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I don't really have a talent for poetry, though I did win a prize in a contest I didn't know I'd entered ! Our English teacher asked us to write a poem about Sundays in the country. I forgot, remembered at bedtime, wrote something in half an hour and handed it in.
Poems from all over the school were entered into this competition run by the Hethersett Society. I got a phone call one day, during half term, asking if I wanted to come to the Society's meeting the next day and receive my prize. Er.....what prize ?
I got a £2.50 book token and managed to win a box of After Eight mints in the quiz. As it had been my birthday three days before, I had pounds of chocolates ! They all got eaten :)
Jon, I am supremely impressed. I bow down before you in awe. I ramble on a bit about how talented you are and give you a swollen head.
Gotta ask. Are you an ex-pat Aussie now defected to England? Or one of those English backpackers who come down here, complain about the weather and earn money by picking all the fruit, therefore taking jobs that honest Aussie bludgers wouldn't touch with a barge pole?
I deny all associations with Horse-trailier. Never been (always wanted to). Don't watch soap operas of any kind. I'm just well-read, and as a Rugby League fan I suppose I've picked up a certain amount of Aussie culture by osmosis.
As for the pome, I can rattle of that sort of stuff by the yard (given a spark), and with a swift change of accent and a false moustache it could just as easily be Robert Service or Rudyard Kipling as Banjo Patterson.
I have entirely too much free time on my hands.
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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
I'd always heard it as Speck Ops myself, and that's also how it's pronounced on the audiobook version of LIAGB I've been listening to.
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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith