Who invented the deckchair?

The Egyptians.

...although John Thomas Moore took out a patent on the design in 1886.

What is the weight of 16 Brazilian Anacondas?

Don't know. What's the weight of one?

The average weight of a Brazilian anaconda is 148.5kg. Thusly, the combined weight of 16 will be 2,376kg.

At a football/rugby match, why is it always the fat bloke who takes his shirt off?

Sorry about that.

Norman French ... like French, only different.
Most "French" people as we now know them didn't speak "French" as we now know it but spoke their own local language.


Well, they were Norman ... descended from Norsemen who "settled" in the fertile limestone area now known as Normandy.
To communicate with the Lord of the Manor you'd speak French but, out in the fields, English was still the lingua franca (

sorry), so a sheep, which is Schaff in German, a word brought here by the Angles (or Saxons, not sure which) out in the field became Mouton by the time it got to the Lord of the Manor's table.
As Dally mentioned, many of their words entered our language.
For many centuries if you wanted to show you were "educated" or sophisticated, you'd drop a few French words into your conversations, hence Shakespeare used French-speaking as a theatrical device to show how a character had ideas above his social station.

EDIT - Forgot to mention, as late as the 1790's, only about 12% of French people spoke what we now call French.

Whats the frequency, Kenneth ?

Probably the closest you will now find to "old" French would be the patois spoken by Arcadians and Guernsey folk

There was a three-part comic documentary done by Eddie Izzard some years ago, [iMongrel Nation[/i, looking at the ethnic origins of the British.

Anyway, one of the segments had him going to Leicester University (IIRC) to learn to speak a little Old English. He then visited rural Holland and went in search of a farmer to ask to buy a cow from – using Old English. And that was an interesting way to show the links between English and Dutch.

I guess that depends on which of the French languages of old, is actually the "Old French" in question.

Why is it that when driving along the motorway, if you happen to glance across at a driver in another vehicle they more often than not can tell your looking at them and will glance back?

This also happens if someone looks at me, I can sense someone looking at me and will look back.

Is this telepathy?

... and of corse "Dutch" is basically the word the Germans use for their own language.

Mrs Dally in her younger day studied the Mediaeval literature of the Languedoc.

Thanks, I'll do that.

Indeed.

You can see the links really easily in just a few basic words.

So, for instance:

Milk - melk - milch.

Or

Thank you - dank u – danke.

Yes, basically the everyday English words that the peasants used / still use are often Germanic and the long, fancy English fancy words often French (with in many cases exactly the same spelling).

And why do they instantly stop picking their nose when they glance? I know they were doing it, they know you know they were doing it, so why not carry on picking while glancing?

I don't want another question, I want an answer to my question.

Telepathically will do.

No, the sudden movement of their head in your peripheral vision to look at you is picked up by your fight or flight detector equipment, which is hard wired to that part of the brain from your optic nerve, bypassing your visual cortex. Your conscious mind is concentrating on the road ahead, but your unconscious mind picks up the "threat" and reacts to it.

Is there a God?

If a person who can see into the future can see that they are going to suffer harm and then they change their plans and, hence, don't suffer harm, that means it doesn't happen.
If it didn't happen, how could they have foretold it?

followed on by, why do you need to make an appointment with a clairvoyant?