Canny lass

Thanks Les! I've heard the name Shankhouse (or Shankhouses) somewhere in my past but I don't think I've ever seen a signpost or anything when driving around. My mother always said Cramlington so I was surprised when I got a birth certificate last month and the adress was given simply as "Shankhouse" - no street name, just Shankhouse. I haven't had time to look into it yet but I'm intending to do so soon.

I think most people with an ounce of common sense can recognize an Easter egg when they see one. Clearly 'barnsley tyke' doesn't belong to that group. Easter eggs usually arrive in the shops in good time for Easter and disappear shortly after.They are often decorated with Easter-related pictures: chickens, bunnies etc..Do they really need the words 'Easter' and 'egg' in order to be able to identify it? It doesn't say 'fish' on a haddock but it's still a fish and easily identifiable. It doesn't say 'toilet paper' on a toilet roll but it's still toilet paper and easily identifiable. The first post on this thread asks the question "Who took the Easter out of our Easter eggs?" How does lesmes know it's an Easter egg that's had the word removed if they are no longer identifiable? Simple! It looks like an Easter egg, it smells like an Easter egg, it's decorated like an Easter egg and the words 'Happy Easter' are staring us in the face everywhere we go. How many clues do we need?

Shankhoose! Whey wa nearly related man! My mother was born there in 1904, as I've just found out. I'd always thought it was Cramlington. I can't really place Shankhouses on a map but I remember getting the bus to Boghouses (a row of 3-4 houses if I remember rightly) when I used to visit a friend at ... I think it was Hartford Colliery. Would that be right? I'd love to hear anything you know about Shankhouses.

Chocolate eggs aren't so very modern. I was a kid in the fifties and can remember watching a chocolate egg (given pride of place on the piano) and longing for Easter Sunday to arrive when it could finally be opened and EATEN!! Heaven knows what my parents must have sacrificed to be able to buy it! Cadbury has been making them since 1875 apparently. I'm sure they were a luxury only for the rich way back then but they became more popular and sales shot up when milk chocolate was introduced in 1905. Even if I got a chocolate Easter egg in the fifties, I agree that Easter was more about hens eggs. Do you remeber saving onion skins and collecting flowers from Gorse bushes to colour them? Fingers used to get pricked to bits! I think we also used Lupin leaves, bound onto the egg with thread before putting the egg into the pan of onion skins to be boiled. can anybody verify that? What ever leaf it was, it gave a nice star-shaped pattern. The cooked eggs were rubbed with butter to give them a bit of a shine. I have to admit that I had no idea why we eat eggs at Easter but finding out kept the grandchildren (and myself) out of mischief at the weekend. I figured that if they wanted to sit with their eyes glued to a screen all day, then they may as well be doing something useful with the time. It was quite interesting actually. Incidentally, they are 9 and 12 yo and they didn't have any idea why we eat eggs either.

I think you might need to revise your thys, thous and thees, Moe, or are you from Yorkshire?

No ‘maybe’ about it, Moe. Cadbury is quite open about the fact that they look for new markets – which business doesn’t? “The Easter egg market is one of the most exciting confectionary markets, with new ranges and presentations attracting more consumers every year.” https://www.cadbury.com.au/about-chocolate/the-story-of-easter-and-easter-eggs.aspx Is a halal certified Easter egg so strange in this day and age? I mean, Kosher Easter eggs for the Jewish community have been around since the year dot. I dished them out on Easter Sunday to jewish patients. In fact, some say that they were invented by Jews in France during the 17th century. http://jewishjournal.com/culture/food/183690/jewish-easter-eggs-really I would have thought that some people would be glad for any move to get ethnic groups to accept what some would call a ‘Christian’ tradition – when in Rome etc.etc.

Eggs have been associated with the Christian celebration of Easter (which celebrates the death and resurrection of Christ) since the very early days of the church. However, Easter eggs are adaptations of former pagan practice – it being the symbol of rebirth and new beginnings. Long before the Christian church was established the egg appeared in Egyptian mythology and in the Hindu scriptures. https://www.cadbury.com.au/about-chocolate/the-story-of-easter-and-easter-eggs.aspx

Lesmes, I’m intrigued to know which big names were missing. I’ve just returned from the UK where I saw the usual range of chocolate eggs for sale – all under the banner *Easter Eggs’. I’ve just shopped on-line for my own chocolate eggs and I can choose ‘Easter eggs’ made by Cadbury, Mars (Malteser and Galaxy),Guylian, Thornton and Nestlé (Aero, Milky bar, Smarties, Yorkie,Rolo, Quality Street, Munchies, Kit Kat chunky, Toffee Crisp and Dairy Box) and Lindt – who even offer an Easter Bunny and an Easter Sheep. Even Ferrero have Easter eggs and Easter bunnies. Kinder and Haribo, while they don’t offer Easter eggs, do offer other ‘Easter’ products, such as bunnies, figures, pouches and mini hunts. Even Tescos has a range of Easter eggs (N.B. their Gin and Elderflower egg is not sold as an ‘Easter’ egg). I think there are some pretty big names in the chocolate industry there.

Top marks, Eggy. I do like a quick learner! Getting back to Easter eggs, I think the word 'Easter' should have been removed years ago and it should have been replaced by 'New Year'. How can anybody legitimately call a chocolate egg an 'Easter egg' when it appears like clockwork on January 2nd every year!

I'm pigeonholed as a 'Guardianista', despite tha fact that I read not one but two daily nationals - one left of centre and one right of centre - and neither of them is even British! Take the pigeonholing for what it is, Steve, wild, uninformed guesswork with an underlying argumentum ad hominem thrown in for good measure.

Why do people automatically assume that the use of quotation marks/inverted commas indicate that the words they enclose must be a quotation of something previously said or written? I think the problem lies in the name – quotation marks. According to MLA (2.2.8) The quotation mark/inverted comma, single or double, has several other uses, among them: placement around translations of foreign words or phrases: Example;The word idiot is derived from the Latin word idiõta ‘ignorant person’. placement around words or phrases used in a special sense or purposefully misused: Example; In terminally PC Sweden they skirt around this and call them “exclusion areas”. These “exclusion areas” multiply by the week. Tell us exactly what is “excluded” from them please? Thanks for the example sentences 3g. Steve’s use of single inverted commas falls clearly into the latter category.

Pigeonholing people is what the left do, and certainly not me! Because of this they do exactly what you do above: rather than tackling ideas which they can't handle they go in for ad hominem attacks. I thought it was hilarious! It must be one of the all time classic greats on here!

Don't know about Merc, but I get round it by avoiding those contracts like the plague!

MLA used here, Merc, where letters versus numerals is related to the number of words required to express the number. Numbers requiring one or two words (one, fifteen, twenty-one, forty-five, one thousand etc.) are written as words while more than two words requires expression in numerals (121 - instead of one hundred and twenty-one, 1 340 instead of one thousand three hundred and forty etc.). Mind you, it also advises the use of a hyphen to separate two-word constructions but I'm not so fussy about that and neither are my clients. It's a complex (and interesting) business!

One learns something new every day, does one not! How is it with twenty one, thirty one and so on(e)?

... also many examples of text written with all vowels removed. Still perfectly understandable though - if things are working up top. One has to agree.

Sadly, we didn't get to Peru last April as hubby was locked in a lead-lined room radiating becquerels and probably glowing in the dark. I can't say for sure as visiting wasn't allowed. However, all being well, it's on the cards for this autumn or next spring.

Yes, but these need to be kept under one's hat and I wouldn't dream of getting my incandescent purple hat claggy with marmalade.

Quite! Spelling, and I'm being serious here, is the least important property of a word. Of a word's form, function and semantic content it's not the form of the word that conveys information to the reader. Speach, even in its written form, is about communication and It takes a great many spelling errors and/or typos before communication is lost to the average native speaker (assuming that they still have a couple of grey cells functioning up top). I tend to see spelling errors as no more that contributions to an ever present and ongoing language change. The more narrow-minded tend to see them as language decay. It's an interesting debate.

L’enfant qui est aimé a plusiers noms. Non? I answer to most names.

Same here!

I don't wish to be pedantic or anything but would that be the same as liminality? You can't go missing out letters here, there and everywhere. It upsets the natives.

Complete wuss is a perfect description! This one is too.

Bernese sennenhund? Babysit an 8 year-old 3 days a week. Lovely dog. I don't think the young lady will be lifting it like that in a year or so!

Yet another of my endearing qualities! I'm pedantic as well, apparently! We all have our cross to bear. Just a pity yours is made of lead. Certainly! Always nice to be able to put a face to a name.