calvan

Let me express my pleasant surprise, as a retired lawyer, that you draw a distinction between the two.

In a potentially misguided attempt to inject some levity to this debate, as an observer from afar it strikes me that the Brexit fiasco presents a marketing opportunity to KFC in the UK. KFC can now offer diners the choice of competing Corbyn buckets and May buckets. The Corbyn Bucket consists of 12 pieces, all left wings and assh*les. I will leave the constituent parts of the May bucket to your imagination.

That ends the similarity.The Gremlin was one of the most truly awful cars known to mankind. Intended as American Motors' answer to import compacts it was essentially a Hornet (the barrel-roll car in The Man with the Golden Gun) with the back sawn off. Hers had a straight 6 engine that produced about 105 brake hamster power while putting, it seemed, 82% of the weight on the front wheels. Combined with a 3 on the floor transmission and four wheel drum brakes it understeered like a pig and stopped in slightly less space than the Queen Mary. The story was that she had just finished nurses training and her father was providing most of the money for a new car. We advocated for the them newly introduced Honda Civic but her dad invoked the golden rule of business (he who has the gold makes the rules) and went with the idea that there would never be parts available for one of those weird import cars. So the car of choice was the Gremlin. We should have viewed this as an omen, but the very first day she had the Gremlin she was driving over to show it to me when a crow flew into the partially open drivers side window, eviscerated itself on the glass and flopped dead onto her lap.

I regularly frequent the hemmings .com site to see if they have any stories of interest, including their intermittent posting of archival photos of various places as kind of a "spot the cars" game. The other day they posted this picture of a parking lot on Richards St., in downtown Vancouver taken in 1974. Cars are a bit difficult to make out, but what will be of general interest is a Lotus Europa just to the right of the lot entrance. Of more direct interest to me is a bronze coloured AMC Gremlin behind the fence on the left side. Back in '74 my girlfriend (as she then was - now my wife) acquired a wonderful Gremlin of precisely that shade and as much of a dog as that car was we never saw another the same colour. I know it's not the Europa we subsequently bought (wrong colour) but there is a fairly good chance that it is the old Gremlin come back to haunt us.

And one more to make it three. Have a great day, and try to carry it over for the rest of the year.

Looking forward to getting stuck into a couple of new ales my daughter gave me for Christmas as well as an old favourite that should perhaps be consumed in honour of Bibs.

Like he said. For what help or comfort it might be worth, our thoughts are with you. The fortitude you are showing is quite literally unimaginable for me

I suppose that puts me near the ends of the Earth, it being about 30 minutes past midnight as I post this. Merry Christmas to all! (and I'm off to bed)

"Technology my arse..." Maybe that's the key to use for a biometric lock.

A few days ago I was having coffee with some friends when, out of the blue, one of them asked me what I thought of the whole UK/EU/Brexit situation. My immediate reaction was to blurt out "It's a rolling [email protected]#k." I hope that I wasn't too far out of the bounds of accuracy and propriety with that assessment.

Yes, he will be missed. It seemed that his character, and obvious knowledge, came through in his posts. Like many here, I never met him in person but was impressed by his contributions. RIP.

1997 Esprit V8 SCCFE33C4VHF65199 Midnight Blue Metallic Orkney Fawn leather One of four imported to Canada that model year Engine replaced in 2004, courtesy of Lotus Cars USA

Some ice hockey trivia for your edification. The earliest instance of a player wearing a protective testicular guard , i.e. a "cup", was in 1874. The earliest instance of a player wearing a protective helmet in a Stanley Cup playoff game was in 1974. You can't say that hockey players don't have their priorities right.

Some of these low-lifes will take anything that can be turned into a bit of ready cash and the police seem to be able to do bugger all about it. Taking cats is common enough here but as the Vancouver area has about the highest gasoline prices in North America, a local variant of the trick is to go under a vehicle, drill a hole in the fuel tank and collect the liquid gold that runs out. It happens most often to SUVs and pickup trucks as they have the largest tanks. While I would never actively wish such a fate on anyone, I also wouldn't shed a tear if one of the bastards managed to strike a spark and immolate himself in the process.

Just in case the new house is a bit much to swing for this year, I will be happy to offer storage space in my garage. Let me know when I need to start clearing out space for it.