Alan Stubbs

Thanks! We hope things are back on an even keel for you after the floods and that your health is more robust. x

Ponting's been fined 40% of his match fee for spitting his dummy out.

Thanks, Lyn. I feel positive about life in general for the first time in years. Bernadette has been so solid beside me since I met her. It seems twee to say, but it's so true that I knew she was THE one as soon as I saw her. Funny enough we got to know each other because her daughter Sarah wanted to learn to fish, so it was a project when I was travelling to Liverpool on business. However, the the 4 year old had a sense of humour way beyond her years. She said to her mother 'Shall I tell all those people that they're wasting their time because there's no fish in the lake?' As I was relatively new to the sport, I took things in my stride and spent as much time teaching Bernadette, so she couuld take Sarah when I wasn't there. The rest of it is pretty hysterical realy. xx

Thanks from the three of us. Sarah has been telling her friends that I'm her parent for the last couple of years, so even that is a non-issue. I lay in bed awake all night listening to the cricket. Life just gets better and better. Off out to friends this afternoon for dinner - which Bernadette and I are cooking for them. They're elderly and the ice is dangerous for them. Strangely, we're really stupidly excited about it.

Merci, mon brave. J'ai besoin d'une guele de bois cure des maintenant.

The rivers I fish have mainly short, fast-flowing runs. As a result I tend to use heavy wire-stemmed avons. I also find them useful when fishing lakes at medium range in stiff winds and a bit of a chop. It may be unorthodox, but my catch rate hasn't suffered. Not that that says much!

J'espere que la nouvelle année vous apporter tous santé et bonheur.

Thanks, Steve. Even without a beer, life is good.

Erm...better than me.... and my step-daughter to be is good enough to teach her peers. The world is a good place, Leon and people as motivated as you to keep it so are to be treasured.. All the best to you and yor family.

Thanks Dave, I've been al over the place this week. I phoned Mum and Sue this morning, Sue's greeting was 'What do you want, you pain in the neck?' She's definitely on the mend! All the best to you and yor family.

Thanks Andy. We're really looking forward to meeting up with you again soon. Whether or not there's black pudding involved!

The issue between my son and I was the result of an ex-friend (and favourite honorary uncle) losing his grip on reality, and at a time of great upheaval chose to spread lies and venom. We are now enjoying open dialogue, each other's compamy and a shared sense of the absurdity of what we allowed happen. I learned that when a marriage fails, deliberately taking the blame for the failure upon yourself to ensure they have a less jaunduced viewpoint of the person they're staying with, is as dishonest as the person you're protecting declining to assme any responsibility. I'm obviously overjoyed at being able to commit to a relationship with someone who cared for me from the moment I moved to Liverpool and just gets daily more vital to be with, but to have heard Sue say on her relaease from hospital 'I will not let this sh*t beat me!' means as much. Sue and I are very close... I helped her learn to read after 49 years, and take great pleasure in hearing her read and give a critique on the books she's devouring. The local library, knowing of her situation, print her off a list each week of the books she's read for the year to date along with Sue's less acerbic critiques. I can advise that an ideal present for an allegedly reformed alcoholic when evicted for a litany of offences against his ex-wife was to send him a large cardboard box and a bottle of meths. Petty, childish, potentially dangerouus..... but the leasure was immense. Steve, I hope Santa brings good stuff!

I am simply as excited as a chameleon in a bag of M&M's

So that's where you got the sun tan!!!!!!!!! Have a great Christmas. A.

Berni was talking to my mother and she said 'I speak fluent French...... I surrender!' France isn't as bizarre a choice as it sounds, Barry. I lived in Paris for almost 3 years, Berni hasn't been abroad other than her native Dublin (a suburb of Birmingham!) though she loves French food, and Sarah is struggling with her French at school. Whilst I speak conversational French, teaching it escapes me. It means I can take them to all the places in Paris they've been reading about in Sarah's French homework, I know my way around and we've only got a week, we can pack as much in as we can.... and I won't need to be like Pierre the celebrated French fighter pilot! I've had a brilliant 8 year honeymoon already. It's all happening at once.... I collect my MBA in January, my son gets his MSc the week later (gotta rib him about that...even if he did get is 31 years before I got mine!) and my two closest friends in Liverpool both start new jobs after having been out of work for 6 months each. Please don't let the dark clouds back in!

As a result of having to move my seriously injured sister, I tore muscles in my back and aggravated a pre-existing tendency to sciatica - to the point where I had absolutely no sensation in my legs. The company nurse sent me to a chirpractor who was able to turn zero feeling to pins and needles At least that was what happened by the time I had left. As a cure? FOrget it... 10 weeks later I still have trouble in moving from sitting to standing or getting to or from a laying position.

I've not been posting as regularly as in the past, from necessity not design. I have a sister who was born with cerebral palsy and in October, she had a fall which fractured her skull in 3 places and caused some addional brain damage. My time has been spent commuting from Liverpool to Kent to help out in caring for Sue. Praise the Higher Power that she is well and truly on the road to recovery. It seems odd to say so, but there have been two clear positives arisen from this: 1) It has healed a toally unnecessary rift between my son and me, and we are talking and seeing each other regularly for the first time in over 2 years. 2) Bernadette and I have been a 'unit' for over 8 years, and having asked her earlier this year, and she having said yes at the time, we werent able to formalise the issue. I had a result at work, having done something to help a seriously distressed customer, she wrote to our senior management. I have been given £2000 in travel vouchers. Today I took delivery of an engagement ring for her, and after she has come to this year's Wingham Fish-In, we are off to get married and honeymoon in France. I want you to know I am a very, very lucky man.

Stevee, thank you so much for ensuring I will get a right earful from the management as I put this into practice!!!!!!!!! Seriously, thanks a lot - as an article is it really clear and easy to follow. Alan

As for backcross / hybrids being infertile, the school of thought as a schoolboy in biology lessons was that a horse/donkey cross is infertile - and called an ass. Or am I braying like one? Budgie, don't even go there!!!!! :-D

The simplest answer is probably the correct one?

...or a blaireau if he was a smartarse! I get to work whilst it's dark and leave after dark... in order to see any daylight, I have to take a walk during the lunch break. Failure to do so has frequently triggered bouts of depression and a lot of sadness for those around me. So I go walkies.

In Liverpool on friday night we had about 4" come down in two hours. I worked on the basis that in our road there was no breeze and I used a wooden ruler to measure the snow on top of the car 3.75" The walk through the woodland to work has been a photographer's dream - and a digital photographer's nightmare - trying to get even a modicum of colour to barely soften the contrast in the images, which are really breath-taking..

One of the main issues with dealing with journalists on politically biased papers is that facs make way for expediency. Propaganda is defined in some quarters as selling something on the basis of withholding salient fact. Something the Telegraph, Mail, Sun (qv it's coverage of the Hillsborough tragedy), and God knows, the morning Star. If unexpurgated fact was printed, it would enable people to make up their own mind.... but the newspapers can't have that...can they?

The propsed figure I heard was about 2% over base rate and it works out at around £20 a month. I found the comments on the programme about the cost of mortgage and children a little disingenuous to say the least. David Dimbleby did rather let the side down in his less than even-handed chairing of the programme. Mind you, he did the same thing when Nick Griffin appeared on Qurstion Time, when he let Griffin get away with suggesting there was an non-racist, non-violent sect of the KKK he had dealings with.