Jonathan Swift

Just sat down to read Gulliver's Travels again after many years and this line jumped out at me:

"I was recommended by my good master Mr Bates, to be surgeon to the Swallow . . ."

Swift was a very cunning satirist so who knows what he was suggesting if anything, but it tickles my crude sense of humour to think he was having a laugh . . .

I always thought that was an urban myth connected to Captain Pugwash?

Or Long John Sliver

Seaman Staynes and Roger the cabin boy.

Yes and the Jolly Roger and all that naughtical humour . . .

Graham Swift - who is one of my favourite writers is a descendent of JS - "Waterland" is a great novel...esp the sections on historiography and eels

Eels. Jellied or pickled?

Jellied eels . . . taste much better than they look . . . thank god

Nice on a picnic.

Not so nice for the eels, of course

Fark the eels. My idea of fair play is me winning.

If they didn't want to be eaten they could have evolved into something like a baby seal and got greenpeace on side.

there is a chapter on how eurpeans wondered for centuries how the Euro eel bred...turns out they develop sex organs just before breeding and migrate to a floating weed bed in the Atlantic - the Sargasso Sea

horace wrote:'there is a chapter on how Europeans wondered for centuries how the eel bred ... turns out they develop sex organs just before breeding, and migrate to a floating weed bed in the Atlantic

That's eels, is it? I thought it was Jamaicans ...

almost the same thing

Nasty.