Yesterday, talking with Jen, and without a hint of irony, I referred to two young women we had seen the previous evening as lasses. I didn’t even notice I had done it. It was Jen who pointed it out. She was highly amused.
Over ten years, I’ve lived in Yorkshire, and it’s finally starting to rub off. I’ll be rubbing cold lard on tut whippet next, mark my words.
‘appen.
BBC: Drought declared in south-east England
… [Environment Secretary] Ms Spelman said she wanted water companies to look at the possibility of connecting pipe networks so they could transfer water from wetter parts of the country.
For the record, the South of England isn’t the only place with low water levels at the moment.
Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch: arrested Sun journalists can return to work
This means a different thing entirely to:
Telegraph: Rupert Murdoch arrested; Sun journalists can return to work
(Unfortunately.)
Chaos reigned in Hebden Bridge yesterday morning, as the main shopping street was closed to traffic on market day to allow Yorkshire Bank to film a TV advertisement:
Filming in Hebden Bridge yesterday.
… That would be the same Yorkshire Bank that closed its Hebden Bridge branch a couple of years back.
Telegraph: Britain being overtaken by ‘militant secularists’, says Baroness Warsi
British society is under threat from the rising tide of “militant secularisation” reminiscent of “totalitarian regimes”, a Cabinet minister will warn on Tuesday.
No.
These so-called militant secularists merely wish to remove all religious influence from official public life. This is a principle which seems to work reasonably well in other countries, such as the United States of America and France—neither of which, as far as I can see, are reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. Secularism is all about equality.
Secularists do not want to ban religion. What people get up to in their own private lives is up to them. Secularists merely think that it is wrong for the state to treat somebody specially on account of their religion—or absence of religion. For example, in Britain we allow children to be segregated into different state-funded schools on account of the professed faith of their parents. Secularists think this is wrong. Were children so segregated on account of the colour of their skin, it would rightly be called apartheid.
A totalitarian regime, on the other hand, to quote Wikipedia, recogni[s]es no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible (my emphasis added). Totalitarian regimes—like many religions—try to control what you get up to in private.
A totalitarian secularist regime is a contradiction in terms.
The unobservant amongst you will not have noticed that I have just added an option entitled Random to the menu at the top of each page. Clicking this will take you to a random post from the extensive Gruts archive.
Guardian: What’s with all the ‘quotation marks’? – in pictures
The inappropriate use of quotation marks seems to be on the rise, but one noble blog – Smosh.com – has started naming and shaming these crimes against grammar and common sense. Please, ‘enjoy’ our selection of inadvertently hilarious signs, notices and labels – and try not to think too hard about what it all means.
I have to say, one photo in particular made stuff come out of my nose:
In the wake of last week’s arrests, I was wondering whether the Sun newspaper would have enough journalists left to make up this week’s news.
It turns out I needn’t have worried. This morning’s Sun shows absolutely no change in quality or impartiality:
Lags moan: Our hot chocolate’s too hot
PAMPERED lags are costing taxpayers thousands of pounds through trivial complaints like their COCOA being too hot.60 stone British man is fattest in the world
A BRIT weighing nearly 60 stone has become the world’s fattest man — after the previous record-holder went on a DIET.Pizza diet could kill me, says scared Claire
A WOMAN who has eaten only cheese and tomato pizza for 31 years has been told she could DIE unless she quits her bizarre dining habit.New dog food advert is mutt-see television
VIEWING figures will go through the woof tonight — with a telly commercial only DOGS can hear.Witch-hunt puts us behind ex-Soviets on Press
THE Sun is not a “swamp” that needs draining. Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times. Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang.
We can all sleep soundly in our beds, knowing that the Fourth Estate is still holding the world to account on our behalves.
Fascinating stuff, though. Do you think that, if Claire were to give up pizza, she really might live forever?
BBC: UK sent nuclear sub near Falklands, says Argentina
Argentina’s foreign minister has accused the UK of sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the South Atlantic, after making an official complaint to the UN over the Falklands dispute.
This one has manufactured Olympics boycott written all over it. Remember, you heard it here first.
Incidentally, have you noticed how every time the BBC reports on the Falkland Islands, it feels compelled to explain that they are known in Argentina as the Malvinas? What’s that got to do with the price of penguins? Whenever they mention Germany, they don’t feel the need to explain that the country is known in France as l’Allemagne.
A three-legged cow yesterday.
An empty restaurant; a romantic table for two by the window; soft music; sweeping, panoramic views towards the setting sun.
Who says I can’t show a girl a good time?
Stense at the Charnock Richard Service Station (M6) yesterday.
We had planned our tryst with military precision. Stense was heading down the M6 from Scotland. If she let me know as she was passing Killington Lake Services, I could drop everything and bomb down the M65 for an illicit liaison midway between junctions 28 and 27. We only had an hour or so, but we had to seize the opportunity while we could.
It was just like that movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Brief Encounter, only relocated 40.4 miles south from Carnforth Station to Charnock Richard Services. Stense, obviously, was reprising Celia Johnson’s role, and I was Frankie Howerd.
Who says romance is dead?
I am indebted to Jen for drawing my attention to a truly great offer from Sainsbury’s.
You can currently take out a subscription to 12 monthly editions of their excellent magazine for just £20. The usual cover price is £1.60.
That’s a yearly saving of −80p.
BBC: Why is Hebden Bridge the lesbian capital?
… There’s a stereotype that big cities are more tolerant while rural areas can be more closed-minded. It’s not necessarily true, as the existence of Hebden Bridge – a small town with a significantly tolerant community – might suggest.
Tolerant: you can see how I managed to fit in so easily around here.
We were watching Heston Blumenthal do weird shit with potatoes on telly last night. At one point, Heston and a bunch of mates he had never met before cried out, “Here’s one I made earlier!” Heston explained that they were coining a phrase.
No, they weren’t. When you coin a phrase, you invent a phrase that nobody has ever used before. For example:
(Don’t bother Googling them, I’ve already checked.)
What Heston and his cronies were really doing was employing a cliché. And, if I wanted to be really pedantic, I would point out that “Here’s one I made earlier!” isn’t a phrase at all; it’s a fully formed sentence!
Yes, I know, everyone—including myself—says to coin a phrase when they really mean to employ a cliché. The people who originally used the phrase in this way were probably being ironic. But nobody seems to think about it these days; to them, to coin a phrase actually means to employ a cliché! Which is the exact opposite of its original meaning. How ironic is that?
Anyway, I’ve had enough of this nonsense and confusion! I am inventing a brand new phrase which, from here on in, means to invent a brand new phrase. And you are not allowed to use that phrase ironically, because I have copyright on it, and only permit you to use it in a totally non-ironic sense. And that phrase is:
(Don’t bother, I Googled that as well.)
Immortality at last!
Jen and I recently watched two new, highly acclaimed BBC TV dramas, Great Expectations and Birdsong.
I don’t think it would be overstating things to say that our enjoyment of these otherwise excellent series was totally spoilt by the unfeasibly large lips of both of the leading male actors:
Unfeasibly large lips.
“Who the hell do these pretty boys think they are, with their ridiculous, fat lips: Burberry models or something?” I complained, sounding frighteningly like my dad.
It turns out that both of the actors concerned, Douglas Booth and Eddie Redmayne, have indeed been Burberry models.
I do hope this isn’t the start of some regrettable new trend.
A cloud sea yesteday.
Recently unearthed film of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Rome, 1968:
… Well, good pictures at least.
[via Dangerous Minds]
Never choose a tagline which rhymes with blunder:
BBC: London 2012: Isles of Wonder is Olympic ceremony theme
London 2012′s Olympic opening ceremony is to be called Isles of Wonder, organisers have revealed.
Fact: Bad mathematics can get you chatted-up. Well, sort of. Bad mathematics certainly got me chatted-up once; I don’t know if it works that way for everyone. Well, when I say chatted-up, I mean spoken to unexpectedly by a member of the opposite sex—which pretty much counted, back in the early 1980s. Or it might even have been the late 1970s.
Irish Mick and I were on our way home from school. For some reason, we were on the top floor of a bus. There must have been something wrong with the trains. Anyway, it had been raining heavily, and the windows were all steamed up, so I explained to Irish Mick (who wasn’t even Irish Mick back then) how I could prove mathematically that two equals one. I wrote my proof in the condensation on the window. It went like this:
Let a = b
∴ a² = ab
∴ a² – b² = ab – b²
Factorise…
(a + b)(a – b) = b(a – b)
∴ (a + b)(a – b)= b(a – b)
∴ a + b = b
But remember, a = b, so…
b + b = b
∴ 2b = b
∴ 2 = 1
Q.E.D
Irish Mick looked on bemused, then went back to reading The Lord of the Rings. After about ten minutes, however, this cute girl on the seat behind us leant forward and said, “Excuse me, I’ve been staring at that proof for ten minutes, and I can’t work out what’s wrong with it. Can you explain, please?”
So I did.
I never saw her again.
Lesson: Never explain anything: it totally destroys the air of mystery.
… and, while I’m at it, Johnny Otis (1921–2012):
(He invented the elevator, don’t you know?)