Cinderella - the Truth!

I just discovered something very interesting today. The Cinderella story is a fabrication! She never actually wore a glass slipper! It all comes down to a confusion of the homophones "verre/vair" in French (the latter meaning leather, from some kind of base critter). I just knew it was all bollocks! I shall never trust the veracity of a fairy tale again.

National Popularity Survey - Top 10

Have you ever wondered which nation and which nation's people are respectively most and least admired? You probably have your own ideas.
I've conducted an informal, non-exhaustive survey on the Internet which offers a statistical answer to this question.
Using a popular Search Engine, I entered the query: "F*cking !!!!!! C*nt" (replace * by vowel and !!!!! by national identity - English, French, American, etc.). The results were as follows, in descending order of number of hits:

1) American: 418
=2) English: 116
=2) French: 116
4) Irish: 76
5) German: 74
=6) Scottish: 51
=6) Welsh: 51
8) Foreign: 16
=9) Japanese: 4
=9) Chinese: 4

So the Americans seem to be most despised, while the Orientals tend to be looked on most favourably. It's refreshing to note that the levels of general xenophobia would seem quite low, with only 16 hits for "effing foreign c***".

Entertain me

Well, Xmas has been and gone, we've got our Wiis and our video games and our HD TVs and our broadband access, and I'm drawn to remembering how dire Sundays used to be when I was a kid and there was literally nothing to do.
As the rain spatters the window pane, I recall how we'd be reduced on a Sunday afternoon to betting on which raindrop would reach the bottom first. Wait a minute, I must concentrate on this. I'm sure the one on the left is going to win.

Cute

Stan is three and my impression is that his elder sister took to English better than him when she was his age, maybe it's a "boy" thing.
Be that as it may, I do try to maintain at least my half of the dialogue with him in English. However, sometimes it is too easy to lapse into French, as I did this morning when he wanted to know what the alarm clock was called, although I do try to redeem myself afterwards:
"C'est quoi, ça?"
"C'est un radio-reveil."
Without hesitation he repeats it in order to commit it to memory: "Radio-réveil".
Whoops, come on now: "In English it's called an 'alarm clock'. Can you say that."
"Non."
"Go on. 'Alarm clock'."
Maybe it's because we'll soon be visiting the folks in England who don't speak a word of French. But a brief look of contemplation flashes over his features and he utters tentatively:
"Alarm plop?"
Gotta love 'em.

Kismet

As the rains come to the aid of a desperate(ly bad) England side in a Sri Lankan town that is as used to shipping water as the England bowling attack, the wags on the message board are passing the time indulging in speculation about Nelson's last words. According to one, it was not "Kiss me" that the Admiral said to Hardy but "Kismet", the Turkish word for "Fate".
Well I personally have it on the authority of Christopher Ecclestone, who used to go for trips through time in the Tardis while working as Doctor Who outside of official filming (perk of the job), that he personally witnessed the final moments of the dying seafarer, and the whispered words were actually: "Kiss it". He had his fly undone and his trouser snake hanging out as he breathed his last.
This kind of behaviour was not considered "gay" at the time since, for one thing, the term had not been coined and, for another, such boisterousness (even for a dying man) would have been considered normal practice among men of the navy, absent at sea for so long and left to their own devices.
These kinds of practices have been picked up in modern times by extremely heterosexual rugby players. A friend of mine, former scrum half and captain of the first eleven of an Oxford University college team, has regaled me with tales of the shenanigans they get up to. I also knew a guy who played for Bedford RU while doing teacher training, and he liked to cup mens' tackle to see what he was dealing with. It was more a case of "fronts to the wall" with him. He had a girlfriend, but he never let you see what was inside his closet.

Xmas spirit

They just turned on the Xmas lights on The Archers. Marvellous radio!

Balmy army

Despite a stalwart show of last ditch resistance, some dodgy umpiring and the home team's secret weapons of Malinga and Murali finally did for the English cricket team in the first test against Sri Lanka.
Looking beyond the possible inclusion of cricket in the Olympics, its inclusion in the Paralympics would surely be synoymous with golden glory for Sri Lanka, as they already have two world-class "differently-able" competitors in their able-bodied national team. That's right, "Slinger" Malinga and Muralitheran, both of whom have had the rule books re-written to accommodate their dubious bowling techniques, caused it is said by physiological defects.
That's the bowling side taken care of, and the latest news on the grapevine is that they're about to introduce another freakish prodigy into the batting line-up: a young man with the birth defect of a three-foot-wide bat sprouting from his wrist.