Questions for our UK HPphiles

[bluesqueak]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Anne" <anneu53714 at s...> 
wrote:
> Hi all, I'm just getting into writing my own HP fan fics (after 
> reading a great many by other HP fans) and would appreciate help 
> on a few details. First, the word PUDDING. In the U.S. it usually 
> applies to a specific type of food, which can be eaten as a 
> dessert or a snack. Does "pudding" just mean "pudding" in Britain, 
> or does it mean "any kind of dessert-type dish eaten after the  
> main evening meal"? 

Following on from Richard's comments:

The word 'pudding' used on its own would be a dessert, probably at 
the evening meal, but a lunchtime meal might also have 'pudding' as 
a special treat (e.g. on Dudley's birthday?)

Pudding is also a sweet or savoury steamed dish made with suet and 
flour ('suet pudding'). You can have treacle pudding, steak and 
kidney pudding, lemon pudding, etc, all made around the suet steamed 
pastry base. They're made in a deep round bowl called a 'pudding 
basin'

Some other dishes made by steaming are also called pudding - this is 
the blood sausage (which we call black pudding) or pease pudding 
(made with peas) category.

And then there's rice pudding, which is, just to confuse everyone, 
baked.

'Pudding faced' means round faced, 'pudding basin haircut' means it 
looks like you put a pudding basin on top of the head and cut off 
any hair that stuck out from under the basin.

A 'big fat pudding' means a fat, round, and generally stupid person -
 as does 'pudding-brain'.
<snip>
> Anne U
> (who figured 867-5309 might fall on deaf ears in an HP fan fic)

No, that could be a UK number. We quite often give numbers without 
the area code, if the person we're giving them to is in the same 
phone area. It would not be a London number, though. As GulPlum 
points out, Londoners now have 8 digit numbers (which everyone has 
trouble remembering).

Pip