Canny lass

Where do you find these Maggie!

Must be the weather then.

I'm using Chrome and not having any problems.

September 2014 in the Swedish election all over again! Your odds on Another election Before the year's out are about right ggg. However, they managed to avoid it here by freezing out the third largest party (equivqlent to Ukip) after the election. Very non-democratic behaviour!

It does tend to be a bit too much at times, doesn't it! As you say - roll on Friday with its discussions on why it all Went wrong (or right as the case may be).

Depends how you measure happiness. Denmark usually comes out in the top 10 on the "happiness barometer", though they have lost a little of their footing the last couple of years. However, if you measure happiness - or the lack of it - by the number of suicides per year you'll get a very different picture. According to WHO data Denmark is currently at number 27/100 with 13.6 suicides per 100, 000. The UK on the other hand is at 62/100 with only 7 suicides per 100, 000. My first thought was that maybe alcohol - or the lack of it - may account for the difference but according to the same source there's only a marginal difference.

Working just fine for me.

Happy birthday guys.

ThanksSymptoms! I'll get him onto that right away!

I can't remember tomatoes either. I can't remember ever seeing a greenhouse. Plenty of Coldframes though for propogating bedding plants. We grew, as well as leeks,potatoes and cabbages, sprouts, peas, onions, carrots lettuce and radishes. On the floral side it was margarits, asters, chrysanthemums and lupins. (The latter grow wild here and are classed as a weed)! Some plants were Always left to go to seed for planting the following year and All garden waste was composted to improve the soil. No garden centres in those Days!

Couldn't agree more Brett! It's all about looking at things in today's light and making up your own mind! Things change and so can our opinions. What was good for our fathers and grandfathers isn't necessarily right for us.The main thing is that we use our right to vote rather than sit at home complaining. Even a spoiled vote says more than no vote at all!

and for chilblains, Maggie. There's a Lovely Word. Do people still get them?

Now this is interesting, Symptoms. We are plagued with foxes here. Must it be men's urine and what do I do with it? Do I spray it round the boundaries of the property, over the entire garden or do I just get the old man to have his morning pee here and there and everywhere? Golden showers? I'm not going to ask! In this neck of the woods it means something that would be considered unfit for inclusion on this site.

I'm particularly intrigued by the cure for ringworm! "Find a pot of a man's urine". The Word 'find' suggests that this should be the urine of an unknown male. We'll I mean, if it was your old-man's urine you wouldn't need to 'find' it. Presumably you would know where he kept his pot. How does one go about 'finding' pots of urine - and, once found, how does one know with certainty that it's a man's urine? What's the magic ingredient in male urine that's not to be found in female urine? And, finally would male urine found in anything else than a pot do the trick? I think we may need to start a new topic for this one.

Good luck with the noise-making tomorrow. I'll be with you in spirit if not in body and will be making a noise here in the garden at 12 noon. Took Malcolm's advice and will have something noisy with me - 7 grandchildren!

Great pics HPW!!

Sorry I missed it, Brett. Been gadding about doing my thing. Hope it was good.

Thanks Ovalteeny. I'd never have guessed myself!

'tom' ? Explain please.

I don't rule out invasions completely, Pilgrim. I feel quite sure that first encounters with Britain were more in the nature of 'raping, pillaging and plundering' There is evidence of that in both languages. Language development/change is a great mirror of history. Just look at the Word Viking. We find it in both the English and Scandinavian languages today just as we did in OE and ON. The OE Word wicing meant 'pirate'. The ON Word vikingr most probably meant 'Creek-dweller'. What interests me most is that the OE Word is recorded long before the scandivian people set foot in Britain. That these people were then referred to as wicing suggests that somebody saw their arrival as an intrusion rather than a friendly visit for a cuppa and a digestive. And let's not forget that they came very near to conquering the whole of England. Danelaw prevailed everywhere north of a boundary that ran from London to Chester so there was a fair bit of battle going on as well.

Thanks Smudge. I have a full set frrom Goth. uni but they don't paste in either. Nothing pastes in for me. Sometimes I've written a longer text in a Word document and tried to paste the whole text but I've Always had to start over and write it again on the site. I Think it's the price I'm paying for finally getting rid of my wayward capital letters (well. almost gone), crossings out and underlinings.

Pilgrim, just a couple of Points you may find interesting. You are quite right in thinking that "that lot mainly went round the top of Ireland and came into 'England' from the west". However, the 'lot' you are referring to came from the area which we today call Norway. Those Vikings who came from the areas today known as Sweden and Denmark, entered 'England' from the east arriving mainly at Humberside. Some made the journey via France and arrived in the South of England. They did however leave their mark, and not an insignificant mark, on the English language. One way of assessing such influence is to look at the number of borrowings (loan Words). Scandinavian borrowings are relatively few, when compared to borrowings from Latin, German and French. There is a very good reason for that. Old Norse and Old English are almost mutually intelligable languages. It would not have been difficult to pick up each other's languages. The similarities, particularly in the vocabulary, are so many that should you put two documents, one in either language, in front of any language historian he would be able to read both even though only schooled in one. Lack of borrowings does not, in this case, reflect lack of influence. There was simply no great need to borrow. I support wholeheartedly your theory that most influence came about through the two languages rubbing shoulders on a social and business level rather than through battle. The ON loan words that linger on in English today, some 2 000 of them, reflect domesticity rather than political power, suggesting that the Vikings lived peaceably side by side with the Brits for several hundred years. They also show the closeness of the relationship between the two Cultures as many of the borrowings belong to the central core of the vocabulary- family relationships, body parts etc. Even more interesting is that English has borrowed some grammatical Words from ON. Several conjunctions are ON in origin and so are several pronouns. It's very rare that these are borrowed in any language and therefore a sign of very strong influence. Some of these grammatical words, like they, them and their are first used in the northern dialects. Borrowings may have been relatively few but there were other influences on the English vocabulary brought about by the initial difficulties in daily exchanges. Sometimes they used an ON pronunciation for an OE word. This is the reason why the English words church and ditch becomes kirk and dike in some areas. Sometimes they would use an OE Word but with the meaning of an ON Word. Loaf and bread are examples of this. OE hlaf (meaning bread) became loaf. while OE bread meant fragment. ON braud, on the other hand, did mean bread so we've ended up with an OE word that has taken on an ON meaning. Last but not least some ON inflections have found there way into English words, having been mistakenly understood as part of the stem. That Little 't' at the end of words like thwart, want and scant or the -sk in bask are both inflectional endings from ON. There is plenty of evidence of this type of influence. So, the number of borrowings is not always the best tool with which to measure influence on a language. The vocabulary of a language changes quite quickly. Today, it's changing at a gallop rather than a trot. For this we can thank the Internet and social media. A newly coined word has done two laps of the globe before you can say Bob's your uncle and the need for brevity in script has increased enormously thanks to text messages and Twitter.

Most Town and/or County Councils have some sort of planning department that decide on street names for newly built streets, roads, Squares etc. It should be easy to find out when the name Hollymount was given and maybe even why.

Welcome to the forum Christine and good luck with your search for information. They're a knowledgeable lot here. Hope someone can help.

Thanks for the feedback. It's obviously not who I thought it was. Losing a good mate is awful. Chin up.