HTML Colours

Super little online directory of colours even I can use: web-design tool for browsing and building color palettes, viewed as horizontal bars within a browser window.

Mind the Ana-gap

Always fun when a new map of the London Underground appears.

Here's a particularly modern and anarchic one with ingenious anagrams.

Milady's McColourful Past

I do wish they'd stop referring to her as Lady *Heather*. She comes from no nobility herself; her title is purely via her knighted hubbie.

She is Lady McCartney. Period.

So, it's

"Lady McCartney posed in depraved pornographic clinches ... bound to sicken her estranged husband etc ... lurid scenes for hard core German book ... images too explicit to print in a family newspaper."

Lady  McCartney - albeit apparently less than lady-like  in past behaviour.

And don't you just love the irony of the lewd and prurient gutter-snipe Sun posing as a 'family' paper? No one but no-one beats the Brits when it comes to high-grade hypocrisy and moral indignation.

Well, Lady M's legions of enemies and bad-mouthers will have a field day of told-you-sos, not to mention Sir P's own children. So much for his blind eye to peg-leg's 'colourful' past.

The Book: I must admit, the book publicist in me drools to be PR hack for publishers Orion ("Caring relationships for the gentry") as Die Freuden Der Liebe makes its way up the charts and into everyone's online shopping trolley.

What I do not drool to be is peg-leg's attorneys Coyle White Devine, having to trot out nonsense such as the shoot being "for the purpose of a "lovers guide" to caring relationships and instructive sex ... not pornographic or for the purposes of gratification."

Comment: Wayne "Table Mountains" Osmond left a comment that I can't seem to OK, but for which thanks. It reads,

"We found thousands of dead seals on our beaches in Newfoundland this spring. We now suspect it was STD'S from this porn queen that killed them when she came here. :)"

Sound of Summer

I was suddenly made aware the other day of the *real* sound of summer's arrival.

Not the ring of Mythos beer bottle caps bouncing on the pool-side tiles.

Not the sound of crashing scooters and tearing flesh as drunken tourists take a dodgy turn on our slippery roads.

It's that unmistakeable flippety slappety sound of rubber flip-flops on marble. That is the *real* sound of summer.

FIFA Germany 2006

To all my pals along the Liston or in the bars or by the pools who greet me with requests for the "latest" on a certain footie comp, I *honestly* - cub's honour - know nothing about soccer. On a par with doing business with the Japanese.

I'm not being snooty and not deigning to talk the game because I believe only fellow Brits are up to my depth of knowledge or understanding.

I don't know.

But you can:

Schedule

Spitfires over Germany: I'm reckoning some punch-ups before this Cup playeth out.

High-hoping Albion.

Convulse Strategies

'The Corfiot' is our monthly local 'Thunderer'. *Everyone* reads it and there's no competition.

The editorial box gives its web site as at corfunews.net but I'm damned if I can call up webby versions of this fine journal.

The issue that came out soon after I swam ashore had a letter from some grande dame fart complaining about our saintèd new consul and how she was never around, never giving lavish cocktail parties, never bowing and scraping to grande dame farts who've been here since forever ... all that.

Also heaping praise on the *ex* consul who's still on the isle and doing good works and, as the writer suggested, taking up slack for our new gal.

Well gosh. What a cause celèbre *that* was. Tongues a' twittering, keyboards a' clattering, the lot.

My dear, we could hardly wait to read the follow-up correspondence.

Out comes the May edition and we rush to buy it and read. Well, not rush, because we've already heard from our resident literary lioness that she's replied; nay, we've even also had copies.

"Slanderous Attack" is the editrice's headline and boy is it fireworks:

A six-paragraph fusillade, of which the choicest:

"I read with contemptible and ignominious displeasure your letter", etc.

Hang about - isn't it up to *us* to decide if the displeasure with which the writer read the original slanderous attack is worth our contempt? If it truly *is* ignominious? Weird.

I read on and it's total déjà lu. I almost mailed the editor of The Review with a complaint: why did you not *tell* me that the Sage of Lariat Loop had eloped with the Peddy-phile's nordic butler and settled in Prospero's Cell?

"The letter is both an assassination and vicious insult to all of the British community ... the letter you printed is both damaging and a slanderous attack ... I note that the writer withheld name and address! ... such a contrived and vindictive letter should not, in my humble estimation, have ever been printed.

In view of the foregoing and the appalling letter, I think an apology is in order.

Convulse [sic] strategies such as the letter you printed should be stopped for once and all.

Name, Calahori, Corfu and Foxrock, Dublin."

There was one other letter chosen from the pack, headlined by the Ed "Disgusted of Corfu".

"The editor was right to run that moan 'concerning the British community'.

It alerted us to the presence on the island of our very own 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells', and is effective reminder of how essential an ingredient is cowardice of conviction in such cases of dyspeptic grizzle, highlighted here by the writer's request for anonymity of name and address.

Chris Holmes, Gouvia"

A man can flee the island, but he can't bridge the bane.

Follow-up: You'd think that letters of that calibre would inspire a decent showing of barbed wit and general epistolary muscle.

Not a bit of it. The June edition just out has but one response, of such bovine incompetence and feebleness it's hardly worth citing.

And this from the home of the Durrell's.

The writer, a 'Mr Punch', kicks off by quoting 'distinguished French writer and historian' Voltaire's adage that "I may disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Then it plummets into gibberish such as it being,

" ... only natural that there should be dissenters with this philosophy, and only to be expected that poison pen writers should express indignation at being unable to vent their venom on a correspondent with whom they are in disagreement but who has withheld name and address to avoid being insulted by a crank.

However, it is not the purpose of this letter to become embroiled with the present controversy raging in 'The Corfiot', but merely to express my thanks to the participating parties for the immense amusement with which - and I suspect many other readers - have been convulsed. All quite hilarious! (No pun intended!) Hopefully, other punters will contribute to the farce.

As I wrote in the first issue of 'The London Charavari [sic] in 1841 (it has since become a stock phrase): 'Laughter is the best medicine' - to which I might, with hindsight, have added: 'For those with a sense of humour.'

Yours ever, Mr Punch".

See what I mean? That sort of milksop rubbish wouldn't see light of day in the doughty pages of the Bainbridge Review.

I have *no* idea what Punch is getting at, nor of any raging controversy that has kept the ex-pat community convulsed.

And what pun? On hilarity?

As for the strutting reference to the golden days of Punch ("I know Punch and you're no, etc"), if anything sets my teeth on edge, it's flubbed quotes: the column was 'Charivari' - 'i' - and if the bogus Mr Punch can't be bothered to get that right, he should stay clear of pseudonyms, noms-de-plume, and so forth.

So farewell then, Brian Church ...

Border this post blackest black and send to Spitaki Gnome for poet laureat EJ Thribb (17) to compose his dirgiest valete.

Wit and tutor par excellence  Brian Church is "shortly off to London to be a more sensible and serious person."

I trust it is also for sensible and serious money.

σοβαος

One of my favourite adjectives, "serious".

When η minxette the angular Aγγela slips me a bit of gossip about the goings-on up in Cassiopington-on-sea, I twirl Greek fingers and lean over her cleavage and mutter 'sovaRO'! (I do wish I had emphatic acute accents. Since being introduced to Mr Churchopoulos' excellent guide to learning Greek in 25 years, I've become fussy and intolerant of unaccented English.)

Indeed, maman and I drowned our sorrows in a swig of the good stuff and debated dropping Athens News now that their star columnist is jumping ship. Except.

Except that readers of AN have the best back page in the WORLD: not just BC but ~ wait for it ~ the non-pareil Dilbert.

Am I in nerdy linguist heaven, or what?

Seriously, those of you unaware of Church's stylish wit, open a new window sans delay and order online. (No, dear, you don't need the slightest urge to learn the lingo, just to laugh and admire witty writing].

In fact, I'm going to write a gateway tool whereby slavering Corfucius readers have to answer a different question each time they enter ("Page 85: who immortalised it in song?").

Brian deserves all the sales he can get.

He also deserves fans writing very VERY polite requests to think again and stay. Vast pay packets and a 25-storey corner office aren't *everything*, tell him.

So farewell then, Brian Church
We read you for a laff
But you're also a damn'd good teacher.
Keith's mum wants to know
What's the use of learning to
Chat up the locals if it takes til 85?
I tell her it's for the talent in the nursing home.
I showed my teacher, he turned a few pages,
Asked "This is - ah - humour?"
His own lessons aren't exactly
A barrel of laughs.

I keep remembering more good times with the Church tome:

The Greek upsilon - υ - is pronounced as a "V". Euro is eVro. No, not Ev-roe; Ev Ro, as in hot sans the 't'.

; ??: And the Greek question mark (?) is our semi-colon (;)

[Ed: You are after his job! On yer bike, lad: He's irreplaceable]

So I'm down at the Prifi, spongeing drinks off the tourists in between perusing "25 Years" and Alex comes up and we chat. Suddenly he cuffs me gently round the lug 'ole:

"What is matter, huh? Yesterday is 'how many euro?', today is eV-ro. Yesterday you write yourself - takes my pen - 'What is Greek for 'snazzy piece of skirt'* with big ?, like so. Today is ;;;."

He picks up the Church: "You see here? It say twenty five YEAR. Not 25 minutes."

* Page 44. Get yer own copy.

You will be missed, sir.

Check out:

Athens News Bookshop

Greek Shops

... And what the expletive-δeleted theleted is my old alma mater, Amazon.com across the Pond not doing not stocking it? Blimey, I may have to drop My Lord Jeffrey of Bezosia a finger-wagging line to pull his cassock up.

1950 Hi-fi cartoon from New Yorker

Whoops - I'm dating myself just using the term "Hi Fi".

Can you read the caption> Rather amusing and prescient.

Eager beaver sales chappie running thru the features of iPod of the day and then pointing to two empty shelves at the bottom "in case anything new is invented."

Of course, the inventions that followed would take up thrice the space ....

Cartoon courtesy of the whacking great tome, "The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker", given to my mother for a quaint ceremony now banished from the calendar, "Christmas", and bought for a mere $60 at Eagle Harbor Books ('Reading matter for the discerning gentry') of Bainbridge Island, WA, USA.  

Adlestrop

I grew up in a post-war Hong Kong, my father a member of spookish British Army Aid Group (BAAG), dangerously spottable gaijins  in their early 30s operating behind Japanese lines.

Most of them, like Dad, stayed on in the Hong Kong colonial service and these were the types I knew as parental pals.

Now I've read Oliver Lindsay's book of their exploits I know what they went thru but at the time, what does a 8- or 9-year-old care or know?

Bernard was one. Mad keen sailor for whom I'd crew, curious about but never vulgar enough to ask about the scars and lacerations about his bod.

Gentlest adult to a skinny junior I knew. The sort, could take a man out with just one punch, but didn't like to talk about it all that much."

One afternoon, a good wind leaving a diminishing Gin Drinkers Bay to starboard, I asked why the First Mate was called "Adlestrop".

I say First Mate but Adders was navigator, chief washer-up (well, licker up is more accurate), rat catcher, dinghy retriever and general all-round good guy.

Some said he was labrador crossed with terrier but Bernard said there was definite pirate in him and count your snacks before you disembarked.

Surest footed canine on the South China sea.

"You don't know 'Adlestrop'?" growled B. "What yer old man teaching you? Here, grab the wheel and steer us sou' sou' west thru the Lizards. Keep Amah Rock at two o'clock and we'll be fine."

With that, he stood up and declaimed the first poem to set me on fire.

"Yes, I remember Adlestrop--
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop - only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire."

I got home and told Mum to "buy" it for me.

Six years later, I held my hand up in class and told Miss Gordon, yes, I'd like to recite in the school poetry comp.

I didn't win. Bagnall with his jut-jawed histrionics with a Rupert Brooke took the honours, but Miss Dehlinger told me later she thought I *should* have won, and that was enough.

Last night, dozing to BBC World Service, I heard it read - a little too fast and not enough wonderment - but I lip-synched along and, gosh darn it, I had it almost word perfect. After all those years.

There's a touching addendum to this all: around 2 years later, Hong Kong was hit by one of its usual pea-souper fogs and Adles went missing. The grown-ups were out calling and all and then Bernard phoned Dad and said, "I know it's late and all, old chap, but any chance Christopher can come out?"

I arrived and B just said, "The bally idiot's took a wrong turn, lost his way, damfool."

"What we want you to do-" started my father, but Bernard silenced him with a "Leave it, Ronnie. The boy's got it."

The boy's got it. How many times are we given *that* break.

I remember looking into the mist and thinking of him out there. If he hadn't come to all the shouting, not good.

I had this puny clap I'd do when we went ashore and Ad would dash up into the jungle to frighten the chickens and roll in good old dung. I did my clap. I also had this puny yelp that I'd try not to do because it was so pathetic and unmanly: "Addie boy, Addah addah. Attaboy, Addie addie".

I don't know how long but out of the mist trotted Adlestrop.

"Someone call?"

"Give that man a large whiskey," hollered Bern.

Giving my shoulder a brisk grip, "Mission accomplished, Officer Holmes. Well played."

Oh to have had the lines, "It's my job, and I do it for pay, and when it's all over, as soon go on my way."

To the manure borne

Eheu! The sacrifices I make for my demanding and voracious readership.

Hardly to the manner born, I'm unlikely now to the manor even to be invited.

Once the central figures identify themselves, that'll be my chances shot of hobbing further with the nobs.

And we're talking corpuscles bleus here: the sort of chinless wonder ancestor who hovered with the royal blotter as King John scrawled his moniker on the Magna Carta.

But first some padding so the culprit story falls beneath the fold and their eye glides over and on to some posher bloggeria.

Today's events brought me in touch with a world removed from the sordid life through which you and I trudge. Indeed, it reminded me of the moment when the Crown realised it had lost its case against "Lady Chatterly's Lover". Do you remember the immortal moment when prosecution counsel turned to the jury and asked,

"Members of the jury, I want you to ask yourselves, is this a book that I would permit my wife or servants to read?"

From that moment on, Allen Lane publishers had won the day and the floodgates were open.

In the same vein, this marvelous - almost certainly apocryphal - tale of M'Lud passing judgment on a boozy old soak.

Picture the hapless meths-swigging soak in the dock for the umpteenth time for wandering abroad sozzled out of his mind.

Justice Ponsonby has reached his verdict.

"Now I've heard the defence and I've decided to take you at your word that you intend to reform your ways. I'm going to be lenient this time, but Heaven help you if you appear before this Court again.

I'm imposing no fine but I want your assurance that you'll desist from your alcoholic ways:

No more drink, do you hear?

And I mean it. Not even a dry sherry before luncheon."

Is it just me? I find it absolutely hilarious.

Alors, now for *my* tale: It's another garden tour for the favoured ("And are you also a gardener?" "Not by a single frond or fern, not by seed, stamen or stem." Nervous chuckle: "Ha ha. Most amusing.")

The traipse over, we retire for drinks on the terrace and mezzes served by our adorable Aphrodite.

One of the party is clicking away with some costly camera and snaps a few of A as she bobs, hovers and curtseys.

"Oh, I say, Dickie, do look at this one. It's a lovely one of the ... I'm terribly sorry, I've forgotten your name."

"Aphrodite," I offer.

"Of course. They do have the  most divine classical names. Regardez, Aphrodite - this is you." Bob and curtsey; terrified smile as she looks to me for a cue.

"I know, Christopher - ask her for her email and we'll send copies when we get home."

Dear darling Aph' - mid-30s, Albanian peasant stock, two kids, three jobs, and a husband with two. Moves her lips as she reads.

She looks at me: "What is the kyria saying?"

In Greek: "You're fine. Hey, any more of those cheese pies? Delicious!"

"More heating in the oven. I'll fetch."

"When you've a moment."

To Yvonne: "Ah! The trials of the wired! They're being reconfigured for wireless and Otenet are being absolute bores over the broadband upgrade."

"You too! Dickie had *such* a time with British Telecom getting them to add it to the cottage. Tell her it's well worth waiting for - isn't it, darling? - she can get the news just like that and the videos they run these days are almost as good as the tele - aren't they, darling?"

I turn to A: "The cheese pies now. The kyria says they are the most delicious she has tasted in all of Greece."

Curtsey, gleaming blush and smile: "Tell her I can give her the recipe if she wants to make them back in Angleeya. Is very easy."

Rictus smile: "No need. Her Ladyship knows they won't taste like yours."

Bob and smile and off she darts.

"Such a charming gel."

"Indeed. Oh look, your husband has persuaded my mother to part with a cutting of the Aloha. Clever man!"

"So he has! Geofrrey, you're absolutely incorrigible."

"Yvonne, that Campari cries out for a reviver."

"It does rather, doesn't it? How clever of you. Marjorie, I'm absolutely besotted with your son; may I kidnap him for The Season?"

Life after Fromgrep?

So there I am ruminating on the Eternal Verities and wondering if there's any  social life after Fromgrep, and my eye falls on page 31 of S.A. Sofroniou's primer of "Modern Greek" (Phonetic introduction by J.T. Pring) and my next vocab exercise for Professor Bourloyiannis.

First column:

• Breakfast
• Mother
• Garden
• Car
• Bar

By the Nine Gods of Clusium! I defy anyone to come up with a more succinct or poignant summary of life as a botanophobe mummy's boy, land-locked on a sun-benighted Greek isle inhabited solely by long-limbed fraüleins, bosomy nymphets from Da Vinci town (dread name!), and - er - boot-faced facsimile "wimmin" tucking into baked beans and chips, grunting in dour British accents of the northern dialect.

Fishy Business

Page 27 of my Kinchin & Melluish ('Greek for the Gentry') has an interesting explanation with which I am impressing fellow church-goers.

The first two letters of the name of Christ (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ) are sometimes seen in churches as what appears to be a jumbled monogram; sometimes also the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus, ΙΗΣ (ουσ) or IHS.

You'll also have seen those fishes on backs of cars.

Well, the Christians used a sign of a fish as a mark of their faith ... and the Greek for a fish is ΙΧΘΥΣ, said to be the initial letters of Ιησους Χριτος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ, Jesus Christ, Son of God (and) Saviour.

Now you know, which you probably did but I didn't and nor did some clerically-collared types I consort with.

Cloudspotters guide - surprise success

You read it here first.

Well, you didn't, but then again nor is it a "surprise".

Just because reviewers miss the boat doesn't mean the unwashed reading public slavishly follows suit.

When Freddie Forsyth's de Gaulle hunting "Day of the Jackal" came out, snooty reviewers panned it.

As we know, it went on to score a *huge* success - a good movie, to boot.

Publishers Hutchinson took an advert I greatly envied and later palely imitated:

"To hell with Fleet Street and its so-called critics!" boomed the headline, proceeding to list the astronomical print runs and sales.

Some years later, Secker published the contentious "Pencourt File", lifting the lid on Liberal pol Jeremy Thorpe's murky dealings with Bunnies and Great Danes.

The old poof's pals closed ranks and those with ink dissed what was admittedly a not very well written  expose, but who cared? It was brilliant sleuthing by Britain's answer to Woodstein.

A silly rant appeared by some limp-wristed type, so I got the word-count precisely right and quoted the more vitriolic bits above tempered praise from the heavyweights who actually knew whereof they wrote.

He walked straight into the trap, instructing his solicitors to ding us with a breach of copyright.

Also unwisely alerting the diary columns, thus guaranteeing us unbuyable publicity with their gloating over our imminent demise under massive damages.

My boss called me on the intercom:

"I've got David Earnshaw on the other line from our corporate solicitors. He's had a letter from X sueing us for breach of copyright.

Did we really take an advertisement quoting him on the Pencourt?"

"Yes, Michael."

"But the man rubbished the book."

"I know."

"I fail to see-"

"Michael, the man's a c***."

"Oh, I see . Right, then. Yes. Gosh. Jolly good. You might think of taking a quarter page in his local paper when his new novel comes out.

I take it we're safe on the copyright nonsense?"

"We are."

"Did you hear that, David? Chris says fuck 'em.

See you at the Garrick around one - no, make it 12:30, get there before the Maschler mob move in.

Right, thanks, Chris, that'll be all."

Toasted

Up betimes and cranky with it, having fallen among thieves the night before and gazed on the Chivas when it was red.

Egg takes ridiculous time to boil, kettle ditto over the water, and our ancient Hong Kong toaster tries to burn the toast, except that alert Maman ejects it and starts to scrape the burnt bits out the kitchen window.

I tell her, "OKay , Mum, fer heaven's sake, it's just a bit of carbon" and she glides off to worthier causes.

I immediately feel terrible for snapping.

What she did had nothing to do with smokin' dough and everything to do with what every parent's wants with every gesture and "sacrifice":

Bread always on their babies' table.

That pointy-capped Toaster in the Sky to deliver even brown slices (with the crusts just right).

And when in the hurly-burly of Life, the timer gets nudged up past the #4 mark, to be there to scrape the burnt bits away, if even just so the marmalade doesn't taste iffy.

Soppy songs: Has anyone ever run a Top 20 cringe-making sappy parental songs? All I can think of is CS&N's triumphant "Teach YOur Children Well" which certainly doesn't apply.

I'm thinking along the lines of that early 1960s hit where a son drools, "He may not be much in the eyes of the world, but he means the world to me-e."

Something to stand alongside those death ditties about Laura and Leader of the Pack and those Jan 'n' Dean goodies.

C'mon, chaps - there's got to be a treasure store out there and if there ain't, I'm sitting right down with the Martin and knocking them out in time for my own beauties to cringe and writhe when they get out here late July.

Better still, I'll write them in Greek ....

One summer I was pursuing a vision of beauty from somewhere like Burton-on-Trent, who of course only had eyes for the local buffery. Drawing from phrase books, I hacked out a convincing sounding ditty along the lines of:

"Listen up, guys, hear my plea
This vision of loveliness next to me
With the eyes and thighs and unbelievable balcony,
Got a crush on her ....

She's here til a week Wednesday and I'm like
Making NO headway.
Any chance you local toughs can go easy on the burning gazes and body buff,
Give me a chance to get some act together?" Etc.

It had everyone falling about laughing and applauding, the bar owner sending over free drinks and the lads coming over and tousling my hair and shaking my hand and (chastely) hers and proclaiming me "Very good man" Thumbs up. "Christos the best."

Trouble was, they'd spend enough time praising me to her that she had time to scope them out at close quarters. As they'd saunter away, she'd whisper "Wow - who was *that*?" which wasn't actually the point of the exercise.

It was later adapted with dazzling success by gay Keith from Ruislip, but I digress.

Soppy  parental songs is what I'm currently after.

A week into August I'll be back calling for Top 20 songs by ferocious Dads warning blokes from sniffing round their retiring violet beloveds.

A parent's life: toast.

Post-script: Great comment from RW, repeated here so you can speed  to Dylan's Mother's Day set list and cop an earful of "everyone's favorite, Mama Get the Hammer, There's a Fly on Baby's Head."

Absolutely first rate.

Irksome Phrases

When I showed The Spitfire my ticket for the steamboat and weepingly told her I had to skip town one step ahead of the posse, all she exclaimed was,

"Dad - that is like so-o-o cool.

You'll be able to talk and they won't keep saying you sound like an English Major."

Hmm, up to a point, Lord Copper.

As I perch regally in my reserved spot in the taverna, all around me noisome youths gearing (and beering) up for some sort of soccer competition, I scan the latest issue of The Oldie, last bastion of literacy and wit on the periodicals shelf.

Incidentally, what a relief to have fled a youth-obsessed culture and actually be able to read the saintèd pamphlet in public, instead of having to nestle it in the pages of The Review.

Seriously, to pass oneself off in the US of A as a regular guy, and then be caught with a mag with the title of "The Oldie" ... one might as well be nabbed perusing 'Paedophile Monthly' or 'The Celice Clarion' [incorporating 'Hair shirt Quarterly'].

Massively annoying modern phrases: So much for taking refuge in the land of Milton and Shakespeare. The Führerene probably pictures me in witty banter with fellow fops, our genial chatter peppered with Prithees and Forsooths and many a By Your Leave ("No, by Yours" ; "No no, I insist")

Well, duude - guess what Nick Parker came up with when the Oldie canvassed readers to "ask you guys to give us a heads up on the modern phrases that are, like, massively annoying to yourselves":

So much for my  Canute-like railings against the hosts of Midian. Here's a selection of what bugs the Brits:

Top Five

1. 'Have nice day'
2. 'Your call is important to us'
3. 'No probs!'
4. 'Chill out' (Curses! I was rather fond of that one)
5. 'Bear with us'

Telephone tirades

'Please hold the line. Your call is important to us.'

'Your call may be monitored for training/security purposes'

Railway rants

'Warning: professional pickpockets operate in this area'

'Your on-train team'

'The next station stop will be Carlisle'

Retail rages

'Clinically-proven' (by our own marketing dept)

'Up for grabs'

Dumbing downers

'The run-up to Christmas'. Comment: previously known as 'Advent'.

Well, no danger of that gaffe ensnaring them across the Pond of Correctitude. The C-word is struck from their calendar and the tongue cut out of any blasphemer who even mentions it during the run-up to the sacred festival of Hallmar'KwanZAA.

Pre-booking (What other kind of booking is there?)

Miscellany

Enjoy!

Whatever!

I'm so not!

Dude.

What? No 'Dude'? Dammit, it forms the very bulwark of my chatter. That is like so unfair. Verily, I use it daily in the Gouvia market and the tourists fall to their knees at my command and grandeur of language.