Symptoms

Yep, all aboard the tootoo ... fond memories. I've posted here before about getting to and from the Mayfair in the late 60s ... I suppose anybody interested could do a search here. The traincops at the Central Station didn't like us lads hanging around for the train and would chase us off ... we would then buy a platform ticket (out of a machine, maybe cost 2d or 3d) and get on the tootoo with that. Obviously, there was no gadgie at Morpeth checking tickets in the middle of the night. Then the tramp home through all sorts of weather, including once knee deep in snow and only wearing my hippy sandals.

I think we need to be cruel to be kind to fatties. Let's all commit, here and now, to challenge those piling their trolleys high with pies, crisps and cakes to look at the healthy options available to them. Something needs to be done ... they're even appearing on the telly fronting-up news reports about health issues. The irony of it all is unbelievable!

This is shaping-up to looking like 'conspiracy to commit a criminal act'. Sym is innocent, OK.

Yellow bellied custard, green snot pie, Mix it, mix it with a dead dog's eye, Mix it, mix it, mix it thick, And wash it down your gullet with a hot cup of sick. A verse usually sung at school lunchtime.

Oh no! Those Eurofools are proposing to make self-stuffing fatties join the ranks of the disabled. I think that's a terrible slur on the 'genuinely' disabled and I'm sure will lead to precious resources being snaffled off them and be re-directed towards the pie eaters.

Be fair Tony ... remember where the Tories get their loot from: crooked hedgefund bosses, crooked boss bankers, crooked boss businessmen, crooked pensionfund managers, property companies, posh fuedal landowners, mining companies, arms companies, crikey the list is endless!! And these are just the ones that have been registered. Tons of lucre shovelled in through the back door that isn't declared but recent leaks have shown the scale of the problem. Further kindness and support is offered to the top Tory politicos ... paid directorships when in office and even bigger trouser stuffing, via the lobby companies, when they leave office. Crooks the lots of them (including a sizable bunch of Blair's warmongering Cabinet).

Merc wrote: "I take it, Symptoms, you're not a fan of Sting!" Well, were to begin? Actually, I haven't got enough time at the moment to fully answer this but I will later.

Thank goodness Maggs, you've seen the light! You're not going to fund the Cramington Budgie Strangler's next warbling offer.

I must say that Blighy politics is really shaping-up to be quite fun over the next few months ... I can't really remember another GE season like it. We've got a truly Socialist party storming across great swathes of Jockoland putting to the sword the Labourjocks and JockoLibs and Fatty Salmond promising to come South to stir a real shitstorm. Eight Pints and a packet of Rothmans Nige promising his version of the Nuremburg laws on all those without Aryan English blood, whilst that dick Cameroooony doesn't know if he's coming or going being trapped by opposing forces within his party. As for that lot who should really be attending to the needs of the population all they seem to care about is matching the rhetoric of the right .... shame on them! Milliiiiiband should ensure that there's plenty of blue water between Labour and the rest so as to give folks an honest choice. Some here will continue to slag off the Left, some will continue to slag off the Right, none here will even bother to slag off the irrelevant Libs and the EU will continue to exercise many here. All good, clean fun. I've said it before here ... make your pack with the party which will more likely be of some direct support to you and your family.

All that photo proves is that the Uncle Tom Movement is alive and well - opportunists looking for the main chance or poor deluded fools being used or a decent Photoshop job. Throughout history there are well-documented examples of the deluded allying themeselves with those who really don't have their best interests at heart. We mustn't forget that the Nazis created their 'acceptable' face for the World by promoting the Theresienstadt concentration camp (making an infamous film of it, conning the Swiss Red Cross, then killing all the captives who were earlier complicit in the plan), and elsewhere in the other camps using Jewish Kapos to keep order and manage the gas chambers. The Jewish Councils in the gettos, with their Jewish Order Police squads, doing the Nazis work for them. Oh, and one last thing, you don't have to be white to be a racist.

I blame Thatcher for everything that's cruel and unfair in Blighty. Oh, and I blame her for the rise of that war crime thug Blair.

I think the kippers should be honest with 'the great unwashed' - they should just admit they don't like black folks. It doesn't matter how much squirming, wriggling, deflecting, or denying they or their apologists do, dislike & fear of black people is the glue that binds them together.

Another Cockney kipper caught slagging-off the good LGBT folks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30467897

Thank goodness there's nothing from the Cramlington Budgie Strangler. Wilko Johnson & Roger Daltrey's Going Back Home gets my vote ... turn the volume up to eleven. Raw stuff.

Blimey Foxy ... when I suggested watermarking photos I didn't mean like that

That 300 grand he's just bunged the kippers will certainly pay for all those swinger parties the ex-bosskipper seemed to enjoy with that ex-prospective candidate. I think Nige will need some of it to drown his sorrows down the Dog & Duck on Election Day +1

I do like the odd bag of crisps with my bait in the boozer but I only like the ready salted ones ... yuk to all those chemical flavour scabs. As to MrsSyms gravy ... only meat juices reduced in the baking tin to a thickish, but runny gloop (no salt, no gravy powder, no OXO cubes). Yummy, yummy, yummy.

But just imagine Mal ... had there been proper investment at the time it's likely we'd now have working 'clean coal' technology. Folks seem to forget that there's 200 to 300 years worth of RECOVERABLE coal beneath Blighty - stuff Putin, stuff shale, stuff imports.

Vic, I've just checked Multimap's birds eye view and I'm sure the shop must have been on the corner of Bowes and Thoroton. I also went through the balsa model making phase ... my first was a Stuka but for some reason on of its wings had a slight warp to it, maybe I'd put too much tension on the structure before applying the dope.

No salt in any of the cooking and none chucked over my plate ... apart from when I have chips (rarely) as these always need salt. It's funny, MrsSym is an avid viewer of all the cookery programmes on the telly where all the chefs chuck pounds of butter, lashings of cream and tons of salt into everything they make but when she attempts recipies it's olive oil, yogurt and no salt. When I cook I copy exactly what the telly boys do and it does taste better. Oh, I forgot to mention my Mum's Yorkshire puddings with the Sunday lunch and all the baking she did; she also worked full-time so I don't know how she managed it all. For years and years when I used to drive up to the Toon from London, maybe 4 times a year to visit my Mum, she always had a 'traditional' meal ready for me (an exact copy of the boyhood Sunday lunch with lashings of gravy over the top but without the rice pud to follow as I'd bucked-up enough bravery to tell her I didn't like the stuff, so she always made me a lemon meringue pie instead) ... she'd spend a day in the Green Market getting stuff then the whole day preparing the meal for me.

Maggs - many here are of the generation brought-up on making Airfix models of WW2 planes and ships so know quite a bit about what these things looked like. I fondly remember spending my pocket money in a model shop in Blyth (I think it was on Thoroton St) buying these things. Our comics were also full of stories of daring do in the war and much of the telly was showing 1950 war films.

Symptoms current scoffing regime: Breaky (usually mid to late morning) ... porridge with a licking of milk*, followed by some 'rough' bread toast with a smearing of butter** topped with set honey*** Lunch (early pm) ... half the week I don't bother but the rest of the time taken in the local boozer ... bagette and cheese, a bag of crisps washed down with some ale. It's a good excuse to walk the woof to the boozer - exercise! Dinner (usually 7 ish) ... home-made soup**** with bread dippers (much to MrsSym's disapproval), home-made meat & two veg*****/tattie****** combo, washed down with a home-made fruit smoothy for dessert. Supper ... I used to have cheese on digestive biscuits with a side order of half a raw onion and a couple of tomatoes washed down with a glass of milk but I stopped doing this when I turned 60. I don't graze between meals, I don't have monster portions, no sugar in my tea, and no processed nosh is allowed in the house, plenty of exercise with the woof, hence the fine figure of a man you see before you (6'4" x 14 stone = BMI of 23.8 ... constant since the age of 21). * full cream milk ** unsalted 'cos I prefer the taste over salted *** the thick white stuff **** MrsSym's finest ***** Death by a thousand broccoli stalks ******variation of the tattie/couscous/Quinoa/brown rice As to my parent's scoff and the stuff they served when I was a nipper. Standard fare for the time ... I can only clearly remember Sunday lunches, generally meat & two veg with mash and roasties followed by something like rice pudding for dessert (funny thing is the rice pudding was usually singed). I do have fond memories of Saturday afternoon tea of Cheshire cheese, tomatoes and Ritz crackers served up while we watched Hawkeye and the last of the Mohicans on the telly. The grub was always fresh ... we had a large garden that my Dad grew tatties, all sorts of veg, eggs from our hens. Lots of tomatoes from my Grandad when in season followed by lashings of Granny's chutney made from all the green toms. My Mum was a good, adventurous cook whose Bible was Good Housekeeping's Cookery Compendium. She bought her copy in 1952 from the Co-op in Wallsend, as it cost 5 shillings she could only afford to get it on 'tick'. I still have this book and it's remarkable for its time with colour photos on every page of all the menues and flipping through it for this post I'm reminded of all the stuff she made (I've attached some photos of the cookbook below). Happy days. So, in summary. Home-made grub and plenty of exercise

Welcome reports today that Jockoboss Nicola Sturgeon is beginning the process of nationalising Betty Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's holdings up in ChillyJockoland. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2863796/Outrage-Scots-rob-Queen-2-1-million-vow-hold-rights-Crown-Estates-including-Tobermory-Waterfront-shore-windfarms.html

Guy, any relation to Micky Routledge?

So Nige is bringing the tootoo to Bedders. Vote kippers, vote kippers, vote kippers.