But how would I know which questions to ask? Believe me, I really  want you to get a gold star.

 

As a matter of fact, yes.  The calligraphy is the easy bit.  I'm not very good a the illuminations - perhaps I'll go to Blackpool for some inspiration.  Don't know why you're always going on about the NHS, it's no different down there than up here.

 

Gave up bird-hunting today and went carpet-hunting instead.  Then home to pot some shrimps and make a Tarte Tatin.

Well, we could adopt the same strategy they use for marking A Levels. You decide what grade you want me to get then mark whatever I write accordingly to achieve the desired result.

 

There you go. You've missed your vocation. You could have been an ancient scribe, like the Venomous Bead, and made a fortune flogging your luminous manuscripts to museums. Well, it's alright for you people on the inside of the NHS, espesh the admin. You can just move yourself to the top of the waiting list whenever you need minor/major/plastic/brain surgery! Ashley, I beg to differ but, despite Windy's accusations of blind Cornish bias, I have lived in udder parts of the country and the NHS was not as non-existent as it is down here. God only knows what will happen when they finish closing down the rural hospitals 'cos then the people with no doctor or dentist will have nowhere to go. (Nearest dentist last recorded taking new NHS patients was in Barnstaple last year. Since then several have terminated their NHS books. Read somewhere in a pooper that 60% of Cornwall now does not have access to an NHS dentist. I know there's nun round here because I just had to go private to get a filling fixed. What a financial joy that was when you only earn £5 an hour (before Gordon Brown).

 

How do you hunt carpets? I've always found them fairly easy to spot but real buggers to capture and take home as trophies. Ditto for potting shrimps. Did you use a punt gun to pot them? They are fairly small targets so you'd need a gun with a fairly large blast radius.

Bonzer idea. That would solve the teaching crisis as well.

 

More like the Vulnerable Beade.  You've missed the point. The National Health Service is there for ill people.  If you're fit or walking wounded you are now expected to take responsibility for yourself.  Thusly, by the time you've walked (because that's good for yoy) to Barnstaple you will probably have forgotten about the toothache as your feet are so sore. People will be treated in their own homes.  And it follows that hospitals will become obsolete so can be converted into affordable housing.

Well, I don't like to suck my own trombone but ..... I'm not just an ugly face, y'know.

 

Oh, so that's it. And there I was thinking it was just a conspiracy to wipe out the inconvenient local population so that more second homes could be created. Ashley, it looks like a major NHS row is about to break out down here. Someone with a brain down here has worked out that under the new NHS 'funding formula' that is being introduced Cornwall is going to get totally shafted and it has been all over the news in the last 24 hours. More in this week's nudes bulletin if the RT get back from the pub in time.

Oh, I know that.

 

I wait with baited breath.

What sort of bait are you using?

 

Come to think of it, what are you trying to catch?