Hannah Shotbolt- An English Rose

[longdog]

"Camel" is one of my least favourites of the watchable ones but this is mostly down to the fact I can't abide Phil Silvers. Otherwise it's pretty good.

"Screaming" is certainly one of the contenders for third place in my opinion "We will explore Avery Avenue" along with "Don't Lose Your Head"... "Alez! To Calais!".

I think one of the best Carry On films is one that is not officially a Carry On but is in all but name...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Job_(film)

The films have been my go-to entertainment on Big Cigarette Night™ for a long while. You don't have to think about them at the best of times and they stand constant repetition when chemically enhanced. Well... The good, or even half good, ones stand repetition. With the exception of "Matron" and "Abroad", which are only tolerable when stoned or drunk, nothing after "Jungle" is worth watching. I've never got more than five minutes into "Emmanuel" which manages the seemingly impossible... Being worse than "England".

There is definitely a point at which the casual racism, homophobia, sexism and all the other -isms became actively offensive. The same point at which Sid's character went from being lecherous to being a border-line, or over the border, sex offender. Yes... Some of the earlier ones were offensive by today's standards and quite rightly would be condemned as such but... None of the main characters ever got more than half way through the film without making a complete prat of themselves.

[Albert Haddock]

Although I do love Screaming. "Do you mind if I smoke?" and "Frying tonight!" always raise a chuckle.

Also “foul feet smell something horrible”.

And features Harry H Corbett in the ‘Sid James’ role.

[wserra]

Philosophy, on the other hand, is just bald men arguing over a comb in pubs.

Iiiiiiiimmanuel Kant
Was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.

[longdog]

Although I do love Screaming. "Do you mind if I smoke?" and "Frying tonight!" always raise a chuckle.

Also “foul feet smell something horrible”.

And features Harry H Corbett in the ‘Sid James’ role.

See also... "The one that looked like that man Doris................................... That Doris Mann".

[NYGman]

Philosophy, on the other hand, is just bald men arguing over a comb in pubs.

Iiiiiiiimmanuel Kant
Was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.

This song used to go through my head in my philosophy classes.

"And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am.""

Was especially helpful.

[hucknallred]

Was there ever a scene in "Fircombe Hall" in any of the series, or was it "Fircombe Town Hall?"

Also is Columbus considered as Canon?

[longdog]

Was there ever a scene in "Fircombe Hall" in any of the series, or was it "Fircombe Town Hall?"

Also is Columbus considered as Canon?

Fircombe? That was "Girls" I think. I'm not going to watch it to find out.

"Columbus" is considered canon by the makers but not by anybody whose opinion really matters.

[hucknallred]

She's popped up with antivax ex PC, Author and sex tourist Mark Sexton.

[Pottapaug1938]

This popped up in my twitter feed about the doomed case at the ICC:

Comments are a hoot.

We're all going to die in 18 months apparently. I suppose that means I shouldn't buy tickets for Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour.

Well, it's getting close to the 18-month mark; yet while I do agree that all UK news does not make it across The Pond, I do suspect that, if most of the UK's population was to die within 18 months from the date of this message, I'd have heard about it somehow.

[Burnaby49]

I'm off to England on Wednesday for a five week pubbing trip. I'll look for the mass graves and empty towns. At least the M1 will be less crowded.

[Burnaby49]

Longdog wrote this over a year ago.

There is definitely a point at which the casual racism, homophobia, sexism and all the other -isms became actively offensive. The same point at which Sid's character went from being lecherous to being a border-line, or over the border, sex offender.

Being old and senile its taken me a while to respond. I know exactly the point where I gave up on the Carry On movies. I believe it was in 'Abroad". As Longdog noted it was the Sid James character who relentlessly, aggressively, harassed every woman he encountered. The movie was just an endless repetitive barrage of idiotic sexual innuendo. I bailed when the movie got stalled by James simply getting on a bus and going after the female conductor.

[letissier14]

At least the M1 will be less crowded.

The M1 will never be lesss crowded, regardless of the circumstances

[longdog]

Longdog wrote this over a year ago.

There is definitely a point at which the casual racism, homophobia, sexism and all the other -isms became actively offensive. The same point at which Sid's character went from being lecherous to being a border-line, or over the border, sex offender.

Being old and senile its taken me a while to respond. I know exactly the point where I gave up on the Carry On movies. I believe it was in 'Abroad". As Longdog noted it was the Sid James character who relentlessly, aggressively, harassed every woman he encountered. The movie was just an endless repetitive barrage of idiotic sexual innuendo. I bailed when the movie got stalled by James simply getting on a bus and going after the female conductor.

'Abroad' does have one good line. "A bottle of wine for each table with the complements of the mismanagement".

ETA: I forgot the best joke...

Vic Flange (Sid James): "Wine?"

Evelyn Blunt (June Whitfield): "No thank you. I tried it once and didn't like it".

VF: "Have a smoke?"

EB: "No thank you. I tried it once and didn't like it".

VF: "Strange..."

EB: "Not at all. My daughter is just the same".

VF: "Your only child I assume".

<kaboom tish>

[Burnaby49]

And the results are in! What results, you ask? On June 10th I posted this;

I'm off to England on Wednesday for a five week pubbing trip. I'll look for the mass graves and empty towns. At least the M1 will be less crowded.

letisser14 responded;

The M1 will never be lesss crowded, regardless of the circumstances

And he was right. We spent the five weeks driving in England and Wales and it was largely terrible, particularly in the north. The roads in the north and into the midlands were, in general, in very poor shape. I’d guess that, on average, we were delayed at least a half hour a day at one-lane traffic only repair sites. In Lancashire and Yorkshire and extending down to the northern midlands road repairs seemed to be the main source of overall employment for the populace. Driving in the Birmingham area was a total fucking nightmare and, even with a GPS, Manchester defeated us. Some of the roundabouts were impossible for neophytes like us to navigate with up to eight or ten entrances & exits that we simply couldn’t handle, traffic was too heavy and events just happened too quickly for us to respond to the GPS instructions and we’d suddenly be trapped in an exit lane to a freeway we didn’t want. The only areas in the entire trip that were actually pleasant to drive were the southern Midlands and East Anglia.

But we at least somewhat expected all that. My friend and I are both seventy-four and figured, after eight previous UK driving trips, we were getting too old to handle UK traffic so we’d planned a last big driving trip for 2021. Unfortunately covid set us back two years but we did what we could this year. The 3,240 miles we covered this trip were necessary to achieve our primary goal, to have a beer in as many of the pubs in this book as we could.

https://shop1.camra.org.uk/product/brit ... w-edition/

The latest edition of this guide was published in 2016. It identified 260 so-called ‘real’ heritage pubs. These are pubs whose interiors have been essentially unchanged since WWII. Based on our experience in this, and prior trips, I doubt there are more than, say, 220 to 230 of these pubs left. Pub attrition in general has been devastating and the heritage pubs have suffered along with the local boozers. We’d already done the easily reached heritage pubs in the big cities so this year we focused on trying to get to as many as we could in locations only reachable by car. Obscure villages in Wales, isolated pubs in the midlands, lone outpost in the far north-east.

We had a beer in 309 different pubs. Of this total 276 were new to us, the remaining 42 were repeats from prior trips. Of the 276 new pubs 86 were Real Heritage Pubs as defined by CAMRA. We also had a secondary goal, having a beer in Regional Heritage Pubs identified in this CAMRA series of nine regional books.

https://pubheritage.camra.org.uk/pub-guides

These books include hundreds of pubs that don’t meet CAMRA’s rigid Best Real Heritage Pub standard but are excellent old pubs in their own right. We managed to visit 96 of them this trip.

The overall totals for our nine trips between 2002 and 2023 are;

1,843 different pubs visited (UK & Ireland)
190 Real Heritage Pubs
161 Regional Heritage Pubs.

While we may come to the UK again I can’t see these numbers changing significantly. We’ve done our best to support your pubbing industry but we’ll probably slow down and just be tourists in the future, at best dabbling in the pubbing scenes in London, Manchester and Birmingham. A lot less stressful than a couple of dozen roundabouts a day or trying to find parking in downtown Manchester.

[Albert Haddock]

The 3,240 miles we covered this trip were necessary to achieve our primary goal, to have a beer in as many of the pubs in this book as we could.

https://shop1.camra.org.uk/product/brit ... w-edition/

The latest edition of this guide was published in 2016. It identified 260 so-called ‘real’ heritage pubs. These are pubs whose interiors have been essentially unchanged since WWII. Based on our experience in this, and prior trips, I doubt there are more than, say, 220 to 230 of these pubs left.

I think I've been to fifty or so of those.

[YiamCross]

And the results are in! What results, you ask? On June 10th I posted this;

I'm off to England on Wednesday for a five week pubbing trip. I'll look for the mass graves and empty towns. At least the M1 will be less crowded.

....

Damn, wish I'd seen that, would have been nice to meet up again in London or somewhere. Sounds like you had a good holiday, though.

[Burnaby49]

Still a chance in the future. As I noted it's time to slow down and smell the roses, spend more time lingering over beer in the Black Friar, quality over quantity. We didn't go to London city this trip. The only places we spent more than one night and just wandered about were Hull and York. York because it has great pubs and Hull for sentimental reasons. My mother was born and grew up in Hull and as a child she took me there at least a half-dozen times back when it was a rough and ready fisherman's town. This was my last trip to Hull so we lingered to do all the pubs I'd visited in prior trips.

[Burnaby49]

To show how little actual tourist activity we engaged in this is a list of the places we stayed at least one night. York and Salisbury are the only obvious tourist spots and we arrived in Salisbury about midnight and left the next morning.

Salisbury
Bristol
Pembroke Dock
Kington
Dudley
Birmingham, Digbeth
Walsall
Bangor
Birkenhead
Liverpool
Eccles
Manchester, Bury
Preston
Sunderland
Newcastle
York
Hull
Huddersfield
Rotherham
Halifax
Chesterfield
Burton On Trent
Peterborough
Norwich
Bury St Edmunds
Biggleswade
Hemel

[SteveD]

Some of the roundabouts were impossible for neophytes like us to navigate with up to eight or ten entrances & exits that we simply couldn’t handle, traffic was too heavy and events just happened too quickly for us to respond to the GPS instructions and we’d suddenly be trapped in an exit lane to a freeway we didn’t want.

"Look kids, Big Ben!!"
"Look kids, Big Ben!!"
"Look kids, Big Ben!!"
.
.
.
"Look kids"
"We know, Big Ben..."





So nothings changed then....
(rumour has it that their descendants are to this day, still circling that roundabout, entire generations having lived in that car...)

[Pottapaug1938]

To show how little actual tourist activity we engaged in this is a list of the places we stayed at least one night. York and Salisbury are the only obvious tourist spots and we arrived in Salisbury about midnight and left the next morning.

Manchester, Bury

How did you like Bury? One of my great-grandmothers came from there -- from the village of Tottington, I think.