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Reply | Golazzo!
at 21:45 16 Jan 2025
Perhaps he thought it would be a spectacle to have the bird landing on it. Can you imagine the grief someone would get in this country from 70,000 football fans if he owned up to having a knob-job?
(Cough, cough, Steed Malbranque, allegedly.) |
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Reply | Working Mens Clubs/ Constitutional Clubs.
at 14:18 16 Jan 2025
Out of interest, why is the beer so much cheaper? Some tax concession, volunteer staff, no rent to pay or margin targets to meet? Combination of the above? |
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Reply | New Match of the Day Presenters...
at 12:04 16 Jan 2025
I was in Ireland for most of London 2012, and the RTE coverage was an eye opener…taking you from an athletics final to see an Irish competitor coming 23rd in canoeing. The country stopped for Katie Taylor, other boxers and the rowing brothers but you’d hardly know about GB medals apart from grumbling about over-the-top coverage in the British press. |
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Reply | Working Mens Clubs/ Constitutional Clubs.
at 10:27 16 Jan 2025
Remember building society “carpet-baggers”, small speculators who opened multiple accounts in the hope of a demutualisation windfall? I’m surprised there aren’t vultures joining clubs with the intention of voting to close them. I imagine it’s been thought of and some protections put in place. |
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Reply | Working Mens Clubs/ Constitutional Clubs.
at 08:40 16 Jan 2025
There have been a lot of factors behind the decline of the clubs: homes becoming more comfortable with better entertainment and cheaper drinks from the supermarket, the expectation that men should spend more time helping out at home, the loss of big factories where neighbours worked and the scattering of office workers on long distance commutes and even working from home, to name a few….more generally shyness and discomfort around strangers.
At the same time, you wonder if the clubs and their members want to change to make them more likely to survive. It’s their club so it reflects their tastes, but the clubs are dying out with their core customers. My son and his friends went to one in Kingston thinking they could watch football there more cheaply than the pub; you’d think someone would see them as potential new blood, but they were grudgingly signed in and no-one thought to discuss membership. I’ve seen mothers and their young kids in Wetherspoons after schools, the Mums having a quick one, the kids doing homework. Do clubs offer homework clubs and maybe sandwiches in a side room?
I can imagine the reaction of some old boys to having kids running around, or the blue-hairs in the bar if they ran a board games night or some other hobby groups, but it would be good for those people to get out into more mixed company and offer the clubs more of a future than nothing, which seems to be the current option. The Barnes Home Guard club I mentioned was lucky enough to have space to pull off a development jackpot and keep the two member groups largely as separate as they want to be.
All big talk from me. I’m not a member of one. My nearest in my new location is a Conservative Club, which doesn’t look particularly enticing, but I suppose I should check it out. |
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Reply | Working Mens Clubs/ Constitutional Clubs.
at 22:40 15 Jan 2025
In the next road up from me in Sheen was the Home Guards Club…not making those any more. It had a really low profile apart from an annual music festival on Mayday weekend, until some bright spark talked them into building a small indoor swimming pool at the end of their garden, they were charging a fortune for “swimming” membership . The older members weren’t interested. We had the funeral drinks for both of my mum’s parents at the Home Guards club in North Harrow.
I wonder what happens when a WMC closes. Do the last members standing split the proceeds from selling the premises? |
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Reply | How about a few “not a lot of people know thats”
at 17:23 15 Jan 2025
A modern version of that trade is in the making of IVF treatments, which rely on the collection of oestrogen uncontaminated by contraceptive pills. Despite the church taking a dim view of IVF, convents have been happy to sell their piss to the makers. They might need a new strategy as vocations crater. [Post edited 15 Jan 17:23]
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Reply | Identity Crisis
at 13:00 15 Jan 2025
Haven’t tried Grumbles yet. It looks like it has the menu of a 1977 Berni Inn, but people seem to love it. The pubs down here are surprisingly old fashioned still, I imagine many of the richer residents would consider a gastropub beneath them, so the pubs are for the estate residents, commuters and budget tourists. Curious to see what the atmosphere is for a Ch*ls** game on the TV is…hoping I haven’t made a terrible mistake coming here. |
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Reply | That's Sad
at 20:43 14 Jan 2025
Someone told me he went to Gunnersbury School. Is that right?
Very sad. Overflowing with wit and talent but that couldn’t protect him. He had the world at his feet. |
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Reply | Identity Crisis
at 19:18 14 Jan 2025
The Jolly Gardeners? Still holding on mysteriously, but there's not much jolly about it. Painfully unwell looking old boys complaining about their bad luck on the horses. |
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Reply | Identity Crisis
at 18:27 14 Jan 2025
I first arrived in Sheen in 1993 and the book shop had gone by then. Sheen Lane had a great Chinese-owned fish and chip shop, best haddock I’ve ever tasted and a lovely old Italian, both long gone, but the retired chip shop owners are still around. Now Chubb the butcher is closing, the last survivors from when we first arrived are Rosa and Leo in the Mamma Mia restaurant (archaic but lovely Italian) and Vest Man, the tall old roadie lookalike who wears a black vest in all weathers and hangs out in the Hare and Hounds. |
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Reply | Identity Crisis
at 18:21 14 Jan 2025
Just spotted this. We started our Pimlico flat hunting way back in April and popped into The Constitution for a quick one. A family were celebrating their 9 year old daughter picking the winner of the Grand National. My kind of place! |
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Reply | Identity Crisis
at 21:47 13 Jan 2025
I was in Church Avenue behind the Hare & Hounds for seven years then Sheen Lane just up from the War Memorial for 24 years. A great place to bring up kids but now two out of three have left it’s time for a change. Does anyone know a short guy called Colin, claims to go to every away game, helps out in Chubb the butcher? Sadly that’s closing soon. |
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Reply | Identity Crisis
at 18:46 13 Jan 2025
Shhhhhh, had to pay a fortune to people smugglers. |
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Thread | Identity Crisis
at 18:22 13 Jan 2025
After 31 years, more than half my life, I no longer live in Sheen. Do I need a new persona to go with my new location? Unfortunately I can’t think of any punning references for my new location. Any other Pimlico Rs? |
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Reply | The one and only
at 16:07 10 Jan 2025
Richard Ord. Didn’t make it out of pre-season, zero competitive appearances.
I was going to say John O’Neill. After 313 appearances for Leicester he made two for us and one for Norwich; John Fashanu ended his career in the first half of his debut, and had to pay compensation after O’Neill took him to court. |
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Site Scores| Forum Votes: | 4514 | | Comment Votes: | 9 | | Prediction League: | 0 | | TOTAL: | 4523 |
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