Welcome to this week's Picks. We begin with the plight facing thousands on a small Caribbean Island. This particular problem is an extended catastrophe for the inhabitants of the British protectorate of Montserrat, where a volcanic eruption has covered the countryside in millions of tons of ash, reducing a large part of the small island to an uninhabitable ruin.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) has set up a Montserrat Volcano webpage to provide information on the ongoing relief effort. To date UMCOR has provided tents, shipments of food, and emergency grants for farming and the construction of temporary housing. It also provides useful links to information about the eruption including the Government of Montserrat's news releases and updates.

Moving closer to Blighty proper, we pause in Ireland to peruse the pages of The Irish Georgian Society. The organisation was founded in 1958 by the Hon. Desmond Guinness and his late wife, Mariga, for the protection of buildings of architectural merit in Ireland. It counts among its victories the saving of threatened buildings such as Castletown, Co. Kildare; Damer House, Co. Tipperary; Doneraile Court, Co. Cork; Roundwood, Co. Laois; Tailors Hall, Dublin, and 13 Henrietta St., Dublin.

Preservation is also a key word for staff at the Bath-based Museum of Costume and Assembly Rooms which preserves and exhibits examples of clothes from 1660 onwards.

The website lets you take a virtual tour of some of the exhibits, and you can also visit the Fashion Research Centre which provides study facilities for students and members of the public.

Some of the most bizarre fashions of this century must be those sported by Pearly Kings and Queens, denizens of London's cock-er-nee East End, who dress up in suits and dresses extravagantly decorated with thousands of small pearl buttons. They are also fluent speakers of cockney rhyming slang, the colourful language, once thought to have been the argot of the underworld, but now believed to have been a quick-witted attempt by cockney navvies to match the blarney of their Irish counterparts.

As the Cockney Handbook shows, rhyming slang is fruity, with a significant percentage of its vocabulary given offer to matters biological. For example the phrases Elephant and Castle, Hampton Wick, Pedigree Chum and popcorn all have meanings which we couldn't possibly reveal in a column such as this. You'll just have to see for yourself. This site is a must for Chirpy Cockneys everywhere.

The chirpiest cockney of them all, for a whole generation of British manhood now approaching middle age, was Barbara Windsor who graced a total of nine Carry On films in the 60s and 70s. Perhaps her most famous moment (until she took on the role of Peggy Mitchell in the BBC soap EastEnders, that is) was the bra-bursting exercise scene in Carry On Camping, a film regularly voted the best of the bunch in Carry Online's fortnightly audience polls.

Carry Online is an exhaustive fund of knowledge about these typically English forays into innuendo. The trivia section is a must -- revealing such nuggets as Kenneth Williams received only £800 for his first role in the series, and that Carry on Up the Khyber was originally known as the British Position in India. It even has information on all the Carry On projects that never made it past the planning stage.

Well, armed with a copy of the Cockney Handbook we're off to climb the apples and pears, use the Bob Hope in the bag of flour, pump up the Max Miller and grab ourselves a little Bo Beep. Until next week ...

Sites featured in Picks of the Week

• Montserrat Volcano - detailing relief work on the stricken island.
  
• The Irish Georgian Society - preserving Ireland's historic past.
  
• Museum of Costume and Assembly Rooms - the history of clothes.
  
• Cockney Handbook - a manual for those born outside of the sound of Bow Bells.
  
• Carry Online - the original ooooohhhh matron!!.
  

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