• ptmoore
      • hello Peter Moore
      • Username: ptmoore
      • In response to: "What do you do on the side?" Sleep
  • ptmoore's latest answers
    • No 'L'
      • 'Twas the month before Easter, and snug in my house,
        I worked at my PC, with keyboard and mouse.
        Producing a story with one missing part,
        Was the requirement which caused sinking heart.
        But a poem, or sonnet, or haiku might do.
        You be the judge now. Is it good, or just poo?
        There's no way for me to decide if it's nice:
        I don't think it's much cop. No way. No dice.
        So I think I should stop now, in case I bore you, you know?
        And besides, the time's getting on so I think I should go.

      • answered by ptmoore on 03/02/2010
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    • You're It!

      • Plinky wants me to remember some of the games I played when I was a kid. Trouble is, i can barely remember the rules to most of them. And I mix up which rules went with which games.
        British Bulldog was a game in which kids lined up on opposite sides of the playground, forming a human barrier. We'd take turns to run and try and break through. I remember that if you failed to get through, you joined that team, but I can't remember what the reward was for getting through.
        Off Ground He was just a massive game of 'It' or 'Tag', except you couldn't be tagged if you were off the ground. This game always started off sensibly enough, but as time went on and more people were tagged, it got much harder to find places to get off the ground. 8 year olds would become eloquent playground barristers, arguing that they were off the ground because they were balancing on a 1/4" asphalt pebble.
        Some games were very specific, geographically. My Nan lived in a cul-de-sac in Bournemouth for a few years and the kids in her road had a game, the name of which escapes me, which involved hiding and then sneaking back to touch the home base without being caught by the person who was guarding the base. I remember it very well as the base was always the cast-iron, Victorian lamp-post at the end of the street. It was a very tactical game. The guard could just hang around by the lamp-post, but then we wouldn't come out of hiding. Or he could try and find us to flush us out, taking the risk that he left the base un-guarded for too long. Whenever I was guarding, I'd go and look for people, seemingly for only 30 seconds and when I turned round I'd discover that every single other player had made it back to base without me noticing. Doh!


      • answered by ptmoore on 02/04/2010
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    • Terrible Uniforms
      • I worked at Sainsburys for a year or so in the mid 1980s. Mum quite rightly said I had to get a job as I was old enough to learn to drive and (more importantly) old enough to drink illegally in the Pelican pub in Addlestone.
        Unfortunately, I seem to remember this backfired on her somewhat, as I was (and always have been) terrible at getting up in the mornings, especially on Saturdays, so there were occasions on which she had to give me a last-minute lift to the supermarket at around 8am.
        There were good things about it - I was earning my first wages, I got to meet new people and I learned how to work a price label gun - and there were bad things; like the fact I spent most of my time collecting stray trolleys from around the parks and alleys of Chertsey, and getting locked in the meat freezer by the bullying butchers.
        But by far the worse thing was the appalling uniform. I think we got to wear our own white shirt, but the brown, nylon, flappy trousers and brown, nylon, flappy jacket were provided. And a smelly black clip-on tie.
        All that nylon mean that Sainsburys employees in the 1980s were walking, talking Van De Graaf generators. We lit up the night sky with crackling aurorae which would move Joanna Lumley to tears. Romances between colleagues were literally electric. If you fancied a girl from the produce department you had to ground yourself on a display of melons before leaning in for a kiss, otherwise you would produce a spark which would leap from your lips to hers, igniting the hairspray on her Lady Di hair-do and leaving her writhing among the greengages, burned beyond recognition, like Richard Pryor, Michael Jackson or that bloke out of Bucks Fizz.
        There was one advantage to working with such huge charges of static electricity. As any 'O' level physics pupil knew, it was possible to chain together several people. If you all held hands and shuffled your Clarks Trailfinder shoes on the lino simultaneously, the potential energy would build up exponentially. There is a legend of the day when most of the Saturday staff formed an electric conga chain: 30 people snaked up and down the household good aisles. As the chain crept up behind an unsuspecting pensioner, the tills supervisor made an announcement over the tannoy: "Mrs Baggins! This is the voice of God. I saw you slip that packet of fuses into your pocket. Now face your punishment!" At this moment the leader of the chain pointed his finger at the old lady's shoulder, in a manner reminiscent of Michaelangelo's work in the Cistine Chapel, and a holy bolt of lightning shot into Mrs Baggins's arm, making her drop her basket on her foot.
        Poor Mrs Baggins. She opened a spiritualist church in the town and preached to the faithful four times a week, imploring God to repeat his demonstration in front of witnesses. Alas, it was never to happen again, for shortly afterwards Sainsburys ditched their nylon uniforms for something less fashionable, but made of cotton.

      • answered by ptmoore on 02/03/2010
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    • My Favourite Galleries
      • A few years ago I stayed with my very good friends Eve and Keith at their home in Pasadena, California. A short walk from their house is the Norton Simon Museum. I'd never heard of it before, but spent a very happy day looking at the hundreds of exhibits of art, ranging from the 14th to the 20th century.
        It's one of the best art galleries I've been to, but there's one I love more and that's the Musee D'Orsay in Paris - where the art on the walls is not the only attraction. The building itself is fantastic - a former railway station terminus, in the grand "fin de siecle" style.
        If you're ever in Pasadena or Paris, you know where to go...

      • answered by ptmoore on 02/02/2010
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    • Nature vs. Nurture
      • What determines someone's personality more: genetics or the environment? I've always thought this was a stupid question. The correct …

      • answered by ptmoore on 02/01/2010
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