posted December 21, 2005 03:18 PM         

.. mmmmmm ..
.. can i pretty please .. be excused from that endeavor ..
untill after this tSaturn to nMerc .. has passed ?? ...

.. have thought over it many a 'time ....

.. got to word it properly .. as i could very well end up
offending folk either side of the great big pond ....

.. then i'd no doubt be ostracized to the mid-atlantic ..

( the idea of ferdinand treading water .. all four legs!!
actualy .. water buffalo don't do too badly with that ..
given the odd crocodile here and there .. )

anyhow .. mid-atlantic .. .. well have always felt a bit drawn
towards checking out Iceland ...

posted December 22, 2005 12:23 AM         

.....for....

Charles Dickens
The Bronte Sisters
Jane Austen
Victoria Holt

Princess Diana

Vivien Leigh
Laurence Olivia

Englebert Humperdinck
Tom Jones

ARE YOU BEING SERVED
WAITING FOR GOD
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

....and of course Monty Python and the Beatles....who have already been mentioned.....(not to forget Mick Jagger...)

....and there's so much more....I know I lived there in my last life...and my mom's ancestors are all from England....

posted December 22, 2005 12:35 AM         

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

About The Book

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

Praise

"Painfully funny and genuinely insightful...Bryson has never been wittier or more endearing."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Wonderfully droll...Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Bill Bryson makes writing look too easy."
--USA Today

"A cross between de Tocqueville and Dave Barry, Bryson writes about today's America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny."
--San Francisco Examiner

"Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud."
--Chicago Sun-Times

----------------------------

posted December 29, 2005 02:42 PM         

saw this on the news this eve ...

.. yep ..the following link made uk channel 5 holiday news ....

so .. for Single Gals looking for a possible Male matchup plus that countryside living .. ... LooKeee at this link .. .. hey .. could turn out to be a neat 2006 ...

.... it be a u.k. link http://www.villagesincrisis.tk/

A.G. .. hi ... i keep meaning to get a copy of that book .. cheers for reminder
.. am fairly sure he did a tv series .. or a tv series relating somehow to his writing .. about the british isles .. ... t' was very enjoyable viewing