Gertsamtkunstwerk

Things that keep me awake at night

The two best ever chat show questions:

Clive Anderson: "Jeffrey Archer, is there no start to your talents?"

Mrs Merton: "So Debbie McGee, what attracted to you millionaire Paul Daniels?"

There has to be a third. But I can't remember it.

Stupid TV people

The TV is on in the other room. The commentator keeps referring to Inter Milan. Why doesn't he talk about Arsenal London?

It would make as much sense.

Forgetfulness

I have often experienced the not being able to pinpoint the precise word I need, but it seems to be happening with increasing frequency, and for words I ought to know. On Friday, I couldn't remember souk, Saturday it was 'miracle cure' - the context of the Pope going to Lourdes ought to be synonymous with 'miracle cure'. I struggled momentarily there with synonymous, but at least it came to me as soon as I started typing symbisomething. In my last post, I had to use thesaurus to find 'vandalism'.

I've always a slight habit of substituting homonyms - this morning I nearly posted something on 'paeons to populism' and I have just realised I meant pandering. At least I think I do; M$ Thesaurus suggests pimp or procurer as an alternative; the sexual negotiator is supported by my Collins dictionary and substantiated etymologically by Ask Oxford.

So, in fact we use the word 'pander' inappropriately.

And now I can't find paeon in the dictionary, even though I did earlier, so I've obviously spelt it wrong. It won't be peon - now that's an interesting entymology...

I hope it's just a temporary lapsus mensis.

The importance of spoken English

Libby Purves writes The word on the street is: spoken English reely matters

The BBC provides more background

In another example of Gert-the-Fogey, I say I agree wholeheartedly. Actually, Libby Purves is spot on - teaching children about the different styles of English and when to use them is a vital component of creating an egalitarian society, and, actually, not fogeyish at all.

It ties in with my exasperation at the illiterates that pop-up with tedious frequency on this blog. If they cannot grasp why they should communicate in standard English, it is unlikely that they will ever learn to do so. And they sell themselves short, because one would assume they have the intellectual capacity to assimilate and analyse information and form thoughts. But those thoughts of our no value if they cannot persuade other people.

Apt names

Names to fit the job. At school, the head of the school kitchen was Mrs Cook. The bursar was Mr Crook. There is a plant hire firm in Old Trafford Dennis Shovlin. My mother (born Foster) and her her brother are both retired Social Workers. Didn't one of the US Presidents have a Chief Press Office called Larry Spekes?

Chav alert

The Sun once again fails to understand the rules of causation.

They are implying that having a 'posh name' enables you to do better at GCSE.

Whereas I reckon that people whose genes and/or upbringing pre-destines them for academic success are more likely to have been given sensible, non-chavvy names!

When I was about fourteen I read a book that gave characteristics of certain names. I was told that my name characterised self-confidence, independence, and academic success. So I resolved to become that person, and I think, by and large, I did.

The kids of today, tsk tsk

It might be parody, but I fear not. Brad and Lydia's comments have to be read to be believed.

Despite the best efforts of Adrian, Sally and myself...

Get rid of trendy vicars

Psalm 23 has been rewritten.

No longer do we have

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...thy rod and thy staff they comfort me

but instead we have

Even if a full-scale violent confrontation breaks out I will not be afraid, Lord...He lets me see a country of justice and peace and directs me towards this land...His "shepherd's power and love protect me

Incandescent, I explode into a million pieces and reassemble myself as Prince Charles, exclaiming If it ain't broke, don't fix it

The genius that is my fiance

Some of the sayings of my fiance.

Does red eye show up in black-and-white photographs?

My head is heavy, my big toe is itching and my stomach feels all nostalgic.

I told him he just has to remember some of my many stupid sayings to get his revenge. Like yesterday:

Me - Why are you emptying the bin?
Him: Because it's full
Me: But it's not coming over the top...oh, it's coming out the bottom...

He did come up with an interesting observation today "You could never murder me. You would leave so much DNA -your hair gets everywhere..." My sister says she always knows when I've visited because my hair is everywhere. I have the animal attachment for my Dyson in an attempt to minimise the amount of hair lying around the house.

Things not to say in bed

*contains personal information...!*

We decided to wash the bedroom curtains on Saturday afternoon. By Saturday evening the wine and port were going down very well as were the DVDs, and we couldn't be bothered to go and get the curtains, which, by now, were collecting the evening dew, off the washing line and rehang them.

So we went to bed without curtains. Jimmy pointed out a star that was visible from the bed.

*Some time later*, I commented that the star had moved. Jimmy said that the clouds had moved.

Me, thinking, what clouds, said "No, I think the earth has moved..."

He found that hilarious.

Small objects of derision

I really really hate antimacassars. I hate the word, I hate the objects, and I especially hate them in situ

The things people say

1. Me: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is one of the greatest, but most under-rated films of all times
Warren: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - is that the last one?

2. Jimmy: Opposites attract. If we were both the same we would have nothing in common

3. Me: (Slagging off an absent party) - She's shallow. (Pause). She's deeply shallow.

4. Me: in a bragging contest to see who had been the naughtiest toddler I used to eat sand
Eleanor: Ugh, yuck, were you ill were you sick. (Pause). Did you die...?

But the old ones are the best - from the notorious Claude Street Quote Board from our student days.

5. Me: I seem to spend my life running after men with long legs

6. Helen: My cassette player is going slow and fast at the same time.

Avoid cliches like the plague

I use a lot of trite expressions when speaking, but will defend myself because, when speaking, we often need empty words to give us - and our listener - time to think. I use 'apparently' far too often, frequently when I actually (oh no!) mean 'reportedly'. However, I use buzzwordish management speak rarely, and then merely as irony. I also use "With respect" when I'm about to rubbish someone's opinion.

I use far too many cliches on this blog. I will admit that, generally, I use them out of laziness. I was horrified when reading over some of my feverishly-penned ridiculous fiction and realised that I was using cliches in a misjudged attempt sincerely to convey the depth of emotion - pathos becomes bathos

The Youth of Today

Would you employ someone who speaks in 'gangsta rap' language.

We see it in the comments left here, on the 'Last train to Manchester' and Peaches Geldof posts, and on Karen's Clock, how too many teenagers seem incapable of using recognisable English in a context which would seem to demand it.

For heaven's sake, I was a teen once. I experimented in non-capitalisation ee cummings style. Crikey, me and my mates had a secret slang. But, you know, the slight modicum of intelligence we collectively shared made us realised that it was not appropriate for addressing adults.

Of course, what it means is that those small proportion of teenagers and young adults who do graps this are likely to be the winners.

Snogging

It's one of those words, isn't it?

We are snogging. I snogged him. I want a snog.

Ooh, look at those people snogging.

What is a snog?

The Oxford English dictionary says

snog

Brit. informal

• verb (snogged, snogging) kiss and caress amorously.

• noun an act or spell of kissing and caressing.

Google comes up with a strange definition:

snuggle and lie in a position where one person faces the back of the others

And there's some tips here on how to get a snog -

The average person will spend approximately two weeks of their whole life snogging!

So, what, to you compromises a snog? Is it a snog if it is merely a prolonged kiss on the lips? Or is it a snog if the lips are parted? Must it involve tongues? And how important is it what the rest of the body is doing - is a long lip kiss with groping a snog, or does it have to involve tonsil licking? The Urban Dictionary seems undecided whether tongues are essential or not, or indeed whether a snog is

A French version of the hot-dog. Is eating with mayonnaise and grease.

Spelling test

I got 8 out of 8, which makes me far better than the average 11-year old. No shit, Sherlock

However, I'm not arrogant. Look through this blog and you will find numerous spelling mistakes - in my defence, they are mainly typos. However, I feel I was destined for perfection on the multi-choice test to which I link. The reason: because I read so many books at a very young, and deeply impressionable, age, I have an instinct for knowing when a word looks right or just plain wrong.

Needless to say, the initial draft of this post was riddled with spellos typos

Oops update Flippin' heck, I was so flippin bothered with getting the spelling right, I forgot the link. Thanks chaps.

Exotic derivatives?

I so misread this chap's job title - City trader's £30m record bonus

Children, the fightback has begun

Spotted outside St James's Park Tube

Any bicycle's found attached to these railings will be immediately removed

Any notice showing lack of use of punctuation should be removed too!

(I, personally, would have put a comma between 'removed' and 'too'.)

Currently reading...

...tittering over and highly recommending: Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

On the comma, an American actor interpreting a scene from Hamlet "Go get him, surgeons". Not quite the same as "Go, get him surgeons".

Or from the bible, which didn't have commas:

Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise

or

Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise

The first version is Protestant, the second Catholic and the placing of commas makes all the difference between whether or not one believes in Purgatory.

But the most exciting thing is: did you know that the semi-colon was invented in the same place and the same year as double-entry bookkeeping? I have to say, I nearly wet myself when I read that.

Propaganda

Every week we have a new set of posters. Mainly in the lifts. And lift lobbies. All connected to the Senior Senior Senior Management's/Ministers' vision of Working in 3D (Delivery, Delivery Delivery. Yes, really...)

It's always fascinating to find out what it's going to be in any week - the infamous dEmail campaign, which encouraged us to email ideas on how to cut down on email. Exhortations to participate in the Out-of-Office Experience. Posters on how we are taking great initiatives to deliver Departmental Aims.

And every week you can guarantee that the posters will be defaced. To be honest, I think much of the defacing is childish, and potentially embarrassing, especially in the lifts that are used by visitors, as well as staff. Moustaches or false glasses drawn onto photographs of colleagues. One of the dEmail posters (which were all cheesy 50s-stylee adverts) featured a group of men wearing Y-fronts (don't ask...!). Personally, I found it slightly embarrassing to be stood in a lift, with random male colleagues, next to a picture of men in Y-fronts (they weren't exactly Homer and Bart). Someone had written 'Knob' in an appropriate place.

There has been some hang-wringing in the soap box about the defacing.

This week's poster is Delivery-focused, praising a eminently worthy scheme we are funding. In the lift I took to go home yesterday, someone had attached a sheet of paper which said "Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to dictatorship".

That is the way to deface a poster!

Misplaced bragging?

I want opinions here.

I'm not a linguist. Okay, I have O-levels in 3 languages (French, Latin and Italian) but that does not make me a linguist. I can barely order a beer in French. Scrub that, I make a special point of knowing how to order beer, wine and coffee in whichever language I have to. I absolutely can't do accents. Two of the last three countries I visited are Spanish speaking; we couldn't have survived in Cuba without use of pidgin Spanish (and Jimmy knows dos cervezas, or dos mojitos).

Newspaper-type articles are generally written in simplified language (in English, the Guardian requires a reading age of 14, the Sun 9).

I love reading foreign newspapers. I don't pretend to do a literal translations, but I have Le Figaro, Le Monde, and La Stampa in my Favourites; sometimes I will search out a German newspaper to see what Germany's saying.

Occasionally, I find myself reading Dutch, or a Nordic language and, at least getting the jist. I know when people on Tubes are reading Turkish. On a bus a few years back I sat on a bus reading someone's newspaper and eventually asked him what language it was - it looked like Russian, but wasn't (and was in the Latin, not Cyrillic alphabet) - it was Lithuanian (or Latvian, I forget now...). During the 1980 Moscow Olympics I learnt the Cyrillic alphabet just by watching the TV (Daddy checked it with a Russian speaker at work - I was right). A chance encounter with my dear late cousin and godfather when he returned from Moldova confirmed my ability to read and understand Moldovan.

Is this usual amongst non-linguists? I am really interested in knowing whether I am a freak who has wasted her talents or whether everyone does this and it's so normal nobody bothers mentioning it.

I really quite fancy learning Arabic - it sounds such a beautiful language. When we were out on the boat in Egypt, our wonderful guide was asking the youngsters whether they liked Egyptian pop music. They all had blank faces. I had heard so much I knew I preferred it to what generally counts as Western pop music these days. He got me dancing round the boat. Would you believe that I accidentally wiped the video...?

Overheard...

Some woman in the smoking room, talking about her husband, presumably injured or ill:

He really needs something to support his leg in bed. Like one of them poofters or something...

My name means...

Your first name of Geraldine has given you a quick-minded, sensitive nature.

It gives you a creative ability in art, music, singing, or fancywork and an appreciation for refined surroundings.

Your sociable nature expresses affection, kindness, and thoughtfulness to the extent that it is difficult for you not to be affected by others and governed by your emotions, rather than by logic and reason.

As you respond to love and encouragement from others, your romantic and dreamy nature can easily lead you into love affairs.

Your desire for peace at any price can result in going out of your way to avoid arguments and confrontation or hurting the feelings of others.

Also, budgeting can be a problem as you enjoy spending money and can easily ignore being practical.

As I said at Green Fairy

Yeah what a load of bollocks - and if anyone disagrees they can bloody well tell me why. Wankers.

Kabalarian Philosophy - Merging Eastern Wisdom with Western Practicality

When spellchecker just isn't enough

One for all you spelling pedants out there. And Adrain.

Now, if I were replying to an MP's letter, knowing that that MP has a frequently updated website, I would get someone to proof read what I had written to Tom Watson - Labour MP: Boycott Lidl

Odds and ends

Apropos of the noise of window-cleaning cradle being moved. "It sounds like a disrailed train being put back."

Disraeled? Sounds like something from the Victorian era.
>
Ann Summers has recently opened a branch in Victoria Palce. Int window is a poster saying 'Boys will be girls'. I had to read it three times to make sure I had read it correctly. Then I saw the picture of teenage lad wearing a red bra.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude, but it does seem a bit, y'know, in yer face.

Dictionary headers

Another in the occasional series, straight from Compact Oxford Dictionary/Thesaurus/Wordpower:

Liberal Democrat/Lie

Ooh, bit political, bit political there, as Ben Elton used to say when he was funny. (Like he cares, now he's a multi-zillionaire)

Incidentally, what's an alternative word for Thesaurus?

Update: Don't ignore the two-way tzarina

Twisting words

One letter can make all the difference. Descending to the Underground, I pondered that it would be so much more interesting if the delays were caused by a detective train at Highbury.

Writing paragraphs for a report, I said that some staff had attended a Palin English course.

Unfortunately, I have spent some of the morning cold-calling some staff in the 'tail' bit of our Department (the one that wags the 'dog').

"I work in Internal Audit, which is in, like, the core-Department."

Like the core Department. What kind of teenager am I?

Names

Just looking at a staff directory. I have found a team of fifteen people. Four of them are Death, Truelove, Little and Barks.

You tell the story...

I opened my dictionary. The header read 'Blind man's bluff/bloodbath'.

I wondered how an innocent party game could have such tragic consequences.

Spelling mistakes

I used to be avery good speller. In fact, I am. If someone asks me how to spell a word, with the exception of just a few, I get it tright.

Typing is something entirely different. I've wruitten about htis before, but in the past couple if weeks I seem to have developed a whole new tic - leaving out while portions of words. For example, the post below this originally referred to 'wbsie' rather than wevsite.

You will, of course, have noticed a plethora of errors in this post. these are not deliberate - they just occur as a I try to type the right thing, but, annoting thought it is to read it, I'm leaving this entry llike this to illustrate just how bad my tryping is. Even though my actual spelling is good.

Thankfully, I have a little applet permanently on my task bar - spell-vbs which I ususually use before I post. I originally stole the idea from Owen

If your typing is like mine, and you don't currently have a spell checker, I would heartily recommend it.

It doesn't however, pick up on those ghastly mistaes, such as confusing you're/your and its/it's that I never used to make until I saw all those other peopel doing it and it seaped into my subsconscious.

Nor does it pick up that really embarrassing tic of using the entirely wrong word - saying /napoloeon when you want to say 'loaf of bread, please.'