I've been spending some happy hours trawling through very old umra threads
- as old as 1996 in some cases - in search of some "Shards of TNMF" because
I'm not able to access any of the early mails that passed between us. I
went to look at it this evening and there is none of the early material to
be seen. I was in the habit of typing into the search "Robin Fairbairns"+
(word or phrase) and often ended up with an entire thread that had me
doubled up laughing. Now the only things I get from a search of his name
are about 4 from earlier this year telling about his death and funeral.
Other searches come out blank or with only a few relatively recent posts (I
tried Fludde because I knew there were some from the time we were doing
Noyes Fludde. Nothing there.)

What's happened? Anybody? I go to http://groups.google.com and thence to
umra. Umrats there all right, but my lifeline to the past seems to have
been suddenly cut.

--
Linda ff

On Tue, 27 Sep 2022 21:18:16 -0000 (UTC), Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com>
scrawled in the dust...

>
>I've been spending some happy hours trawling through very old umra threads
>- as old as 1996 in some cases - in search of some "Shards of TNMF" because
>I'm not able to access any of the early mails that passed between us. I
>went to look at it this evening and there is none of the early material to
>be seen. I was in the habit of typing into the search "Robin Fairbairns"+
>(word or phrase) and often ended up with an entire thread that had me
>doubled up laughing. Now the only things I get from a search of his name
>are about 4 from earlier this year telling about his death and funeral.
>Other searches come out blank or with only a few relatively recent posts (I
>tried Fludde because I knew there were some from the time we were doing
>Noyes Fludde. Nothing there.)
>
>What's happened? Anybody? I go to http://groups.google.com and thence to
>umra. Umrats there all right, but my lifeline to the past seems to have
>been suddenly cut.

That is very sad :(

I searched for something there quite recently and certainly found posts
from the '90s.
Giganews seems to have held on to old stuff, I picked up a lot the other
day when I managed to mess up my umra-on-a-stick, though I CBA to get it
all.
The earliest from Robin I have at the moment is a pre-wedding thankyou
from October 2002.
--
Penny
Annoyed by The Archers since 1959

Penny <spam@labyrinth.freeuk.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2022 21:18:16 -0000 (UTC), Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com>
> scrawled in the dust...
>
>>
>> I've been spending some happy hours trawling through very old umra threads
>> - as old as 1996 in some cases - in search of some "Shards of TNMF" because
>> I'm not able to access any of the early mails that passed between us. I
>> went to look at it this evening and there is none of the early material to
>> be seen. I was in the habit of typing into the search "Robin Fairbairns"+
>> (word or phrase) and often ended up with an entire thread that had me
>> doubled up laughing. Now the only things I get from a search of his name
>> are about 4 from earlier this year telling about his death and funeral.
>> Other searches come out blank or with only a few relatively recent posts (I
>> tried Fludde because I knew there were some from the time we were doing
>> Noyes Fludde. Nothing there.)
>>
>> What's happened? Anybody? I go to http://groups.google.com and thence to
>> umra. Umrats there all right, but my lifeline to the past seems to have
>> been suddenly cut.
>
> That is very sad :(
>
> I searched for something there quite recently and certainly found posts
> from the '90s.
> Giganews seems to have held on to old stuff, I picked up a lot the other
> day when I managed to mess up my umra-on-a-stick, though I CBA to get it
> all.
> The earliest from Robin I have at the moment is a pre-wedding thankyou
> from October 2002.

I haven't had much luck there yet - can't get into groups.

I've been in rather a dark place this past month, after getting on with my
life contentedly; suddenly started grieving hard again roughly mid-August.
I remembered Robin said, a couple of weeks before he died, that although it
had "worked out very well between us" (like over 20 years together) he
hadn't been completely sure it would at first.

This quite shocked me and I started to trawl through early umra for any
indications of the change that came about both our lives in the autumn of
1999. To my dismay there's no evidence. He's happy enough to discuss that
his ex had thrown him out etc, but though the bond between Robin and me
became the most important thing in my life within ten days of my contacting
him, there's no mention of it on umra. Not just no mention of my name,
that's not important, but no sign of the excitement, the anticipation, the
fortnightly visits, the preparation for starting a life together in April
2000. All that might just as well have been happening in someone else's
life entirely. I know he was in touch privately with one or two friends who
are still here in umra, but he wasn't a very secretive person. So it's all
left me wondering where his head was really during that time.

No, I'm not really casting any doubts on his sincerity, or wondering if he
led a double life, I'm just puzzled. I think what he really meant was that
he wasn't confident that I would stick around, and my daughter suggests
that the reason he never posted about us during that time may have been
that he didn't want to jinx it.

--
Linda ff

On 28/09/2022 00:40, Linda Fox wrote:
>
snipperoo
>
> No, I'm not really casting any doubts on his sincerity, or wondering if he
> led a double life, I'm just puzzled. I think what he really meant was that
> he wasn't confident that I would stick around, and my daughter suggests from 1998 and another from 2002
> that the reason he never posted about us during that time may have been
> that he didn't want to jinx it.
>
I'm sure it was exactly that.

Coming back to your earlier question, I typed in fludde as a search term
and it came back with just 2 recent threads.

Then I added an end date in 2002 to the search and it came back with a
thread from 1998 and another from 2002.

So maybe gropes is getting a bot (TWATBILI) lazy and needs some
encouragement to look into the more distant past. Good luck.

On 28/09/2022 08:56, BrritSki wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 00:40, Linda Fox wrote:
>>
> snipperoo
>>
>> No, I'm not really casting any doubts on his sincerity, or wondering
>> if he
>> led a double life, I'm just puzzled. I think what he really meant was
>> that
>> he wasn't confident that I would stick around, and my daughter suggests
>> from 1998 and another from 2002

Ah, I wondered where that went and why I had to type it again !

>> that the reason he never posted about us during that time may have been
>> that he didn't want to jinx it.
>>
> I'm sure it was exactly that.
>
> Coming back to your earlier question, I typed in fludde as a search term
> and it came back with just 2 recent threads.
>
> Then I added an end date in 2002 to the search and it came back with a
> thread from 1998 and another from 2002.
>
> So maybe gropes is getting a bot (TWATBILI) lazy and needs some
> encouragement to look into the more distant past. Good luck.
>
>
>

On Tue, 27 Sep 2022 23:40:21 -0000 (UTC), Linda Fox
<linda.ff@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>Penny <spam@labyrinth.freeuk.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Sep 2022 21:18:16 -0000 (UTC), Linda Fox <linda.ff@ntlworld.com>
>> scrawled in the dust...
>>
>>>
>>> I've been spending some happy hours trawling through very old umra threads
>>> - as old as 1996 in some cases - in search of some "Shards of TNMF" because
>>> I'm not able to access any of the early mails that passed between us. I
>>> went to look at it this evening and there is none of the early material to
>>> be seen. I was in the habit of typing into the search "Robin Fairbairns"+
>>> (word or phrase) and often ended up with an entire thread that had me
>>> doubled up laughing. Now the only things I get from a search of his name
>>> are about 4 from earlier this year telling about his death and funeral.
>>> Other searches come out blank or with only a few relatively recent posts (I
>>> tried Fludde because I knew there were some from the time we were doing
>>> Noyes Fludde. Nothing there.)
>>>
>>> What's happened? Anybody? I go to http://groups.google.com and thence to
>>> umra. Umrats there all right, but my lifeline to the past seems to have
>>> been suddenly cut.
>>
>> That is very sad :(
>>
>> I searched for something there quite recently and certainly found posts
>> from the '90s.
>> Giganews seems to have held on to old stuff, I picked up a lot the other
>> day when I managed to mess up my umra-on-a-stick, though I CBA to get it
>> all.
>> The earliest from Robin I have at the moment is a pre-wedding thankyou
>> from October 2002.
>
>I haven't had much luck there yet - can't get into groups.
>
>I've been in rather a dark place this past month, after getting on with my
>life contentedly; suddenly started grieving hard again roughly mid-August.
>I remembered Robin said, a couple of weeks before he died, that although it
>had "worked out very well between us" (like over 20 years together) he
>hadn't been completely sure it would at first.
>
>This quite shocked me and I started to trawl through early umra for any
>indications of the change that came about both our lives in the autumn of
>1999. To my dismay there's no evidence. He's happy enough to discuss that
>his ex had thrown him out etc, but though the bond between Robin and me
>became the most important thing in my life within ten days of my contacting
>him, there's no mention of it on umra. Not just no mention of my name,
>that's not important, but no sign of the excitement, the anticipation, the
>fortnightly visits, the preparation for starting a life together in April
>2000. All that might just as well have been happening in someone else's
>life entirely. I know he was in touch privately with one or two friends who
>are still here in umra, but he wasn't a very secretive person. So it's all
>left me wondering where his head was really during that time.
>
>No, I'm not really casting any doubts on his sincerity, or wondering if he
>led a double life, I'm just puzzled. I think what he really meant was that
>he wasn't confident that I would stick around, and my daughter suggests
>that the reason he never posted about us during that time may have been
>that he didn't want to jinx it.

Being in your company together was enjoyable. You seeemed to belong
together, in a very comfortable way, and to generate an athmosphere of
well-being. I think the timetable of grieving for someone is very
varied and not sequential. I find sadness for family members lost
can come unexpectedly with unknown triggers.

20 years of memories is good to have and the down side is they might
make you sad unexpectedly. But one of the things I am sad about,
having lost my father when I was 7, is that I have so few memories and
there are things I would like to remember, like his voice. I have no
live picture, just photos.

BrritSki <rtilburyTAKEAWAY@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 00:40, Linda Fox wrote:
>>
> snipperoo
>>
>> No, I'm not really casting any doubts on his sincerity, or wondering if he
>> led a double life, I'm just puzzled. I think what he really meant was that
>> he wasn't confident that I would stick around, and my daughter suggests
>> from 1998 and another from 2002
>> that the reason he never posted about us during that time may have been
>> that he didn't want to jinx it.
>>
> I'm sure it was exactly that.
>
> Coming back to your earlier question, I typed in fludde as a search term
> and it came back with just 2 recent threads.
>
> Then I added an end date in 2002 to the search and it came back with a
> thread from 1998 and another from 2002.
>
> So maybe gropes is getting a bot (TWATBILI) lazy and needs some
> encouragement to look into the more distant past. Good luck.
>
Oh, thank you! So maybe I'll keep trying and see if it's just a glitch.
Once it was possible to search for isolated posts, with quite a complex
search page (name, date range, keyword etc) but now it's just the one
search and it tends to freeze up.

Cross fingers

--
Linda ff

On 27/09/2022 22:18, Linda Fox wrote:
>
> I've been spending some happy hours trawling through very old umra threads
> - as old as 1996 in some cases - in search of some "Shards of TNMF" because
> I'm not able to access any of the early mails that passed between us. I
> went to look at it this evening and there is none of the early material to
> be seen. I was in the habit of typing into the search "Robin Fairbairns"+
> (word or phrase) and often ended up with an entire thread that had me
> doubled up laughing. Now the only things I get from a search of his name
> are about 4 from earlier this year telling about his death and funeral.
> Other searches come out blank or with only a few relatively recent posts (I
> tried Fludde because I knew there were some from the time we were doing
> Noyes Fludde. Nothing there.)
>
> What's happened? Anybody? I go to http://groups.google.com and thence to
> umra. Umrats there all right, but my lifeline to the past seems to have
> been suddenly cut.
>
>
I asked a similar question in another place recently when I failed to
find an old thread I wanted to re-visit. Unfortunately, the answers I
got have moved off my machine by now and GoogleGropes doesn't even
acknowledge that such a group exists. Pah!

--
Jenny M Benson
Wrexham, UK

Jenny M Benson <NemoNews@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> On 27/09/2022 22:18, Linda Fox wrote:
>>
>> I've been spending some happy hours trawling through very old umra threads
>> - as old as 1996 in some cases - in search of some "Shards of TNMF" because
>> I'm not able to access any of the early mails that passed between us. I
>> went to look at it this evening and there is none of the early material to
>> be seen. I was in the habit of typing into the search "Robin Fairbairns"+
>> (word or phrase) and often ended up with an entire thread that had me
>> doubled up laughing. Now the only things I get from a search of his name
>> are about 4 from earlier this year telling about his death and funeral.
>> Other searches come out blank or with only a few relatively recent posts (I
>> tried Fludde because I knew there were some from the time we were doing
>> Noyes Fludde. Nothing there.)
>>
>> What's happened? Anybody? I go to http://groups.google.com and thence to
>> umra. Umrats there all right, but my lifeline to the past seems to have
>> been suddenly cut.
>>
>>
> I asked a similar question in another place recently when I failed to
> find an old thread I wanted to re-visit. Unfortunately, the answers I
> got have moved off my machine by now and GoogleGropes doesn't even
> acknowledge that such a group exists. Pah!
>

Pah pah pah indeed.

Er... I hesitate to ask this, Jenny, but you're not by any chance one of
those people who keeps emails for ever and ever, are you? You can PM me if
you don't want to post on here, but I am sure he said you were one person
he'd "told". He also spoke very fondly of visiting what he insisted on
calling Runty Weston (we went there in 2013 after doing Noyes Fludde in the
hopes of going to the horse place, but it had just shut for the winter)

--
Linda ff

Vicky <vicky.ayech@gmail.com> wrote:

> Being in your company together was enjoyable. You seeemed to belong
> together, in a very comfortable way, and to generate an athmosphere of
> well-being. I think the timetable of grieving for someone is very
> varied and not sequential. I find sadness for family members lost
> can come unexpectedly with unknown triggers.
>
Actually I'm pretty sure I do know what triggered it; there was a
particularly silly sitcom on BBC called Mandy, with Diane Morgan, which I'd
found on Netflix, and I was intrigued by the title song, which I found was
by Barry Manilow - not my usual genre, but there were lines in it which
seemed to chime with Robin's and my joint experience. In particular, I
don't know if you remember him posting about being all alone on the Exeter
by-pass coming home from being dumped by his girlfriend (posted in 2011 but
relating events in 1967)? He'd rung me a little while after and asked me to
visit him. After I'd been there 2 days he was saying he wished we could
carry on (carry on carrying on) - yes, he was on the rebound - but I'd had
a boyfriend in Oxford for most of the past year, and we had booked and paid
to go on a week's music summer school, which was a biggie for me, later
that month, and much as I'd have liked to stick around Robin, I couldn't in
all conscience go away with one bf if I'd already... Well, TMI, so - no.
And we'd been (loosely) an item when we were at school and I'd adored him.
You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, at the end when he's
about to get married and his real love shows up and they say "our timing's
been really bad, hasn't it?" It felt like that, I remember thinking NOW he
wants me :'(. We wrote on and off for another year and it just drifted and
we married other people. As yer do. I think that was the reason for the
speed and urgency with which we got it together when we found each other in
'99 (a whole nother story).

<cue violins etc>
--
Linda ff

On 28/09/2022 09:27, Linda Fox wrote:

> Once it was possible to search for isolated posts, with quite a complex
> search page (name, date range, keyword etc) but now it's just the one
> search and it tends to freeze up.
>
I think that is still there. This is the bookmark I use for UMRA:

<https://groups.google.com/g/uk.media.radio.archers>

At the top of the page there is a box labelled "Conversations" which has
two little downward pointing solid triangles. If you click the RH one
you get a drop-down panel that lets you specify the more detailed search
terms you mentioned.

Good luck.

On 28/09/2022 10:40, Linda Fox wrote:
> Vicky <vicky.ayech@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Being in your company together was enjoyable. You seeemed to belong
>> together, in a very comfortable way, and to generate an athmosphere of
>> well-being. I think the timetable of grieving for someone is very
>> varied and not sequential. I find sadness for family members lost
>> can come unexpectedly with unknown triggers.
>>
> Actually I'm pretty sure I do know what triggered it; there was a
> particularly silly sitcom on BBC called Mandy, with Diane Morgan, which I'd
> found on Netflix, and I was intrigued by the title song, which I found was
> by Barry Manilow - not my usual genre, but there were lines in it which
> seemed to chime with Robin's and my joint experience. In particular, I
> don't know if you remember him posting about being all alone on the Exeter
> by-pass coming home from being dumped by his girlfriend (posted in 2011 but
> relating events in 1967)? He'd rung me a little while after and asked me to
> visit him. After I'd been there 2 days he was saying he wished we could
> carry on (carry on carrying on) - yes, he was on the rebound - but I'd had
> a boyfriend in Oxford for most of the past year, and we had booked and paid
> to go on a week's music summer school, which was a biggie for me, later
> that month, and much as I'd have liked to stick around Robin, I couldn't in
> all conscience go away with one bf if I'd already... Well, TMI, so - no.
> And we'd been (loosely) an item when we were at school and I'd adored him.
> You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, at the end when he's
> about to get married and his real love shows up and they say "our timing's
> been really bad, hasn't it?" It felt like that, I remember thinking NOW he
> wants me :'(. We wrote on and off for another year and it just drifted and
> we married other people. As yer do. I think that was the reason for the
> speed and urgency with which we got it together when we found each other in
> '99 (a whole nother story).
>
> <cue violins etc>

Music always does it for me. I was in York Minster a couple of months
ago (did I tell you this already? oh, so decrepit...). I was going to a
lecture in honour of an old friend who had died just before the pandemic
hit in 2020, and was early enough to look round. A very good local choir
was rehearsing the Mozart Requiem, and it resounded wonderfully as I was
pottering round the altars and crypt, thinking fondly of my friend Bruce
and also of course of my dear Ralph, who would have loved all that. Was
managing really well until I came out into the crossing just as they got
to 'Et lux perpetua, et lux perpetua luceat, luceat, luceat eis'. Quiet
but comprehensive collapse of stout party. A lump still comes to my
throat as I write this.

--
Kate B

Kate B <elvira@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 10:40, Linda Fox wrote:
>> Vicky <vicky.ayech@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Being in your company together was enjoyable. You seeemed to belong
>>> together, in a very comfortable way, and to generate an athmosphere of
>>> well-being. I think the timetable of grieving for someone is very
>>> varied and not sequential. I find sadness for family members lost
>>> can come unexpectedly with unknown triggers.
>>>
>> Actually I'm pretty sure I do know what triggered it; there was a
>> particularly silly sitcom on BBC called Mandy, with Diane Morgan, which I'd
>> found on Netflix, and I was intrigued by the title song, which I found was
>> by Barry Manilow - not my usual genre, but there were lines in it which
>> seemed to chime with Robin's and my joint experience. In particular, I
>> don't know if you remember him posting about being all alone on the Exeter
>> by-pass coming home from being dumped by his girlfriend (posted in 2011 but
>> relating events in 1967)? He'd rung me a little while after and asked me to
>> visit him. After I'd been there 2 days he was saying he wished we could
>> carry on (carry on carrying on) - yes, he was on the rebound - but I'd had
>> a boyfriend in Oxford for most of the past year, and we had booked and paid
>> to go on a week's music summer school, which was a biggie for me, later
>> that month, and much as I'd have liked to stick around Robin, I couldn't in
>> all conscience go away with one bf if I'd already... Well, TMI, so - no.
>> And we'd been (loosely) an item when we were at school and I'd adored him.
>> You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, at the end when he's
>> about to get married and his real love shows up and they say "our timing's
>> been really bad, hasn't it?" It felt like that, I remember thinking NOW he
>> wants me :'(. We wrote on and off for another year and it just drifted and
>> we married other people. As yer do. I think that was the reason for the
>> speed and urgency with which we got it together when we found each other in
>> '99 (a whole nother story).
>>
>> <cue violins etc>
>
> Music always does it for me. I was in York Minster a couple of months
> ago (did I tell you this already? oh, so decrepit...). I was going to a
> lecture in honour of an old friend who had died just before the pandemic
> hit in 2020, and was early enough to look round. A very good local choir
> was rehearsing the Mozart Requiem, and it resounded wonderfully as I was
> pottering round the altars and crypt, thinking fondly of my friend Bruce
> and also of course of my dear Ralph, who would have loved all that. Was
> managing really well until I came out into the crossing just as they got
> to 'Et lux perpetua, et lux perpetua luceat, luceat, luceat eis'. Quiet
> but comprehensive collapse of stout party. A lump still comes to my
> throat as I write this.
>

{{{Kate}}}

Actually when I see the words Et lux perpetua I first hear Britten’s War
Requiem and then the Fauré. Last time I sang that (as soloist) was in the
70s for a student conductor who was later murdered.

You may have coincided with him: Bahram Dehqani-Tafti known in his college
(Jesus) as Bill? He was the son of the Anglican Bishop of Tehran and killed
in the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini et al for the simple reason that
they had failed to kill his father.

My predictive text keeps insisting I mean “perpetual”. Do you think Ate Lux
Perpetual is a Bristolian equivalent of swallowing Tide pods?

--
Linda ff

On 28/09/2022 13:46, Linda Fox wrote:
> Kate B <elvira@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 28/09/2022 10:40, Linda Fox wrote:
>>> Vicky <vicky.ayech@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Being in your company together was enjoyable. You seeemed to belong
>>>> together, in a very comfortable way, and to generate an athmosphere of
>>>> well-being. I think the timetable of grieving for someone is very
>>>> varied and not sequential. I find sadness for family members lost
>>>> can come unexpectedly with unknown triggers.
>>>>
>>> Actually I'm pretty sure I do know what triggered it; there was a
>>> particularly silly sitcom on BBC called Mandy, with Diane Morgan, which I'd
>>> found on Netflix, and I was intrigued by the title song, which I found was
>>> by Barry Manilow - not my usual genre, but there were lines in it which
>>> seemed to chime with Robin's and my joint experience. In particular, I
>>> don't know if you remember him posting about being all alone on the Exeter
>>> by-pass coming home from being dumped by his girlfriend (posted in 2011 but
>>> relating events in 1967)? He'd rung me a little while after and asked me to
>>> visit him. After I'd been there 2 days he was saying he wished we could
>>> carry on (carry on carrying on) - yes, he was on the rebound - but I'd had
>>> a boyfriend in Oxford for most of the past year, and we had booked and paid
>>> to go on a week's music summer school, which was a biggie for me, later
>>> that month, and much as I'd have liked to stick around Robin, I couldn't in
>>> all conscience go away with one bf if I'd already... Well, TMI, so - no.
>>> And we'd been (loosely) an item when we were at school and I'd adored him.
>>> You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, at the end when he's
>>> about to get married and his real love shows up and they say "our timing's
>>> been really bad, hasn't it?" It felt like that, I remember thinking NOW he
>>> wants me :'(. We wrote on and off for another year and it just drifted and
>>> we married other people. As yer do. I think that was the reason for the
>>> speed and urgency with which we got it together when we found each other in
>>> '99 (a whole nother story).
>>>
>>> <cue violins etc>
>>
>> Music always does it for me. I was in York Minster a couple of months
>> ago (did I tell you this already? oh, so decrepit...). I was going to a
>> lecture in honour of an old friend who had died just before the pandemic
>> hit in 2020, and was early enough to look round. A very good local choir
>> was rehearsing the Mozart Requiem, and it resounded wonderfully as I was
>> pottering round the altars and crypt, thinking fondly of my friend Bruce
>> and also of course of my dear Ralph, who would have loved all that. Was
>> managing really well until I came out into the crossing just as they got
>> to 'Et lux perpetua, et lux perpetua luceat, luceat, luceat eis'. Quiet
>> but comprehensive collapse of stout party. A lump still comes to my
>> throat as I write this.
>>
>
> {{{Kate}}}
>
> Actually when I see the words Et lux perpetua I first hear Britten’s War
> Requiem and then the Fauré. Last time I sang that (as soloist) was in the
> 70s for a student conductor who was later murdered.
>
> You may have coincided with him: Bahram Dehqani-Tafti known in his college
> (Jesus) as Bill? He was the son of the Anglican Bishop of Tehran and killed
> in the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini et al for the simple reason that
> they had failed to kill his father.
>
> My predictive text keeps insisting I mean “perpetual”. Do you think Ate Lux
> Perpetual is a Bristolian equivalent of swallowing Tide pods?
>
Hol hol....

I was in Austria when Bahram was killed - I didn't know him well. He was
rather later at Oxford than me and in fact I was in Austria at the time.
But in another odd coincidence, he was one of Bruce's (in whose honour
the York lecture was given) very closest friends. Bruce never quite got
over his death. I wonder if he was at that concert? It's odds-on he was.

--
Kate B

On 28/09/2022 12:00, Kate B wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 10:40, Linda Fox wrote:
ggers.
>>>
>> Actually I'm pretty sure I do know what triggered it; there was a
>> particularly silly sitcom on BBC called Mandy, with Diane Morgan,
>> which I'd
>> found on Netflix, and I was intrigued by the title song, which I found
>> was
>> by Barry Manilow - not my usual genre, but there were lines in it which
>> seemed to chime with Robin's and my joint experience. In particular, I
>> don't know if you remember him posting about being all alone on the
>> Exeter
>> by-pass coming home from being dumped by his girlfriend (posted in
>> 2011 but
>> relating events in 1967)? He'd rung me a little while after and asked
>> me to
>> visit him. After I'd been there 2 days he was saying he wished we could
>> carry on (carry on carrying on) - yes, he was on the rebound - but I'd
>> had
>> a boyfriend in Oxford for most of the past year, and we had booked and
>> paid
>> to go on a week's music summer school, which was a biggie for me, later
>> that month, and much as I'd have liked to stick around Robin, I
>> couldn't in
>> all conscience go away with one bf if I'd already... Well, TMI, so - no.
>> And we'd been (loosely) an item when we were at school and I'd adored
>> him.
>> You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, at the end when he's
>> about to get married and his real love shows up and they say "our
>> timing's
>> been really bad, hasn't it?" It felt like that, I remember thinking
>> NOW he
>> wants me :'(. We wrote on and off for another year and it just drifted
>> and
>> we married other people. As yer do. I think that was the reason for the
>> speed and urgency with which we got it together when we found each
>> other in
>> '99 (a whole nother story).
>>
>> <cue violins etc>
>
> Music always does it for me. I was in York Minster a couple of months
> ago (did I tell you this already? oh, so decrepit...). I was going to a
> lecture in honour of an old friend who had died just before the pandemic
> hit in 2020, and was early enough to look round. A very good local choir
> was rehearsing the Mozart Requiem, and it resounded wonderfully as I was
> pottering round the altars and crypt, thinking fondly of my friend Bruce
> and also of course of my dear Ralph, who would have loved all that. Was
> managing really well until I came out into the crossing just as they got
> to 'Et lux perpetua, et lux perpetua luceat, luceat, luceat eis'. Quiet
> but comprehensive collapse of stout party. A lump still comes to my
> throat as I write this.

Big hugs to you both from me.

Odd bits of music catch me out, too (although sometimes of a rather
lower-brow variety). Lovely song though it is, I can't listen to
Fotheringay by Fairport Convention, for example, without a moistening of
the eye. Nunciette and I used to listen to it a lot together when I was
about 16 and she was 13 and obsessed with Mary Queen Of Scots. It's
wholly imbued with her and reminds me how terribly I still miss her.

And just don't get me started on Tallis's Miserere nostri.[1]

[1] Which I always have to re-correct from Miserere nostril. Hey ho.

--
Sid
(Make sure Matron is away when you reply)

Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 12:00, Kate B wrote:
>> On 28/09/2022 10:40, Linda Fox wrote:
> ggers.
>>>>
>>> Actually I'm pretty sure I do know what triggered it; there was a
>>> particularly silly sitcom on BBC called Mandy, with Diane Morgan,
>>> which I'd
>>> found on Netflix, and I was intrigued by the title song, which I found
>>> was
>>> by Barry Manilow - not my usual genre, but there were lines in it which
>>> seemed to chime with Robin's and my joint experience. In particular, I
>>> don't know if you remember him posting about being all alone on the
>>> Exeter
>>> by-pass coming home from being dumped by his girlfriend (posted in
>>> 2011 but
>>> relating events in 1967)? He'd rung me a little while after and asked
>>> me to
>>> visit him. After I'd been there 2 days he was saying he wished we could
>>> carry on (carry on carrying on) - yes, he was on the rebound - but I'd
>>> had
>>> a boyfriend in Oxford for most of the past year, and we had booked and
>>> paid
>>> to go on a week's music summer school, which was a biggie for me, later
>>> that month, and much as I'd have liked to stick around Robin, I
>>> couldn't in
>>> all conscience go away with one bf if I'd already... Well, TMI, so - no.
>>> And we'd been (loosely) an item when we were at school and I'd adored
>>> him.
>>> You know that scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral, at the end when he's
>>> about to get married and his real love shows up and they say "our
>>> timing's
>>> been really bad, hasn't it?" It felt like that, I remember thinking
>>> NOW he
>>> wants me :'(. We wrote on and off for another year and it just drifted
>>> and
>>> we married other people. As yer do. I think that was the reason for the
>>> speed and urgency with which we got it together when we found each
>>> other in
>>> '99 (a whole nother story).
>>>
>>> <cue violins etc>
>>
>> Music always does it for me. I was in York Minster a couple of months
>> ago (did I tell you this already? oh, so decrepit...). I was going to a
>> lecture in honour of an old friend who had died just before the pandemic
>> hit in 2020, and was early enough to look round. A very good local choir
>> was rehearsing the Mozart Requiem, and it resounded wonderfully as I was
>> pottering round the altars and crypt, thinking fondly of my friend Bruce
>> and also of course of my dear Ralph, who would have loved all that. Was
>> managing really well until I came out into the crossing just as they got
>> to 'Et lux perpetua, et lux perpetua luceat, luceat, luceat eis'. Quiet
>> but comprehensive collapse of stout party. A lump still comes to my
>> throat as I write this.
>
> Big hugs to you both from me.
>
> Odd bits of music catch me out, too (although sometimes of a rather
> lower-brow variety). Lovely song though it is, I can't listen to
> Fotheringay by Fairport Convention, for example, without a moistening of
> the eye. Nunciette and I used to listen to it a lot together when I was
> about 16 and she was 13 and obsessed with Mary Queen Of Scots. It's
> wholly imbued with her and reminds me how terribly I still miss her.
>
> And just don't get me started on Tallis's Miserere nostri.[1]
>
>
> [1] Which I always have to re-correct from Miserere nostril. Hey ho.
>
Arrrr Bristle strikes again :)

--
Linda ff

On 28/09/2022 18:33, Linda Fox wrote:
> Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>> And just don't get me started on Tallis's Miserere nostri.[1]
>>
>> [1] Which I always have to re-correct from Miserere nostril. Hey ho.
>>
> Arrrr Bristle strikes again :)

:o)
I taught in Bristol for three years and a lot of the kids had strong
Bristolian accents. I loved the terminal L - especially when it
intruded into a word like drawing to make it drawlin'. It had to be
done, but I corrected things like "idel" to "idea" in written work
reluctantly. I never commented on it when spoken; it's a precious thing
which should be preserved, IMO.

--
Sid
(Make sure Matron is away when you reply)

Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 18:33, Linda Fox wrote:
>> Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>> And just don't get me started on Tallis's Miserere nostri.[1]
>>>
>>> [1] Which I always have to re-correct from Miserere nostril. Hey ho.
>>>
>> Arrrr Bristle strikes again :)
>
> :o)
> I taught in Bristol for three years and a lot of the kids had strong
> Bristolian accents. I loved the terminal L - especially when it
> intruded into a word like drawing to make it drawlin'. It had to be
> done, but I corrected things like "idel" to "idea" in written work
> reluctantly. I never commented on it when spoken; it's a precious thing
> which should be preserved, IMO.
>

Best one I ever heard was Cameral Obscural.

--
Linda ff

On Wed, 28 Sep 2022 18:24:03 -0000 (UTC), Linda Fox wrote:

> Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> :o)
>> I taught in Bristol for three years and a lot of the kids had strong
>> Bristolian accents. I loved the terminal L - especially when it
>> intruded into a word like drawing to make it drawlin'. It had to be
>> done, but I corrected things like "idel" to "idea" in written work
>> reluctantly. I never commented on it when spoken; it's a precious
>> thing which should be preserved, IMO.
>>
> Best one I ever heard was Cameral Obscural.

There's a nom-de-plume just waiting to be used.

--
Jim <http://www.jim-easterbrook.me.uk/>
1959/1985? M B+ G+ A L- I- S- P-- CH0(p) Ar++ T+ H0 Q--- Sh0

On 28/09/2022 19:24, Linda Fox wrote:
> Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 28/09/2022 18:33, Linda Fox wrote:
>>> Sid Nuncius <nuncius@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>> And just don't get me started on Tallis's Miserere nostri.[1]
>>>>
>>>> [1] Which I always have to re-correct from Miserere nostril. Hey ho.
>>>>
>>> Arrrr Bristle strikes again :)
>>
>> :o)
>> I taught in Bristol for three years and a lot of the kids had strong
>> Bristolian accents. I loved the terminal L - especially when it
>> intruded into a word like drawing to make it drawlin'. It had to be
>> done, but I corrected things like "idel" to "idea" in written work
>> reluctantly. I never commented on it when spoken; it's a precious thing
>> which should be preserved, IMO.
>>
>
> Best one I ever heard was Cameral Obscural.
>

My favourite is the man who was trying to buy a radio and wanted to hear
what it sounded like, but decided not to buy when told it was a bad
areal for reception.

john

On 28/09/2022 10:39, Linda Fox wrote:
> Er... I hesitate to ask this, Jenny, but you're not by any chance one of
> those people who keeps emails for ever and ever, are you? You can PM me if
> you don't want to post on here, but I am sure he said you were one person
> he'd "told". He also spoke very fondly of visiting what he insisted on
> calling Runty Weston (we went there in 2013 after doing Noyes Fludde in the
> hopes of going to the horse place, but it had just shut for the winter)

Well (don't get your hopes up) I am one of those people and would have
all the e-mails I had from Robin (who was wonderfully kind to me when I
really needed it) except for the fact that my C drive collapsed and died
a few years ago and I lost the entire contents of Thunderbird.

I have good memories of Robin and his son visiting me in Runty Weston.

--
Jenny M Benson
Wrexham, UK

Jenny M Benson <NemoNews@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> On 28/09/2022 10:39, Linda Fox wrote:
>> Er... I hesitate to ask this, Jenny, but you're not by any chance one of
>> those people who keeps emails for ever and ever, are you? You can PM me if
>> you don't want to post on here, but I am sure he said you were one person
>> he'd "told". He also spoke very fondly of visiting what he insisted on
>> calling Runty Weston (we went there in 2013 after doing Noyes Fludde in the
>> hopes of going to the horse place, but it had just shut for the winter)
>
> Well (don't get your hopes up) I am one of those people and would have
> all the e-mails I had from Robin (who was wonderfully kind to me when I
> really needed it) except for the fact that my C drive collapsed and died
> a few years ago and I lost the entire contents of Thunderbird.
>
> I have good memories of Robin and his son visiting me in Runty Weston.
>
>

Nugger. You have of course memorised them all, no?

I hadn’t realised Sam went to Runty Weston as well. Very pleasant boy
(well, boy? he’s nearer 50 than 40 now.) I had lunch with him this week.

You have mail (soon, if I can get it to work)

--
Linda ff

Delighted to say that as of this morning the Google groups archive was up
and running, as far back as 1996 (gawd, that’s more than a quarter of a
century!) so I have been wasting a lot of today reading ancient threads,
enjoying the breadth of the wisdom of umra - most of you were already there
even then! - gaining just a little insight into the life of my funny furry
husband before we reunited (really not many clues, he was very inscrutable,
but a huge amount of computer techiness, obviously, of which even now I
understand scarcely a word), but loads of IRTAs, TWATBILIs, punthreads
galore - particularly one with Songs for Pigs, and the crowning glory,
Robin Somes’ wonderful Manual Intestine posts: worth a visit. Is there a
simple way to save these?

Is BUMRA still accessible?
--
Linda ff

On 02/10/2022 20:48, Linda Fox wrote:
> Delighted to say that as of this morning the Google groups archive was up
> and running, as far back as 1996 (gawd, that’s more than a quarter of a
> century!)

Gosh, yes! I found my very first post!

particularly one with Songs for Pigs, and the crowning glory,
> Robin Somes’ wonderful Manual Intestine posts: worth a visit. Is there a
> simple way to save these?
>
> Is BUMRA still accessible?

A totally simplistic way would be to find each post you want to save and
"Print" to a PDF file, but I wouldbn't be at all surprised if some
techwizzrat can come up with a better solution.
--
Jenny M Benson

Jenny M Benson <NemoNews@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> On 02/10/2022 20:48, Linda Fox wrote:
>> Delighted to say that as of this morning the Google groups archive was up
>> and running, as far back as 1996 (gawd, that’s more than a quarter of a
>> century!)
>
> Gosh, yes! I found my very first post!
>
> particularly one with Songs for Pigs, and the crowning glory,
>> Robin Somes’ wonderful Manual Intestine posts: worth a visit. Is there a
>> simple way to save these?
>>
>> Is BUMRA still accessible?
>
> A totally simplistic way would be to find each post you want to save and
> "Print" to a PDF file, but I wouldbn't be at all surprised if some
> techwizzrat can come up with a better solution.

Ok, sounds like resurrection may be called for here so, to start the ball
rolling:

‘We’ll meet a swine’.

And of course:

McArthur Pork.

--
Toodle Pip, Mike McMillan