BillF

Norma Winston Norma Major Major Barbara

The Gay Hussar The Jolly Waggoner The Happy Wanderer

Braveheart Amelia Earhart Richard Basehart

The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive Rambo Rambling Sid Rumpo

Bad Santa Bad Lieutenant The Bad Plus

Patricia Neal Stanley Crouch Squatty Roo

Still with Fitzgerald. Now moved on to the first novel she wrote, not from personal experience, but in a historical foreign setting - this time in 1950s Italy. Less impressed. Are we getting a stereotyped English view of Italy here?

Yes, "ship's chandler" is known here - at least among people of my age!

Giorgio Gaslini Electric Light Orchestra Steve Waterman

I think it's French for what we call DIY. Do you say DIY in the States, too? We do use that acronym, not really in an education sense (at least, that's how it seems to me). I think we would use the word eclectic to describe DIY referring to education. People use DIY here to refer to doing household jobs - such as painting, decorating or repairs - yourself, rather than call out - and pay - a specialist. That's how we colonists use it as well.

I think it's French for what we call DIY. Do you say DIY in the States, too? We do use that acronym, not really in an education sense (at least, that's how it seems to me). I think we would use the word eclectic to describe DIY referring to education. People use DIY here to refer to doing household jobs - such as painting, decorating or repairs - yourself, rather than call out - and pay - a specialist.

Mr Mxyzptlk Anna Gramme Antonio Gramsci

Doxy Newk Hawk

I think it's French for what we call DIY. Do you say DIY in the States, too?

Etta Sandwich Decca Aitkenhead Simon Mayo

Boo Boo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDHAo7xmIac Little Rootie Tootie Nellie

Coo Stark The Buffs

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/dec/26/buddy-defranco-jazz-clarinettist-obituary-john-fordham

Alec Bedser Charles Pillow Kipps

All the King's Horses All the King's Men Humpty Dumpty

Best of luck with Clarissa. One of my daughters is named Clarissa, though I've only read extracts from the novel. I was once on a badly planned course on the 18th century novel in which students were given a week to read Clarissa. Needless to say, no one succeeded. Fielding's Tom Jones, half the length of Clarissa, was more within my grasp and I've read it twice. My wife staggered through volume after volume of Proust in English translation, but still didn't reach the end. At university I got through a big chunk of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The prose style was magnificent. It took me many months to read Boswell's Life of Johnson, although it's not a particularly long book. I kept by my bedside and it was a great sleep inducer. A paragraph acted like a blow to the head with a blunt instrument :-)

Leopold Bloom Dubliners Mancunians

Ah, the beautiful Vitti! Ornette Arnett Arno

Happy Birthday