[english] as pure as the driven snow

The good doc

Wish I knew who had said this:

"The defence of the mother tongue against perceived decline or corruption by foreign terms is a major preoccupation of the French. L'Académie française sets an official standard of language purity of the French language by removing foreign words such as microchip and hamburger from the vocabulary."

Most are familiar with the James D. Nicoll addendum:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

I understand but can't be sure that there is an English body which convenes for the purpose of doing just this - rifling other languages for new vocabulary and I'm all for it. While we don't wish to see other languages die out for want of usage, as Johnson said [quoted 1785 by Boswell in reference to the New Hebrides]:

I am always sorry when any language is lost because languages are the pedigree of nations

… nevertheless sometimes the foreign words seem better. For example, the cumbersome "in front of you" when you only need say "devant" [Fr - stress the last syllable]. Or "that is so awful" when all you need to say is "uzhas" [Ru - stress the first syllable].

And in the article on Tingo, Georgina Pattinson of BBC News said, in 2005:

English is a rich and innovative language. But you can't help feeling we're missing out on some words … Of course, the English language has borrowed words for centuries. Khaki and croissant are cases in point.

So perhaps it's time to be thinking about adding others to the lexicon. Malay, for instance, has gigi rongak - the space between the teeth. The Japanese have bakku-shan - a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

… and so on. The Russians show their fixation with the prescriptive and pedantic rules of their language [which are then abused] by the following exchange in English:

Me: Which of these are correct: "How many brothers and sisters ... ?"

a] have you got b] do you have c] are you having d] have you

Girl: a] have you got

Me: Any others?

Girl: What do you mean? Isn't that the correct answer?

Me: It's one of them.

I then go on to explain that in many multiple choice exercises in English, there are four variants - one clearly incorrect, one unlikely or not in a good form and two possibles - one being the better.

This messes her mind up because her English teachers all insisted she have the correct variant in every case, nothing else being possible and if she put forward, say, variant b] above, then she is wrong, wrong, wrong and loses the marks. End of lesson, see you next week.

I've been fighting this attitude [and in particular the ubiquitous and tyrannical "marking key"] ever since I've been over here. Typical every day:

Him: What's the correct one?

Me: They all are.

Him: [incredulous look on his face].

Then I might say: "If yer want owt fer nowt, alas, do it fer thisen," and ask him what language it is. Or: "I'm gooin oop ont moor." He refuses to accept it is English from 200km north of London. What's more, the Americans don't even speak English [:)] and my evidence for this is Websters - my friend's constant companion is the dictionary of American Language, not American English. It clearly states this on the cover.

Which language for her?

So in the end, which model do you wish to follow - the prescriptive and pure attempt to keep your unchanging language pure or the more rollicking, "all comers welcome" model?

[sooner or later] the number comes up

Steve Fossett's Cheyenne - fastest around the world

Steve Fossett was an adventurer and these things happen to adventurers who continue for long enough:

The search process has been made considerably more difficult by the fact that Fosset didn't file a flight plan for his jaunt to reccy possible locations for an attempt on the land speed record. He did, however, have "full radio capability", but has ominously not made contact.

He's a type, like his mate Richard Branson. Ellen MacArthur, the fastest solo voyager roudn the globe, is another. Australia had its Dick Smith and they're characterized by restless spirits, a vision, a sort of maniacal bravery and some cash.

I had the first two and embarked on a few adventures myself [I'm in the middle of one now]. My mate and I were reputed to be the first to attempt circumnavigating tiny Port Phillip Bay in an open QB2 catamaran, I attempted a speed record for summer bobsled in Finland and broke my wrist in the process and I've just finished the design of my outrigger sailing canoe I plan to travel to Turkey in.

Ellen waves from B&Q

One thing you never think about is that you can come a cropper. Like when you play rugby, you're concentrating on the task ahead and injury doesn't enter your thoughts. I don't think it's bravery - it's more single-mindedness. Richard Branson shows this when he says:

"Steve is a tough old boot. I suspect he is waiting by his plane right now for someone to pick him up. The ranch he took off from covers a huge area, and Steve has had far tougher challenges to overcome in the past. Based on his track record, I feel confident we'll get some good news soon."

A school friend of mine who later joined a 70s pop group called Skyhooks was just such a type. He flew his helicopter into a cliff face in Queensland in 2001. Don't forget Steve Irwin either. I might have already told you about one of my brushes with death which still stays with me.

I was sailing my A Class cat and at the same time the rescue boat went off to rescue some kids, I decided to sail out wide off course, my trapeze snapped, the boat threw me five to ten metres and sailed off by itself and suddenly I was in pretty cold water and the feeling started disappearing and the thinking got foggy within about ten minutes. I reached the stage of happiness before being rescued on an off chance.

The class I sailed - you have to use a trapeze to sail it.

It happens. If you keep at these things long enough, it happens.

[world cup] swing low, sweet chariot

[admitting faults] who can do it?

Was there ever a psychological exercise so difficult and so fraught with self-delusion, outright deception and lies as admitting one's faults?

And even if we do make the journey on the long road to self-knowledge and self-acknowledgment, can we then allow others to see these? To admit anything is a one way street and if even one single little error is admitted to a spouse or lover, it's immediate ammunition in the partner's next fight.

And even if we are so confident in ourselves that we don't worry about what anyone says, don't we still put a sheen, a gloss, a well-intentioned, self-forgiving tone to the admission? And admit only that which others will look at and say: "Oh, James, that's no fault at all." Then we can puff ourselves up, having assuaged our egos.

Quite frankly, in marriages, when she [because I'm a man but the other way for the girls] adds my slightest admission that I may have been wrong to her list of self-vindicatory bullets for next time, it's sickening and the result is NO further admissions whatsoever and watching your back for any surreptitious move to manouver you into said admission.

The nausea is then complete when she sweetly demands that we should be open and honest with each other because she "loves honesty in a man". Sorry, sister, I made one admission and it was used against me. I'm not an idiot to do it again.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is the beginning of the end - actually a bit further on than the beginning. A partner who needs, absolutely must have Right on her side the whole time and is forever jockeying into a position of Power over her man is going to consume the other and as Helen Rowland said in 1922:

A husband is what is left of a lover once the nerve has been extracted.

Except that my nerve was not extracted - it became a brick wall at which she repeatedly flung herself until she gave it up and left. So now, with the pressure off and no woman on the horizon, I can make a few admissions I hope freely, on the grounds that I don't care any more.

Perhaps this is one of the purposes of a blog - useful things, blogs.

The two things I've been most accused of are passivity and obstinacy. Not in public life - you can judge for yourselves here. No, I mean in the relationship because I see a relationship, not as a war [or ever onwards and upwards] but as a haven, somewhere to withdraw to after the day's vicissitudes are done with.

As I offer an open pair of arms when we meet, so I expect the same, not to be met with a barrage of "did you phone this person" or "did you buy this - oh you forgot!". The moment I hear that sort of thing, I withdraw into myself and go and do something like wash the car or visit a client.

Some years ago a friend told me of coming home after work, stopping at the door and not being able to go inside that door because of the embittered disdain he'd have to endure until next morning and the shouting match which would ensue.

He admitted he might have been the cause of much of it but still - that was the prospect he faced each evening and so he went elsewhere for the night.

That was the beginning of the end.

So admitting faults is a minefield. Here's another - I don't mind her flirting as much as she wants at work where I can't see it or getting up at the café and chatting for a few minutes to some Adonis or even the occasional evening out with some man to break the monotony and the less she wanted, the more I'd be open to it and here we get to another criticism of me - she told me more than once that I gave her too much freedom, which I'm still puzzling over.

What did she mean - that she couldn't trust herself or that she resented that I didn't need her 24/7?

Another criticism came from my mate who asked me, after chatting to her for some minutes, "How central are you to her world?" He added, "I don't mean materially."

That was the beginning of the end.

Jealousy must appear on the list somewhere and the hypocrisy here is astounding. I took a girl out once, held her hand across the table and kissed her and her conversation was about how her guy would be "jealous of a tree". She was full of how she was an independent person and if she wanted to go out with me, she was a free agent and so on. I pitied him, really I did and admit what it said about me too at the time.

Surely it comes down, in the end, to how much that person loves you and how much space you'll allow her, confident in the invisible and elastic ties that bind her heart and not in any external demands on her.

Nowadays I'm over-sensitive to this and if the relationship looks a goer but the nuances are unmistakable that she still likes to play the field after my charm has failed to do its work, it's time to up sticks and move on. Trouble is - women like to play the field these feminist days, free to go out whenever and with whomever they like but I won't accept this social contract. No way.

And to say this would be stifling is to misread these comments. The less she demanded, the more I'd give. That's what it's about.

This is why I plan to remain alone - not because I want to play the field [because in the end it comes down to a lot of froth and bubble flirting and no more] and not because I'm in any way celibate and not because no woman will go out with me but because I need far more than a lover - I need a companion to laugh and go side by side and enjoy things with.

We can do business.

I had a difference of opinion with a woman the other day - she was arguing that men were so much better and I was arguing that women were so much better and we both realized we might be able to do business on that basis.

Except that she's married, lucky guy.

[the whole] greater than the sum of the parts

Richard Havers has been writing about guitarist Jan Akkerman, a prodigious talent but not the only one in the group Focus.

One of the driving forces was Thijs van Leer, classically trained flautist and resident crazy man. They were far too classical for mainstream pop and far too rocky for the classicists. Result - a very select bunch who followed them and yet, as Richard says:

Dutch band Focus in the Seventies – and a brilliant one at that. House of the King, Sylvia, Hocus Pocus and Moving Waves are some of the tracks you might recall.

Classics

Sometimes, when you take a group of talented musos who enjoy both their music and absurdity, some classics emerge and these are two I'd like to recall:

Hamburger Concerto, by Focus. It features the "St. Anthony Chorale" by Haydn, fake magnifico lyrics, yodelling falsetto and brilliant guitar riffs. An extraordinary track really - some say it didn't work but I beg to differ:

[i] Starter

[ii] Medium 1

[iii] Medium 2

[iv] Well done

[v] One for the road

A commenter at Amazon said of this track:

A sunset never blazed so brightly – the penultimate Focus album was their most perfectly achieved statement, a beautifully composed and produced celebration of the Akkerman/van Leer partnership at a creative, if not social, peak.

A real synthesis of their musical strengths – crunching riffs, memorable tunes, classical motifs, whimsy, humour, and those carmine Akkerman guitar runs threading the whole thing together.

Down in the Sewer, by the Stranglers [from Rattus Norvegicus]. As Wiki says about them:

The Stranglers were, beginning in 1976, tangentially associated with punk rock, due in part to their opening for The Ramones' first British tour. [They] were also associated with New Wave as well as gothic rock, but their idiosyncratic approach never fitted completely within any musical genre.

That's what I loved about them. Not only that but they were too good as musos to be accepted in any one genre. Wiki continues:

Although initially received with mixed reaction because of their apparent sexist and racist innuendo, the Stranglers employed a sort of dog-humour in their lyrics that won over many music critics. Indeed, Dave Thompson wrote that the Stranglers themselves revelled in an almost Monty Python-esque grasp of absurdity (and, in particular, the absurdities of modern 'men's talk').

And as for Hugh Cornwell … well:

[i] Falling

[ii] Down In The Sewer

[iii] Trying To Get Out Again

[iv] Rat's Rally

Hughy in recent years

In my humble opinion, the tracks on the next album - Bitching, Something Better Change and the title track No More Heroes are some of the best semi-punk rock ever produced and the free flowing energy is infectious.

[You can hear samples by clicking on the album name links.]

[england] sweet taste of victory

Don't often blog about cricket:

Luke Wright and Matt Prior fell for ducks but Ian Bell (36) steadied the reply before Kevin Pietersen (71no) and Paul Collingwood (64no) took over. They shared an unbroken 114 to ease the hosts to victory with 13.4 overs left, to beat India by seven wickets and clinch their one-day series 4-3.

Now bring on the Aussies. Well, maybe not quite yet.