Cutting slabs - follow-up.

[Andy Hall]

Is anybody?

[:Jerry:]

In your dreams.

[:Jerry:]

On your planet no, but on Earth plenty do.

[Andy Hall]

You have to be kidding, although there are a fair number of queens among the cabin crews.

I did sit next to David Owen once on one of their aeroplanes but I don't think that would count.

Sitting opposite Princess Mette-Marit on an SAS flight was the aristocratic experience.

Mind you, BA do quite often seem to manage to deliver luggage using different aircraft.

[Andy Hall]

No accounting for taste.

[Stuart Noble]

Laying eggs?

[The Medway Handyman]

Very partial to a helping of bratwurst - Aldi do a very nice one.

[:Jerry:]

Nothing wrong in liking cockles Andy, but a man with your wealth should really have more class...

[Andy Hall]

The sad thing is that even allegedly pretty good restaurants take perfectly good ingredients and wreck them.

This even extends to many ethnic restaurants.

The only things that I have found to reasonable are Italian places actually run by `italians, otherwise it's pretty desperate. For the last several years, the German restaurant have had massive drops in sales and the drop in quality is noticable.

[Owain]

Not that many outside Germany, otherwise there'd be MacFritz's restaurants on every high street.

Owain

[Andy Hall]

I think that you're getting confused with oysters and their origin.

[:Jerry:]

I think you are a pompous ass on an ego trip!

[Andy Hall]

Oh dear. That really does show how little that you know about shellfish and their humble history

Traditionally, all of the available shellfish types were sold together as subsistence food as witness some of the very basic Victorian dishes using them viz. the East End eel, pie and oyster shops.

Much of the stupid British attitude to seafood in general and oysters in particular came about as a result of Britain's own oyster industry being largely screwed up in the early years of the last century.

elsewhere in Europe, fruits de mer are widely available, prepared every which way and not necessarily expensive at all - for example the almost universal availability of moules at eateries in Belgium. It's possible to go to fine dining restaurants in France (with or without Michelin stars) and pay a great deal of money for oysters prepared in sophisticated ways. Equally, one can go to virtually any supermarket in France at certain times of the year and buy a big bucket of them for about 5 euros.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My wife just picks em up off the beach and eats them. Yuk.

[Andy Hall]

Well, there used to be a chain of burger places in Israel called McDavids (shameless copy of the yellow arches). I don't think they are there any longer. They had kosher cheeseburgers, IIRC. I never figured out how that could be achieved.

[Andy Hall]

Hasn't she convinced you that they are not just salty snot then? :-)

[S Viemeister]

Soya 'cheese' product?

[Andy Hall]

I figured that it would have to be vegetable something......

[Andy Hall]

Well I don't know. Now that Skodas include the engine as part of the deal, the difference may not be so much