What would we call it? hallo-old-chum-you-fiend? my-good-friend-the-dishonourable-sir?

Is anyone posh using British Lemmy who can help advise?

I recommend that you do not touch the diaper.

I have to admit I love these ladder related jokes - they work on so many different levels :D

Britons of a certain age refer to this as the “Trigger’s Broom Paradox”, after a character from a comedy TV Series “Only Fools and Horses”.

Trigger, who worked as a street sweeper, got an award from the City Council for maintaining the same sweeping brush for twenty years (though the broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles).

Trigger’s Broom (Youtube Link)

I think so - he definitely played for Leeds. He must be in his 50s now, so maybe he’s took up journalism? :)

Black cats of all nationalities are welcome :) The charity that declared the day is from the UK, but the idea that “black cats are beautiful and shouldn’t be overlooked” is worldwide :)

According to the best school playground scientists of the time, opening a packet of crisps upside down (i.e. so the branding/writing is upside down, and you open the bottom of the packet, at the top) actually “made you gay”.

It wasn’t just gay if you did it, but it would literally cause a spontaneous eruption of gayness in whoever did it - who would be permanently gay from that point onwards.

In the 1990s in the UK, it was gay to wear a backpack using both shoulder straps (as opposed to using one strap over one shoulder, which was the heterosexual way to carry things to school).

I genuinely didn’t realise that! It looked like they were missing, and just had the little nubs underneath.

Would you perhaps like to imagine they were missing, if only for the sake of my previous comment? :)

How often do you write the word “wads”? I can see a potential problem.

Or Hocus Pocus, by Focus (youtube link)

✅️ Menacing scream at audience
✅️ As loud as possible
✅️ Crazy eyes
✅️ Flute

A very interesting and well-written post.

All three of ours play fetch, but only with specific objects. They’re all brothers about 2½ years old.

The tabby cat plays fetch with fluffy toy balls with feathers on them, the grey cat plays fetch with spare cat collars and the little black cat plays fetch with menthol sweet wrappers.

I think you’re going to need some Blackadder to go along with your Monty Python.

Start with the second series though, as the first series is a little weaker (the characters and style are a bit different), and might put you off.

Also used to make Mummy Brown Paint (wikipedia link)

Okay, this pretty much helps, but now I don’t know what a VMA or an SNL is.

I’m going to go with “Viking Marauder Awards”, a yearly event where people re-enact the sacking of the Lindesfarne Monastery etc, via the medium of song and dance (and pyrotechnics).

and “Sitting Near Larry”, a weekly TV programme where a bloke called Larry sits down somewhere, and then semi-famous people come and sit near him and perform things. Larry has never heard of any of them, so gives them well-meaning but slightly patronising advice. Larry is just off-screen in the image shown above.

Perhaps a warning rather then a genuine murder attempt?

Though the list of suspects must be “Any politician, celebrity or person who has been in the news and done something wrong, stupid or hypocritical since the 1980s”.

Cool. Good luck!

Just in case it’s interesting/relevant, it turns out I’ve got a couple of a similar type knocking around - in one case, the fabric is simply glued directly to the front of the inset, between the inner and outer moulding (the other one is a fabric coated mountboard between the work and the glazing).

In this case, you’d just tear the fabric off (from the front), try and clean up some glue residue off the backing, then stick some freshly cut fabric in its place.

Technically, you wouldn’t need unframe the work for that - but it’s still probably safer to do so.

Anyway, let us know how you get on with the framers - and give us a before/after photo :)

As said above - you’re going to want to take it apart anyway and see what it’s made of. You may be able to clean the fabric - but you’d need to know if it’s glued or stretched onto a backing board of some kind first anyway.

I’d be inclined to replace it or take it to a framers for the amount of effort it may take. It wouldn’t be an expensive job.

If you’re interested in home repair options, if the fabric is stretched and pinned/stapled etc (i.e. not glued onto a backing board), you can try unpinning, then cleaning with any general water/mineral stain removal instructions for clothes etc - dabbing, soaking, saliva, detergent, vinegar, chuck it in the washing machine etc, then re-pinning it.

If it’s glued onto a backing board, some of the cleaning might still work, but might be pretty impractical, and you’d perhaps have an easier time painting it.

You’d need a stain-blocking primer/undercoat otherwise the mark will just seep back through - then you might want a few very thin coats of gesso or other quick undercoat on it, then several very thin coats of waterbased whatever-you-like matt paint on top (no real difference in using household emulsion wall paint or the finest of artists acrylics). Multiple very thin coats will keep the fabric texture more visible.

I’d be inclined to say replacing it would be a whole lot less hassle :)

Very nice. Visually and technically brilliant.