Paul

Yeah, well, my knight can beat up your cowboy, so there. :D Language evolves; maybe that's what we're seeing here.

Yea instead of yeah. This one seems to be so common it's almost as if it's become a convention of net fiction. Whenever I see a character saying "yea" I feel myself being thrust back into time, when knighthood was in flower and damsels were being rescued from dragons. I expect the conversation to proceed with "verilys" and "forsooths" abounding.

Yahoo! Lessee... dance-floor mayhem, juggling, mismatched socks... What's next? You're going to tell us you have ants in your pants?

I've enjoyed the first four chapters well enough that I'm inclined to keep following it. Characters are interesting, flows nicely. Doesn't come across as amateurish. Seems to be a mystery, but with signs of a romance in development. Wish he didn't write "loose" when he means "lose," though.

'ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's all this then? Git I 've been familiar with for ages, thanks to Monty Python. Gor Blimey, for USA ears, was for years the quintessential stereotypical British exclamation. Movies depicting ordinary British blokes had them spouting it right and left. Apparently it's a corruption of God blind me. I hadn't come across the Cor vartiation, though. Another one that's subject to misunderstanding these days is blow me, in the sense of "I'll be damned," or more directly, "Well blow me down." If you read P.G. Wodehouse, you'll often hear Bertie Wooster exclaiming, "I'll be blowed." Bollix seems to derivation of bollocks. Here in the USA, you can say of someone who messed up some project, "He really bollixed that up," and few, if any, will realize the original reference. You lot is one of my favorite Britishisms, in particular when spoken in an affectionate, mock-derisive sense, as when Mum calls out to the family, "You lot get cleaned up now, tea's about on."

She can't kill him off. Imagine what it'd do to the movie franchise.

Initially, I had divined my own (and as it turned out, correct) sense of the term from the context in which I found it, but until I checked up on the derivations (gob=face), that's exactly what I had imagined; someone hocking up a good one and spitting it right in your kisser. Funny the memories that stay with you long-term. I wasn't exactly gobsmacked that day, nearly 55 years ago, as all us little tykes were lined up on the stairs waiting to file back into kindergarten after recess. Suddenly I felt a cool, slimy sensation on the back of my neck. Some little shithead behind me had smacked his gob on me. Unlike a lot of childhood memories, which tend to be hazy mood-pictures, with this one I have a definite sense of location and circumstance. Maybe it's because it might have been the first experience I'd had of another kid my age deliberately being mean to me. Funny, though, I don't remember who it was. Maybe I blocked that out.

Would I? Hell, no. I honestly did wonder, but I also couldn't resist using sanguine in this particular context.

Chapter 5: Some questions answered, but a whole lot more remain. I had to wonder, were I in Tibor's shoes, if I'd be as sanguine about another encounter with Maxfield. But this is a story in which not everyone is exactly what they seem to be, isn't it? Note this sentence vis-?-vis Tibor in chapter one: "The trouble was, like most teens, what you saw on the outside wasn't necessarily related to what was happening on the inside." Eager to read more.

Here's an interesting link on the possible derivation of "gobsmacked."

Taken by surprise; uttlerly astounded. "When I finally came out to Clive, my best friend since kindergarten, he told me he'd known for years and had been wondering when I was finally going to get around to it. I was gobsmacked."

No doubt about it, my all-time, number one, nonpareil, top of the heap, the ultimate, the ne plus ultra.... Gobsmacked. I've been aching for the perfect opportunity to slip it into my everyday parlance, but alas, my life seems sorely lacking in the element of surprise.

His "The Quantum" was one of the more enjoyable reads I've had, and I was looking forward to updates, infrequent as they were.

OK, so I just read "Robert's Day" and been tantalized by the (temporarily I hope) withdrawn "Albert's Day or Sex on the 6:29" over on GA, and I'm looking forward to reading more of your stuff!

I sort of assumed it derived from "passion," and after Googling pash + British slang, found I was right. "Infatuation" or "crush" would be equivalents. Very nice story, I agree.

Thanks for bringing the forum back.

He takes a cliched situation, the brawl in the boy's bathroom, and un-cliches it. Nice.

That's my impression as well - not a specific book, but books in general. In bygone days, if you were a snooty type, you'd paste an adhesive bookplate on the inside cover of your books that stated, for example, "Ex Libris EleCivil," meaning, "from EleCivil's library." This pun wouldn't be a variation on Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book," would it, blue?

See it here.

I think that's what they use in these less inhibited days in place of La plume de ma tante est sur la table.

Am I the only one who uses Post-It notes? Can't fall out of the book, you see.

Book titles can't be copyrighted, according to the US Copyright Office. See this link which says in part: Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks.

Now I want to check out your stuff to get a feel of what you're talking about. It sounds right up my alley, as a matter of fact. Could you give a pointer to your Nifty stories? Thanks.

Hoo-hah! Now that's the kind of cliffhanger I like. Again, a really excellent job. After reading so much online fiction that's padded with inconsquential action and repetitive introspective narration, it's a pleasure to read such well-paced plotting. The events move the story along, help develop the characters and are witty and entertaining to boot. I wonder if it was a temptation to title the chapter "Riots of Spring"? I'm glad to see that the game here called "In Bed" is still played. In my day, we called it "Between the Sheets," which I personally feel has a bit more panache.

Actually, I think Graeme's real motivation for writing this story is to teach us Aussie slang. Unfortunately, unlike my earlier research for "ute," I wasn't able to find a web site with lots of pictures of cute garbos.