See follow-up comment. He is old and slow (like me).
But he can still dream.
Sits by the front window all day, most days. Watching. Imagining.
10.03.2026 21:51
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See follow-up comment. He is old and slow (like me).
But he can still dream.
Sits by the front window all day, most days. Watching. Imagining.
That said, he's the most ineffective hunter ever. He's spent the last 8 years drooling over our squirrels. Chased loads. Never yet caught one.
As for birds, he hasn't a hope!
But he can dream...
I'm sure he'd love to meet your pigeons! πΈπΈπΈ
Had a couple outside my bedroom window last week, and he was fascinated. Sat and sang "ekekek" at them til they flew away...
Cat insisting on his right to sit on my tummy!
Oh. And a cat lover to boot!
My #NFC says hi!
Which lad?
Because they've grown up with Hollywood Robin Hood... and Sean connery popping up wearing a massively ahistoric coat of arms...
What? How dare you intervene with a totally... nice comment! πΉ
This (thread) is how sm always should have been.
Also love that Richard I mostly spoke occitan and Norman French.
And if he had English at all it was at best 4th, after latin.
Gammons hate it when you mention that!
Anchoress!
Fuck autocorrect !!!
The apostate? As opposed to the anchovy?
I have a bastardised occitan prophecy written for a longer novel.
Will add it here later... see what you think.
Ooo... i might come back to you on the occitan.
I love romance (languages). Eternally dabbling in Italian dialects. Pugliese. Siciliano. Napoletano...
And, not being Tolkien (!), i have appropriated medieval occitan for exchanges in a fantasy series I've been writing.
Really? I was totes a languages geek, and spoilt, because my school allowed me to roam.
Functionally fluent in Latin by 14 (most a-level bods were still stumbling along).
So, read widely. In Greek, i did mostly C5th attic. But also some homer, some NT.
In Latin, i tackled plautus (alone!)
One of (two of?) the biggest shocks came when i was let loose on NT greek.
Quite a change from thucydides and aristophanes.
But even more mind-bending was the realisation the NT came with footnotes: that scholars actually had different views as to the accuracy of the "word of God."
Ah! A vulgar student?
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Just returning to the "carthago delenda est" line... I don't know how cato worked. But if I made it my catchphrase, as he did, maybe to begin with id have opted for that word order.
Then, later, once everyone knew it as catchphrase, sometimes swap to "delenda est.... (long pause)...carthago!"
I am geek enough to enjoy (?) the fact that while the ablative singular for puella is "puellΔ" (long -a), the archaic form, reflecting PIE origins, was a very odd-sounding Β "puellΔd"!
Tbf, all manner of versions work. In school, you tend to be taught "classical" latin, which covers a very narrow window either side of 0 BC, and is very Rome-centric.
Whereas recognisable latin covers at least 1,000 years , and dozens (hundreds?) Of dialect forms.
Compare and contrast one of the finest opening lines to a speech from cicero.
"Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?"
I can see that working in english, except we'd likely START with catiline's name.
And that tandem is a master-stroke, adding an extra instant of tension.
Should be fine. As in, both are totally acceptable... and hard to know which is the real quote.
Latin does not require strict word order to make sense... so word order often reflects rhetorical intent.
Cato the elder was an orator and understood this... so may have varied it over time.
Love the Honest to Betsy channel, but this one is especially for Trump.
youtube.com/shorts/_GsAA...
Apologies for the pedantry, but if i were offering pedantry at Mastermind this would be it.
Was one of the last generation that actually offered Latin prose composition at S-level (which back then was the level ABOVE A-level).
And one of the last 6 in the UK to do Latin poetry comp special paper.
That feels literally correct... but grates.
I know you are looking to get close to 'Labour Party.' But maybe
"Delenda est factio popularis"
is a bit closer to the sense here...
You might add the Forever War to your list. Also a tour de force with the major reveal at the end that it was all pointless because {redacted for spoilers}...
Can a fence sitter be out of their depth? A ditch sitter, maybe?
But a fence sitter is more likely to find themselves too high...
Is that, like, a litter bin?
Why is she pushing it? On where?
Thank heaven the USA successfully avoided entanglements in wars in faraway parts of the world, like south-east Asia, in the 60s and 70s!
Ah. You know the film from which that gif is taken.
Makes me tear up, every time!
That sounds like a worthy ambition!
Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about that...