Golder's Green?
And did you recognize any of those Yiddish terms from UK usage?
And did you recognize any of those Yiddish terms from UK usage?
to mjd, jim and all old antimooners...
Yes, Uriel - I really did recogniSe (sorry...I couldn't help it) a fair number of those Yiddish terms from UK usage. We do have quite a large Jewish population in this country, you know - especially in the larger towns and cities (including this one) - with the Golders Green area of North West London being the most well known - there are more synagogues there than Christian churches and Kosher food is almost obligatory.
Do you know of the actress Miriam Margolyes? As London Jewish as they come and such a talented lady of the stage and screen.
Also another one called Maureen Lipman? She played the part of a Manchester Jewish mother of two small boys at the outbreak of WW2 - in a TV play called "The Evacuees" (this film was included in my uni course on the social history of Britain). At the outbreak of WW2 in Britain the vast majority of young children were evacuated from all the so called "danger areas" - the areas most likely to be affected by aerial bombardment and air raid attacks - and they were billeted/lodged with people living in "safe areas" - mostly out in the country, and people in those regions who had room in their homes were, by law, forced to give these children refuge, as close to their familar home environment as possible.
Maureen Lipman's two small Jewish boys were evacuated from Manchester, well before the devasting air raids on that city began, and went to live with an elderly couple living by the seaside at very sedate, very non Jewish Lytham St Annes, in Lancashire - who were obliged to accept them in accordance with the emergency evacuation regulations and also by the very forceful billeting officer who was at the end of her tether trying to offload the two wee lads in a suitable home....the very last of her charges for that day, and it was already getting dark.
The Jewish lads confused the very staid English elderly couple with their Yiddish expressions, and the fact the meal the woman dished up for them that first evening consisted of pork sausages didn't help much.
The UK has frequently given refuge to large numbers of Jewish people (and others) fleeing from persecution and horror on the nearby Continent over the centuries, and this was the case during the Nazi regime prior to, and during, WW2. As did America, of course.
My immediate boss can be a wee bit of a putz at times.....not always, just sometimes....
Golders Green:
http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/regions/golders-green/
Do you know of the actress Miriam Margolyes? As London Jewish as they come and such a talented lady of the stage and screen.
Also another one called Maureen Lipman? She played the part of a Manchester Jewish mother of two small boys at the outbreak of WW2 - in a TV play called "The Evacuees" (this film was included in my uni course on the social history of Britain). At the outbreak of WW2 in Britain the vast majority of young children were evacuated from all the so called "danger areas" - the areas most likely to be affected by aerial bombardment and air raid attacks - and they were billeted/lodged with people living in "safe areas" - mostly out in the country, and people in those regions who had room in their homes were, by law, forced to give these children refuge, as close to their familar home environment as possible.
Maureen Lipman's two small Jewish boys were evacuated from Manchester, well before the devasting air raids on that city began, and went to live with an elderly couple living by the seaside at very sedate, very non Jewish Lytham St Annes, in Lancashire - who were obliged to accept them in accordance with the emergency evacuation regulations and also by the very forceful billeting officer who was at the end of her tether trying to offload the two wee lads in a suitable home....the very last of her charges for that day, and it was already getting dark.
The Jewish lads confused the very staid English elderly couple with their Yiddish expressions, and the fact the meal the woman dished up for them that first evening consisted of pork sausages didn't help much.
The UK has frequently given refuge to large numbers of Jewish people (and others) fleeing from persecution and horror on the nearby Continent over the centuries, and this was the case during the Nazi regime prior to, and during, WW2. As did America, of course.
My immediate boss can be a wee bit of a putz at times.....not always, just sometimes....
Golders Green:
http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/regions/golders-green/
Nope, never heard of either of those ladies.
Going back to London for business or pleasure this time?
Going back to London for business or pleasure this time?
Both Uriel - both! Hopefully not too long for the business side of it, though, but needs must in the shorter term if I want to further my career experience. I love my home city (and country) to be away from it for TOO long. I'm not a great supporter of the S(cottish) N(ational) P(arty though. It's aims and ambitions are understandable - but far too unworkable and "pie in the sky", to use an expression we mentioned before in another thread. English dosh is far to precious a thing to give up. ;-)
Maureen Lipman is now starring in "Ladies of Letters" - all about two literary ladies who conduct a long correspondence with each other (once by snail mail - now by e-mail) and setting the whole world to rights in the process, as well as other things. I will find a link when I have more time.
Their use of the English Language is both funny (in the amusing sense) and stylish in their own (updated) "Jane Austeny" kind of way. I'm not sure without checking who the other actress is. On the radio it was conducted by Patricia Routledge (aka the pretentious snob Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances) and Prunella Scales (aka the long suffering Sybil Faulty in "Faulty Towers" and loads of other characters) - both well known actresses over here.....ladies now in their 70s.
I once saw Prunella Scales coming out of a chemist's pharmacy (that's drug store to you) here in Edinburgh. I heard her say to the person she was with that she was looking for her husband - she had apparently "mislaid" him - the actor Timothy West, and mother of the actor Samuel West.
NOw and again I see well known faces knocking about the streets of central Edinburgh.
Maureen Lipman is now starring in "Ladies of Letters" - all about two literary ladies who conduct a long correspondence with each other (once by snail mail - now by e-mail) and setting the whole world to rights in the process, as well as other things. I will find a link when I have more time.
Their use of the English Language is both funny (in the amusing sense) and stylish in their own (updated) "Jane Austeny" kind of way. I'm not sure without checking who the other actress is. On the radio it was conducted by Patricia Routledge (aka the pretentious snob Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances) and Prunella Scales (aka the long suffering Sybil Faulty in "Faulty Towers" and loads of other characters) - both well known actresses over here.....ladies now in their 70s.
I once saw Prunella Scales coming out of a chemist's pharmacy (that's drug store to you) here in Edinburgh. I heard her say to the person she was with that she was looking for her husband - she had apparently "mislaid" him - the actor Timothy West, and mother of the actor Samuel West.
NOw and again I see well known faces knocking about the streets of central Edinburgh.
<<Prunella Scales (aka the long suffering Sybil Faulty in "Faulty Towers">>
I thought she was the CAUSE of most of the suffering!
I thought she was the CAUSE of most of the suffering!
Basil Faulty was the cause of most of Basil Faulty's suffering.
I saw a Documentary on Faulty Towers and it was it was modelled on a real Hotel, with a real Basil Faulty.
Torquay
I am not absolutely sure. Basil Faulty was a retired naval officer who was obviously not cut out for a life of service.
Manual, the much abused foreign worker was also in the press recently. The comic actor who played 'Manual' was abused on air by a Stand Up Comic - Russell Brand. The actor who is now quite elderly was upset as were a great number of viewers. The Director General of the BBC publically apologised and various people sacked.
There is a public debate in the UK at the moment as to what is 'acceptable'.
Mary Whitehouse is a name, who was associated with this debate.
'Freedom' or 'Licence'
Dictionary of English - licence <i>or</i> license Rremember that licence is the noun and license is the verb. In American English, however, the noun is spelled license. To remember the spellings, ...
www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/english/data/d0082350.html - 49k -
I saw a Documentary on Faulty Towers and it was it was modelled on a real Hotel, with a real Basil Faulty.
Torquay
I am not absolutely sure. Basil Faulty was a retired naval officer who was obviously not cut out for a life of service.
Manual, the much abused foreign worker was also in the press recently. The comic actor who played 'Manual' was abused on air by a Stand Up Comic - Russell Brand. The actor who is now quite elderly was upset as were a great number of viewers. The Director General of the BBC publically apologised and various people sacked.
There is a public debate in the UK at the moment as to what is 'acceptable'.
Mary Whitehouse is a name, who was associated with this debate.
'Freedom' or 'Licence'
Dictionary of English - licence <i>or</i> license Rremember that licence is the noun and license is the verb. In American English, however, the noun is spelled license. To remember the spellings, ...
www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/english/data/d0082350.html - 49k -
Manuel, not Manual. ;)
And I thought Sybil drove Basil completely off the deep end. He was no picnic, either, but she knew just how to push his buttons... like any good wife.
And I thought Sybil drove Basil completely off the deep end. He was no picnic, either, but she knew just how to push his buttons... like any good wife.
"The Gleneagles Hotel" Torbay
John Cleese stayed at the hotel in 1971 and was fascinated with the eccentric behaviour of owner Donald Sinclair.
Cleese later described Mr Sinclair - who died in 1981 - as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met."
Fawlty Towers - based on the Gleneagles Hotel in the early 70s
The Monty Python team stayed in the hotel while they were filming in Torquay. Mr Sinclair is said to have thrown Eric Idle's suitcase out of the window thinking it was a bomb.
He is also said to have told off Terry Gilliam for not straightening his cutlery on the plate after he had eaten.
John Cleese stayed at the hotel in 1971 and was fascinated with the eccentric behaviour of owner Donald Sinclair.
Cleese later described Mr Sinclair - who died in 1981 - as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met."
Fawlty Towers - based on the Gleneagles Hotel in the early 70s
The Monty Python team stayed in the hotel while they were filming in Torquay. Mr Sinclair is said to have thrown Eric Idle's suitcase out of the window thinking it was a bomb.
He is also said to have told off Terry Gilliam for not straightening his cutlery on the plate after he had eaten.
I forgot to quote my sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2003/fawlty_towers.shtml
There is more information on Donald Sinclair in Wikipedia
Donald Sinclair (hotel owner) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Donald Sinclair (10 July 1909 – 1981) was the owner of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, which he had acquired after an extensive career in the Royal Navy. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sinclair_(hotel_owner) - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2003/fawlty_towers.shtml
There is more information on Donald Sinclair in Wikipedia
Donald Sinclair (hotel owner) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Donald Sinclair (10 July 1909 – 1981) was the owner of the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, which he had acquired after an extensive career in the Royal Navy. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sinclair_(hotel_owner) - 24k - Cached - Similar pages
My error - it is in fact Fawlty Towers and not Faulty Towers. Basil Fawlty was the manic hotelier who was indeed, as Robin so rightly says, modelled on a real life hotelier down there in Torquay, Devon, England - on what is called the English Riviera owing to its generally mild climate, although a picture in one of the UK's national newspapers showed one of the palm trees lining the promenade* (that's Britspeak for the main road/esplanade running along the seafront of a seaside town with the beach on one side and buildings on the other, all facing the sea). English Riviera or not the branches of the tree were weighted down with snow.....so much for balmy oceanic breezes and the salty ozone air of the maritime South West.
Apparently Mr Sinclair was so rude, argumentative and confrontational with his guests that many of them began to take a perverse delight in deliberately antagonising him and actually kept coming back to stay at the hotel for that very reason...for the pleasure of being insulted by him and winding him up at the same time.
John Cleese himself, as Robin also says, was similarly drawn to the eccentricity of this man, but that's no surprise is it - there are elements of that in JC himself otherwise he would not have joined up with all the rest of the loopy Monty Python crew from the Cambridge University Footlights brigade.
I truly believe, as a Scot, that there is a certain type of Englishman who is, by nature, plain bonkers - mad as a hatter as the saying goes- but at the same time as shrewd and as lucid and compos mentis as the best of us. As Robin said - eccentric. Harmless, but doited, as we Scots say for bonkers. If Mr Sinclair kept having his guests returning year after year in spite of his manic attitude towards them then he was far from being a loser.
I'm not sure whether Sybil played a part in the root cause of Basil's behaviour - his attitude towards her suggested that she did and she did take delight in treating him like an oaf. There doesn't appear to be any mention of a Mrs Sinclair at that hotel in Torquay.
Yes, it was Manuel - from Barcelona. Que? ;-)
I like the opening scene to each episode showing the hotel sign "Fawlty Towers" made up of individual letters which sowetimes fall off in the wind and it's Manuel's responsibility to put them back in order again - or what eh thought was the right order. Sometimes the opening shot shows the sign "Fatty Owls" or "Warty Towels" - Manuel's English is not very good...
Connie Booth, who played Polly, the waitress, is an American as you probably know - her accent is quite Anglicised but she can't quite hide her rhoticisms - they "give her away". She was married to John Cleese at one time.
Correct anagrams of Fawlty Towers include:
Wow! Style Fart
Wet stray fowl
Wet stray wolf
Worst flaw yet (very apt)
Try wolf waste (the mind boggles)
Try fowl sweat (ditto)
Slow farty few
Few tarty owls**
*Pronounced as Prom-en-AAHD, although some people place the stress on the first syllable...anyway it does not rhyme with lemonade for some reason best known to those who have carefully and lovingly formulated our Language over the years.
**Does "tart" or "tarty" have the same meaning in America as it does here? Nothing to do with what you eat or what you taste btw - something else altogether.
Apparently Mr Sinclair was so rude, argumentative and confrontational with his guests that many of them began to take a perverse delight in deliberately antagonising him and actually kept coming back to stay at the hotel for that very reason...for the pleasure of being insulted by him and winding him up at the same time.
John Cleese himself, as Robin also says, was similarly drawn to the eccentricity of this man, but that's no surprise is it - there are elements of that in JC himself otherwise he would not have joined up with all the rest of the loopy Monty Python crew from the Cambridge University Footlights brigade.
I truly believe, as a Scot, that there is a certain type of Englishman who is, by nature, plain bonkers - mad as a hatter as the saying goes- but at the same time as shrewd and as lucid and compos mentis as the best of us. As Robin said - eccentric. Harmless, but doited, as we Scots say for bonkers. If Mr Sinclair kept having his guests returning year after year in spite of his manic attitude towards them then he was far from being a loser.
I'm not sure whether Sybil played a part in the root cause of Basil's behaviour - his attitude towards her suggested that she did and she did take delight in treating him like an oaf. There doesn't appear to be any mention of a Mrs Sinclair at that hotel in Torquay.
Yes, it was Manuel - from Barcelona. Que? ;-)
I like the opening scene to each episode showing the hotel sign "Fawlty Towers" made up of individual letters which sowetimes fall off in the wind and it's Manuel's responsibility to put them back in order again - or what eh thought was the right order. Sometimes the opening shot shows the sign "Fatty Owls" or "Warty Towels" - Manuel's English is not very good...
Connie Booth, who played Polly, the waitress, is an American as you probably know - her accent is quite Anglicised but she can't quite hide her rhoticisms - they "give her away". She was married to John Cleese at one time.
Correct anagrams of Fawlty Towers include:
Wow! Style Fart
Wet stray fowl
Wet stray wolf
Worst flaw yet (very apt)
Try wolf waste (the mind boggles)
Try fowl sweat (ditto)
Slow farty few
Few tarty owls**
*Pronounced as Prom-en-AAHD, although some people place the stress on the first syllable...anyway it does not rhyme with lemonade for some reason best known to those who have carefully and lovingly formulated our Language over the years.
**Does "tart" or "tarty" have the same meaning in America as it does here? Nothing to do with what you eat or what you taste btw - something else altogether.
Tart meaning slut is not in common use in the US, but we know what you mean when you say it. "Tarted up", in the sense of making something look better than it is, is still in occasional use. Tarty isn't used at all, as far as I know.
And it would end up sounding like "tardy", anyway. Which would probably just confuse people.
Sybil and Basil's Fawlty Towers Hotel (or Watery Fowls Hotel according to yet another one of Manuel's erratic interpretations on the exterior hotel sign) was located in Torquay, and Torquay is located on Torbay, and Torbay is located on the south coast of England, and the south coast of England consists of cliffs and promontaries and headlands for much of its length all the way from Cornwall in the south west to Kent in the south east.
For example:
Golden Cap cliffs, Dorset, England:
http://www.imagesofdorset.org.uk/Dorset/098/06.htm
The Seven Sisters Cliffs, including Beachy Head - the one of the UK's top suicide spots - East Sussex, England:
http://www.visitsussex.org/site/explore-sussex/seven-sisters-p274481
The White Cliffs of Dover - including the Shakespeare Cliff, Kent, England - the real Gateway to England from the Continent:
http://www.dover-kent.co.uk/places/white_cliffs.htm
Uriel describes Sibyl's often fraught and difficult relationship with Basil as one in which "she knows which of his buttons to press - like any good wife". Presumbly that's a signal to send him off on another one of his misanthropic acts of mania and paranoia. Wow! If that's how good wives behave then little wonder the UK suffers from a domestic violence problem.
Torquay is set very close to some pretty impressive cliffs of its own - such as those overlooking nearby Babbacombe Bay, and much earer to home for S & B:
Babbacombe Bay, Torquay, Devon, England
http://www.devonguide.com/photos/img614.htm
If Basil gets pushed that bit too far over the edge then he may well think of returning the compliment to her. He could suggest a walk with her right up along the cliff edge, where a footpath actually runs quite perilously close to the cliff edge with a drop of about 50m or so down to the waves crashing on the rocks below. He could distract her attention for a moment as he slowly guides her away from the pathway and closer to the edge of the clifftop. He can then hope for a sudden gust of wind to do the rest. No more nagging and harrassment and button pushing from a "good wife!"
For example:
Golden Cap cliffs, Dorset, England:
http://www.imagesofdorset.org.uk/Dorset/098/06.htm
The Seven Sisters Cliffs, including Beachy Head - the one of the UK's top suicide spots - East Sussex, England:
http://www.visitsussex.org/site/explore-sussex/seven-sisters-p274481
The White Cliffs of Dover - including the Shakespeare Cliff, Kent, England - the real Gateway to England from the Continent:
http://www.dover-kent.co.uk/places/white_cliffs.htm
Uriel describes Sibyl's often fraught and difficult relationship with Basil as one in which "she knows which of his buttons to press - like any good wife". Presumbly that's a signal to send him off on another one of his misanthropic acts of mania and paranoia. Wow! If that's how good wives behave then little wonder the UK suffers from a domestic violence problem.
Torquay is set very close to some pretty impressive cliffs of its own - such as those overlooking nearby Babbacombe Bay, and much earer to home for S & B:
Babbacombe Bay, Torquay, Devon, England
http://www.devonguide.com/photos/img614.htm
If Basil gets pushed that bit too far over the edge then he may well think of returning the compliment to her. He could suggest a walk with her right up along the cliff edge, where a footpath actually runs quite perilously close to the cliff edge with a drop of about 50m or so down to the waves crashing on the rocks below. He could distract her attention for a moment as he slowly guides her away from the pathway and closer to the edge of the clifftop. He can then hope for a sudden gust of wind to do the rest. No more nagging and harrassment and button pushing from a "good wife!"
Aren't you glad I'm not married?;P Imagine the damage I could wreak on some poor, unsuspecting schlub.....
What we lack in the way of tall cliffs to dash our loved ones onto the rocks from, we more than make up with with our miles and miles of empty desert and the occasional deep lake. Drive through some of those lonely stretches of highway and you can definitely begin to see the possibilities -- civilization ends at the shoulder of the road, in some of those places. And when you are driving from Las Cruces (the crosses), which is named for the gravesites of a party of Mexican settlers massacred by Apaches, up through the Jornado del Muerto (Dead Man's Journey), which is a sixty-mile stretch of country where the Rio Grande disappears underground and there is no surface water, up to Albuquerque (named for a Spanish duke) and Santa Fe (holy faith, which must have also been blind and stubborn when the Spanish made it the capital of Nuevo Mexico in 1610), and you see the statues of those first Spanish settlers and imagine these strange men and women toiling through hundreds of miles of hot, dusty, empty land in their Spanish Armada-era armor, on foot and on horseback, thousands and thousands of miles from home, only 9 years after their historic defeat at the hands of the English, you gotta wonder how many centuries of old bones lie out in the wasteland, long forgotten and undiscovered.
What we lack in the way of tall cliffs to dash our loved ones onto the rocks from, we more than make up with with our miles and miles of empty desert and the occasional deep lake. Drive through some of those lonely stretches of highway and you can definitely begin to see the possibilities -- civilization ends at the shoulder of the road, in some of those places. And when you are driving from Las Cruces (the crosses), which is named for the gravesites of a party of Mexican settlers massacred by Apaches, up through the Jornado del Muerto (Dead Man's Journey), which is a sixty-mile stretch of country where the Rio Grande disappears underground and there is no surface water, up to Albuquerque (named for a Spanish duke) and Santa Fe (holy faith, which must have also been blind and stubborn when the Spanish made it the capital of Nuevo Mexico in 1610), and you see the statues of those first Spanish settlers and imagine these strange men and women toiling through hundreds of miles of hot, dusty, empty land in their Spanish Armada-era armor, on foot and on horseback, thousands and thousands of miles from home, only 9 years after their historic defeat at the hands of the English, you gotta wonder how many centuries of old bones lie out in the wasteland, long forgotten and undiscovered.