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Patrick Brennan's avatar

"Up, up with people, you'll find them where ever you go ..."

Is "where ever" one or two words?

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Kevin Dolan's avatar

"Head on a swivel" is used frequently by American football announcers. It means looking in every direction to avoid getting rocked by an opponent who means you ill.

I also heard it today on a City Journal podcast in reference to riding the New York subway. You need to have to avoid being a victim of a random, probably bizarre, encounter with a disturbed fellow rider.

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Midge's avatar

I don’t know how close you’re getting to Flat 1, 80 Colney Hatch Lane, but that’s the street address for the charity registered in the Gesualdo Six’s name.

I know this, not because I’m stalking them, but because I stumbled into a chance to nominate them for a series on England and its history, and had to supply some kind of physical address, the only kind a perfect stranger like me could easily find.

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Jay Nordlinger's avatar

Thank you, Midge.

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L. McKee's avatar

Thank you for the travelogue. I have tagged along vicariously for quite a few.

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Jay Nordlinger's avatar

I appreciate that!

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Ray Loehr's avatar

I've traveled to London often and Jay's article sums it to a tee. The British are a great people and I enjoyed spending time with them. They overall are more gracious than most Americans and there is so much to see in London. I am in constant awe and their extensive history.

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Jay Nordlinger's avatar

Same. Thx.

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David's avatar

Well, I didn't read the great 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?' address on the 4th, but as the day approached it happened that I reached the chapter 'By the Rivers of Babylon' in David Blight's wonderful biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which includes an account of the famous speech delivered on July 5, 1852 (the Fourth fell on a Sunday), before almost 600 white Northerners who gave him an ovation with “a universal burst of applause.” Quoting from a letter I wrote to a friend on the 4th, as Congress passed the OBBB: He was able through his language and other gifts of oratory to afflict the comfortable who knew they were complicit in a great moral wrong. Now, 173 years later, no language, no oratory, no argument could convince even one of 50 senators nor even two or three of 218 representatives that they were not just complicit in but authors of, not so great a moral harm as slavery, certainly, but one that many more than one Senator or three Representatives absolutely knew was wrong in so many ways. Whether they feared for their physical safety (Murkowski signaled as much awhile back) or, more likely, for their political demise in a primary election, their cowardice is contemptible.

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CynthiaW's avatar

We have a South African Food Shop here in suburban Boring, east of Charlotte. It's been in business as long as I've lived here, more than 20 years, so there must be that much of a market for South African Food.

In novels, they call the English pharmacist a "chemist," as it says on the window in Mr. Nordlinger's photo, and the business a "chemist's shop." Is it new to call the business a "pharmacy," or are the novels just being quaint? They also call the pharmacist a "chemist" in Mexico.

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Randall's avatar

I visited London in 1993 with my daughter, who was then 12. We spent a day walking around central London, touring the Tower of London and the halls of Parliament. We stopped at the gate leading to the British Museum. I told her what it was, and she asked if we were going in. I said, "No, Darlin'. It's enormous and we don't have time. But if anyone ever asks you, you can tell them you've seen the British Museum!"

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CynthiaW's avatar

I visited London in 1983. We "saw" the British Museum in the same fashion. Then we went to Northern Ireland; the Troubles were only moderately lively that year.

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Dave Ouzounian's avatar

As we passed one on the bus, our London travel guide referred to the McDonald's as "The American Embassy."

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Jay Nordlinger's avatar

!

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