Believe it or not the title says it all, but for more details see;

http://www.cumbria-online.co.uk/view....asp?id=180623

Not really travel related but perhaps this gives some sort of an insight into the English psyche?

Jim

<i>This is why I need to live in England. </i>

or as the New Yorker magazine used as a caption whenever a story like this was reprinted in its pages:
&quot;There'll always be an England.&quot;

Hopefully above the surface, Scarlett!

&quot;There'll always be an England&quot;
- the counterpart of &quot;only in America&quot;?

JJBhoy, I can only take this to be an attempt (and a good one) to upstage my recent &quot;Falling Chicken Alert&quot; post on the Australia forum.

Neil,

Have just read your falling chicken story &amp; am happy to defer to you.

Your story has that edge of mystery &amp; intrigue whereas I have to say that nothing the English do surprises me (speaking as a Scot).

Neil, will you be on CNN tomorrow? I will get up early to watch..let us know

LOL, JJ, yes, hopefully

Scarlett, I didn't lob the chickens and I don't know who did and I'm not changing my story for anyone.

JJBhoy, we can take it that the gnomes weren't planted by frogmen from north of the border, then?

At the risk of highjacking your thread, I once read of an urban guerilla movement that was nicking gnomes somewhere in Germany. The anti-gnome forces has even gone to the trouble of moulding a prone gnome with a dagger in its chest, which they were leaving in gnomophiles' gardens as replacements for the nicked gnomes (yes, I know it all seems somewhat unGerman). Could this be a pan-European conspiracy?

http://www.freethegnomes.com/

It is all the work of a Gnomish Underground movement I think..

Neil, I believe you, really I do..absolutely.

My sister-in-law and her husband have quite a few gnomes strategically placed around their 2 acre property in NJ -- it's their own Gnomeland Security force.

Are gnomes like trolls?
In which case, the deeper under water, the better.

Has anyone used Gnomish on the obscure languages thread yet? Still spoken yet by a very small population, as I understand it.

Surely you all remember the great gnome kidnap scandal storyline on Coronation Street, a few years' back?

The are obviously Fodors editors doing their new &quot;dipping in&quot; number.

Obviously none of you have ever tried diving in England's inland waterways. To which one alternative (diving off England's coast) is even colder, and the only sane alternative requires going at least as far as Sharm El Sheikh (where there's a serious danger of running into some very dodgy characters), or else the Caymans or Queensland.

Unfortunately, nature's not bestowed our lakes with much underwater visual interest. So enthusiasts have done underwater landscaping all over. There's a chalk pit in Cambridgeshire that conceals an entire double-decker Routemaster (better there, of course, than on the streets) in its less than limpid depths. And, until you've tried exploring it in the middle of December, you haven't lived.

Guess I know where I'm going to go diving next. Better yet, maybe I should start a gnome garden here.

Wait a minute Neil,

If you're not prepared to own up to throwing the chickens then I don't see why I should admit to planting the gnomes.

In fact, I will use the standard defence employed by small boys all over Scotland when caught apparently red handed;
&quot;It wisnae me - a bad boy done it and ran away.&quot;

Honest Jim