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I have always had an interest in nautical history and had a rather strange thing happen one day a couple of years ago whilst walking my dog through a small park near me. I was walking along a path and saw a man coming towards me pushing a bicycle. When we got level he said hello and asked me if I knew the name of the Argentine navy cruiser which was sunk by a Royal navy sub during the Falklands conflict? I told him it was the General Belgrano and he thanked me -he said he had been trying to think of it for some time - he then just carried on walking.

The park was busy and he passed a couple of people before he got to me without stopping to ask them anything as far as I was aware. It wasn't as if it was an anniversary of the event or recent either , maybe 38 or 39 years on from the conflict. Maybe he goes out every day with an obscure question to ask? I never saw him after then though, even though I used to walk there quite often waiting for my wife to finish work.

My guess is he was a spy. You fitted the description for his arranged rendezvous, but unfortunately you were supposed to give a different answer. It is classic, as per the Fry and Laurie model shop incident:

 
Stealing away means leaving somewhere quietly or secretively. The song is a Spiritual. In the context of the song stealing away to Jesus represents leaving behind the misery of slavery by dying.*

It's now known that Spirituals also expressed ideas about escaping slavery by absconding either alone or with organised help.

Of course, under slavery a person stealing away in any form was depriving their owner of property and so literally committing theft.

*Learning this in a school music lesson as a teenager, I was shocked to think those people's lives could be so hard they'd welcome a natural if premature death. Nobody else in class seemed interested but it blew my mind.
I was being facetious, but I never knew about this hymn (wasn't raised in a church going household), and your explanation of the lyrics reveals a deep and poignant meaning that never occurred to me. The misery of slavery in America was indescribable. It was a vile institution, and tragically, the attitudes that justified it still linger here.
 
One small and odd one. Looked out of the bus window today while travelling, to see a digital clock in an office display click over to 17:43:21. it occured to me that this is also 5-4-3-2-1. Logically this must come up twice a day on a digital display, but how many people are there to notice it at a quarter to six in the morning?(and how many other chains of consequetive numbers are possible?)
6:54:32
 
I was being facetious, but I never knew about this hymn (wasn't raised in a church going household), and your explanation of the lyrics reveals a deep and poignant meaning that never occurred to me. The misery of slavery in America was indescribable. It was a vile institution, and tragically, the attitudes that justified it still linger here.
We were taught at my high school to sing 'Negro Spirituals' and what they were about.
This was an English mainly white/middle class selective school so I'm guessing our efforts weren't exactly authentic. :wink2:
That lesson stayed with me though.
 
I do remember The Sun's headline, I just wasn't doing it the service of repeating it. Bernard Manning I did not follow too closely. Probably for the best.
Manning always maintained he was holding up a mirror to bigotry rather than expressing it. He played a brilliant stunt that made the audience have to laugh at their own attitudes.
 
One small and odd one. Looked out of the bus window today while travelling, to see a digital clock in an office display click over to 17:43:21. it occured to me that this is also 5-4-3-2-1. Logically this must come up twice a day on a digital display, but how many people are there to notice it at a quarter to six in the morning?(and how many other chains of consequetive numbers are possible?)
The big mystery to me is why the clock read the equivalent of 5:43:21 P.M. in the A.M.
 
e: your Simply Red post above, Trev, these kind of mind-bending music-related coincidences have happened to me quite often over the years, and often relating to sleep/dreams. I am quite oriented towards chart music ranging from the Sixties to the Noughties, which is quite a broad area of interest, so that might be a significant factor. Two of the more remarkable ones follow. They both made my brain do somersaults in my skull.

I tend to get these quite a lot, as well as having the psychic iPhone that plays music from the recently deceased. Back in my teens, roughly 1985, I was getting ready for school and found myself singing "Vienna" by Ultravox - not a recent song, not one that I had heard recently. But when I wandered back into my bedroom and turned on the radio, it was playing - and I was tuned in to a different station to the one playing downstairs, so it wasn't picked up from there.

Around the same time, I was sitting in the back of the car with my sister as we drove off somewhere as a family, when for no apparent reason I began to sing "Send in the Clowns." "That's odd," quoth my sister, "I was just thinking about that song."

Anyway, non-musically, today I was thinking about names (an interest of mine); for some reason recently I had been trying to work out where Hayley came from. (Surname!). As I crossed the hall, I was considering Fiona as a name found about the same time as Hayley, but I was heading for a name dictionary to check the meaning of Lauren. (All very random). I was highly amused when the dictionary opened at the page for Fiona. Not quite, cosmic joker, not quite!
 
The big mystery to me is why the clock read the equivalent of 5:43:21 P.M. in the A.M.
Ah. I should have been more clear: I was travelling home in the afternoon, at 5pm (`1700hours). I was speculating on how many people might be up and about and conscious and paying attention at 5-6 in the morning to see the "pure" version of 5:43:21. I got the slightly erstaz but still remarkable 24 hour clock version: 17:43:21.
 
Manning always maintained he was holding up a mirror to bigotry rather than expressing it. He played a brilliant stunt that made the audience have to laugh at their own attitudes.

I bet his fans weren't thinking "This is great, it's really holding a mirror up to my attitudes!" I didn't mind him on repeats of The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, but John Thompson's Bernard Right-On was a lot funnier (especially as Manning didn't appreciate being the butt of the joke).
 
Weirdly in the past 2 weeks I have come across 4 people who I've not seen for 30 years or more. All remembered me and my life instantly although I couldn't say the same about them. One was badly affected by Legionnaires Disease which was a massive problem a good while ago in the North West of the UK and nearly saw them off and sadly now permanently disabled due the effects.
Strange that, getting out less in the past couple of years, I would meet these great people again.
 
I bet his fans weren't thinking "This is great, it's really holding a mirror up to my attitudes!" I didn't mind him on repeats of The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, but John Thompson's Bernard Right-On was a lot funnier (especially as Manning didn't appreciate being the butt of the joke).
Yup, there's a fine line to tread with the satire. As with the BBC TV sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, where Alf Garnett delivered all the bigoted and racist lines. You weren't supposed to admire that ignorant character but plenty did.

One would trust the intentions of Alf Garnett's creator Johnny Speight over those of Bernard Manning.
 
I've just had an odd coincidence.

I ordered a parcel of stuff for Christmas (yes, sorry, sorry, I KNOW it's too early to be thinking about it, but I've got a big family!). I'd ordered a pair of feline socks for my daughter's partner, but they'd made a mistake and replaced them with a pair of Frida Kahlo socks. I'd actually been thinking about ordering the Kahlo socks for my other daughter, but decided to go with the cat ones. A minor rejig of presents, but when I look at what could have been substituted or mistaken, it's quite coincidental that it's something I was thinking about getting anyway.
 
I've just had an odd coincidence.

I ordered a parcel of stuff for Christmas (yes, sorry, sorry, I KNOW it's too early to be thinking about it, but I've got a big family!). I'd ordered a pair of feline socks for my daughter's partner, but they'd made a mistake and replaced them with a pair of Frida Kahlo socks. I'd actually been thinking about ordering the Kahlo socks for my other daughter, but decided to go with the cat ones. A minor rejig of presents, but when I look at what could have been substituted or mistaken, it's quite coincidental that it's something I was thinking about getting anyway.
OK - I'll be the dummy who asks. What are Frida Kahlo socks and what's special about them?
 
I'm guessing they're not socks actually worn by Frida Kahlo. And I'm guessing the feline socks aren't socks for cats to wear. I could be wrong on either or both counts.
 
Yup, there's a fine line to tread with the satire. As with the BBC TV sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, where Alf Garnett delivered all the bigoted and racist lines. You weren't supposed to admire that ignorant character but plenty did.

One would trust the intentions of Alf Garnett's creator Johnny Speight over those of Bernard Manning.

Yes, Speight was so militant at ridiculing bigotry it became a crusade with him, and the angrier he got, the more bigoted Alf got. He calmed down in the later Alf shows, 1980s onwards, but let's say Speight was... overemphatic in his aims.
 
Yes, Speight was so militant at ridiculing bigotry it became a crusade with him, and the angrier he got, the more bigoted Alf got. He calmed down in the later Alf shows, 1980s onwards, but let's say Speight was... overemphatic in his aims.
My English teacher at school told us he'd met Speight. He reckoned that he was a lot like his Alf Garnett character.
 
My English teacher at school told us he'd met Speight. He reckoned that he was a lot like his Alf Garnett character.

There's a famous programme from the 60s where the BBC got a bunch of comedy writers together to have a discussion, and they all became roaring drunk and basically yelled at each other for half an hour. Some comedy writers have no sense of humour.
 
There's a famous programme from the 60s where the BBC got a bunch of comedy writers together to have a discussion, and they all became roaring drunk and basically yelled at each other for half an hour. Some comedy writers have no sense of humour.
American shows are actually written by committees like that. The theory goes that this gives a lot of stories and jokes to use but also a less individual style of comedy.
 
American shows are actually written by committees like that. The theory goes that this gives a lot of stories and jokes to use but also a less individual style of comedy.

Yes, but this was a discussion show - Speight looks like he's going to lamp Marty Feldman in it! I wonder if it's on YouTube?

The US committee method can be very successful, though, they will have a showrunner to make sure everyone's on the same page, so to speak. I don't mind how they write it as long as it's funny.
 
OK - I'll be the dummy who asks. What are Frida Kahlo socks and what's special about them?
They are socks with a Frida Kahlo design on. The feline socks are socks with cats on.
 
Seriously, are there any socks with Frida Kahlo AND cats on them? My wife might like those

IMG-20210806-WA0003.jpg


She might like this image, Chas. Not sure if you can get it on socks tho.
 
I just messaged the company that sent me the mistaken Frida socks, and they've messaged back to tell me to keep them and they're going to send me the right Feline socks too. So I've now got two presents covered...

Have we got a Christmas 2021 thread yet?
 
Son No 2 had his first day at work on Monday. I dropped him off, but he planned to walk home as it's only a couple of miles across the edge of town.

On my way home after work, I had intended to go to the big Boots' on the other side of the river to pick some things up, but when I got down to the bridge I discovered a traffic jam owing to part of the bridge being shut. At that time of night there was no way I was going to get through the jam to the shop quickly, so I abandoned the idea and turned homewards. Our local council have made some road layout changes during the pandemic that are bloody unhelpful and close off a number of the rat runs, so I was resigned to crawling out along one of the main thoroughfares. When I got the opportunity to go sideways to pick up my normal, quieter, route home, I took it, but by this time I was about 20 minutes later than I would normally be. And as I reached the roundabout on the ring road, who should I spot but Son No 2, wending his merry way home. Although he was on the opposite side of a dual carriageway he did spot me, so I felt obliged to pull in at the local Toby car park and wait for him. Good thing too - his feet had been munched by his new Doc Martens. But we couldn't have timed that any more to perfection!
 
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