BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed

Subject: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:26 AM

It is almost a 1000 years since England got biffed by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings.

Discuss!!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:36 AM

Eye, eye! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:37 AM

A biffing was required, and a biffing was done!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 06:09 AM

Almost 2000 years ago the Romans gave the Ancient Britons a good biffing. It wouldn't have taken many legionaries with balls, guts and tip-top training to sort out the Brits who spent all day checking their Nancy boy blue makeup.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 06:22 AM

And they only had swords, bows and tin armour. Not high velocity rifles, tanks and Kevlar body protection like the wokey, wimpy marines of the 1980s...

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 06:51 AM

Romans came across the channel
all wrapped up in tin and flannel
half a pint of woad per man 'll
dress us more than these

Romans keep your armours
Saxons your pyjamas
hairy coats were meant for goats
Yaks' Retriever Dogs and Llamas

climb up Snowdon with our woad on
never mind if we get rained or snowed on
never need a button sowed on
Go it ancient B's !!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 06:59 AM

Gone are the days when a true manly Briton could biff a sabre tooth tiger in the nose,
and drop it dead with only one punch,
before it could invade here over the icy land bridge from shirtlifting Europe...

Our rock hard ancient ancestors dug the English channel with their bare hands
to keep all them foreign scroungers out...

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 07:29 AM

Bare hands? HANDS? How wimpy and wokey is that. In Yorkshire we carved out t'dales with our tongues...

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 08:00 AM

Romans keep your armours
Saxons your pyjamas
hairy coats were meant for goats
Yaks' Retriever Dogs and Llamas

Scansion failure. It should be:
"Gorillas, yaks, retriever dogs, and llamas"

[end pedant mode]

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 08:12 AM

”(end pedant mode]”

If only! That’ll be the day...

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 08:28 AM

If only! That’ll be the day...

Okay, maybe the thread could move back up top.
We've gone from a quote of William Hope-Jones to one from Buddy Holly in just 3 comments.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 10:41 AM

I knew it wasn’t true...

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 11:20 AM

This is now a music thread...???

.. that's smashing fab groovy..

Here's one of my favourite bands...

Biff Bang Pow

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 02:09 PM

The deadliest attack on the borough during the Nazi reign of terror was on May 10, 1941 - when the bus station on Brighton Road, in South Croydon, was among the sites that were hit.
nazis biffed croydon before bomnzo was born should we celebrate

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 02:12 PM

It was all going so well ;-(

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got bi
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 02:19 PM

2066 will be a great year for celebration. I wonder if any of us will live to see it. Tell me, why don't you UK people speak French? But no, this thread doesn't need to be moved to the music section. A passing mention of music doesn't qualify.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 02:55 PM

Some of us do speak French Joe. And many, many words in English are of French origin. (Well, French is derived form Vulgar Latin, so that's our original root-language - Latin!)

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: peteglasgow
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:20 PM

oui, c'est vrai

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Jos
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:25 PM

et moi aussi

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:48 PM

Et moi, un peu.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Gurney
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 03:51 PM

The people who had a biffing at Hastings were as much German than anything else, that's why they were called Anglo-Saxons.
The people they fought there were mostly Scandiwegians who had taken over part of France.
And those Anglo-Saxons had come racing down from Geordie-land from a battle driving out another bunch of invading Scandiwegians there, and left a lot of their foot-soldiers behind.
So, it wasn't really the Angles who got biffed, was it.


Such peaceful times, nowadays.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 05:02 PM

I was rather disappointed at University with the promised lectures/tutorials in Vulgar Latin. Not what I'd been expecting at all...

One or two Anglo-Saxon words are rather ...er ...useful.

My old father who came from way up in the north of Scotland (Caithness) always said his blond hair and pale blue eyes were Scandinavian, as his region had been invaded many times by marauding Vikings. I believed him, as I reckoned he would have looked quite at home in a horned helmet and brandishing an axe!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 05:43 PM

2066 will be a great year for celebration.

I can see a huge pedantic debate akin to whether the millenium turned in 2001

So the date of the Battle of Hastings will then hinge on whether we calculate the date using the Gregorian** or the Julian calendar.

And was the battle in Hastings or what we now call Battle or, as historians insist, somewhere a few miles away?

** I always thought Gregorian was a game of chants...................

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 05:54 PM

There is, apparently, a cement business in Battle who trade under the name:

William the Concreter.

Well Harold Hardrada was mortarly wounded.............

I'll get my dunarees...........

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 05:57 PM

"2066 will be a great year for celebration. I wonder if any of us will live to see it."

Well that would make me 115, so I'd put the chance for me at about 50:50.

" Tell me, why don't you UK people speak French?"

Well you yanks, and anyone else under about 60, won't understand this, but a good few years ago now my dad told me about a mate of his at work, who dad had castigated for not being able to speak French (as my dad supposed HE could). Indignantly, the chap claimed that he DID have a smattering of French. So my dad challenged him to give an example of his French-speaking.

Came the reply, "Do 'ave a Dubonnet..."

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Monique
Date: 28 Sep 20 - 07:00 PM

I highly recommend the History of English Podcast to everybody who wants to know why you don't speak French. You can drink quite a lot of Dubonnet while you listen to it as there are 141 episodes so far = at least 160/170 hours and he's just begun to deal with the great vowel shift.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 02:50 AM

Steve reminded me of my mate Paddy trying his French out on a school trip to Switzerland.

Avec vous un 'am butty et un banana?

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 03:02 AM

Hahahaaagh Dave! I used to take pupils over to Normandy on school trips (40X 12 yr olds) and being 'Norfolk' they couldn't see why the blooming French couldn't speak blooming English. I let them loose in Rouen, but patrolled around the shops making sure they were behaving themselves. I came across a pair of my scamps standing in front of a shop assistant in Printemps (department store) shouting at the tops of their voices, "Oi sed, 'OW MUCH IS IT?' yer fule!"

I recently played 'Je suis un rockstar' by Bill Wyman to my francophone husband. He laughed so much I thought he'd need an ambulance!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Monique
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 03:47 AM

Eliza, both of you should listen to this one. It's called "La leçon d'anglais" from the 60's. I'll tell you that I don't understand all of it as sometimes he's speaking fast and low.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 04:45 AM

Oh Monique, that was so funny!!! "Ouaire is ze chair?" "La chair est faible" (bit of philosophy there! from 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak')

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 05:45 AM

My long-dead old aunt, a dyed-in-the-wool northerner, often did coach trips to France with her pals. She oft regaled us with details of their visits to Sackrer Sewer and Noatrer Dame (as in pantomime dame), and her idea of getting French shopkeepers to understand her was to speak her English louder and slower:

"Ah said, 'OW...MUCH...DUZ...THIS...ASHTRAY...COST...?"

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 06:02 AM

Hahahaha yes Steve! Just like my pupils! Isn't it funny how so many people who don't speak the lingo just shout loudly in their own language and expect 'them blooming furriners' to understand?
I'm so proud of my husband. His native tongue is Malinke, he was educated in French at school and has learned English quite well after living here in UK. But now he's making a real effort to speak 'Norfolk' and absolutely creases the ladies in our village shop with, "Ah yew orlroit moi dares?" and "Oi s'll see yew mawthers la'er tergether!"
So he now has three-and-a half languages in his armoury!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Raggytash
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 07:30 AM

It's 1227 years since the Vikings biffed them woke nancy boy Monks on Lindisfarne!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 10:18 AM

The Lindesfarne survivors were so badly traumatised,
they ended up taking their revenge
by forming a folk rock band
to biff the top 20 pop charts...

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: keberoxu
Date: 29 Sep 20 - 06:40 PM

... and this is what I love about the unsinkable Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 30 Sep 20 - 12:54 PM

No the British received a good biffing from the Japs in Singapore - 1942.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Oct 20 - 10:32 AM

When I found out that London has a street named "Rotten Road" because that's how the Anglo-Saxons pronounced "Rue de Roi" I forgave the French everything!

I find it kind of interesting that I will always remember what happened in 1066 because it showed up in a Batman comic book in the 60s when Alfred the (English) butler mentioned it while speaking to Bruce Wayne.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 02 Oct 20 - 10:39 AM

Not quite right. Rotten Row isn't a street but a bridleway in Hyde Park for exercising horses. There are Rotten Roads in other parts of the country.

Subject: RE: BS: Almost a 1000 years since England got biffed
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 02 Oct 20 - 10:41 AM

”When I found out that London has a street named "Rotten Road" because that's how the Anglo-Saxons pronounced "Rue de Roi" I forgave the French everything!”

Wrong again, Moriarty.

It’s ‘Rotten Row.

Rotten Row.