Hello

Hmm, so was your ky fatal?

Dyslexia George?

Call it what you will.

Speaking of which, where's John? I was thinking earlier "What sweet but bitter?" There are lots of answers but only John might say sugar. He's no doubt learned to be sweeter to the help and Denver's missing a side-kick now that George has reformed - it won't last :)

Don't push your luck, mykle. I'm nobody's 'side-kick' and reforming is not on my list.

:o)

And take that silly grin off your face.

Hello Ausencia, Good to have you along. Hope you enjoy it here - it's a rollercoaster ride and that's the truth, but you may just find it helps your writing and you'll get to read lots of good stuff too. Where about's are you from? I'm in Norwich, England. If you want anything reading/commenting on let me know. I'm always happy to read people's work when I've got the time - and that goes for anyone's else reading this too. (I'm not an expert or an agent or anything, but I do like a good read and have been known to make one or two useful comments in my time) Enjoy.

Side Kick? I ride alone pad-na.

I though all great cowboys had side-kicks, Denver.

Only in the movies...I'm not a cowboy, nor am I great...nor am I in a movie.. If you must visualize me as something familiar, think of me as a big furry lumberjack singing songs. I'm Okay!

Yes, but do you wear a bra?

Hello Ausencia, I'd echo just about everything Fergal says - apart from coming from Norwich, because I don't. I'm from Lincoln, England (which is like Norwich, only smaller and with less cake) and I love true things, quirky ideas, dreamers and science. I don't like tortoises, mushrooms and eggs. Welcome to the site - may I recommend Discuss Writing at abctales as the best forum for the beginner - for one thing, it points you towards pieces of writing that you may like to read and discuss, and for another, it tends to be a bit less rough-and-tumble while you find your feet. Very glad to have you here.

On occasion, from time-to-time...but I don't own one.

I've noticed you fluttering around recently, LadyButterfly, but you managed to fit in so well I didn't realise you were new :) Welcome.

Hi Ausencia, Welcome. Yes I agree, a beautiful name. You'll find that this site is run by a mafia of about 8 people, who drone and whinge and snipe and carp about each other and this site. I love it!

Gimme the names and I'll fix the contracts.

Fwoh! I hope you don't require a push-up bra, Denver.

I've never required a bra. As a matter of fact, that's how I ended up wearing one.

Hi Ausencia, a very unusual name, sounds pretty like a flower or something. Anyway, I don't know much about writing but I like to talk about the weather :) [%sig%]

It's a requirement of Python clad lumberjacks, Archer.

Yeah, a little lacy number underneath the woolen Black Watch... *wiggles eyebrows up and down*

I like the ones that have easy clasps on the back.

Delivery tortoise ambles into forum with a flat cardboard box that reads, "Eggs on the Shell slow food emporium. We deliver... eventually" ..."sorry I'm late, who ordered the mushroom omelette?"

Now I see why you didn't want a sidekick, Denver :)

Thanks Ely - this is from my blog, entitled "Tortoise Milk" Looking at the subject closely, there isn’t a single thing about tortoises that doesn’t give me the yawing dreads. In ascending order of awfulness :- 1. The glossiness of the shells and the mixture of greens and browns there, looking like the whole thing has been Goth-nail-polished on there. This coupled with the slightly pie-crust / old man’s hat shape of the shell makes for an unpleasant beginning for the tortoise and represents what must be eighty-per cent of the visible tortoise. 2. The underside of the shell, and the whole idea of a tortoise being upside down and wriggling, unable to right itself. Oh, that’s a horrible image. And I don’t know whether it is hard like the upper shell, or soft like skin, or leathery like a school satchel. I suspect it feels like wine gums. 3. But at least it isn’t webbingesque overcooked cabbage-coloured limbs and stumpy tail. My revulsion for the tortoise is so great that I’m not even 100 per cent sure whether their limbs don’t end in little nasty claws. Just thinking about it is making me need to undo my collar button and open a window. The shape of the limbs are unpleasant too, and there’s a nasty knee-bending aspect when they scuttle. (I know that scuttle is usually used to imply speed of motion, but that’s what they do, only slowly. There’s a horrible nauseating ponderousness about the tortoise in motion that I don’t get with other animals with odd locomotive methods - although caterpillars that move by sort of hunching their back up into the air in a big loop, like an inchworm gives me a queasiness I can’t think about too much when I also have tortoises on my mind) 4. The head, oh God, the head. The wrinkled neck, the bald head, the benign village-idiot smile, the deliberation when munching a lettuce leaf. 5. The pronunciation of the name as “Tor-TOY-ze” - I just don’t like it, that’s all. 6. The knowledge that their spine is fused to the inside of the shell. That just seems deeply wrong and I don’t like to think about it at all. 7. And a brand-new one, which came into my head only this week (thanks Trina!) - the concept of a glass of iced Tortoise Milk. It would be a pale, almost mint green, frothed, and have an almost wheatgerm milkshake look to it. Every time I consider this, I have to hold onto something tightly and say to myself - “The Tortoise is not a mammal and as such, does not produce milk”. That helps, but I have to say that this sometimes gives me a mental picture of the underside of the shell (see 2 above) with little tortoise nipples. And in addition, I read this week that scientists have been splicing spider genes into goats. Certain spider webs contain silk, silk is valuable, you can’t farm silk, because spiders are carnivorous and will eat each other if any attempt to intensively farm them is made - but you can farm goats who produce silk in their milk. Now, if you can make goats do things that spiders can do, who is to say that some lunatic isn’t already working on Tortoise Milk? Tortoises are wrong. They are sick and wrong. (Actually, it occurs to me that I have one positive thing to say about the Tortii world, and that is that the character of the Tortoise in illustrations of logical matters such as Lewis Carrol, Zeno and Donald Hofstadter is irascible, conceited, infuriating, deliberately obtuse and occasionally kindly. It doesn't even redeem the shinyness of the shell, never mind anything else...)

I would think you would prefer the clasp in the front, Denver.

Did you know that in the Seychelles (My mums birthplace), Andrew, they have tortoiseses so big you can actually sit and ride on (and I am talking adults here)... you have to scratch the back with a stone to get them to move... Just think how much milk one of those babies can produce. Bucket Loads I think!

hi i am megan nice to meet you

I'm bookended by tortoiphiles. Yuck! By the way, I am in no sense scared of a live tortoise - if one came at me, I would set about it with relish and kill the fiendish thing. It is more of a dread of having to touch one (for example, visiting a house and finding that a friend had one as a pet and wanted me to have it on my lap) than fear of what it might do to me. Delenda est Torthago! (That which stands in the way of destroying tortoises must itself be destroyed)

No...the back is better....Once undone, it makes little difference.

Except then you either have to do it up again once you're ...ah... finished, or you have to do the magic bra removal via the left sleeve.

Good things about totoises from an ex tortoise owner: If you drop them, tread on them, leave them in the pond for quarter of an hour, they don't break (unlike gerbals). They never bite your finger. They never look any old and sick. One day they die (and then a little while later you notice) The plucky blighters are encoragable escape artists, scaling several feet of overhanging chicken wire or tunneling under it only to be found a few yards away munching through the shrubbery. They don't smell. You can keep them in a carboard box for half the year.

Ve have vay's of keeping zem off.

they win races against hares! they're responsible several jokes! (the one with the kid revving it up) (the one about taking half an hour to get out of the shop in tortois shell shoes) I think they think a lot and that's good for an animal, surely! never owned one, don't ever remember touching one. Always imagined that if you stepped on one it's pop like a snail does and then lies there all helpless and broken... awwwwww!

*wolf whistle*

I was once told a story (believe this at your peril) of a man who ordered tortoise in a restaurant int eh Seychelles. He waited, waited, waited, and waited some more before finally loosing patience and barging in to the kitchen to see what had happened to his dinner. There was the chef, perched above the tortoise, one foot on it's shell, cleaver raised ready, waiting for the animal to poke it's head out.

Oh, and hello Ausencia.

Well... tis true. Tortoise head served on a bed of lettuce is a rare and expensive delicacy in the Seychelles.

OMG! I'd sooner eat the chef.

When I worked as a chef my boss - who I used to feel dizzy standing in a room with because he was the epitome of sex in a weird, a-bit-overweight-from-drinking, always-sort-of- sweaty way - used to request I made him deep fried pastrami wrapped around brie. He would eat it on toast accompanied by a shot of whiskey. It doesn't sound attractive, but I assure it was. Though I never tried it. (the boss or the deep fried pastrami/brie combo)

There can't be much meat on a tortoise head.

Bleurgh

I'm reading old threads and so this is long after first mentioned but... Emily did you know that when turtles lay their eggs there is this dreadful smell of ammonia. I like turtles but it was revolting. It was on a beach in far north west of Western Australia, a place that was far from civilisation and a long drive up a beach in a 4WD. Completely deserted. And these giant turtles come and lay their eggs each year. Heave themselves up the beach, dig a deep hole (somehow) fill it with eggs and ammonia over a period of hours, cover in, then heave back down the beach and into the water. And by now it's night. You would have loved it.

Turtles just don't bother me - I read the other day that Darwin ate thirty giant tortoises on the Beagles voyage home and threw their carapaces over the side into the ocean. Hoorah for Darwin! Turtles can move quickly in water, so I respect them and they are a proper sensible green colour and have moist skin and flippers, not wizzened wrinkly legs. I have no respect for tortoises.

These turtles were not green, very dark in colour. Dark grey? Black? Big enough for a man to sit on her back and still heave along. Big enough and serious enough to command anyone's respect. Not moist skin. Very dry looking, like a parrot's tongue

Emily: I've never 'felt' a winegum Ladybird: You say that there is talent on this site. Good, bad, mediocre or just plain ordinary? [%sig%]

Really Fatal? Do you use tongs to get them into your mouth? I've touched a shark and it felt remarkably like a warm winegum. It's a combination of warmth, resistance and give. The sort of thing that you can poke with your finger and leave a fingermark in, but a few minutes later it has just returned to its original shape. Not quite weighed you up yet, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself? By the way, if I haven't already said, welcome to the site, lovely to have newcomers. Believe it or not, other than Mississippi, Liana and I all of the regular posters (and hence mafia) are I think people who were newcomers and made themselves at home. The original mafia like Eddie, Stormy, Fish, Robert and AJ don't post much any more. And some of the most brilliant conversationists (?) and writers on here have come along in the last year or so.

Well, you for one Miss Pippi.

Hello Ausencia, I'm new too. I have not submitted a piece yet as I am too busy reading here. There is a lot of talent on this site.