol Shields and reread Jonathon Coe. And vast numbers of detective stuff, John Sandford and for pure comfort reading, Leslie Charteris' Saint books, which I've loved since I was a kid.

Nah, the key workers have the keys! You don't think the manager's going to get there at 5am to sort the papers out, do you?

Coupla points. At least you accept that our political leaders are among the low iq brigade, but by your repeated references to thick people I assume you don't include yourself, so assume your post is just down to ignorance. The definition of a key worker is one without whom society ceases to function. Without transport, ours stops. Without support staff, people die. Without labourers crops rot. Oddly, almost all these people live in poverty on minimum wage levels. (You could lose most of the City, hedge fund managers or trade union mandarins without making much difference). Stuff your comfy middle class income, these are the people who need decent wages. And, whether you like it or not, once the racist and Brexit mobs have managed to deter immigrants from even worse off places, their wages will have to rise if you want the jobs done and the well fed middle will have to take a cut, or there will be no doctors, dentists, food in the shops or cozy deliveries from Amazon. Unless you find the magic money tree of course. And don't tell me how poor you are and how hard you struggle to make ends meet. None of us what own a boat can argue that! If the manager doesn't turn up, the shop can still open. If the staff don't... So who are the keys? You want food or not?

Well, we're currently seeing what a Parliamentary democracy is worth, or at least this version of it, and anyone who thinks this present government is trustworthy is bonkers. But it's still got nothing to do with the clappers (or this thread!). I think it was a nice idea when it started, but soon got grabbed into a political sidetrack and all this "front line heroes" nonsense, just a way to stop people complaining that they were suddenly expected to do their jobs without the proper tools and equipment, risking deaths that really weren't in their original contracts of employment, and demonising anyone who dared to question it.

There may be a sudden upsurge in single sex relationships - a husband, his husband and their three brothers each, all hiring a boat together for a big family week out. Oddly, they all seem to belong to the same army unit....

Can't see any indication there that Dicky doesn't want a Parliamentary Democracy. Or is it thst you can criticise the clappers for their motives, but don't like being criticised for your own attitudes?

I've run out of nylons.... Diesel get on the deck when filling from the local boat because it spits out of the breather. Itend not to spill any when funnelling! I'll see if my local paint dealer is open next week. I'm planning on taking the deck back to bare metal before repainting.