Tear up the dictionary!

Did I hear right?  News item about the first same-sex marriages, and much cheering, whooping and hollering, but amongst it all did I really hear the Registrar say something like "you are now legally husband and husband"?  So we've not only redefined marriage, but we've also redefined husband and, I assume wife? This is getting silly!

Was zum Teufel??

I'm always interested in language stories, and here's one from Germany.  German has three words for "the" - der, die and das.  Although nouns which take the der form are classed as masculine, those which take die as feminine and those which take das as neuter this does not necessarily reflect reality - the word for a young girl is neuter for example, whereas the word for a turnip is feminine.  But apparently moves are afoot to decide on one form (die seems to be favourite or maybe a neutral de) and do away with the others.  But of course as we see with our own language, you mess with it at your peril and there will be people who will defend the status quo to their last breath, so we shall see if anything come of it.

What's the idea?

Can't quite get my head round this ban on books being sent to prisoners.  Is this a security matter - it is said that parcels are an easy way of smuggling contraband into prisons - but surely this is just a matter of having an efficient examination system for incoming mail?  Then again, it has been suggested that it is a question of privileges - you have to earn the right to be allowed to have books.  If that is indeed the reason what happened to the idea that prison is supposed to be rehabilitative? Of course, I suppose there's always the prison library.

Ha ha.

A horse walks in to a bar and orders a beer.  The bartender is a bit taken aback and asks the horse to hang on a minute.  Meanwhile he goes into the back room where his boss is and says "There's a horse out front asking for a beer - what should I do?" "Serve him" says his boss "but charge him double - horses don't know the price of beer".  So the bartender goes back out and serves the horse his beer.  "We don't get many horses in here" he says.  "I'm not surprised at these prices" replies the horse.

Up the reds!

Did you know that if you see a grey squirrel on your land and do not report it, you are breaking the law? Well, at least you are for the next few weeks until the government get round to repealing the law which makes this so.  It was a law originally designed to protect the native red squirrel which was at risk from the foreign grey interlopers, but it seems the battle has been given up as lost, and so there's no point in the law any more.  The reds are now confined to the North and Scotland, where they seem to be doing OK, thank goodness.

Left hand, right hand?

From the beginning of the next school year, it will be compulsory for primary schools to teach a foreign language to Key Stage 2 pupils (7 to 11 year olds). However, it is becoming apparent that when these children go on to secondary school, there is no guarantee that they will be able to continue to study the same language there. There seems to be no requirement for primary and secondary schools to liaise to ensure any sort of continuity of language teaching.  This wouldn't be so bad if you were able to ensure that your child went to a secondary school where they would be able to continue their study of Italian, Mandarin or whatever, but as we all know and I've commented on so many times in these pages, which secondary school your child ends up at is very much in the lap of the gods. So four years studying language X may end up being a waste of time.  Joined-up thinking, folks?

Seems clear to me.

Cannot understand all the opposition there has been to the idea of decriminalising the non-payment of the TV licence fee.  The idea is that it will become a civil matter and if you don't pay you will be sued rather than prosecuted.  I've stated my position more than once in these pages that in my view imprisonment should be reserved for those who present a specific danger to the public or some member(s) thereof, but put that on one side for a moment and consider the maths.  What's a TV licence - £145 isn't it?  So you send someone to prison for a week - what's that cost?  Must be getting on for £1000 I would think.  And at the end of the day you aren't even going to get your £145 - you can't be tried twice for the same offence on the same evidence, so conviction effectively wipes the slate clean.   Where's the sense in that?

Is that all?

Am I missing something?  Apparently a gang of thieves spent months and plenty of sweat and toil in digging a 50-foot long tunnel to get to a Tesco hole-in-the-wall machine and got away with some £86,000 in cash. Now I'm not pretending that £86,000 is small change but given the time and effort and numbers which must have been involved, it does make you wonder if it was worth it.

Did you know...

...that nowhere in the nursery rhyme does it say that Humpty Dumpty is an egg? Indeed, although the rhyme goes back to at least the late 18th century, it is only from about 1900 that Humpty Dumpty has been portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg.  The earliest recorded written version is in fact slightly different and does not so easily suggest an egg -

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

Four-score men and four-score more

Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before

(1797)

Of course, most of us know Humpty Dumpty from "Through the Looking Glass" - the follow-up to "Alice in Wonderland" where he is very definitely drawn as an egg. There have been many suggestions as to the origin of the rhyme - from the idea that it was originally a riddle (what is it that, if it were to fall off a wall, would break and could not be restored to its original state?  Answer - an egg) to the suggestion that it was based on a real event concerning a large cannon in the Civil War which, as a result of enemy bombardment, toppled off the wall it was on, and was so heavy that it could not be lifted back up there.  Oh come on - let's just enjoy it as a nursery rhyme, eh?

Pretty in pink?

Pink for a girl, blue for a boy...  We're so used to the idea today, that it comes as somewhat of a surprise to find that a hundred or so years ago it was the reverse - pink was considered the appropriate colour for boys and blue for girls. And prior to that, children of both sexes were generally dressed in white, and usually dresses at that.  Indeed, somewhere among my souvenirs there is a photo of me aged about 2 with blond ringlets in what looks suspiciously like a dress!  So is girls' love of pink today (my granddaughters all wouldn't be seen dead without a pink mobile 'phone) more a matter of nurture rather than nature? 

For God's sake...!!

Anybody else fed up to the back teeth with these constant and contradictory articles about healthy and unhealthy food?  Saturated fat is bad for you - no it's not.  Red meat is bad for you - no it's not.  Alcohol is bad for you - not necessarily. And so on and so on.  They've demonised fat, sugar, caffeine, salt and all manner of other things at one time or another, only to later change their minds, and then sometimes change them back again!  What on earth are we supposed to think?  My Gran (yes, that one) used to say "moderation in all things" and once again I think she'd got it right.

Just dust it off - it'll be fine!

You must have heard of the "five second rule"?  This says that if you drop food on the floor and scoop it up within five seconds, it's still safe to eat.  It's not a rigid rule of course, because so much depends on the state of your floor, the type of flooring you have and the sort of food we're dealing with and certainly you would be well advised to throw it in the bin, or at least cut off the part that came in contact with the floor and chuck that away.  But research at Aston University in Birmingham has concluded that there is in fact a significant "time factor" in the transfer of bacteria from the floor to anything dropped on it. Surprisingly, they found that if you are going to drop food on the floor and pick it up and eat it, then carpet is the safest type of floor covering on which to do it.

Ukraine

You will recall that the government in Kiev is there as a result of deposing a President who, whatever your views on him, was democratically elected.  They are now refusing to acknowledge the recent referendum in Crimea on the grounds that it was illegal.  The words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.

What's in a name?

I had a cousin called Margaret - except that nobody called her Margaret - she was known to everybody as Peggy.  But it's only recently that I've realised that this wasn't some personal fad on her behalf, but that Peggy or Peg is an accepted nickname for anyone named Margaret.  But why?  It seems that it was a very popular name in medieval times and as it was a bit of a mouthful, it spawned a whole series of nicknames, including Maggie and Meg.  Meg became Peg, and there you go. Perhaps the most unusual of the various nicknames is Daisy.  This is a bit more obscure and relies on the fact that margaret was at one time the common name for the flower called the ox-eye daisy.  God bless, Peggy - I miss you.

Can't keep a good man down?

As an interesting addendum to Saturday's post, I had thought that when Tony Benn, then Viscount Stansgate, renounced his title, that the title would cease to exist.  But apparently the change in the law which allowed him to do this made it clear that such a revocation would be personal to the individual involved and would cease to have effect on that individual's death.  So the title survives and his eldest son has now become the new Viscount Stansgate.

Let the people decide.

So if, as seems most likely, the referendum in Crimea today results in an overwhelming vote in favour of joining (rejoining really) Russia, what will be our stance?  We have consistently supported those protesting in Egypt, Libya and (at least initially) Syria, on the basis that the people of those countries should be allowed to choose their own future - so what's the difference?  Do we only support the popular will when it suits us?  There's a word for that - hypocrisy!

R.I.P.

Tony Benn - a politician whom I admired and respected rather than felt comfortable with.  What I mainly remember about him was that he reinvented himself at various points in his life. Before he adopted the "man of the people" name of Tony Benn he was Anthony Wedgwood Benn, and prior to that he was Viscount Stansgate, and had to renounce his title in order to stand for Parliament.  A man of many parts you might say.

Heads or tails

When I was at school the perceived wisdom was that when you flipped a coin you should always call the side that was on top and flip it from waist height so that it went up as high as your head and let it fall to the ground.  Doing that, supposedly you should win more often than you lose.  Interesting, because an American professor of mathematics has done research suggesting that there may be something in it. Don't understand the maths which is horribly complicated, but it concludes that the "topside" will come up winner some 51% of the time.  Of course, whether or not you find that sufficient of an "edge" is another matter.

Salted and roasted - they're lovely!

Did you know that peanuts grow underground - bit like potatoes?  Indeed, they used to be called groundnuts, and if you're old and decrepit like me you may remember the "groundnut scandal" when shortly after the war our government invested a lot of money in a scheme to grow groundnuts in Tanganyika (what is now Tanzania) completely overlooking the fact that the climate there was fundamentally unsuitable, and that there would be massive problems in preparing the ground for planting.  In the end they abandoned the project with a loss of some £48m (well over a billion in today's money).  And by the way, they're not nuts, they're legumes - more akin to beans and pulses.

And it still goes on...

Lockerbie - has the whole business been blown wide open by a former Iranian intelligence officer, who has said that the bombing was carried out by a Syrian terrorist group at the behest of Iran, who wanted revenge for the "accidental" shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by a US warship a few months earlier. You have to treat statements like this with caution, and it may or may not prove to have some basis in fact, but I have to say that my immediate response on hearing of Lockerbie all those years ago was "this is Iran getting its own back".

What a language!

Can't think of the story it comes from, but one of P G Wodehouse's tales contains the line "I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled". Funny, yes?  But why, if disgruntled is a genuine English word, isn't there a word "gruntled"?  There are in fact a whole list of what are referred to as "unpaired words" - words which look as though they should have an opposite, but do not. Words like "nonchalant", "insipid" and "gormless".  There ain't no such words as chalant, sipid and gormful.  The Simpsons often gets laughs from the same idea - they used the "gruntled" one as well and also in one episode had Flanders talking about "refenestrating" Edna Krabappel who had climbed out of a window to meet him. Defenestrate is of course a legitimate word meaning to throw out of a window.

Leave us alone!

I've said before that I am generally in favour of our being in the EU but just wish they would stop trying to micro-manage everything and leave individual countries to sort out the more trivial issues for themselves.  A case in point - most countries (including us) have regulations in force governing what you can grow where.  This is to ensure that there is some control over invasive species which might otherwise cause problems (Japanese knotweed being the most obvious example).  But now the EU is proposing a European-wide "hit list" of forbidden plants, with the power to enter private property (like your back garden) to search for and seize any such. Quite apart from the threat to your privacy, the problem with this is that Europe is a big area with very different climatic conditions, and a plant which is seen as a nuisance in the dry, arid areas of the Mediterranean for example will therefore be on the list, despite the fact that it would cause no problem in say Scotland or on the Baltic coast.  Like I say, this is the sort of thing best left to individual countries to regulate.

UTW (Up The Wolves)

Oh, you've got to love this - a Wolves fan (I'm sure you remember that that's my team) sent off for a club shirt.  When it arrived, the logo (a stylised wolf's head) was upside down.  So he complained, and the club sent him a letter of apology - printed upside down!  How brilliant was that?  And what I really liked was that the letter said  "the world can sometimes look better upside down - last year's League table being just one example...."  And they sent him a match ticket with perks. Now that's what I call customer service!

Does what it says on the tin?

Extremist groups usually have a very high opinion of themselves, and tend to defend their views and actions with cod philosophy and distorted facts.  So, whatever you think about them, a new far-right group called National Action which has recently sprung up around Birmingham at least deserve ten out of ten for honesty, when its spokesman said that their aim is to be provocative and "piss people off".

Quick - Eastenders is on.

Why are "soap operas" so called?  Although when we hear the expression today we think of various popular TV programmes, it well predates television.  It goes back to the 1920s when Proctor & Gamble had the bright advertising idea of sponsoring certain US radio programmes which were broadcast daily, thus keeping their name constantly in the public mind. The company were of course best known at the time as the manufacturers of soapflakes for washing clothes - hence the name.

A technological step too far?

I struggle with my several-year-old outdated mobile 'phone, but I am told that the latest and greatest iPhone has a facility called Siri, which allows you to speak to it and it will understand you and answer queries and so on.  Well, somebody apparently used Siri to write their shopping list for Pancake Day, and this was the result -

That cake today (Pancake Day)

Axe (Eggs)

Queen (Cream)

Flower (Flour)

Milk

Balance (Lemons)

Shut up (Sugar)

Butter

So - two (maybe three if we give it flower) out of eight.  Pencil and paper still rules!

Music man

For some reason - maybe because of the forthcoming centenary of the outbreak of the Great War - the song "It's a long way to Tipperary" is in the news.  Why is this worthy of comment?  Because there are two distinct stories of how the song was written, and by whom.  The sheet music credits Jack Judge and Harry Williams as joint composers, but both (or their descendants) have claimed it as their own work. They had certainly known one another for years, and Judge, who played the music halls, claims that he was playing in Stalybridge (Manchester) one night when he was bet five shillings that he couldn't come up with a new song for the next night and won the bet by coming up with Tipperary.  Williams - or rather his family - maintain that he wrote the song (originally called "It's a long way to Connemara") some years earlier, and that Judge pinched it and changed the name to Tipperary to win his bet. Well, whoever and wherever, it caught the imagination and became perhaps the best known song of WW I.

What a gay day!

I find it very strange to find myself somewhat in agreement with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, but...  I have absolutely no problem with homosexuality - I have no problem with people who are homosexual, I have no problem with talking about homosexuality, but I am uncomfortable with the idea of promoting homosexuality.  What has brought this up?  The Department of Education has upgraded its advice to schools on the teaching of sex education, and included in this is that pupils should act out scenes involving gay characters.  So this is not teachers responding to questions about homosexuality from pupils, which I would have no problem with - this is homosexuality being forced on pupils as it were, who might otherwise never have thought about it.  And I can't help feeling that that is a step too far.

Not even fit for fish and chips?

What is it with the Daily Mail?  First they tried to get at Ed Milliband by accusing his (conveniently deceased) father of being "the man who hated Britain", and now they're after his deputy, Harriet Harman on the basis that decades ago she was a (very junior) officer of the National Council of Civil Liberties, and that that organisation was at the time affiliated with the Paedophile Information Exchange, which was lobbying for the age of consent to be lowered - maybe to 10.  The Mail is insisting that she "must apologise" - but what for?  Talk about guilt by association! The Mail have offered no evidence that she played any active part in the involvement between the two organisations, or indeed that - junior as she was - she even knew about it.  But it's very much a case of "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" isn't it?  I've long given up on the Express as a serious purveyor of news, but I did expect something better of the Mail.  Doomed to be disappointed again, it seems.

Away the lassies!

You may have seen the film "A League of Their Own" which tells the story of women playing professional baseball in the US during the last war to fill in for the men who were away in the military.  But did you know that during WW I there was an unofficial but very organised women's football league in and around Northumberland?  This was an area full of munitions factories and indeed these women's teams were known as "Munitionettes".  They had a cup competition called the Munitionettes Cup with no less than 30 teams competing.  As there was no professional football going on because of the war, they attracted sizable crowds. After the war of course, the munitions factories closed and that was the end of that - indeed in 1921 the FA banned women's football at their grounds.  In fact the ban was only lifted in 1971, and women's football has struggled since to make any real impact as anything other than a "niche" attraction.

Today I learned...

...that "orange" as a colour did not exist before the early 1500s.  Prior to that, that which today we call orange was simply treated as a shade of red.  This explains why so many common things bear the name red which are in fact orange.  The robin red-breast for instance, or the red deer, or even red hair - they are all closer to what we today we would call orange than true red.  The word as a colour came into being at around that time as a result of describing the particular tint of the (then relatively new) fruit called an orange. So the colour orange came from the name of the fruit rather than vice versa.