Buzzard

p.s. my real name is AA Gill. The above will be appearing in the Sunday Times next weekend but with fourteen other paragraphs talking about how fit my missus is.

I just had lunch there. Pasta with sausage. It was delightful. My missus had the risotto and that was also very good. The garlic bread was also top notch. They screwed up the drinks order but you sort of have to give new restaurants time to get their sh*t together.

It never occurred to me that it was Green & Blue that tried to gag the forum, on the contrary. I'm another lawyer, and I suppose this post was born of frustration because it's quite easy for someone like me to shoot a letter off to a forum like this and, because of the fancy letterhead, know that the recipient is likely to be too afraid to challenge me, even if the words are empty. My suggestion that you post the threats in that context was quite serious - it's a great way of levelling the playing field. I accept what you say Mark if this was not one such occasion.

-- moved topic --

;-)

I thought it was obvious from the above post that I do fully understand the difficulties that the admin team find themselves in - difficulties that are caused by chippy local businesses who want to shut up people like you and me. I find your response baffling and unsubstantiated, and unless you withdraw it I shall instruct my solicitors to issue an injunction against you from posting any further.

Reading the Green & Blue thread, it's sad to see that some shop on the Lane has written a threatening letter to the forum to put them under pressure to make sure that nothing about a certain dispute is written by members. I guess it's only natural that a small business like this forum has to err on the side of caution and bend to their will, but I have a tip for the moderator: publish the nasty letter there's no legal reason to not do so, and it will rightly embarrass the people who as silly enough to write them by the way, forum people: there's no law against - and certainly nothing libellous - about discussing a boundry dispute about drains. I am willing to put that on a certificate that you can frame.

Hilarious thread

gr8 post

Posters in glass chich?s should not throw metaphors

"This message was brought to you by Bassano Street Ripoff Gymnasium Enterprises Limited"

I thought I saw Amy Winehouse in there but on closer inspection it was a spoilt cabbage

I'm sitting tight until they drop their prices in line with every other gym in the world and then I'll be in there like a rat up a pipe

There's a place in Barking

I saw these amazing red lights shoot from the ground at an incredible speed, and then turn orange, yellow and green before splitting up with a loud bang and flying off in different directions before dying. It fair put the wind up me, I can tell you. But then I am a dog.

I wonder whether they do read this. If they do curse you

A pint of blood, sweat and tears for *Bob*, please barman

I wish I was that lucky. The stuff at the end of Bassano is a durge.

It doesn't take long for these places to start taking the punter for granted. It's the beginning of the end mates.

Wilko, Sean. We moved to ED because my previous flat was on a main road in the posh part of Hackney (ho ho) and escaping the noise from the traffic (particularly buses) was the prime motivation to come here. Give me the aeroplanes overhead anyday, but spare me the amplified drumming.

I intend to hoard tins of beans an can openers sufficient to last out the duration I hope I don't lose my opposable thumbs in the panic

It occurs to me that chavster might just be taking the mickey.

Believe me, Chavster, the knowledge that I only a phone call away from a professional rub n tug is all that keeps me from going crazy. Sean, not sure I get your point. Are you saying that I should shut up because I am privileged enough to have a garden? Is that how it works? Mate, It's not that much to aspire to, and hardly lifts me above the ordinary.

Nice work Dulwich Mum. Seriously, are there baby changing facilities? I couldn't find any and was so incandescent with rage at the staff that I couldn't bring myself to ask. Chav, I do think frog is derogatory, yes. But it's the French we are talking about. They are our sporting and cultural rivals, and although we love them and they love us, we also hate each other. During the Hundred Years War they called us the "Goddamns". Now they call us the "F*ckoffs". It's not racism or classism - it's casual baiting. It's about as offensive as a Spurs fan calling an Arsenal fan a gooner.

As I mentioned above, this thread was motivated not by crypto-racism that I had managed to hide behind my white guilt, but by the fact that my wife and I like to sit in the garden at the weekend without being disturbed by loud noise in the neighbourhood. I do object to Maurice dragging race into it though, because he seems confused as to what racism is. For there to be anything in his proposition that "It always amuses me how the most liberal can't quite bring themselves to admit they are complaining about a race-based issue", there must be an issue of race at stake. What is it? Is anyone seriously saying that black people are by nature more noisy than white people? Are they genetically predisposed to play amplified drums of a Sunday morning? Has evolution endowed them with a propensity to take all the parking spaces on my road at the weekend so that I have carefully to time my trips to Sainsbury's? I doubt it. If not, then it is not a race issue, there is no elephant in the room, there is no issue of liberalism or "political correctness" (whatever that means) to object to. It's sloppy thinking, Maurice.