Grumpy

Apparently Mr Speaker’s other half, Mrs Sally Bercow, is running for a seat in the house. She wants to be a Labour MP. God only knows why, but it doesn’t matter to me if she wants to run for the Monster Loony Party.

Mr Speaker is a Conservative MP. Because he is also Mr Speaker, he has to be impartial, at least in the house.

Mr Speaker gets what is known as a Grace and Favour house, because to do his job he really has to be in the house. Tradition does not allow a holographic representation to be put up on the wall with an auto-order-order device when the troughsnouters start to get lairy.

It is not unreasonable for Mr Speaker’s wife and kids to cohabit in the house. In this context, they live at home.

I could run for a seat if I wanted to. I don’t. But, if I did, I could run from a house, a boat, a shed, a rented office or from the top of a tree.

Mrs Bercow can’t, apparently. “Chaps” have decided that she can’t. Presumably the partner of Mr/s Speaker has never wished to run in the past.

So, if she wants to run, and it is her right, she has to move out, with or without her family.

That is just plain daft, in my most humble opinion.

If you have a different opinion, and you are of independent mind, I’d like to know.

There are, broadly speaking, two sorts of people in this country. This country, by the way, is England. It is not South Scotland. It is the one which, sadly, is being eaten away by a bunch of zealots despots self-satisfied attention-seeking megalomaniacs … there must be a word … hubris-ridden lunatics … ahh, that’s better.

The two sorts of people are the ones who’ve had enough (that includes me) and the others who are on the gravy train or are mentally deranged, or both.

If you are one of the latter kind, then please feel free to comment on this blogette, I will probably delete your comments because you are clearly either too stupid or too selfish to have them published. However, if you are one of the former, then please read on, as there is a formula by which I think things could be restored to normality, or at least some semblance of it.

If you are in the middle of the road or sitting on the fence, then take a gander at this which will give an indication of how jumpy and jittery the powers-that-be are. Or look at this:

It isn’t real. Of course it isn’t. Nor is this:

This is, though, on all the locks on the river Nene, courtesy of the Environment Agency, who are only doing what they’re told:

And so was the one which was written in Welsh, and translated as “I am not in the office at the moment …” rather than the intended “No entry for heavy goods vehicles …”. It’s still on Auntie Beeb at time of writing, and not dated April 1st here

Perhaps April Fools’ day in Wales is our Hallowe’en.

So, which camp are you in?

Had enough? Then here’s what to do. Firstly, find someone who is intending to vote for this bunch again. They are quite easy to spot, and you can find them almost anywhere (although there seem to be more in the North, Scotland, Wales and so on). Look for these telltale signs:

• standing outside a job centre
• knuckles dragging on the ground
• wearing school uniform and pushing a pushchair or being followed closely by small child or children
• going into, or coming out of, a public building such as a council office, court house, police station etc
• wearing a red rosette

Having identified your target, ask them if they are intending to vote for the offending bunch. If they reply in the affirmative then attempt to sway them by offering cohesive and coherent arguments (do not use big words as this will confuse them). Ask them the question again. If they have seen the light, then wish them well, and congratulate yourself on a job well done.

If they cannot be persuaded by reasonable means then, because at the moment the vote is only witheld from serving prisoners, the mentally ill and most animals, I guess the way forward would be to shoot them.

I notice today from the Bee Bee Sea webby neurons that the humble book is to be phased out by Mr Arnold Shwarznegger, rubbish actor and governor of California (search for BBC A Textbook love affair)

I agree with this. I understand it too, because everything anyone could ever want is available on the interweb now.

Here is some useful information, so that when schoolchildren and even researchers google (yes, it’s a verb) for something they will find it here.

1. A shark is not a fish.
2. A woman has one more chromosome than a man, and it is the “Y” chromosome.
3. The hare has exactly the same DNA as a human making it indistinguishable from us (apart from the extra two legs).
4. Llamas are used to herd sheep because they are capable of independent thought, unlike sheep.
5. The wolf is the only wild animal with an opposable thumb.

There. All conveniently stored in one small space, useful not only for ‘A’ level study but also for compiling pub quizzes. In the olden days, Messrs Monty Python had a spoof book of lies, written by the Hackenthorpe brothers and allegedly published by Slater-Nazi, as I seem to remember dimly. The interweb seems to have gleaned some of its information therefrom, especially in the environs of Wikipedia.

I suspect that if the web site used by the students and researchers was run and written by people who know at least something about their subject, that would be fine. But that would be, to all intents and purposes, a book, wouldn’t it? Maybe not a paper book, handsomely bound, but a source of information.

Instead of sitting comfortably and perusing the book, the student could sit up straight, strain his eyes, burn his thighs, get Repetitive Strain Injury whilst scrolling his mouse wheel, and a whole schoolful of students could then in a single evening  consume about the same power as a jumbo jet flying from London to New York.

Excellent plan, Mr Shwarznegger.

But, as usual, I have a better one. Below the line down there, copy the text until the line even further down there then, using your favourite text editor, such as Notepad, paste it in. Repeat on separate pages for each test then print it, and you will have created your own book.

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Eleven-plus exam, some years ago:

In the following word pairs, one letter can be moved from the first word to the second word leaving two different words. The letters must not be otherwise arranged and both new words must be real words.

SCARF : RAIL

GUILT : POND

BLIND : SAY

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English Language ‘O’ Level paper, 2008:

In the following word pairs, one letter can be moved from the first word to the second word leaving two different words. The letters must not be otherwise arranged and both new words must be real words.

SCARF : RAIL

GUILT : POND

BLIND : SAY

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If any English teachers would like to use any of this material they are more than welcome.

Beware that any comments added to this post may not be ratified and as such it is advised that users of this material should do their own research to validate them, using such tools as Google and Wikipedia which can be found on the interweb and used freely.

There will be four (4) people in the whole of the world who have any idea of what the title means, and I’m not sure about at least three (3) of them.

Toller Porcorum is a mixture of Olde-Anglo-Saxon toller, meaning valley, and latin porcorum being the genitive (plural) of pig. According to the internet, so it must be true, the Toller is the old name of the river which flows through the village of Toller Porcorum, which has since been named the river Hooke, but my friend Rosalind Buttered-Crumpet informs me that it means “valley” and so “valley” it is.

So I spent the weekend in the valley of the pigs.

“Are there pigs?” I enquired.

“Not a one.” retorted Rosalind, authoritatively.

One does not argue with Rosalind.  An acclaimed (and bronzed, she told me not to omit) erstwhile writer of many things not limited to cordon-gendarme cookery, she knows. Had she not made the decision to spend time in the real world, in a Felicity Kendal stylee, she would be a rather good blog writer.

Anyway, we had spent some considerable time discussing the merits of the American (mis)use of words such as “leverage” as a verb, management-speak and its uselessness and, more importantly, the word “like” as a hesitation mark. Like, er, like, um, ah. And the general concensus is that it had close to zero value in any context apart from that of its original meaning, for instance when introducing a simile. But more than simile, it introduced a smile. And a conundrum, as you will see.

Sunday brought us to a publick house known as the Spyway, a smugglers pub in Askerswell. I can recommend this pub on a nice day as there is an ample garden with attractive water feature and, if you ask, you can get an ashtray too. Inside if wet is not so attractive an option as the bar is small. Cosy is a word which would also describe it adequately, but small is more accurate.

Into the second pint, mid-discussion into the colouring of the bee orchid (don’t ask), the young lady-in-waiting approached our table and interjected “Excuse me, did you order like haddock?”

Conversation stopped. “Like haddock? No, not us.”

She left, bearing what was presumably like haddock, to seek those who ordered it, leaving us to work out how “order like haddock” should be punctuated.

I have since tried going into the shop to order some Marlboro, like haddock. It is not easy, you have to mouth the words in a haddocky way, as haddock (so far as I can gather) can not, or will not, speak. You can’t point like a haddock, as haddock’s extremities are designed for navigating the salty depths, not for pointing. It is like being paralysed in a foreign country whose language you know not wot. Of. I assume that you can’t order like haddock, you can only really order like a human.

I have tried Joe’s Fish Restaurant. “Have you anything like Haddock?” I asked. Apparently there is nothing like haddock, although obviously cod would be more like haddock than, say, cottage pie. So I assume that there is nothing that, technically, is like haddock, and conclude that the young lady must have meant “Did you order, like, er, um, haddock?”

My message to young (and old, alike) is this:

“Like”. It is a versatile word, being a noun, verb, adjective, preposition, conjunction, adverb, even a verbal auxiliary and not least a suffix, in the case of haddock-like.

It is not a substitute for er, em, like, arrrgh.

And my message to those lovely people who explain from positions of apparent authority that it doesn’t matter if we spell properly, use our native language properly, and pick up junk American langauge faster than we can build a new McDonalds is this:

Yes, it bloody well does. Like.