Yes, mine's a scotch, please. No, Nell! I've never vomited into someone's lap, never, never, never. Or had it happen to me. I've never actually read the poem that has 'not waving but drowning' in it, bless you for posting it. And me, I'm WAVING NOT DROWNING, at least for the time being. Floundering around in the water though, I'll confess to a bit of frantic doggy paddle in this posting.

Hi Ellie, being a very LITERAL woman, I always read postings exactly as they come, (re Nell laughing at me vomiting). And I'll have ice in my scotch, please, and can you make that a double?

The poem was/is used as the theme for a govenrment safety advert for the coastguard

as for reading and taking things literaly I have the habit of seeing things slightly differently and being able to make humour out of them but being a Gentleman I wont draw attention to becca and her Doggy paddle oh sorry just have .......

I had better just wave before I drown and vanish back under the waves my god is that an Ice cube and yet I can still see The palace and west Piers so much for global warrming

...staggers in carrying a tray of assorted drinks, a copy of War and Peace, Forever Amber and Beano..with a life raft tucked under my arm... mine's the strong coffee by the way

Ellie

<Added>

...oh and a cloth just in case, Becca :)

I think perhaps abucket may be more useful but perhaps just a tad less discrete

I'll catch up with you later David about the cryptic ref to doggy paddle. But on being 'literal' and talking about the meaning of things, and the meaning of the meaning of things, for a long time I did not understand the meaning of 'LOL.'
I first came across it in a terse email conversation on another writing web-site, (the kind that makes this one a sanctuary), with a girl whose name I had taken to be Chrissie. So when she began to sign her name 'LOL' I was ever so slightly disturbed. (I was at that stage hardly infected at all with the Paranoia virus that many otherwise healthy modern people carry). Either, she was allowing me to view her special nickname, perhaps as a way of acknowledging that her retorts to me were very bitchy, and that she wasn't really like that at all, something I could realise for myself if only I'd be co-operative, or, and to judge by the tone of her writing, she was demonstrating her ability to shape-shift at will into a new identity that I knew nothing of.
Another thought struck me. There were two of them! Evil Chrissie and her slimy co-hort 'LOL'. They were in it together, her and Lolly. But search as I might, I could not in all honesty detect even the slightest tremour of evil in her words. Even the joining words 'but,' 'if,'when,' where evil could be so cleverly hidden, seemed innocent.
The following morning I had a brainwave and eureka-ed the mystery. 'LOL' was an abbreviation, - a long idea hidden in a short almost cavewoman like exclamation. It was my task to unravel the true meaning.
Not for a second did I consider asking Chrissie to enlighten me because it would have revealled my ignorance, and thus given her a decided advantage if she had been evilly included towards me. At this stage I had forgotten some simple facts about myself,- that I was non-religious, non-political, non-classist, non-confrontational, non- married,(and non-inclined to be). In fact I was non-mons, (for those of you who have read Matherson's lovely writing). A non-entity.
These were the full versions of 'LOL' that I came up with during the day, a day when I barely stopped for a whiskey and a cigar through all the long tense hours:
Loads of lentils, (Chrissie had become associated in my head with Indian bedspreads made hastily into skirts).
Loads of love, (No, seemed very unlikely).
Loads of lies,[.. I'm telling you, but you're too thick to realise it], (Now, that seemed possible).
Maybe it was worse, 'Lurch off Lady!' or 'Let out the loonies!' Was it perhaps the obscure Latvian curse 'Leeches on your legs!'
In the following weeks however I noticed that 'LOL' seemed to crop up everywhere in the more light-hearted emails of people I knew had not chosen me as their victim, (or in modern speech, 'projection object'. It was then that the true meaning came to me, 'Lick our labia,'(our being the royal useage) - No, I'm lying now, the true meaning was 'laughed out loud.'
So I moved through the rite of passage decked only in a cocoon of banana leaves and wearing the great hanging phallic flower like a scarf around my neck, and became a fully fledged, if slightly odd, member of the virtual community. Although I confess to retaining still, a literalness that I suspect will always be potentially troublesome, like a winter coat that through some gastly curse cannot be removed in summer. But then as a colleague of mine used to say, over a bottle of Kenyan beer, or nine, 'If you go running to Mr Danger, don't then come crying to me the next day, lady.'

By the way, I don't know how that little yellow blobby thing got into my above rabbit. I didn't put the bugger there.

That did amuse me..!

rofl...?

Becca -
I received one of the smiley faces inserted in one of my messages, too. It came in a suitable place, as yours did. Is there an editor somewhere, quickly slipping in a expressive symbol for us? Mine also came at after an inveted comma and before a fullstop. There's a bug in the system, I think. JohnK.

I think the smiley face happens if you accidentally hit a key somewhere to the right - I ended up with a couple and David removed them after seeing my 'Oh God' in my next post. Some clever people (Ellie and Andrew) know how to place them correctly - the thought of using one deliberately myself scares me a little.

Becca, your post has set me off again - laughter is the best medicine, so thanks for that, and I'm soooooo glad you didn't think I was being sarcastic before.

David, come back to Brighton, we need your gentle humour. Don't you just love Stevie Smith?

Ellie, you're an angel, a pourer of gin on troubled waters, and what was all the fuss about anyway?

Tweed, sorry (number 4} for calling Jilly Cooper non-lit. Washed the ashes off first thing this morning and feel better now. Will discard sackcloth later.

Becca firstly in response to your LOL I LMAO and FoFL

ref Doggy paddles perhaps I may hold you to that

Nell I'LL be back ( perhaps we could arrange a soiree in Brighton for like minded persons?)

I would very much enjoy I think revisiting Brighton at some point but any visit needs a purpose otherwise to wander aimlessly around The Lanes and etc bemoaning that things have changed for the worse or that things havent changed in 20 years and the place is a dump etc is rather self defeating.

does Rod Stewart still play the Regent as Rod the Mod?

David,

I never saw Rod Stewart at the Regent, I did see The Who at King's West though, and the speakers nearly blew my head off. More recently I caught Bob Dylan there too - an extaordinary event with oldies and kids alike there to pay homage to a legend.

A WW meetup in Brighton - now there's an idea...

one weekend then?

I've just butted into your arrangements, I want to go to Brighton too.

..oh yes I would too! can visit my son at sussex if he decides to go back..last time i heard he was heading to New Zealand..Jon? have you seen a dreamy guy wandering around??
Bonnie Raitt at the Dome was my last trip there .. a finer collection of 50 pluses in the audience lol..I have never seen..

Hope I die before I get old...

Ellie..