Bruin Fisher

My favourite of Amy Lane's books is The Bells of Times Square. Also Freckles is great. I haven't read The Mastermind.... yet...

How did I miss these? They're great! Not sure about No.3, I worry about Emus being hunted to extinction...

Yup. Great story, perfect ending.

As Sean Connery might have said: “Underpantsh should be Shilk, and not Shatin.”

New Undies I do like wearing new ones - I like to feel them on. I like the way they hold me So snugly round my dong. I choose the softest fabric, So gentle on my skin. They’re cut to cup my tackle And hold them safely in. I wear them out in public The people unaware: If they knew how I’m feeling Well, they’d all just stop and stare. In private I can risk it, I strip down, in the nude, And walk around protruberant, Lascivious, and lewd. I wriggle into them again My stiffy ridge is clear. It peeps above the waistband, Just like ‘Kilroy woz ‘ere.’

Name your price, guys, it's pay day!

Glad you liked it, Jason!

Algy's Dream It's a long time since I've read this delightful short story, so I was pleased to see it in Dude's Picks. It's a great, uplifting, coming-of-age story set in the British Boarding School world that's very familiar to me. Highly recommended. (The Story, not the Boarding School...)

😄 I was only using that sentence as an illustration of the usage of the word 'proven'. I should have put 'Darwin's' in place of 'The' at the beginning.

Thank you Camy, that's amazing. I've known that poem since studying it at school, but always found it difficult. Michael Sheen brought it to life, made its meaning evident, even obvious.

No it's not your fault, it's my fault. Everything's my fault - the cat told me so.

In the US, the mail is delivered by the US Postal Service. In the UK, the post is delivered by Royal Mail.

Amazing, so true to life. Or at least true to my life...

(It turns out that both vagueries and vagaries are real words, with similar meanings, so that both, or either, are appropriate for the title of this thread!) It's amazing that sometimes the most peculiar spelling or pronunciation conventions can be so entrenched that I don't even notice them. I only recently noticed how strange is the verb prove. A scientist must prove her theory, a prosecuting counsel must prove the guilt of the defendant, bread dough is left to prove overnight. In British English it's pronounced so that the o sounds like the oo in food. It gets odder: the past participle is not proved, it's proven - and this time the o sounds normally, like owe. "Case not proven!" barked the judge. The theory of Evolution has still not been proven after a hundred years of acceptance. And there's a noun form the word, too, which is proof. And suddenly we have two o's so that the oo sound makes sense, but now the v has changed to an f. Language never ceases to fascinate.

Good old Monty Python. I think the only actual gay participant in that particular GMSUFU parade was the officer, who calls it 'silly' and 'a bit suspect' at the end. Oh, the irony...