MartyDonovan

I know you're used to Spotify, and I get it, I used iTunes until it was no longer supported, and Google Podcasts until they got rid of it, always a pain to change what you're used to. I've been using AntennaPod since then, which is free, and doesn't show any locked episodes. I guess it might be a pain to integrate if I did want to pay, but I listen to some of the Goalhangar ones you mentioned and I don't even register that they have bonus content, I just mentally tune it out or skip 30s every time they start advertising or plugging something, and my feed isn't clogged up with anything I can't listen to.

Maybe Blackpool to Brighton would have been better. Come on The Who, workshop your lyrics a bit! Haha

Coach trip?

But he'd rather have been fishing with his split cane rod!

It's the original British spelling used by Jewish bakeries in the East End of London

My parents were in their late thirties/early forties when my younger brother and I were born. We grew up in the '90s though so I don't think it make a huge difference in terms of slang, technology, or social media. In fact we always had a computer and my dad is reasonably tech savvy. The only thing they really resisted for a long time was us getting video games consoles, and they restricted screen time a fair bit. In retrospect, for the best! We became big fans of the '60s/'70s music that my dad listens to too. Although to be honest, I think a lot of my contemporaries actually had parents of a similar age, so maybe that was already becoming more common. It's not like they had us in their late forties or older, so perhaps I'm not the best example of this anyway! There were the occasional extreme examples of people's grandparents being closer in age to my parents, but their parents were usually especially young by comparison. Overall I'd say they just seemed like sensible, traditional, down-to-earth adult parents, rather than impulsive eccentric 'best friend' grown kid types that younger parents might be. Although they're also quite politically left leaning, which is perhaps less common for their generation, so thankfully no arguments there!

People still act like this, although actual violence I think is much lower. Recently after the local League Two team lost badly, the town centre was full of angry roving men and lots of police. Outside a pub, some bloke was aggressively asking two young teens walking past if they supported the opposing team, as if they didn't he'd have to punch them. As the kids were also a visible minority, I worried it would turn into a racial incident and was ready to run to the police if need be.

I was still playing Granny's Garden at primary school at least 10 years later than that! My school, and my parents (I had it at home too), must have had very old still working computers from the '80s. MS-DOS and command lines. My parents' computer (or monitor) was black and white so I struggled to solve the puzzles with colours.

There were four dragons at one point and you had to put collars on them by matching their favourite foods

I also remember El Nombre

Definitely a shame, as English is a very much cultural identity just like Scottish and Welsh, as England is a country (albeit a constituent country of a larger nation state). If you're a non-white English person who's grown up in England, then your cultural experience is English, not Scottish or Welsh. Yes, it's British too, but it's definitely English!

I was taught to do this, but usually have them straight down, i.e. 6 o'clock. I know others do 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock, etc, but I've never thought that really matters as long as they're together and parallel.

Aquila was brilliant

I spent half my life thinking I'd missed the following series before I learned this was the last episode!

I spent half my life thinking I'd missed the following series before I learned this was the last episode!

Got your big plate, Alan?

That's the genius of its location

That's always seemed so strange to me, and my understanding is that essentially they've never bothered analysing those roads and determining what the actual limits should be, so they just slap a national speed limit sign on them and call it a day

It's still there, I just moved! There's a Polish deli down the street there too that does good pierogi!

Oh I miss the cheap local no frills Italian deli near my old flat

But I'm not the borough! I wish I was!

There's one in Atherstone, Warwickshire, but there are no goals, the winner is simply the person holding the ball after 2hrs, so it's essentially a massive scrum/brawl for the entire duration.

All the towns where I grew up in East Kent seemed to have carnivals when I was a kid, with floats for all the local towns and villages and various "Miss [Town]"s riding them, but they seem to have died off now.

I read a lot, always have a book on the go and a shelf of books to read next. Usually fiction rather than non-fiction. I read all sorts really, but mainly genre fiction, horror, thrillers, crime/mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.

My dentists (I feel like I never see the same one twice so there must be a high turnover) sometimes used to do it when I asked. I'd say it was mentioned in the band details and they'd do it reluctantly. But now they never do and the last time I asked, I was told to make a hygienist appointment

I live about 2hrs away from my parents and I don't have a car, so I probably only visit on average about once every other month. I can only go at the weekends, and these often get filled up with other plans but I should probably try and see them more! We live near my girlfriend's parents and she probably sees them once a fortnight, but her mum's always asking her to go on days out (and she has a lot more days off on weekdays), I am a little envious!

Love me vinegar! Unfortunately most parents aren't free to be parents after the first year so they have to stick their kids somewhere and get back to work!

I think Sensodyne is one of the exceptions as it's formulated differently. All the 'ultra-plus charcoal micro-crystal max whitening' stuff is just marketing.

You don't know the pain of that level until you've played it on a black and white monitor

I feel like the others may have enjoyed oranges and chips

Definitely, I used to get Asterix (and Tintin) books out of the library all the time as a kid. In retrospect they were very well translated with great care taken to localise the humour. My dad also recorded a lot of the (English dubbed) Asterix animated films when they were on TV, and as a kid of course I watched and rewatched those videos.

Oh yeah, our library had a great collection! Not a complete one, but a very solid collection of both Asterix and Tintin that I regularly borrowed and read.

My girlfriend sometimes calls the nearby retail park/open air shopping centre "the precinct" because her mum does. We are in our thirties though so might have aged out of "young" already.

Yes, it'll always be the Millennium Dome to me

What has Oberman done?

You might be on to something there

It wasn't, and obviously it's become a bit of a cliche now, but it's still quite effective shorthand for that whole attitude, even if such slogans weren't actually popular at the time!

Haha fair enough I do know what you mean sometimes

We'd be a terrible case study any way because we'd keep calm and carry on whilst moaning and not doing anything about it far longer than many other countries, for example the French who strike and revolt at any opportunity (and rightly so as it's protected their pensions and industries in a way we haven't managed to).

Tombe fair a hot toddy in the winter is nice

Nah, much better to try and read a faded town abbreviation on the road that you're not familiar with like W'dly or C'ville

I was reading this thread thinking that it was silly to keep using all these old names lo g after the fact, but I will die on the hill of The Millennium Dome

I spent a lot of time working in Austria and Germany and it really felt like cash is king. This was a few years ago now so they may have got better, but in restaurants if you wanted to pay on card, the servers would not expect or want it at all and would have to go into the back to get (and presumably dust off) the card machine.

Yeah it really depends on the restaurant. It's not standard but 'family restaurant' type places sometimes have an unlimited fountain drink refill that you can get for £2.50 or something Nandos and Toby Carvery also do this as well as Harvester, etc.

Let's eat, to the beat!

I am English, but no worries, mine was just a light-hearted comment. Thanks for the detailed response! It's definitely seen as 'not the done thing' any more, and with good reason. By contrast in some gendered languages like German, I have heard that it is seen as empowering to create (if nonexistent) and use a gendered occupational noun, especially in a male dominated field, presumably because the other word is specifically gendered, and the grammatical rules are quite clear, so doing this claims it for the sake of equality in the field. For example, Angela Merkel being the first 'Kanzlerin'. Whereas in English the opposite is true because the 'default' word is not actually gendered and there's no grammatical reason forcing it to be used only for men, only societal bias, so it's better to reclaim that word for everyone and do away with the gendered distinction. Just thought that was interesting.

Surely men can still be tempters?

In my day they had those candy sticks, they didn't look as much like cigarettes as these but still similar vibes. You often got a super cool temporary tattoo of Spiderman or something like that in there too!

I completely understand how you feel, I think I feel the same, no one really seems to dress up any more. Could be exacerbated by COVID, but I remember it happening before. Everyone who used to wear a suit to work probably works from home now, even when I go into work my manager wears jeans and a button down shirt so I'd feel overdressed in anything more. Ties are a thing of the past. An exception is maybe meeting clients if you're a solicitor or something, but even then it depends on the company and it's probably done over zoom half the time now. I usually like to dress up a bit to go out for a meal or event, even if that does just mean wearing a button down shirt rather than a t-shirt. But most men just seem to wear wear t-shirts and jeans, and I don't really like standing out or drawing attention to myself too much. Tracksuit bottoms and pajamas I just think are a bit too casual and slovenly to wear in public, but a lot of people seem to prioritise comfort these days, like they're lounging around at home on the sofa or in bed. In my experience however, the exception is weddings. All the ones I've been to people make an effort and wear suits and dresses. But there are all sorts of people in this country and so I can well imagine some go for a more casual wedding. Christmas and Easter dinner I can kind of understand, because these celebrations take place at home and half the 'fun' is after the sit down dinner where you're hanging around on the sofa drinking, snacking, playing games, watching films, etc. But I'd probably dress a bit better if I had guests, and make it more like a dinner party atmosphere with party games than just the family lounging at home.

Bill's PC