Square Eyes

Cheers for that! I suppose that mean the one made of plasticine I picked up in a charity shop the other day is a fake!


Dear Mrs Mitchell,

Why the flipping heck do public school and private school mean the same thing when they really should be opposites?!

Yours plebbily,

Sutti

Sutti's big hair wrote:Cheers for that! I suppose that mean the one made of plasticine I picked up in a charity shop the other day is a fake!


Dear Mrs Mitchell,

Why the flipping heck do public school and private school mean the same thing when they really should be opposites?!

Yours plebbily,

Sutti

Apologies Sutti, I just spotted your post on a general look around.

Your question reminds me of a rather amusing ‘slasher fiction’ story I read concerning two gentlemen, one English the other American, and the confusion over the use of the term 'Public School' and what different sporting terms mean at those establishments.

Public and Private can and do mean the same thing, but it depends on where one is educated.

The best example is the American opposed to the English meaning.

Public school in England refers to the long-standing educational establishment funded by private means requiring the payment of fees from its pupils and/or charitable/ private funding (e.g. for scholarships where the educational fees are paid for a child’s attendance by a sponsor/s.) or by beneficiary or legacy.

The earliest known reference to a ‘Public School’ dates from 1364, when the Bishop of Winchester wrote concerning ‘the public school’ at Kingston.The term public then distinguished between education in a school and education by private tutors, which was usual in royal and aristocratic families at the time.

In the 19th century, the term was used to refer to a select group of nine old English independent schools in the Public Schools Act 1868, but many similar schools were soon to be established, and they were later joined by a number of ancient grammar schools which aimed to conform to the ethos of the nine schools named in the Act.

These days the term ‘Independent school’ is preferred by the schools, but media often use the term 'Public' or 'Private' when a good juicy story comes along.

Public school in America (and also in the main in Canada) refers to a school funded from tax revenue and most commonly administered to some degree by government or local government agencies.

The English equivalent to the American meaning of Public school is the State school, the education provided free of charge by the local education authority.

The American equivalent to Public School is Private School.

So, if one was rich, lucky enough to have a benefactor or was a cleaver clog’s and won a scholarship, if educated in England, Ireland, Whales or parts of Scotland, one would have a Public school education, if educated in America or parts of Canada, one would be receiving a private education at a private school. If one were attending a state school in England et al or a Public school in America et al, one would be attending a school to which a local authority had sent one.

I went to a public school as in the US meaning.

dear mrs mom.....

i like to shave when im in the bath..... so i relax for a bit in my bubbles...and then shave..... but its only when i start shaving that the mirror decides to steam up....WHY?

your condensationally

shaving fan

avid fan wrote: its only when i start shaving that the mirror decides to steam up...

do you really need a mirror to shave your legs?

maria wrote:do you really need a mirror to shave your legs?

Yes of course i do penelope...what do you think i got? eyes on the back of my legs??

maria wrote:do you really need a mirror to shave your legs?

Nah, he'd be better off using a razor!

Dear Mrs M,

How come Penelope Pitstop couldn't pronounce the word "help" properly?

Yours dastardly,

Hughesy McMuttley

avid fan wrote:dear mrs mom.....

i like to shave when im in the bath..... so i relax for a bit in my bubbles...and then shave..... but its only when i start shaving that the mirror decides to steam up....WHY?

your condensationally

shaving fan

'shaving fan' made me laugh that, although I'm not going to say why.

Your mirror would become steamed up because you are bringing it in closer contact with the steam and your warm wet face.

There is a way to steam-proof your mirror (it's the same method divers use to stop their mask from steaming up while diving) spit on it! I'm told it works but have not tried it myself.

Yes, spit on it and spread the spit over the mirror. You might have a bit of a distorted view, but, better than cutting your throat Aye.

Mrs M

Hughesy wrote:
Dear Mrs M,

How come Penelope Pitstop couldn't pronounce the word "help" properly?

Yours dastardly,

Hughesy McMuttley

Penelope Pitstop. What a character. I thought she was awfully cleaver at doing the damsel in distress act to get herself out of sticky situations, get back into the race and leave her helpers behind.

Well, Penelope had what's known as an upper-class U.S. Southern American accent with a little affliction to make her sound even more vulnerable.

Penelope could say 'Help' properly but would so many saps have come to her rescue if she had?

Mrs M.

Dear Mrs M,

You know when NASA used to launch space shuttles and things and it'd be live on the telly, how come when they counted down they always prefixed the number of seconds with the words "t-Minus"? (ie t-minus 20 seconds and counting, t-minus 10 seconds and counting etc.) What was all that about?

Oh, and another thing before I forget. How come bus drivers always have a fit when you try and pay them with a note? Even if your fare is, say, £4.50 and you present them with a fiver, they still react as if you've just waved a turd under their noses or something!

Yours inquisitively,

Hughesy

I just did a search to see what comes up on Google for David Mitchell's Mom. It crossed my mind that I might have written something I didn't want someone to see. It's good I did too because I didn't realise you'd posted in this thread Hughesy. Mucho apologies. OK here we go.

Hughesy wrote:Oh, and another thing before I forget. How come bus drivers always have a fit when you try and pay them with a note? Even if your fare is, say, £4.50 and you present them with a fiver, they still react as if you've just waved a turd under their noses or something!
Yours inquisitively,

Well Hughesy,

Your question is a bit of an oddity for me. I'm used to paying exact bus fares, which for me is often a £3.00 day saver ticket which lasts all day as the name suggests On most Second City buses, one needs to pay the exact fare, our drivers don't deal in change. I've seen a driver a bit miffed at someone paying in pennies for a fare, but only because they were paying a £1.30 fare in pennies and putting the pennies one at a time in the money slot. I thought it was quite funny myself.

Only the rough second hand private company buses deal in change and I don't frequent those too often because they are like old stage coaches and don't except the day saver tickets unless one pays a little extra. The drivers on these buses are very nice though and, on the odd occation I have used the old bone shakers, they have been quite pleasant. One even let me off with the private fare when I had a day saver

I'm wondering if not liking the notes is a southern thing. £4.50 for a bus fare. Where were you going? Scotland? Use the correct change in future.

Hughesy wrote:Dear Mrs M,
You know when NASA used to launch space shuttles and things and it'd be live on the telly, how come when they counted down they always prefixed the number of seconds with the words "t-Minus"? (ie t-minus 20 seconds and counting, t-minus 10 seconds and counting etc.) What was all that about?

T = "Take off." the "-" is just the negative hours to the time of take off. If the countdown was "T + 10" minuites the craft would have already taken off 10 minutes before. Apparently, the reason for the much anounced countdown is because, at certain stages, the thousands of people involved in take off preparation have checks to make. The countdown can be paused, you could hear "T - 30 seconds", lots of people do their thing, find a problem, then 360 seconds later countdown resumes and you hear "T - 29 seconds" Listen out for that if you ever tune in to a live launch of a shuttle.

That question brings back bad memories of my slave days. Ones employer, when certain changes to the law were fast aproaching, had this annoying "A Day -" countown. Did me head in it did. I mean, such drama just to ensure from 1st April one made two copies of a form rather than three.

Mrs M

How irritating!


Dear Mrs M,

If things can can be subliminal, can they also be liminal?!

Yours confusedly,

Sutti's (you want to do a subtitled movie) big (and also a limerick) hair

Sutti's big hair wrote:How irritating!


Dear Mrs M,

If things can can be subliminal, can they also be liminal?!

Yours confusedly,

Sutti's (you want to do a subtitled movie) big (and also a limerick) hair

Sublime(inal)!

Dear Mrs M,

I see there's now a Nintendo WII darts video game. Wouldn't it be cheaper (not to mention a damn sight more realistic! ) just to buy a dartboard and some actual darts?

Yours on the oche,

Hughesy

Sutti's big hair wrote:How irritating!


Dear Mrs M,

If things can can be subliminal, can they also be liminal?!

Yours confusedly,

Sutti's (you want to do a subtitled movie) big (and also a limerick) hair

Well Sutti,

I just had the urge to write another limerick for some strange reason, and, started to wonder why no one had made a new subtittled film lately

I'll just borrow one of my favourite comedians jokes here.....

"I used to work in a factory that made subliminal messages. We only made £2.00 an hour but no one seemed to mind"

You can have liminal messages as well as subliminal messages. The liminal barely register (I like to think of them as in one ear and out the other) and don't stop in the mind (a bit like the long questions on funtrivia). The subliminal go past the liminal and are snapped up by the brain without you knowing.

The word "liminal" is from the latin meaning "threashold" and is used more in reference to describe an intermediate state, phase, or condition such as in-between or transitional, e.g. in the liminal state between life and death.

I wonder if Limbo dancing comes from that word too? In between dancing and breaking your back.

Mrs M

Hughesy wrote:Dear Mrs M,

I see there's now a Nintendo WII darts video game. Wouldn't it be cheaper (not to mention a damn sight more realistic! ) just to buy a dartboard and some actual darts?

Yours on the oche,

Hughesy

Whatever next Hughesy! Vertual darts? It sounds a bit silly to me, and as you say, a darn site cheaper to buy a dart board and darts! it does seem a bit silly to me especially as darts is the one sport you can play at home. I know from when my nephews stay and I've played darts from the early hours of the morning (5am risers )to the late afternoon. It took my arm a few days to recover.

What would Jocky Wilson say?

I would also think it would up a dart players carbon footprint quite a bit too.

Mrs M.

Dear Mrs M,

If someone who loves all things English is an anglophile and someone who loves all things French is a francophile, what is someone who loves all things American (apart from bonkers)?

Yours yankily,

Sutti