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Thread: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace (Read 21376 times) |
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Ian Chippett
MV Fellow
In the clear at over fifty-five
Posts: 332
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #20: 23.12.07 at 13:45 » |
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Keith wrote:
<<Especially when it's not a pipe. >>
It so rarely is...  I wonder what Magritte had in mind?
Ian C
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=20#20  |
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Kevin Cryan
MV Fellow
I love Midnight Voices!
Posts: 1144
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #21: 23.12.07 at 15:41 » |
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on 23.12.07 at 13:45, Ian Chippett wrote:Keith wrote:
<<Especially when it's not a pipe. >>
It so rarely is... I wonder what Magritte had in mind?
Ian C |
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Everything except the Magritte reference* is lost on me. Can somebody explain? As I said, my knowledge of France and French culture is not terribly extensive.
Kevin
*Magritte painted a pipe and then painted immediately underneath it the words Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), thereby making the rather obvious and, to me, trivial point that a painting could never be the thing it represents.
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=21#21 |
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Keith Busby
MV Fixture
Posts: 167
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #22: 23.12.07 at 16:56 » |
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A "pipe" in French slang has sexual connotations. Gallic stereotypes confirmed.
Keith
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=22#22 |
Commit THAT to Your Fragrant Memory!
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Kevin Cryan
MV Fellow
I love Midnight Voices!
Posts: 1144
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #23: 23.12.07 at 17:53 » |
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on 23.12.07 at 16:56, Keith Busby wrote:A "pipe" in French slang has sexual connotations. Gallic stereotypes confirmed.
Keith |
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Ah ha!! So we have in the the Magritte a double entendre, do we?. That makes sense, if anything of the Surreal can be said to do so.
Thanks for the insight.
Kevin
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=23#23 |
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Ian Chippett
MV Fellow
In the clear at over fifty-five
Posts: 332
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #24: 23.12.07 at 19:25 » |
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Kevin wrote:
<<Ah ha!! So we have in the the Magritte a double entendre, do we?. That makes sense, if anything of the Surreal can be said to do so.>>
I can't imagine a Francophone (Magritte was a Belgian) naming his picture like this in all innocence unless the use of the expression is more recent. The French also say "casser sa pipe" meaning "to kick the bucket." When Brassens, a noted pipe smoker died, Libération used the headline "Brassens casse sa pipe." Brassens is worth more than a cursory listen, incidentally. Some say his tunes are all the same and it's only the words which are really interesting. Well, when I arrived in France I could hardly speak a word but spent a lot of time listening to Brassens just for the music. It makes BoTBS sound over-produced but I far prefer this to, say, Brel who goes over the top in the French tradition (OK I know he was Belgian.) Clive says something about this tradition in a TV review of Aznavour.
Ian C
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=24#24 |
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Cathy Corbishley-Michel
Ex-Member
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #25: 24.12.07 at 20:02 » |
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This Thread amazes me and I'm glad to see that it has recently taken a more trivial turn. The smoking ban is probably one of the best things this government has ever done (perhaps the only useful thing) - although they took their time. Today in my role as a consultant pathologist at a large teaching hospital working with the lung cancer team I have looked at five new cases of lung cancer caused by smoking. Merry Christmas - I think not as all of these are inoperable and will be dead in less than a year even with every treatment we can offer now.
The main benefit of the ban will be to provide a social atmosphere (lacking smoke) that will discourage young people (well below most MVs age group - but some of us have teenage children) from starting smoking. I feel very sorry for anyone who is already addicted as I am aware how hard it is to give up, but the misery I see on a daily basis in my work with unneccessary premature deaths from heart and lung disease often preceded by months or years of disability saddens me. Dying of breathlessness is one of the nastiest deaths I have seen.
When I get back to work on Thursday and Friday my mortuary will be full again, many of the cases will have died in the recent cold weather of exacerbations of thier lung disease and heart attacks/failure and some of them will be not very old!
I'm sure the CD is wonderful but I won't be buying it I'm afraid. Maybe I have missed the joke here and it was not meant to be serious.
Cathy Corbishley Michel
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=25#25 |
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Ian Chippett
MV Fellow
In the clear at over fifty-five
Posts: 332
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #26: 25.12.07 at 11:22 » |
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Cathy wrote:
<<The main benefit of the ban will be to provide a social atmosphere (lacking smoke) that will discourage young people (well below most MVs age group - but some of us have teenage children) from starting smoking. >>
I wonder: I gave it up in 1980 after marrying into a family of fanatical non-smokers but now I have three children, all addicted despite living in a smokeless zone. My eldest once spent a few days in hospital for a benign op in a room with a chap with throat cancer, (no tongue, fed through a tube etc) but this didn't stop him (my son) from taking up the habit immediately afterwards. They all cough but refuse to listen to reason. They know it can and probably will happen to them (I knew that when I was at it) but won't admit this in public (again just like me.) Practically all the young people I see these days are smokers despite years of campaigns because it's what you have to do to be like the others. Even punitive taxation doesn't work.
I'd bet a small amount that the vast majority of MVs are non-smokers while the majority of their offspring aren't. Hope I'm wrong.
Happy Christmas anyway
Ian C
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=26#26 |
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Gerry Smith
MV Fixture
Posts: 222
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #27: 26.12.07 at 03:04 » |
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Smoking is something which goes hand in hand with a certain lifestyle and way of being.
Not all of us want to live to be 100.
We are human, we are fallible, we are not just electrobiochemical machines, we feel. We have spirit, aspiration and desire. If we die, we die. I hate the kind of health fascism handed down by some people who have lovely all-paid-for houses and shiny happy families and all that goes with it, to people who hang on by their fingernails.
Cathy, I doubt you have ever been addicted to anything. So how could you possibly understand, notwithstanding your training?
What "this (shallow, corrupt and odious) government" is doing is taking away our choices and eroding out liberties over not just the smoking issue, but in many other directions.
It is so sad to see so many of the bars and clubs I have gigged in for so long closing or losing viability as a result of lack of patronage since the smoking ban.
Gerry
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=27#27 |
Out playing the saxes
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Ian Chippett
MV Fellow
In the clear at over fifty-five
Posts: 332
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #28: 26.12.07 at 10:46 » |
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Gerry wrote:
<<Not all of us want to live to be 100.
We are human, we are fallible, we are not just electrobiochemical machines, we feel. We have spirit, aspiration and desire. If we die, we die. >>
I knew of a woman who was Director of a large charitable organization here in Paris and who chainsmoked herself to lung cancer. After the removal of one of her lungs, she promptly went back to chainsmoking and died of a brand-new cancer shortly afterwards. When I expressed my incredulity at this, my wife explained that the woman in question had decided to die before she was sixty and was quite aware of what she was doing. I can understand how she felt about life in general (Clive's lyrics deal with this all the time) but however awful things may be, it's better to struggle along.
"To be or not to be: that is the question
To be is better than not to be: that is the answer"
Ian C
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=28#28 |
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Richard Bleksley
MV Fixture
My time has come to find a better way
Posts: 164
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Re: Alan Barnes & Simon Wallace
« Reply #29: 26.12.07 at 13:01 » |
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As one of Ian's probable minority, an MV who does indulge, maybe it's about time I joined in this thread.
My case is particularly sad and ironic in that I didn't even start until I was about twenty, and (save for one interval of about six months) I've been hooked ever since. One and a half of my offspring do it too. The half is my daughter, who, after nagging about my disgusting habit all through her teens, started herself when she was at university. Since then she's stopped whenever she's had a non-smoking boyfriend, but has always gone back to it. I just hope that her current (non-smoking) relationship turns out to be stable.
I'm well aware of the hazards, but just don't seem to have the will-power to kick it. I can only thank heaven I've never had any contact with heroin…
What Ian and Gerry have implied is quite correct. What people want to do, they will do, no matter how bad for them it is, and no amount of punitive taxation or legislation will stop them. You only need to look at the example of Prohibition (whose main achievement seems to have been to deliver the USA into the hands of organised crime) to see that. And nobody has ever, despite prodigies of effort, been able to do anything to stop the trading in and use of hard drugs, even though everybody knows what disastrous effects they can have on your life.
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https://peteatkin.com/forum?board=offtopic&action=display&num=1198152422&start=29#29 |
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