Nigel Gordon
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Posts posted by Nigel Gordon
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25 minutes ago, Rutabaga said:
This is unambiguously what someone in the U.S. would think of as pudding:
That to us is a dessert. There is no way you could pour hot custard or gravy over it. If it is a pudding it can be savoury or sweet. The way you can tell which is being served is by the sauce. If the sauce is gravy, it is savoury. If it is sweet, the sauce is custard - though some heathens might server cream. If it doesn't have a sauce and is sweet, then it is dessert.
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19 hours ago, Rutabaga said:
How are we Yanks supposed to know, when a character refers to "having tea," whether they are actually having a meal or just drinking the beverage? And when there is a reference to "pudding," how do we know whether it denotes dessert generically, or the actual creamy substance?
R
I is simple, if they are having tea, they are partaking of a light meal in the late afternoon. If they are drinking tea it will say they are have a cup of tea, a mug of tea, drinking tea, having a cup of char, a rosy lee, etc. The term pudding is generic and may be applied to things as diverse as a steak and kidney pudding to an apple crumble. A creamy substance would be a dessert not a pudding, as it is lacking the essential ingredient, a quantity of flour. All you need to remember is that if it can't be used as an offensive weapon then it is not a pudding, its a dessert. Just think of Haggis, Robert Burns righty identified it as a pudding. It is so dangerous you will not allow its importation to the United States. Though personally I would put my great aunts suet treacle pudding up against a haggis any day.
PS If the receipt does not involve boiling or baking for at least and hour and a half it is not a pudding.
PPS If it can't be used as an alternative to cement, it is not a pudding.
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7 hours ago, Cole Parker said:
I don't mind the 'gone ten' part so much. It's the half ten that gets me. They never specify if that means night-thirtyrro ten-thirty, and I'm sure they only say it that way to muddle the Yanks.
C
In British English half-ten means half past ten. However, I know from experience that to the Dutch the term means half past nine. Considering the impact that Dutch and German had on American English I am not surprised at the confusion.
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It is not so much about the meaning of language that is the problem, it is the cultural information that a passage can contain that is not available to anyone who does not know that culture. There is an opening line to a story which goes:
"It took me twenty minutes to walk back home from Lord's, having spent the afternoon watching the last match of the Ashes."
As an Englishman that tells me certain things. For a start the character is reasonably well off. They have to be to be living in 20 min walking distance of Lord's. They are in London, that is where Lord's is located. It is high summer, they are playing cricket at Lords. England had been playing Australia, it is the Ashes a test match series between England and Australia. That I get immediately from the information in the sentence. However, there is also a lot implied. I can make a fairly good guess at how the character would be dressed. I can also make a fairly good guess at the weather conditions. All of this I get because of my immersion in English culture.
If I read a similar line referring to a baseball ground in the States, it would be meaningless to me, just as the above quotation is probably fairly meaningless to most Americans.
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On 1/26/2022 at 2:38 PM, Rutabaga said:
I'm not condemning the story for it; it just didn't seem to serve any useful purpose in advancing the story line.
R
It served a major purpose but you probably needed to be English to appreciate it. The boys drinking habits and the drinks they were drinking clearly identified them as a particular class of English society. Even the choice of drinks in the common room, identified the social ranking of the boys relative to each other. I have noticed that Foote uses these unspoken class indicators a lot in his writing. Unfortunately this does rather restrict appreciation of his writing to those from the same social background. I would guess a lot of what his is writing just does not make sense to people outside of England. I think even the Scots might find it difficult.
Of course that raises the question of how parochial a writer should be? At the moment I am in the final editing stages of 'Being Johnny' and a lot of the discussion between myself and my editors is around questions of how understandable something I have written is to an American readership. My own view is to make it as understandable as I can within the context but still keep an English feel to the story. This has resulted in me having to write passages to explain things which to any English reader would be obvious. I suspect Andrew Foote has taken a somewhat different approach. He writes in a very English style for an English audience.
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8 hours ago, Rutabaga said:
Just finished "Thilo" at IOMFATS. It was an enjoyable, if somewhat uneven, read, with some quirkiness such as a major focus on alcohol consumption by the teenagers in the story. Not sure yet whether it has convinced me to try any of the other Andrew Foote stories also available at this site.
R
The alcohol consumption by the teenagers is probably pretty accurate for English teenagers, especially those at a Public School. You need to remember it is not illegal for teens or younger to drink alcohol over here, it is only illegal for them to buy it.
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Been doing a bit of research. Podium is derived from the Latin and means little foot. It appears to have two distinct meanings. The first is for any type of stand used to display an item that only has a single foot, e.g. a lectern. The second is a raised area or platform on which only has space for one person to stand. If more than one person can stand on it is technically not a podium, though the term is often misused for structures that support more than one person. The common element between the two is that something is raised up for display on a small footprint (podium).
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19 hours ago, Camy said:
A salad has shrubbery and cucumber and tomatoes etc, NOT bananas, blueberries and shredded-coconut... bananas, blueberries and shredded-coconut is, with double cream, a delightful pud. 'nuff said.
Never heard of a fruit salad?
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SUCCESS!!!!
Tim at IOMFATS found it. The story is Thilo by Andrew Foote
It is to be found at https://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/andrew-foote/thilo/01.html
I am fairly sure it is posted elsewhere, as I think read this story before I was looking at stuff on IOMFATS.
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Had to try and remember the saw my English teacher drummed into a class of 12 years old 61 years ago. Unfortunately, after all this time I can't remember the exact wording. However, I do remember the meaning. A podium has a foot, on which it stands and you can stand in front of it. A rostrum is something you stand on with the podium in front of you.
Incidentally, some years ago I was involved in organising a series of lectures to take place at a very upmarket location. When I was viewing the location and making arrangements for the hire of the venue, I was asked by the events manager if we wanted a podium or a book stand. I asked what was the difference? After getting a look which told me how uneducated I was, I was then informed a podium only has one foot, whilst a book stand has more more than one foot.
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30 minutes ago, Merkin said:
I, too, remember that story Nigel--only bits and pieces, however, and sadly not enough to help you with your query. However maybe between the two of us we can jog someone else's memory. The additional detail I remember: the fugitive student is being hidden from an uncle in Africa who wants to take over the family lands and fortune after a dreadful slaughter of the new boy's family. The boy is the only survivor. Our main character befriends him and becomes his protector, a role enhanced by the main character's involvement with the school's cadet corps (? what is it called in England?) and and this leads later to identification of the new boy's pursuers while they are on a cadet training exercise. Later in the story both boys are at the main character's rather lavish family farm while the rest of the family are away, and they are forced to defend the holding from a team of assassins deployed to kill the new boy. I think there may also be a later scene set in Africa... it's all very hazy, and I'm somewhat led to believe I read it on a site like IOMfAtS. I hope that helps to add some pertinent detail to your query?
Yes, Merkin, that fits, it is the same story. I've got a feeling that it might well be on IOMFATS, as I think I have looked at every possible story that might fit on here and did not find it.
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Can't wait for it. Tim was one of my favourite stories from Cole, will love to read it again, in its new form.
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Thanks Pedro, I had looked at all three of the ones you mentioned as Mihangel was my first choice for an author about a public school, but none of them fit. Am now working my way through Joel. Not found it yet, but enjoying the reading.
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Not sure where to put this post, we could do with a find story subject.
I am trying to find a story which I am certain is on AD. It is based in a public school which I is in the north of England or might even be in Scotland. The main character in the story befriends a new boy who has been sent to the school as somewhere to hide him. The boy is taken ill and the main character's intervention saves him. The story ends on a farm in the South of England in a shoot out.
I read this story years ago and it impressed me with its plot line, which I recommended to a friend. He's asked me about it and I can't now remember its title or the author. Can anybody help?
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Merry Yule and a Happy New Year. Hope it is a better year for all of you, especially for Mike.
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I think he is twelve. At least he was earlier this year, might be thirteen by now.
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I am really enjoying this story and it is developing nicely.
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This story by Peter Conrad on Castle Roland starts out exactly as one would expect. Two men stuck in a cabin in the mountains. The, as about 50% of stories with this start we find that they used to be best friends who drifted apart at school. It is then that the story takes a twist from the trope. Whilst hiking in the woods they come across a party of kids who have got lost in the snow storm. Conrad's development of the story is interesting and unusual. It is well worth reading, though be warned it is a long read. Personally I would have split it up into four or six chapters instead of what Conrad has delivered. It is, though, worth the effort to read. You can find it here:
https://castleroland.net/libraries/snowed-in/
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Gerry,
Being Johnny is currently with the editor and proofreader. The second draft of Being Johnny is finished, all 61 chapters, it has also all undergone and initial edit. At the moment I have four chapters in the finished folder, six more in the nearly finished folder and have just sent a further five to the final editor. Hope to have something ready for publication around Christmas or early next year. It is just a question of how the editing process works out.
Nigel
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I've seen him play. He is fantastic.
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8 hours ago, James K said:
An engine which can propel a spacecraft at 99% the speed of light has been invented, theoretically, they just need to build it! It has no moving parts and will get you to Mars in 12.5 minutes, to Neptune in 4 hours, and beyond...
Sorry, the time estimate to Mar's is wrong. You first have to accelerate to 99% of the speed of light before you can do it in that time. Accelerating to that speed will take time. With a helical engine you will have travelled out of the solar system before you achieve it.
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Well he is a making a lot more sense than that lot up in Glasgow at the moment.
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Posted
Personally it is a toss up between Sticky Toffee Pudding and Sussex Pond Pudding. However, both are forbidden to me these day on doctor's orders.