Pedro

Thanks Mike. Makes you wonder where they are now. Have they pursued music as a career?

Thats great fun. Do you know anything about who the boys are or where the setting is?

I couldn’t find font smoothing on my version of safari. I did manage to find an option called smart invert colours under ipad general settings>accessibility . The near-black on black becomes grey on light-gray which is readable. Of course all other apps are converted which can give some strange looking results. The setting also slows things down as each pages is loaded then then converted. I won't be keeping the setting as my default, only use it when I think there is something hiding.

Hi Talo Thanks for your suggestion. The iPad browser is Safari. The settings function does not appear to have a high contrast mode. I have tried the high contrast mode under accessibility in general settings but with no improvement. I can get a very slight improvement by increasing the screen brightness in general settings, but it makes every other webpage and application too bright for me. P

I use an ipad most of the time and I have a problem that I think is more to do with the theme than functional updates. A number of the buttons, particularly those associated with user profile at the top of the page and the edit post and related functions are rendered with a very dark grey font with very little contrast with the background which is the same as the general background such that they are nigh on impossible to see or read. It’s only If I can remember where they are supposed to be that I can access the functions. If I try and change the theme using the dropdown in the page footer I get the same theme but some of the layout is altered.

And great fun to watch as long as it’s not you being tied up in the red tape. Made me chuckle, something much needed in these ‘interesting times’. Thanks Joe.

Expect a nomination on McConnell’s desk first thing Monday, and all other Senate business put on hold until confirmation pushed through. Unfortunately it will also embolden reactionaries elsewhere. [ Aside - ‘Reactionaries? ‘ makes me sound like a bearded, sandal-wearing, 1960’s leftie and a term I never thought I would have cause to use, but somehow seems more apposite than ‘conservative’ .]

I’m enjoying this. I hope others are too. Up to ch9.

Ah’s thinkin’ we should have a new forum section here Cole's Classic Cookery Classes I will confess to using a 7” cooks knife for dicing onions for the dexterity when doing the horizontal cuts. My big 10”s comes out for things like root veg and grating cabbage for coleslaw. Whatever knife you use it must be sharp. Oysters in stuffing? My first thought was yuck, but it’s not really any different to oyster sauce in chinese cuisine. It’s a way of adding umami. I think I’ll stick with sage and onion with maybe a forcemeat based on pork sausage on extra special occasions. Some people like to do a chestnut stuffing. I normally bone out turkeys. It substantially reduces the cooking time - to under two hours depending on size - so you don’t have to get up at silly o’clock to put it in the oven and it stays moist. It also makes carving a doddle. You do lose the theatre pf bringing the whole bird to table. Turkeys are actually easier to bone than chickens because the bits are big enough to get hold of. Just do not try it with one of those ready basted horrors unless you like oil-wrestling and have an assistant with a catcher’s mitt for when you lose your grip and it slides off along your worktop.

I’m confuzzed. Were chapters thirteen and fourteen posted in the wrong order? I’m sure I read what is now ch14 on Wednesday and wondered at the time about the references to Foster intervening with Barry the Bully. I only found the new to me ch13 because these days I need to refresh my memory of what happened last time before reading a new instalment.

Greeting Wandering Pom. Thank you for commenting. You must think it ok if you have read it twice in a couple of months! As for a sequel, I’m not sure that Patrick and his boys don’t just settle down into an uneventful domesticity. Maybe Mother has an adventure or Diana has to sharpen the knife of hers again neither of which would be suitable material for the gentle, sensitive souls who visit here!

Thank Bruin. I'm glad it hit the spot. I had hoped somebody else might rise to the challenge but no takers as yet.

Thanks guys I’m pleased you liked it.

Billy Spooner A response to Cole Parker’s post: https://forums.awesomedude.com/topic/11396-for-writers/?tab=comments#comment-78649 For Writers in Writers Workshop. By Pedro Epizeuxis : A literary or rhetorical device using the repetition of words in quick succession for vehemence or emphasis usually in order to appeal to or invoke the reader’s or listener’s emotions. Little Billy Spooner was both the age and of an age when boys under thirteen wore short trousers and long socks. It was also an age when grammar was still taught in schools, and taught proper. Billy and his classmates at the local school had been taught their grammar at the hands of Miss Skinner. Although it might be grammatically incorrect, it would be more appropriate to say the boys and girls had been learned by Miss Skinner . For if they did not learn something the easy way, the old dragon would beat it into them with the tongue of leather that was her trusty tawse. One day, after the teacher had been at her most curmudgeonly and lashed at the class with both her tongues, Billy had made moan to his father. “Pa. She’s a wicked old hag and should be retired. She’s ancient, smells, and has been teaching forever!” “Billy! You should respect your elders, especially your teachers,” his father had replied, trying to sound stern. His smile betrayed him. “Well, she has been teaching since before the old queen died. You know she taught me...” he had to pause to chuckle, “and your grandfather. I suppose she still has that leather tongue of hers. Speaks louder than words, doesn’t it?” Billy inferred from this exchange that neither Miss Skinner’s temperament nor her teaching methods had improved over the years and, like his father and his father before him, he would just have to grin and bear it. However, his parents did understand his plight and, as a consolation, he was allowed second helpings at supper that day. A biddable and bright child, Billy enjoyed his learning, finding the work sufficient challenge to give a sense of accomplishment on completion, but not so challenging as to leave him struggling the way some of his peers did. His application to the task meant he was usually top of the class or would have been except he was regularly marked down for indiscipline. For Billy had a little problem. His parents and those others who were concerned about it (that did not include Miss Skinner) could not decide if the problem was caused by Billy’s brain running too fast for his mouth to keep pace, or if it was his mouth outpacing his brain. Either way it made Billy seem impetuous and, like his illustrious namesake, the late Warden of New College, Oxford, he frequently got his words mixed up. Metatheses, mondegreens, eggcorns, catachreses, he would do them all. Perceived in a certain quarter as indiscipline or, worse, insubordination, his problem had earned Billy frequent conversations with the leather tongue. At least Billy’s peers had noticed the regularity with which he had to hold out his hand, stoically accepting his fate. As a consequence he was never picked on for being teacher’s pet or the class swot. The years rolled on and Billy was now in Miss Hepburn’s class. Miss Hepburn was everything Miss Skinner was not: pleasant, soap-scented, pretty and young. She also held her class without recourse to physical techniques of instruction. Whether she could have done so without the grounding given to her pupils by Miss Skinner in their earlier years was a point for debate among the parents and school governors. Also of debate was how long she would remain a teacher. Young and attractive, the consensus was that it was only a matter of time before she would be courted, engaged, married and leaving to have a family. Billy was aware of the speculation but paid it no mind, calculating that she was unlikely to leave before he himself moved to secondary school. The grounding in discipline that Billy and his peers had received from Miss Skinner was matched by their grounding in the three ‘R’s. Miss Hepburn was able to build on this solid foundation and her English lessons had progressed to include the discussion of rhetorical devices in literature. Perhaps unsurprisingly given his little problem, Billy was fascinated by words and their origins and usage, and therefore assimilated these lessons eagerly and with ease. An observer with an analytical mind would have noticed a correlation between the temperature and the position of the socks worn by Billy and his peers. On a mild day, the wearer would allow the socks to pool around their ankles unattended. On a cold day, evidenced by the frost reaching inside to the top of the window pane, the socks would be worn at fullest extent with constant pulling-up to keep the gap across the knee to the hem of the wearer’s shorts to a minimum. As the day was merely chilly, Billy’s socks were vacillating between full and half mast. Miss Hepburn had her own strategy for dealing with the chill. Knowing that the heating at the school would not be turned on, something that only happened when the inkwells threatened to freeze over, she had swapped the plain petticoat she normally wore under the full length skirt she was required to wear for a prettier one with ruches and frills that she found warmer. However her decision may have been influenced by the fact it was close at hand as she dressed, for she had worn the underskirt the night before when she was walking out with Thomas Wickham, the vicar’s son. Checking her appearance in the mirror, Miss Hepburn chose a somewhat old-fashioned, high-necked blouse to complete her ensemble. Unfortunately, Miss Hepburn’s frilly petticoat and regulation school skirt were incompatible in that the skirt had a tendency to ride up, exposing the bottom of her frou-frou to public view. Billy was in a quandary. He knew it was impolite for him to refer to his teacher’s undergarments, but neither should she be left unaware of the problem. Seeing a solution, Billy’s impetuous nature got the better of him. “Miss, Miss,” he said as he put his hand up. “Your epic zoo kiss is showing.” Billy had anticipated that Miss Hepburn might blush, which she did, but he couldn’t understand why she had adjusted her collar and not, as he had expected, her skirt.

I think Cole is being disingenuous here. Like he egged us on with Gee Whilliker’s ‘mahmilapinatapai’ this is clearly intended as a prompt, nay challenge, to all here to scribble something pertaining to the word. I say, I say, I’m sure this is the start of something pernicious: ‘Parker’s Pandemic Prompts’ to keep our brains protesting in these unusual times. Of course Cole has forgotten to say the submissions should be posted in the Flash Fiction section of the forum. But then had he done so it would have destroyed the subtlety of his approach.

Memory plays tricks. The story I initially thought of was this one http://www.awesomedude.com/tsf/wgna/index.htm “When Gay Nerds Attack” by Fredrics. There is no picture of a Mobius strip, only a section title and no nerds striking back, although it appears there was the intention for a such a scene, but the story seems unfinished - something I do remember from first time around.

I recognised the story and searched several sites before finding it was actually here (-see Link in Ivor’s post). Since the pseudonym Kewl-Dad no longer appears in the author list, I presumed this was a re-release of a, possibly updated, story. Intriguingly neither version was the story I thought it was when I realised I had read it before. That story had plot elements where the nerds struck back at the bullies and ‘phobes. IIRC one of the chapter headings was a picture of a Mobius strip.

Ch5 -”As long as there are no problems from Massachusetts.” George Hannover III could have told you how that will work out.

Brilliant. I think that is one of his best.

Wondering if there was any resonance with Boys on Trains, I took the bait, and like his protagonist on the plane, Cole has struck and set his hook. I am eagerly awaiting chapters two onwards.

Thank you for posting this piece. The teacher echoes everything my late partner used to say about ballet. He danced late 1950’s with Festival Ballet and occasionally with the Royal. Unfortunately he only managed two or three years before he picked up a knee injury that ended his career, but there was no doubt it was the major part of his life.

That was fun. A nice double trouble twin story to raise a smile on a cold wet day. (and it’s very wet in the UK at the moment) Find it here: https://awesomedude.com/alan_dwight/seeing-double/seeing-double.htm

Curses. Now I’ve got the theme tune running around in my head. I ‘m not going to suffer alone -here’s a link:

Except ‘Heart ‘ is not actually the first book in the series. IIRC it is however the first book where the paranormal associated with Rothenia Is hinted at. The Peachers are introduced in ‘Towards the Decent Inn’ and Terry in ’Terry and the Peachers’. For some reason these do not appear on this site. I remember raising the question with either the Dude or the author, or maybe both, but I suspect my email(s) may have been swept into the black hole of junk mail by their mail servers. These two stories can be found on IOMFATS http://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/arram/ amongst other places. Please note that the versions of some of the stories (especially ‘The Fall’) differ between sites (I think the version here is the most recent) and I have noticed Mike Arram is currently posting some of the stories on GA with further revisions.

Except I understood the problem to be how to find stories by genre after they have fallen off the new story lists. I would have thought authors could be responsible for classifying their own stories at least until they are proved wrong by reader feedback!