NEVIN'S FUNNY OLD THINGS:
a marvellous miscellany of past wit, wisdom and whimsical curiosities
If anything at all links these sayings, thoughts, findings and happenings from rambles in life's byways, it is this, from Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 'Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!', joined with that great Lancashire expression of incredulity, 'Well, I'll Go To The Foot Of Our Stairs!'
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October 31
Bored with Halloween? Try some of my top trivial instead!
1) Bristol is east of Edinburgh.
2) Bristol, Torquay, Tunbridge Wells, Kampala, Weybridge, Seattle, Sheffield, Lisbon, Durham and Rome are built on seven hills.
3) Herman Melville lived in Southport.
4) The 1985 edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica advises readers, 'For Wales, see England'.
5) The original Jack Russell was called Trump.
6) The US Confederate Navy surrendered in Liverpool.
7) FC Barcelona's colours were borrowed from Merchant Taylor's, Crosby.
8) Juventus (founded on tomorrow's date in 1897) got theirs from Notts County.
9) The geographical centre of the British is Dunsop Bridge in Lancashire.
10) Cutting toenails on a Friday or Sunday is unlucky.
More top trivia very soon!
October 30
Today, for no reason other than that it occurred to me, we celebrate command and something less of the subtleties of the English language, beginning with the playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), celebrated author of such as 'The Rivals' and 'The School for Scandal'. Sheridan was a terrible man: drinker, gambler, womaniser, debtor, serial betrayer and double dealer. But he was also a terrific wit: and we might - almost - excuse him some of it for his response when he was called upon to apologise after accusing a fellow MP of lying to the House of Commons. Sheridan, who was a member for Stafford, naturally, a rotten borough, didn't hesitate: 'I said the honourable gentleman is a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable gentleman may place the punctuation where he pleases.'
Less easily impressed critics have pointed out that Sheridan had a history of apparently spontaneous but well-rehearsed replies, but that surely doesn't detract from the cleverness. (The accusation cannot be made against Sheridan's equally brilliant contemporary, John Wilkes, libertarian, libertine and and a far better egg. When a fashionable young fop said to him, 'Isn't it strange that I was born on the first of January?', Wilkes replied, 'Not strange at all. You could only have been born on the first of April.')
Non-native speakers, unsurprisingly, have often had more difficulty with the subtlety, nuances and ambiguity of the language. Michael Curtiz, the Hungarian-born Hollywood film director, was renowned for it, most famously for his crisp command when it was time for the riderless mounts in 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' to be set loose on the set, 'Bring on the Empty Horses', and his reply to David Niven (who used it as the title of his second memoir) and Errol Flynn when they were teasing him: 'You think I know fuck nothing. But let me tell you, I know fuck all'.
Laughing at foreigners trying their best to communicate in the native tongue is a perhaps understandable but not necessarily attractive native trait; but surely the last laugh is with Curtiz for making Hollywood's finest ever effort, that magical mix of flawed good, bad bad, crackling wit and high romance, 'Casablanca'. And there again, Sam Goldwyn, another legendary Hollywood figure enjoyed his efforts as much as anybody else: 'Include me out', 'Two words, impossible,' and 'Definitely maybe.'
Finally, some words of encouragement for all those in peril on Budget Day, from Groucho Marx: 'Look at me - I worked my way up from nothing to an extreme state of poverty.'
Next!
October 29
As the day progresses, you might find it helpful, as I so often do, to recall these wise words (of very many) from Honore de Balzac: 'Irony is the essence of the character of Providence.'
Balzac was introduced to this truth at an early age while he was being put regularly into what amounted to a detention cell at his school for disobedience (in reality boredom) while his father, a Government official, was writing a treatise on crime prevention disdaining prison as a means of reform.
He went on to write more than 100 books: I have a special interest in one, 'Le Lys dan la Vallee,' as it is where the hero's mistress, an English aristocrat named Lady Arabella Dudley, tells him that 'Lancashire is the county where women die of love'. I was so impressed by this arresting assertion that I wrote a book with the same title, dealing with the lost mystery and romance of my native heath, from Southport's claim to have inspired the boulevards of Paris to Carnforth Station's leading role in that most tear-jerking of British films, Brief Encounter. Among much else, I asked various Lancashire women if they agreed about the love and the dying without ever really ever establishing the truth of it, although one bride-to-be in Blackpool did tell me she thought it was from the cold or too many chips.
I should like to relate that I came across the quote while reading 'La Lys dans le Vallee,' a heated tale of a young man with a platonic love for an older woman who falters and dies when he takes a lover, in the original French, instead of in an essay on Lancashire by AJP Taylor; sadly, tant pis, as I believe it is expressed over there.
It's a fine essay, though, in which the great historian also argues persuasively for the superiority of Lancashire people over those from the other side of the Pennines, praising the Lancastrian love of whimsy, fostered by the gentle south-west wind. He slightly qualifies the local distaff side urge to die for love by opining that in his view they were more likely to say, 'Come on, lad, let's get it over,' but then he was a little dry, even if he came from Birkdale. I suppose I ought also to mention that Balzac's North Country authority, his English mistress, Jane Dudley, later the Countess Guidoboni-Visconti, no less, was from Wiltshire, which is some distance from the land of the Red Rose.
As it happens, I later learnt that Taylor borrowed the latter line from Harold Brighouse's splendid play, 'Hobson's Choice', where a talented but timid cobbler is taken in hand, and up a convenient alleyway (for a kiss, thank you) by Maggie, the commanding daughter of his employer, the said Hobson. The 1954 film of the play, starring Charles Laughton, John Mills and Brenda de Banzie, is a delight.
But to return to what guidance the past has to offer for navigation through life, I refer you to TS Eliot, one of its most distinguished travellers; he used to tell of an encounter with a London taxi driver who had recently had the distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell as a fare. 'At the end, I said to him, " What's it all about, then, Lord Russell? And do you know, he couldn't tell me."'
See the Books section for more on 'Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love.'
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October 28
Today we celebrate the crowning of Ladislaus the Posthumous as King of Bohemia in 1453. Should you be scratching your head as to how that worked, exactly, I'm happy to tell you that Ladislaus was the posthumous child of Albert of Habsburg. Sadly, his life was not a happy one, despite all attempts to make it so, as he became caught up in a bewildering morass of central european rivalries and died at the age of 17, either from poison or the bubonic plague.
But his is one of those many suffixes that enliven the dullest histories. I give you: Sigurd the Stout, Ivar the Boneless, Sigrid the Haughty, Eadric the Grasper, Thorfinn the Skullsplitter, Ingvar the Far-Traveller, Theophylact the Unbearable, Louis the Sluggard, John the Abandoned, John the Beer Jug, Ivalyo the Cabbage, Vasili the Cross-Eyed, Alfonso the Fat, Manuel the Grocer-King, Wilfred the Hairy, Henry the Fowler, Basarad the Little Impaler, Frederick the Quarreller, and my personal favourite, Charles the Affable, whom I prefer to Charles the Simple.
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October 27
Emily Post, the American expert on etiquette was born on this day in 1872. She would not have approved of Evelyn Waugh, who, among very much else, made a habit of giving precise but wrong directions to any stranger who might ask, including, on one occasions, a clearly agitated man who explained he was running late for his train and wanted to know the way to the railway station. Nor, I feel, would Mrs Post have warmed to Lord Glasgow, the 19th century aristocrat of a dyspeptic turn who once, infuriated by some imagined failing, threw a servant out of the window at Crockfords, his London club. When the Secretary remonstrated with him, his lordship merely muttered, 'Put him on the bill'. Other servants were also often at risk, as it was his practice when hunting to elect one of them quarry if a fox was not to be found.
As is usual, rather better manners are to be found among the servants. The butler to the 16th Duke of Norfolk, for example, was once umpiring a game at his cricket-mad master's splendid Arundel ground; called upon to decide whether the Duke had been run out, he declared, with aplomb matched only by finesse, 'His Grace is not in'. After being appointed manager of the England tour to Australia in 1962-63, the Duke announced to the team at their first meeting, over dinner, naturally: 'I wish this to be an entirely informal tour. You will merely address me as "Sir" '. I once interviewed his son, the 17th Duke, a man of rather different stripe, who told me, 'I am - pompous arse, you might say - Earl Marshal of England'.
Perhaps my favourite example of politesse, though, comes, as its should, from a king: George II, who responded to the dying request of his wife, Queen Caroline, that he should marry again, with sobs between every word: 'Non - j'aurai - des - maitresses'.
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October 26
Today in 1919, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, his last notable work, was given its first performance at Queen's Hall, London. Sir Edward's lesser known works include possibly the first football anthem (1898), 'Bang the Leather for Goal', a tribute to his favourite team, Wolverhampton Wanderers (he used to cycle the 40 miles from Malvern to watch them at Molineux). Sadly, although set to a recitative from 'Caractacus' (also 1898), it never really caught on, probably because it lacks a second line.
This is not a problem with a chant I have always admired for its typically robust, chauvinist and slanderous wit, the one that celebrates Tottenham Hotspur's richly gifted Korean player, Son Heung-min: 'He shoots he scores, he'll eat your Labrador!'
Collectors of curiosities might be interested to know that Sir Edward also wrote an arrangement for Jack Hylton's dance band. Jack, who doubled as a noted impresario, was the man who first brought the renowned if unconventional concert pianist, Eric Morecambe, and the light tenor and unique playwright, Ernie Wise, together.
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October 25
Remembering today, on its anniversary, that glorious but inglorious, incompetent but somehow inspiring, at the same time acme and nadir of British arms, The Charge of the Light Brigade. Not quite so well known as Raglan, Cardigan and Nolan is the remarkable Private John Vahey of the 17th Lancers. The company butcher and enthusiastic toper joined the Charge informally after leaving the now unguarded guard tent where he was being held on a charge of drunkenness with another enthusiast, 'because why the devil should we be out of the fun?'
Still wearing his bloody butchering apron - the job came with free rum - Private Vahey mounted a loose horse now minus its Russian rider and, armed only with his butcher's cleaver, first tried to join the Heavy Brigade, who spurned his offer and then jeered as he set off after the Light Brigade, arriving just as their trumpets sounded the Charge. 'Setting our teeth hard, off we went pellmell across the valley as hard as ever horse could lay foot to ground.'
We now have only Vahey's word for what happened to him during the Charge: he claimed that he killed large numbers of Russians with his cleaver before hearing the retreat sounded, making it back with a young wounded Hussar across his horse. Whatever, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (after, naturally, in the British way, being charged with leaving the guard tent without permission).
He died in India six years later in India, where he had swopped to grave-digging for drink ration. He was buried in one he had dug himself.
Now see the Books section for The Book of Jacks.
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October 24
Today, in an attempt at relevance, we discuss the importance of principles, as illuminated by two of last century's more interesting thinkers. First, Groucho Marx, who coined or borrowed this apercu whose practice you might find wearily prevalent: 'These are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others'.
Second, Tommy Cooper, failed illusionist and fabled ruminator, in a heated discussion with a barman over some small change: 'You don't understand: it's not the principle, it's the money.'
Readers of my book, So Last Century (see the Home Page) will recognise Tommy Cooper in Gus Pinner, leading character in my story of the 1914-18 war, a music hall star who travels to the trenches.
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October 23
Today, just because, my favourite Country & Western titles: 'Walk Out Backwards And I'll Think You're Coming In', Connie Smith, Bill Anderson; 'Here's A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares', Travis Tritt; '(I'll Be Over You) When The Grass Grows Over Me', George Jones; 'I Miss You (But My Aim Is Getting Better),' Zoe Ackah; and, possibly my favourite, 'Did I Shave My Legs For This', Deana Carter.
A touch more unclassifiable is that excellent effort from the extraordinarily eclectic talent of Shel Silverstein, 1930-1999, cartoonist, children's and adult novelist, poet, playwright and song writer ('A Boy Named Sue' for one). Here is my Shel favourite, a masterpiece of hippy country fusion: 'Bury Me In My Shades': https://t.ly/BAYHd
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October 22
And today, for no particular reason, we remember that great actress, Sarah Siddons, 1755-1831, peerless tragedian and stage electrifier, who never visited Leeds again after a member of the audience took against her dramatic prevaricating with some poison and advised her to 'just get on and drink it!'
Surely coincidentally, and as it happens, Queen Victoria never returned to Leeds, either, after being presented with the bill by the hotel where she took luncheon.
As for other 'helpful' audience interjections, it is often told of how, when Pia Zadora, a young starlet of uncertain quality, was appearing on Broadway in a production of Anne Frank's Diary, the arrival on stage of Nazi soldiers was greeted with the cry, 'She's in the attic!'
Respect for the truth, however, narrowly compels me to note that this did not, in fact, happen.
Things were also quite robust in the Music Hall. One lady soprano of a certain age and genteel appearance found her attempt to introduce culture into straitened lives being continually thwarted by boos and catcalls before she could even begin. At last, a man shouted loudly from the back, 'Give the poor cow a chance!' The hall finally quietened and prepared to listen. Before beginning her first aria, the soprano smiled graciously and confided, 'Thank goodness there's one gentleman in tonight.'
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October 21
Today we begin with what, as it happened, turned out to be the last words of Major General John Sedgwick, who was unimpressed by Confederate sniper fire at the Battle of Spotsylvania during the American Civil War, shouting encouragingly to his men: 'What! What! Men dodging this way from a single bullet! I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!"
Which leads us, a little later, to this final utterance from the great Lord Palmerston, Victoria's Prime Minister, robust dispatcher of gun boats, and incorrigibly enthusiastic roué: 'Die, my dear doctor? That's the last thing I shall do!'
There are more, and they will come, but for now, just these: 'What an artist dies with me!', - Emperor Nero; and, from Pitt the Younger, 'I think I could eat one of Bellamy's Pies.'
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November 18I know: time for, yes, Some Old Thespian Stories (SOTS)!​1) AE Matthews, splendid character actor, adorner and enlivener of such as 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' and 'Around the World in 80 Days', answered the phone on stage, and couldn't remember his line; completely unflustered, he turned to his companion and said, 'It's for you'.​2) Tallulah Bankhead, larger than most lives put together, enough to make flamboyance blush, (in)famously 'more of an act than an actress', having attended a screening of the adaptation of 'Orpheus Descending' by Tennessee Williams, told him, 'Darling, they've absolutely ruined your perfectly dreadful play.'​3) Noël Coward took Laurence Olivier to a mountaintop near his beloved Jamaica home, Firefly, to see his favourite view. Surveying the magnificent terraces spread beneath him, Sir Laurence commented, 'It looks like rows and rows of empty seats'.​​November 17Another determined delve into the beguiling bran tub that is Funny Old Things comes up with this:Well, well: it seems that Goering never made the famous remark about reaching for his revolver at the mention of culture. The only recorded source approximating it is in a now much mercifully forgotten play by the Nazi, Hanns Johst, where a stormtrooper remarks: 'When I hear the word culture, I cock my Browning.' Remarkable: Did you know the Nazis were into panto?(After the war, in an excellent example of condign bathos, the only outlet Johst could find was writing poems under a pseudonym for a supermarket magazine. And while we're here, consider whether this was more bold in 1967 than it would be now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPXHRX8Q2hs)And, in the event that you might like to be cheered up even more in these troubling times, try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZIjtt5V3Es&t=14sNext!November 16Today is the anniversary of death by hanging of Jack Sheppard in 1724, a great blast from the roaring past that was early eighteenth-century London.Unusually for a villain of the time, Jack doesn’t appear to have killed anybody, which might explain his immense popularity, or not. Jack was an averagely gifted thief, but an escape artist of quite stunning brilliance, ensuring his fame by making each successive break-out more spectacular than the last. As is usual, he was young (dead at 22), fatherless, and fell away from an honest apprenticeship as a carpenter into bad company, a couple of doxies at the Black Lion in St Giles. You might judge their charms from their nicknames, Edgworth Bess and Maggott.Jack started robbing from the homes and businesses he was working in, and fencing the stuff through Bess and Maggott. Arrest came soon, and his first escape, through a roof. Although it never took long to capture Jack again, holding on to him was another matter. His next escape was from the New Prison, Clerkenwell, with Bess, sawing through an iron bar, descending 25 feet on a rope made out of a blanket, a sheet and Bess’s gown and petticoat, and then scaling a 22-ft high perimeter wall.His return to custody the next time was accelerated by making an enemy out of Jonathan Wild, the Mr Big of London organised crime. So organised, in fact, that Wild had semi-official status as a thief-taker and receiver of lost property (whose loss he had arranged in the first place). Those who refused to work for him found themselves arrested by Wild, who would then claim the reward.Jack’s refusal to share his profits with Wild argues either extreme foolhardiness or supreme confidence in his powers of escapology. He was arrested, tried and sentenced to hang. Four days before his appointment at Tyburn, he escaped from Newgate disguised as a woman. London, which has always liked a Jack the Lad, was agog with it.Recaptured yet again, he was put into solitary confinement in Newgate’s equivalent of a high-security block, four floors up, The Castle. Jack freed himself from his handcuffs, broke his fetters, climbed up the chimney into the room above and then cracked open six locked, bolted and barred doors on his way up onto the roof, sixty feet up. And then went all the way back again to get his blanket before returning to lower himself with it onto the house next door, climbing into the garrett window and making his way downstairs and out through the front door to freedom.How could Jack possibly follow that? Only one way, really. The next days were spent thumbing his nose at his fate. He mingled with crowds listening to ballads about his escape, had himself driven in a carriage past Newgate, robbed a pawnbroker’s, dressed finely, dined with the doxies, sent for his mother, promised he would flee the country, got more drunk, became incapable and was arrested in a brandy shop in Drury Lane.People flocked to Newgate to see him, paying the turnkeys for the privilege. His route to Tyburn was lined by weeping girls throwing posies at his open cart. He stopped, as was customary, for a final mug of ale at the Bowl Inn in St Giles, and a pint of sack (wine) in Oxford Street. There were said to be 200,000, a third of London’s population, out for the hanging. At Tyburn, his autobiograpy was on sale, which must make the event a unique book launch.Jack was a small, slight man and death by hanging was then a matter of slow strangulation rather than the later device of a sharp neck-breaking drop; the crowd spared him by rushing forward to pull down on his legs to hasten his end.Jack was said to have told a visiting clergyman in Newgate that one file was worth all the bibles in the world. This didn't prevent another exhorting his flock to follow the example of this alternative Shepherd and ‘open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance, burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts, and mount the chimney of hope to the roof leads of divine meditation’.Excerpt from The Book of Jacks (see Books page)On!November 15​Getting a touch older? Worried that you're a little what we used to call 'off the pace' and 'out of the swing'? Relax, or, rather, key word, 'chill': simply follow these handy tips and people won't think of you as old at all!1) While walking around, play imaginary but vigorous tennis shots (a rush to the imaginary net to return a drop shot is particularly effective, I find).2) Drop some youthful catch-phrases casually into conversation. "Swinging" and "Dodgy" seem to provoke the strongest reaction.3) Not hearing quite as sharply as you did, just a little Mutt and Jeff? Develop a cool, enigmatic smile and if in doubt, use one of my all-purpose replies, such as, ‘Whatever,’ 'You wish', 'Tell me about it!' (but definitely not 'I should cocoa!').4) Don't wear your cardigan after March.5) Offer people your seat; but, on no account, hold open the door.6) No humming, particularly Beatles tunes.7) Ostentatiously bite into discreetly prepared apples.8) Talk about football a lot.9) Never, on any account, run (except for the last chocolate digestive, force majeure, obviously). Complete giveaway, even without the grimace. Instead channel your inner Bill Nighy and cultivate an insouciant (but wary) saunter, much kinder on the knees.10) Instantly convert that sad sigh whenever you sit down into an urgent relevant rap.11) Don’t sign letters 'Yours aye'.12) Actually, don’t write letters. 13) For goodness sake, do you want to be rumbled? Use those thumbs to text! Not one finger while peering anxiously through your reading glasses! And, please, no verbs! Cast aside your crossword, or worse, book: work on your emojis and txtspk, babes.​14) Nothing says old like not knowing your mobile's number: why not do as I have and get it put on the inside of your wrist? Sorry? Yes, of course it's a tat. Get with the beat, Daddio. Oh and really: a landline?! 15) Do not attempt a pleasantry with anyone under 30 (you must have noticed the dead look that comes into their eyes and, if you’re lucky, the automatic age-tolerant smile).16) Even more importantly, never, in any circumstances whatsoever, attempt a joke, as that requires them to concentrate and unsettles their understanding of dementia.17) Never raise your baseball cap (or beanie) when meeting a lady.18) No hesitation, half-proffered hand, that sort of thing: get your hug in first, and squeeze!19) Carefully check those cultural references for anything before 1990: always ask yourself: would Richard Madeley understand this?​20) What do you mean there's no 20?​​Going off for a lie-down now.​​November 14​Welcome once again to another riproaring selection of my Oddly Fascinating Facts (OFF):1) The longest name on record in Britain is Major Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache-de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache (1884-1917).2) The floor in the dance to 'I'll Be Hard to Handle' in the Astaire & Rogers musical, 'Roberta', was the only wooden floor in all of the their films. They both loved working on it because they could tap and actually make the sounds of the taps. In the other musicals, their taps were dubbed over, as they were too quiet.3) Mrs Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor, mastered only four words in Chinese during her extensive time and travels in China and Hong Kong: 'Boy, pass the champagne!'. 4) Weight for weight, the Brussels sprout contains three times the level of vitamin C of an orange. 5) Male deep-sea squid mate indiscriminately with members of either sex because they can't see properly in the dark.More from OFF as I have it!​​November 13Today, I note, is World Kindness Day. Ever eager to assist, might I suggest some random acts of kindness that will warm cockles, lighten the step and provoke one of those smiles where the eyes shine, the head goes to one side and a warm voice with a hint of a catch in it confides, 'Bless':1) Why not approach a stranger (who, after all, is only a friend you haven't made yet) and say, 'Cheer up, it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile!'2) Travelling on public transport? Whistling helps people with their day. I find that, out of my extensive repertoire, 'Colonel Bogey' and the 'Star Wars' theme go down best. Tne ones with the earbuds in never look happy, do they? Mime is the answer here, particularly anything involving a virtual sheet of glass.3) Pack your items very slowly at the check-out so as to give the hard-pressed operative a bit of a break.4) Drink an extra glass of water to help the hard-pressed shareholders in your struggling water company.5) Send that nice Mr Musk some hand cream, as his poor fingers must be worn to the bone posting all those helpful and rigorously researched posts on his platform.6) If you're in London, why not go and talk to one of the mounted cavalrymen at Horse Guards? It gets very boring for them, and they like nothing better than a chat about the political situation while you tickle the horse under its chin.7) When using roundabouts, ignore that bare minimum requirement to give way to the right and opt for the far kinder approach of waving everyone through irrespective. I can hear the appreciative honks already!8) Send poor Mr Farage a stick of Clacton rock as an aide memoire.9) Don't forget that people really enjoy a detailed description of television programmes you've been watching,10) And always remember that if in the unlikely event you have any enemies, kindness can be really irritating!More Happiness tips very soon!November 12As the firm smack of authority seems increasingly popular currently, I thought I would supply my working list of overworked words, inelegant constructions and stale phrases that should be banned forthwith from public discourse and discussion, with penalties ranging from being forced to write them out 100 times or listening 200 times to comments and analyses prior to and following sporting contests; repeat offenders will be examined at length on the declarations and writings of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson or Fred Sirieix.There are, of course, some offences which are so endemic that rooting them out would prove prohibitively expensive, such as 'At the end of the day', 'level playing field', 'So...', 'like', or 'I'm glad you asked me that'. Others are a touch niche, and possibly pedantic: 'fulsome' to mean 'great' when it actually means 'insincerely flattering', or 'enormity' for enormous when it actually means 'enormously bad'. These are not hills to die on.Others, though, be warned:1) Unnecessarily inelegant images, what my distinguished former editor JWM Thompson used to describe as 'infelicitous': 'Suck it up,' 'Nailed it', 'Smashed it,' 'Grilled', 'Call out,' 'Hold his/her feet to the fire,' 'Firm smack'.2) The lazy abandonment of accuracy and imagination displacing the original and useful meaning. Prime example: 'They' for his or her, whether it agrees with the verb or not. No one is arguing about the need; but please invent a new word. Please.3) Prepositional abuse in the mistaken belief that it makes for more vivid language: 'Around' for 'About'; 'Ahead of' and 'In advance of' for 'Before'; 'Off of,' 'Back in the day'. And while we're on 'immediacy,' 'relevancy; and 'accessibility', the new historic present, where nothing happened, it's all happening now: 'Henry is born,' 'It is very much an age...' Grrrr!4) Old images: 'Drawing Board', 'Blue Print,' 'Letting off steam'; Alien images: 'Stepping up to the plate,' a baseball expression when we have 'Stepping up the crease'. And what about 'Stepping up to the oche?' Of course!5) And just because: 'Niche,' 'Not the hill to die on,' 'It is what it is,' 'The right thing to do,' 'remains to be seen,' 'The rest, as they say, is History,' 'You know, there's an ancient Chinese curse,"May you live in interesting times,' 'iteration,' 'cusp,' 'holistic,' 'existential,' 'surreal,' 'storied,' 'interrogate,' 'curate,' 'inhabit','tick the box,' 'Everything ok for you, Guys?'. And how many more people, do you think, are going to go on a journey?My goodness, that's better! You should try it!Next!November 11Remembering all who have been engaged by war, by choice or by order, and all shades between; heroes and cowards, and all shades between; fallen or survivors, and all shades between.Represented by:1) Jack Harrison, a thrilling rugby player of the great game, Rugby League, symbol and cypher for all the pride, wit, skill, belligerence and bloody-mindedness of the North of England.Jack's searing speed, grace and sudden swerve had already gained him 90 tries in three seasons when he scored the winner for Hull FC against Wakefield Trinity in the 1914 Challenge Cup Final. The next year, he volunteered for France, and was commissioned temporary Second Lieutenant in the 11th Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment.In March 1917 he was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry. One month later, he took off on the run of his life, across no-man’s-land, towards the German machine gun pinning down his men. He is reported as moving at speed, swerving between barbed wire, dodging shell holes, through enemy fire.Then Hull’s Hero went down, never to be seen again, not there, or at the Boulevard, or Fartown, or Belle Vue, or Knowsley Road, or at any of the other great rugby league grounds, flying down his wing to the roar of the crowd, not guns. But he was carrying a grenade and the gun was destroyed; it was Jack’s last try, for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.He was a man of imagination, a schoolteacher: who knows what thoughts, what comparisons, went through his head on that final lung-bursting swerving, sprinting run; who knows what the Germans made of this lone figure racing for their line out of the dark with the guile and balance and bravery learnt on Yorkshire mud. He was 26. The one complaint about Jack as a rugby player was that he was a touch timid. ‘Before the beginning of next season,’ wrote a reporter in the Hull Daily Mail in 1914, ‘I am more than confident that the East Hull lad will be found in a more fearless mood.’ Indeed. And his son, also Jack, a Captain in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, was killed at Dunkirk in 1940.2) Major Allison Digby Tatham-Warter, of the 2nd Parachute Batallion, who could be seen during the height of the Battle of Arnhem carrying an umbrella. This was because, as he explained, he could never remember passwords and the brolly would make it perfectly clear that he was British. He also used it on one occasion to disable a German armoured car by thrusting it through a slit and poking the driver in the eye.When German tanks began to cross the Bridge (Too Far), Tatham-Warter led a bayonet charge against them with his pistol in one hand, swinging his umbrella above his head with the other and wearing a bowler hat.He was injured, but escaped, made contact with the Dutch resistance, survived any number of encounters with the Germans, including helping them get a staff car out of a ditch, and organised the escape of around 140 stranded Parachute Regiment soldiers, 10 British and US pilots, two Russians and 15 Dutch across the Rhine.After the War he ran safaris in Kenya. Also present at Arnhem was Father Bernard Egan, chaplain to the Battalion, who was taking shelter from mortar fire when the major came to help him cross the street; Father Egan mentioned the mortars: the major replied, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got an umbrella.'3) Jack Nevin. They also served; afterwards, some cope with it in silence, and some by making light of it. My father's account of service life between 1939 and 1945 was not a routine one, despite an unswerving admiration for Churchill and ‘Monty’, and distinguished service in Egypt and Europe. After they had died, I found a letter from him to my mother which describes being under German shell fire in France shortly after D Day. He never mentioned it; the only shot of any significance he claimed to have fired, for example, seemed to have gone through a wall at the Rose and Crown, Colchester, nearly killing an American officer in the next bedroom.Otherwise, by his account, he managed to rise quite peaceably from private to major in the Royal Army Service Corps (Run Away Someone’s Coming, as he loved to put it) because his superiors decided, rightly as it turned out, that a Lancashire grocer would be rather better at supplying the Eighth Army than any of their regular chaps. The high-ups, he said, seemed to think a Lancashire accent the outward sign of an inward trustworthiness. This belief proved particularly useful during their visits to his depots, which tended to involve groups of men moving the same stock to different points on the inspection route to disguise irregularities (not of his making, I stress). And he never did get to go back to the Western Desert to find all that sugar they had stored there, under the sand, away from Rommel, and which, he claimed, seeing as it was uncontaminated by Hiroshima, would now be worth a bloody fortune, if he could remember where he put it.His memories of all this, including the Indian Army CO sitting down to lunch in a tent in the middle of the desert and sending the plates back because they hadn’t been warmed, would more often than not lead to the set piece of his war time: the embarkation from North Africa of 500 Italian prisoners of war followed by their immediate disembarkation and re-embarkation when he mistakenly counted only 499.I can see him now, hugging his small but generously sized self over this, feet up, whisky in hand, and hear his chuckling exclamation at the daftness of it all: ‘Oooh, bloody hell!’, or, as he elided it, ‘Oooh, bloody’ell!”Thank you, all, that there is a: Next!November 10Today, an exclusive sample from the News Department of Old Nevin's Unusual Trivia Selection (ONUTS)! :1) April,1999: Sophia Hadi drove all the way from Leeds to Washington, County Durham, after a friend there reported hearing a rare song thrush, only to find it was, in fact, the noise made by a forklift truck reversing at the local Asda.2) June, 2013: A German bank clerk who fell asleep in mid transfer of 62.40 euros while his finger was on the "2" key ended up transferring 222,222,222.22 euros instead. 3) October, 2013: In Cornwall, Ontario, Donald Johnson, a lawyer, discovered the burglar in his home was a man he was representing on a burglary charge.4) November, 2010: Matthew Nieveen (no relation) of Nebraska tested positive on his way home from a fancy dress party dressed as a breathalyser.5) January, 2011: Andreas Mueller, 39, of Sachsen Anhalt won a Mini in a radio show contest by having the word "Mini" tattooed on to his penis.More from ONUTS very soon!November 9At the end of a challenging week, I have some quotations to aid your pensive ruminations on Life and Stuff:1) 'Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.' AJ Balfour, UK Prime Minister, 1848-1930.2) 'I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6/5 against.' Damon Runyon, 1880-1946, writer of fine stories and creator of such as Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit, Nicely Nicely Johnson and Harry the Horse.3) An admirer who spent the afternoon with Lord Tennyson in his garden reported only three remarks: 'Coals are very dear'; 'I get all my meat from London'; and 'It's those cursed rabbits!'4) 'Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of Man.' Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900.5) 'I have learned from my mistakes, and I am sure I can repeat them exactly,' Peter Cook, satirist, 1937-1995.6) 'If the aim of medicine is by drugs to alleviate suffering, the question forces itself on one: why alleviate it? In the first place, they say that suffering leads Man to perfection; and, in the second, if Mankind really learns to alleviate its suffering with pills and drops, it will completely abandon religion and philosophy, in which it has hitherto found not merely protection from all sorts of trouble, but even happiness.' From Anton Chekhov's short story, 'Ward 6'.7) 'Most people are bastards, and everything is bullshit,' George Black II, father of newspaper magnate and prison inmate, Conrad Black, Lord Black of Crossharbour.8) 'There is an art of sophistry by which men have deluded their own consciences by persuading themselves that what would be criminal in others is virtuous in them.' Dr Johnson sets us right.9) 'I was lying tenth and had a 35 foot putt. I whispered over my shoulder, 'How does this one break?" And my caddie said, "Who cares?"' Jack Lemmon, actor, 1925-2001, whose gravestone reads, 'In'.10) 'On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.' Epitaph for himself proposed by WC Fields, 1880-1946.On!November 8A crank of the miscellany handle, and we come up with...Towards More Colourful English!And today, a few Lancashire phrases with which to enrich your already sparkling repartee:1) 'I'm drawn to you. It's like magnetism. I'm a little nail and you're a big lump of iron.' (Lancashire is the county of romance.)2) 'Give him a chance? I wouldn't give him the steam off my tea.'3) 'Ooh, look what next door's cat's dragged in.' (A typically warm Lancastrian welcome.)4) 'I've seen more meat on a butcher's apron.' ('You're very slim, aren't you?')5)'They say the midwife who delivered him is still looking for the scissors.' ('He may be untrustworthy')'6) 'He'd skin a flea then sell it a vest.' ('He is mean and untrustworthy.')7) 'I can do owt except wheel myself in a barrow.'8) 'I thought you had more oil in your can than that.'9) 'Who's pissed on your chips?'10) And finally, for a far superior euphemism to 'passed away', or, heaven forfend, 'passed', I would suggest this typical example of local delicacy and sensitivity: 'He/She has popped his/her clogs'.Next!November 7Leonard Cohen, the Troubadour of the Age, died on this day in 2016. Poet, composer of plaint and anthem, lover of women, admirer of religions, blessed with an unique gift of echoing melancholy, the killer line, and self-wry wit.Some of the things he sang and said:1) 'I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.'2) 'It's been a long time since I've stood on a stage in London. Was about I 4 or 15 years ago. I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Ritalin, Focalin. I've also studied deeply in the philosophies and religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.'3) My page was too white, My ink was too thin, the day wouldn't write what the night pencilled in.'4) 'Everybody know the boat is leaking, everybody knows the captain lied.'5) 'Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild he'll never need to deal another. He was just some Joseph looking for manger.'6) 'I was born with this gift of a golden voice.'7) Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost.'8). 'Follow me, said the wise man, but he walked behind.9) 'A million candles burning for the help that never came'.10) That last came from the song released to mark his 82nd birthday, earlier in 2016, and written amid the ascent or Donald Trump, 'You want it darker'. Worth a listen in these newly dark days:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7YNovember 6Aarrgghh! The people have indeed spoken. And here are some other famous mistakes history:1) Croesus, the rich one, King of Lydia, asked the Oracle at Delphi if he should attack Persia. 'Cross the river Halys and a great nation will be destroyed,' intoned the Oracle. So Croesus did, and did: his own.2) Macbeth, who, you will remember, had a bit of a research error over the exact circumstances of Macduff's birth.3) Richard the Lionheart stopped to applaud the shot that killed him at the siege of Chalus.4) Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden (1594-1632) refused to wear body armour at the Battle of Lutzen, declaring, 'God is my armour!'. Yes, the Battle of Lutzen was indeed in 1632.5) Lord Chelmsford, who opined before the Zulu Wars that the only worry was whether the Zulus would fight. Rorke's Drift, Isandlwana, enough said.6) Peter Crawford's self-defence in a New York court suffered a little when he asked a key witness in cross-examination: 'Did you get a good look at my face when I snatched your bag?'7) Rommel decided Normandy was so quiet in June 1944 that he could afford to go home and celebrate his wife's birthday.8) The chap who left Canada to escape the threat of nuclear war and settled in the Falkland Islands.9) The Toronto lawyer demonstrating the safety of the windows in his office with his shoulder who plunged 24 floors to his death.10) Those who use the expression 'shot themselves in the foot' are shooting themselves in the foot, as it derives from the First World War and was a deliberate method of escaping the trenches.What a happy post!Next four years, quickly!November 5Presidential elections, commemoration of potentially explosive high treason, exciting Conservative shadow ministerial appointments: today, prompted by the 113th anniversary of the birth of Roy Rogers, the singing cowboy, we celebrate the real star of his act: his horse of course: Trigger!Trigger (real name, Golden Cloud) got his big break playing Maid Marian's horse in that splendid swash, buckle and bow extravaganza, 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' (1938), also starring Errol Flynn and the incomparable Claude Rains (did you know he was born in Camberwell?). He (Trigger, not Claude) was snapped up in 1943 by Roy (whom, shallow fellow that I am, I might have been rather less impressed by in my youth if I'd known his real name was Len Slye. Ditto, for another random example, the alluring Cyd Charisse, real name, Tula Ellice Finkel. Diana Dors' real name, Fluck, would probably have worked today; then, not. A friend of mine remembers his father confiding to the family over Sunday lunch that Diana's real name was Clunt.)But, Trigger: some horse. He could walk 50 feet on his hind legs, sit on a chair, and sign his name (admittedly only an x). He toured extensively, including in Britain, where in 1954 he was presented with a kilt in Dress Stewart Tartan on stage at the Glasgow Empire. (As you ask, it was Roy/Len's proudest boast that he had house-trained Trigger.) After his sad demise in 1965 at the venerable age of 31, Roy had him stuffed, and he can still be seen at the headquarters of the Cowboy Channel in Fort Worth, Texas.Trigger was, of course, just one of many famous horses in television and film, including the Lone Ranger's Silver, Gene Autry's Champion the Wonder Horse, and possibly the most distinctive, Mr Ed, who talked. Legends about them abound, not least the often repeated claim that Mr Ed was, in fact, a disguised zebra. Allow me to settle the matter with this official statement from the programme's makers: 'A zebra was briefly used in several scenes in the series when Ed was unable to do some difficult stunts, but there's no truth to to the myth that a zebra was used the whole time. Ed was definitely a horse!' So there.Coming soon: The real truth about Lassie.And finally, a quote that might help the loser in the big election cope with his disappointment. It comes from Dick Tuck after he failed to be elected to the California Senate in 1966: 'The people have spoken, the bastards.'Until tomorrow?November 4Writers! Struggling with the old creativity? Staring at the blank page? Pencils all sharpened? Wordle all done? Not staring out of the window so you will have something to do this afternoon? Here is some advice, and consolation, from the experience of others.1) Victor Hugo used to take off all his clothes, using the cold and discomfort as a motivation to just get on with it so he could put them back on as soon as possible.2) Virgil wrote one line a day.3) When Edmund Gibbon presented the second volume of 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' to The Duke of Gloucester, George III's brother, his grace graciously responded, 'Another damn'd thick square book! Always scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Gibbon?'4) Publishers? Schmublishers! You must remember the one who told F Scott Fitzgerald 'You'd have a decent book if you got rid of that Gatsby character.'5) 'Dubliners', James Joyce's wizard-like book of short stories, was rejected 22 times and then only sold 379 copies in its first year, 120 of which were purchased by James Joyce.6) George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' was rejected by TS Eliot at Faber & Faber.7) Rejection letter to Marcel Proust (translated): 'My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but, rack my brains as I may, I can't see why a chap needs 30 pages to describe how he turns his head in bed. I clutched my head.'8) Proust and Beatrix Potter (not a coupling you will often come across) were forced to self-publish.9) Chill. It is a fact universally acknowledged that no book will be universally acknowledged. This, for example, is Mark Twain on Jane Austen in a letter to a friend: 'I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so much that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice', I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shinbone.'10) Or, indeed, JRR Tolkien. Another reading from an early draft of 'The Lord of the Rings' to his literary group, The Inklings, was greeted by one of a fellow member thus: 'Oh no, not another fucking elf.'Next!November 3Today, some of my acclaimed nature notes:1) Research into bats has shown that the bigger the testicles, the smaller the brain.2) Kangaroos can't walk backwards.3) Giraffes can't cough.4) Pigs have corkscrew penises which operate with a right hand thread.5) Snails have a homing instinct, eventually.6) Most humans drown before being dismembered and eaten by a crocodile. Most.7) The Romans grew 37 distinct types of pea.8) You should run away from a moose but stand your ground with a bear. If the bear makes 'contact' you should play dead.9) But - and it's an important qualification - 'if the attack is prolonged, change tactics and fight back vigorously.'10) And another, I'm afraid - if you play dead, the bear may carry you off to its food store.11) There are also suggestions that you should run and lure the animal to a slope. Because a bear's front paws are considerably shorter than its back ones, it will most likely go head over heels if it charges down after you.12) When hunting, polar bears have been observed to stand very still and place a paw in front of their noses to camouflage themselves against the snow.Finally, I have some unconnected advice should you encounter parents who are wont to elaborate extensively on the brilliance of their offspring. Today is the 1,622nd anniversary of St Rumbold of Buckingham, who, as soon as he was born, declared, 'I am a Christian' three times, and the next day preached a sermon on Christian virtues and the Trinity.(NB. Verb Sap. The writer advises that it might be unwise to rely too heavily on nos 8) to 11.)(Correction: pigs: left hand thread.)Next!November 2Today, some of my favourite, if overworked, lines from the movies:1) 'It's a long shot, but it might just work.'2) 'You'll never get away with this, you know.'3) 'All right, I'll tell you. What harm can it do? You're going to die anyway.'4) 'I think I've heard just about enough.'5) 'Cover me and I'll circle around behind them'6) 'It seems we had old Jim figured all wrong.'7) 'Guards!'8) 'Now try and get some rest.'9) 'Listen! ...'No, you listen!'10) 'I'll see myself out.'Watching my first Bond movie in a long time recently, I also much enjoyed it when, after they had survived any number of explosions, bullets, crashes and general mayhem, the girl greeted our hero's latest plan with, 'No, James, it's too risky!'More great movie quotes very soon!November 1LS Lowry was born this day in 1887. Keith Waterhouse, the much-missed novelist, playwright, columnist and slight curmudgeon - he was from Hunslet - told this: 'Many years ago, the late L S L had an exhibition, which most unusually for this master of crowded street scenes, was dominated by single figures, including the famous one of a man lying on a wall with a bowler hat on his chest. The critics made much of this development, and saw the artist homing in on the essential loneliness of his characters.'At the opening night party, Lowry provided me with his own interpretation: 'Y'see, Keith, I had a ten by eight to do for Merthyr Tydfil Corporation, but at the same time I'd this exhibition coming up and I'd promised them at least half a dozen new pictures. But with this big job on, the best I could do was dash off some of what I call me ones.'https://www.lslowry.org.uk/lowry-manonawall.html