Toast

That is all I require of a car. I drive anything up 2,000 miles a month in mine. So it needs to be comfortable for me. If it was just for short trips, then I wouldn't care as much. One other thing - ideally it should pass its MOT every year at minimal expense. This rarely happens, sadly. However, that's now been dealt with for another year, thankfully.

The Daily Mail? <hopeful>

That is all I require of a car.

Happy birthday, Charon! The first car I had was one of these (but without surfboards).

There are various stories about Lester's allegedly selective deafness.

Souad Faress?

In the 90s I worked in London for half a year. I didn't call myself immigrant nor expat, nothing at all, really. I didn't have the esprit to present myself as a gastarbeiter. Well I've been here for 12 years now, so I suppose I would fall under the category of an immigrant. A gastarbeiter or guest worker, conjures up the definition that you're working on contract from a company that has offices in different countries. I prefer the term 'resident alien'. I think of ex-pats as people of the same nationality as me who are living abroad. I don't think it's a matter of race or colour.

Idly wondering what had become of Jordan (not that one - the woman on the right), I learn that she is now a veterinary nurse who breeds Burmese cats.

Lester has a speech impediment caused by a cleft palate.

He was, anyway.

All right all right! I've never listened to The Archers and I'm assuming the other thing is some American shite. I do recognise her face but don't know where from. To be honest, she looks like she could do with getting fingered more often. Alas, it was poor Mr Pearson who was fingered.

There's no need to pander to SC's 5 year rule, as that is entirely his own invention.

Some have their own brand, Target have their own brand called "Market Pantry" and Cub Foods' is called "Happy Shopper" or something similar. But here if you ask for a lemonade you'll get that flat stuff, as for a Sprite they'll come back and say "we only have Pepsi products" or vice versa. Unless you're in some states in the South, where they will just ask you "what Coke do you want?" and then they'll give you a list of the fizzy soft drinks that they have. Yes, but within that brand they must call the individual drink something, or use some sort of description eg "lemon flavored soda drink" or whatever. Not that our British lemonade tastes remotely like lemons

Exactly, they call it by the brand name. It's the same here, though. I often find if I say to someone getting drinks, "I'll have a lemonade please" they'll come back and say something like "I got you a Sprite, hope that's OK", as if it was something different. Don't the likes of Wal-Mart or other supermarkets have their own version? What is that called?

Surely Sprite and 7Up are lemonade of the type you mean? Commercial fizzy lemonade as opposed to home-made still lemonade made with fresh lemons. They taste much the same to me as the branded ones like R.Whites or the generic supermarket own-brand ones. I suppose it shows the power of a brand name. Like you rarely hear people asking for cola.

Last Of The Summer Wine?

I got 4, but that was from randomly guessing.

Nah.

Readers of Private Eye will be aware that the byline on their classical music column is "Lunchtime O'Boulez". The latest issue carries the following letter of complaint: I notice that Eye issue 1410 has plenty of coverage on the death of David Bowie, however not a word about the death of Pierre Boulez (a week before), yet you still sign off Music & Musicians as "Lunchtime O'Boulez". Disrespectful, methinks? I may have to consider my subscription.

Also popular with people who have no idea what Warcraft figurines are.

That's an old and fairly well-known rumour. Bowie's first wife Angela said that there was nothing to it, they were just two lads sharing a bed, as it used to be normal decades ago, especially in somewhat impoverished post WWII-Britain. This wardrobe story is slightly different though. Nevertheless I see nothing to suggest that the two gentlemen involved were pleasuring each other. I suspect that the lady received all their attentions.

I would be very surprised if LFN gives a flying fuck about his or anyone else's post count. I certainly don't.

I didn't know who these were so I googled 'em, and found this. So its probably not. I knew who they are. I saw a documentary about them once.

So the dead man was a drummer who was beating the retreat. Annalen der Physik was and is an old and respectable scientific journal. The article gives as source: Asiatical Journal, Oct 25, 1825. p. 486 and says it quotes a message dated 17 Januart 1825 in the India Gazette. No more time now, but I have leads. He'd have been a good pick for the Hartlepool Deadlypool, then.