FinnDave

Free? I'll be submitting my invoice at the end of the month!

Every chance we've rubbed shoulders in the club bar, then. I know the 88 date is correct, because my first daughter was born shorty after I started working with Clive James, but the other dates are a bit vaguer. I was in a band when i worked in VT current ops at TVC, it was called 'Shift 2' as that's what we worked. Drummer & vocalist were both VT operators, the two guitarists and a keyboard man were non BBC.

There is a technical term for people who do that kind of thing, but the profanity filter here would render it unintelligible!

It's hard to have a dialogue when you have to wait for the other person to respond, so people keep going on....and on...and on (you get the idea!)

I think I addressed the informal/incomprehensible dichotomy in my final sentence. I agree, however, that normal conversation is something involving a minimum of two participants, who will interrupt, make sounds indicating agreement/disagreement, elicit comments, etc Internet communication is a relatively new form of personal interaction, and the ground rules have yet to be established, I think.

Our paths may well have crossed, I was in TV News in 87, then went on a lengthy attachment to the Clive James Unit over in Kensington House in 1988-91 (or 2, not sure now). Small world!

My theory is that many people treat written communication on the internet as an extension of speech, rather than a form of writing, and therefore produce exactly what you dislike, a stream of consciousness post with no formal punctuation. It is certainly treated by a substantial proportion of users as informal communication, which doesn't lend itself to formal grammar, though as you say (or write) there is a limit to how far one can start from the (descriptive) rules of grammar before it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to understand what is being said (even though it is being written).

Maybe not in Banbury, but down this part of rural Oxfordshire, I know several people who drive home when they are incapable of walking to their cars! My wife insists on collecting me from the local these days as she is worried about me accepting a lift from a well-meaning but paralytic neighbour. One local farmer, who shall remain nameless, but anyone around here would know who I mean, used to turn up at the pub in his Landy, leave the door open and the engine running, come in and have a couple of large vodkas in a half pint glass topped up with cider, neck it, then either have another or drive to the next pub. Lovely bloke, but you wouldn't want to be on the same road as him! He stopped doing that after the inevitable ban, uses a bicycle now.

My favourite was at a gig in the centre of Swindon a couple of years ago, when a totally drunk/stoned/whatever punter climbed onto the low stage and attempted to talk to each of us in turn while we were playing. He then slipped trying to get back off the stage, hit his head against a wall and lay there motionless while we played on. Security fetched the police in and we were asked to stop when we'd finished the next song. Bloke was carried out and sent away with suspected concussion in an ambulance. And why was he on the stage trying to talk to us? Turns out he wanted to buy us all a drink so was trying to find out what we wanted!

I stick it in round the back, as it were. That is to say, bass to SansAmp (bass driver DI) to FX return of amp. If I've already posted this, my apologies, takes too long to go back read the whole thing!

I worked in TV centre in the 80s and 90s, on TOTP recording days there would often be hordes of kids, almost all girls, wandering around the building having climbed in over walls or sneaked in past security (commissionaires!) on the gates. For a couple of years, I worked in the basement (VT ops), same level as most of the dressing rooms, and there wold be streams of girls trying to find where the stars' were. To us, they were just a bloody nuisance, getting in the way as we got on with our daily routine. It was always ten times worse if there was a big name band in.

How could we! I was once in a lift at TV Centre with their successors (legs & co, I think) and it shuddered to a stop between floors...for a moment, I thought there might actually be a God, and then the lift started moving again. Oh well.

Looks exactly like the one I have up for sale!

To be fair, I can think of several bands with harmonica players that could apply to!

I have only one non-sunburst bass, and that is a white Precision which sounds so good I doubt that I'd ever part with it. My remaining 7 basses are all 'burst. I'll probably never buy another non-burst bass, nor one with a maple fingerboard, but that's a different story!

It's useful when representing speech (which a lot of posts on here do), it is a pause without a break, a chance to breath without a change in the flow of conversation (or monologue). That's how I use it, anyway, and I'm sure I'm right. Its just the doctors that disagree!

Sounds like a bloke I had come round years ago when I needed to get rid of a bike and get a car...he offered to swap his car for my bike, came over, and then started telling me about his breakdowns. Not the car's, his. That was the end of that.

Surely a non-native speaker is allowed to make a few errors? I know I would make more errors than sense if this was a french speaking forum!