DISCUSSION ABOUT CLASS - SPOILERS...

DISCUSSION ABOUT CLASS - SPOILERS...

@puroandson  @Arbutus

As @pedant indicated, ‘pulling’, as in ‘pulling a pint’ refers, in the strictest sense, to the process by which non-pressurised ale is drawn or syphoned up from the casks to taps at the bar.  This is done by means of a device known as a beer engine which consists essentially of an air-tight piston chamber operated by thos…[Read more]

@pedant

A pedant writes: pulled up to the bars, ie drawn – hence draught

Exactly so. You tempt me to release my inner pedant 😈

I’m with you wholeheartedly on the subject of keg beers.  I vividly recall the reaction following the introduction of the disgusting Watney’s Red Barrel: a triumph of popular activism, and who remembers Red Bar…[Read more]

@pedant

Ah, the winter of 1962-63, the coldest of the 20th century in the UK, and one of the coldest on record and another landmark in my memory, when in some places even the water mains froze and water had to be brought round in bowsers.  A whisky mac would definitely have been in order.

It was my second term at university in Edinburgh and I…[Read more]

@puroandson     That list seems like overkill to me – as you say, this isn’t the arctic.  On the other hand, people used to a warmer climate might tend to feel the cold more.

Statistically speaking, the range of temperatures encountered in southern England in November is likely to be between 7 to 11 degrees C, and in December 2 to 8 degrees…[Read more]

@puroandson

that warm British stuff

What is this of which you speak?   If, as I fear, you are referring to cask conditioned ale, then you have uttered blasphemy 😯  It should be served at cellar temperature – i.e. cool, but not ice cold, since refrigeration kills the taste – and the beer also, for that matter, since it is not pasteurised.  Of cou…[Read more]

@puroandson

Yes, it was more than a little frustrating.  I am fit enough now to tackle the larger and more time-consuming tasks consequent on the months of neglect and am beginning to get things back under some kind of control, but  there is still much to do before I can even begin the routine Autumn tasks.

I designed the garden to be inf…[Read more]

@puroandson @Arbutus  @blenkinsopthebrave @Missy

I love these few weeks when the year is on the cusp of Autumn, especially when the weather is as perfect as it has been here for the past few days. Last week it was unseasonably hot, with high humidity and temperatures in the high 20s to low 30s C.  Now the weather is calm, with hazy sunshine and t…[Read more]

@Missy

He knew that the Doctor wouldn’t shoot, so he sacrifices himself and sends Galifrey back to where it belongs.

Not so.  What caused Gallifrey and the Time Lords, including Rassilon, to return whence they came was the breaking of the link which connected them to earth – think the snapping of elastic, or of a wire under extreme tension – an…[Read more]

@Missy

What say you on the Hybrid- if there really is a Hybrid – being half Human half Dalek

This wasn’t addressed to me, so apologies for butting in with my unsought opinion.   As I see it, though,  if the Daleks did succeed in using Human DNA to breed a new variety of Dalek, the results would indeed be chimeras- or hybrids if you like, but not,…[Read more]

@Missy

surely it was the Master who defeated Rassilon?

I think that you are forgetting the sequence of events.  The Doctor gate crashes – or rather, skylight crashes – the party just as the link with Galifrey is established and Rassilon and the High Council appear.  After making a brief attempt to persuade the Master of his folly, he uses Wi…[Read more]

@ichabod

Why go to the barn in the first place? Why not go right to the Citadel and call Rassilon out there, without putting innocent locals in the (possible) line of fire as at the barn?

I’m not sure that I can add much of substance to what @puroandson (both) have already said, but perhaps I can expand a little on the points they made

When…[Read more]

@ichabod

why “they’ll kill you!” isn’t that clear to me

I took this to be the generic ‘they’ with which ordinary people who lack power or influence tend to refer to Authority. Furthermore, Rassilon, as one of the founders of Time Lord culture resurrected, would appear to be the focus of something like a personality cult, having been accorded al…[Read more]

@puroandson    (son)

Thank you for the welcome back.  I’m doing well; fully mobile once again, even if my spine remains a bit stiff – and there is not much that can be done about that.  The weather where I am remains, as it has been for much of the summer, fine and pleasantly warm, and likely to remain so for the next ten days or so at leas…[Read more]

@puroandson  @ichabod   Your discussion of the hybrid has set me thinking.

To summarise: the Matrix is a vast and powerful computer onto which the minds of deceased Time Lords are uploaded and, as I have understood it, these minds form a major part of both its software and its operating system.  It generates forecasts or predictions which are…[Read more]

@pedant

The Govt explicitly excluded the NHS from the scope of TTIP

Indeed they did, but whether they were justified in giving such assurance when the terms of the deal are still being negotiated is debatable.  According to some accounts I have read, there are legal experts who are not sure that this would be possible.  Anyway, I wouldn’t trust t…[Read more]

To forestall any indignant protests, I acknowledge an error in the above. I should have specified that the statement about Saxon and Danish place name derivations applies to England and, to some extent, lowland Scotland.  Wales and the Scottish highlands, not so much

@puroandson   I’ve just realised that I didn’t address your query about the pronunciation of Derby.  In the UK it is indeed pronounced Darby, with a long a.  A lot of place names here are not pronounced as they are spelt, probably because the origin of the names is generally Anglo-Saxon or Danish, or a combination of both, and while both spel…[Read more]

@Miapatrick

Congratulations on achieving yet another distinction!  Onward and upward 🙂

And I fully agree with you about the negative emphasis in the Remain campaign; it was a horrendous mistake.  I think I read somewhere that it was on the advice of an American campaign ‘advisor’, but I may be mistaken on that score.

@puroandson   Re the EU…[Read more]