Word: paddington
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...potty old party, the very model of what the aitch-adding British call a "maiden haunt." It is Comedienne Margaret Rutherford, 69 and still going strong (Passport to Pimlico; I'm All Right, Jack], and in this adaptation of an Agatha Christie chiller called 4:50 from Paddington she has a role that is custom-tailored to her somewhat peculiar measure...
...plays Miss Marple, a sort of dowager-detective who takes the 4:50 train from Paddington Station one afternoon and, happening to glance up from the whodunit she is wolfing, sees a woman being strangled in a passing train. Murder, she says to the police, but they only smile indulgently. Miss Marple gets her back up. "If you think I am going to sit back." she bellows, "and let everybody regard me as a dotty old maid, you are very much mistaken...
...creeping neologism, and one finds that since 1920 "without a mintie" has been Australian sporting slang for penniless, and that "boat race" is current Cockney rhyming slang for face. There is no end to this; it is ceaselessly fascinating to learn that between 1780 and 1830, "to dance the Paddington frisk" meant to be hanged, that "painted mischief" is an obsolete term for playing cards, and that "paff!" is a contemptuous colloquial interjection, no longer used...
Residents of Cambridge, joined by commuters from outlying towns like Paddington have complained bitterly to legislators and councilmen about the inconvenience of standing in cold, rain, and snow while waiting for coach buses...
Through the fogs and damps of London drift thousands of Africans, a long way from the sunlit ease of their homelands. They live in bleak, crowded rooming houses in Netting Hill and Paddington, find their entertainment in smoky cellar nightclubs that are loud with West Indian steel bands, bongo drums and maracas. They are genuinely puzzled when the Jumbles (a corruption of John Bulls) object to the noise and the dawn revelry. "What harm do we do?" asked an African last week. "We like to dance and sing, and we've worked hard all day and till late...