#hearsay

Sylus has officially been thrown under the bus while Valko is still MIA.

ACTUALLY, I want Brilliant Radiance. But Godspeed to everyone resisting temptation to pull.

Honestly, if they're waiting for September, when the anti-cyber bullying laws come into place, I personally would not mind. They have until autumn is in full swing by my clock.

I'm not 100 (because I don't have this from someone who was actually in that conversation on casting) but I believe the idea to cast this particular German actor was floated. She speaks French and can't get work because her reputation precedes her, but it was nixed by the studio.

I think the only difference is that Noel has had the life experience to be nicer to people and has a high respect for women. I heard Paul lives in a filthy mess and Liam and Noel have had to pay for him most of their lives. Maybe he thinks he's entitled to do whatever he wants with no consequences because he can use the excuse that he's the eldest?

If we want to believe Paul, Noel cut contact with him in the past and wasn't answering any text. There's an interview where Paul said that. So I don't think they have been on good terms for a long time.

I would like to tell you about a certain type of urban life that I observed in my younger days.

I once lived in a small apartment in the east-end of the capital for about six months, which is roughly half a year. My neighbours were of the usual sort - a mixture of retired people, the occasional young couple, and a committed spinster. All thoroughly normal and unremarkable.

The colourful exception to this bland retinue was my upstairs diagonal neighbour Mr Jenkins ‘fishsticks’ Willis, who was, by comparison, a singularly peculiar fellow.

Mr Willis had been awarded his sobriquet of ‘fishsticks’ on account of his most extraordinary shins. He would parade along the corridors of the apartment building, and the adjoining streets, wearing short trousers, all the better to show off his ‘sticks’, as he called them.

You see, each of his shins was covered in golden scales, in the manner of a great fish. His shins would shimmer and dance in the light, all full of living and joyful natural radiance, like the play of light upon a rainbow trout lazily circling in a sparkling pool during the golden hour.

The overall appearance of Mr Jenkins Willis was like that of a hunched rat, all sniffly and pinched, and twitchy. His magnificent shins were his most striking feature, and they attracted no small amount of admiration around the neighbourhood.

Mr Willis was certainly not embarrassed by his so-called ‘fishsticks’ any way, in fact he rather encouraged his onlookers. He would routinely pluck out a fresh golden scale and make a present of it to notable or remarkable admirers. Over time, his fame became significant enough for him to be able to make a minor living from servicing the curiosity of tourists. Local Hackney carriage drivers could be requested to hasten to the ‘fish-legged man of the east end’ and so instructed they would most reliably convey one to Mr Willis, for the purposes of edification. Apparently, a young student doctor even authored a medical article about the phenomenon of Willis’s shins for the Lancet, back when said learned journal still accepted such curios.

I had very few direct interactions with Mr Willis myself that I may repeat. Although I will record that I most certainly found maintaining a conversation with him to be gravely taxing, primarily given the distraction represented by his bescaled shins, which he insisted on bandying about in an alarming manner. We did converse on occasion about the price of apples and corned beef, to which he was partial, and I knowledgeable. He also had a habit of scratching his ears whilst speaking, in the manner of a rodent, which was disagreeable to me, and so we were never more than warm acquaintances.

Eventually, my personal circumstances developed such that I moved to other environs that were less salubrious, meaning that I encountered old ‘fishsticks’ no more. Although I have heard tell that in his later years he ceased his touristic perambulations and settled upon a more modest form of trouser.

More recently, I had occasion to visit an ale-house in the area of my former domicile. Therein I could but overhear a fishwife relaying to a young street urchin the story of ‘old froggy’. The tale took the form of a confessional, in which the protagonist reported to seeing a frog-legged man, awandering the streets of London, in a thick fog, near the river shores of the Thames. I could not but imagine that the story might be inspired by Mr Willis through some folkloric means of transmutation.