Bad Branding

According to the press this morning, there is much disgruntlement amongst the followers of Newcastle United Football Club over the renaming of their home ground to 'Sportsdirect.com @ St James' Park'.

Can't say I blame them, to be honest, but it got me thinking about other potentially inappropriate sponsorship deals. How about these for a start... (the links, if you need them, are safe. Ish)

Larry Flint eye hospital @ Moorfields (it'll turn you blind, you know)
The Richard Dawkins Discovery Institute
Bram Stoker's National Blood Service
The Melton Mowbray Mossad
Kwik Fit up @ the Old Bailey

Feel free to add more suggestions as comments. On the other hand, if this cheesy little article has robbed you of the will to live, may I commend to you another suggested link up - that of Nike and The Samaritans...

Open Letter To Alan Johnson

I was almost irritated enough by this story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8335189.stm) to write a letter to my MP, but he's probably tied up naked in a wardrobe (bought on expenses) somewhere with an orange stuck in his mouth.

So I'll bung it in here instead, because it'll fill some space if nothing else.

Dear Mr. Johnson

Please excuse any poor typing in this letter - my keyboard has been partially disabled by a small blob of Lebanese Hashish that fell from a Camberwell Carrot I was constructing last week. Obviously I tried to suck it out (waste not want not), but I just ended up with a choking mouthful of pocket-fluff, which is weird, because this keyboard doesn’t fit in my pocket.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on your sacking of Professor Nutt, the science expert dude you appointed to advise the government (God rot its socks) on the subject of recreational pharmaceuticals. That’s Druuuuugs to you sir. On the face of things, it would appear that Nutt is failing to live up to his name, while you, Johnson, are definitely living up to yours.

The thing is, Al; may I call you Al? Does it help if I let you call me Betty? Even if I’d rather not be your long lost Pal? (Apologies to Paul Simon). The thing is, what you have in the shape of old Nutter, is an expert. That’s someone who knows more about something than you do (I suspect there’s a lot of people who fit that bill). Now, old Nutt, he says - if I may paraphrase - that Bob Hope’s less dangerous than fags and booze. He’s probably got a point, ‘cos that’s his job, you see. (Personally, I’d rather take Bob Hope on a road trip than Phillip Morris and Johnnie Walker.) And what you wrote to him is “I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy”. There, my old fruit, we agree. But that may be as far as it goes.

Lemme ask you a question, Al. Has it occurred to you that the reason there’s a mismatch between policy and scientific advice, is because the policy’s a bit Pete Tong? Eh?

The rumour we are seeing round these parts (these parts being anywhere outside the House of Commons) is that Golden - I’m sorry, I mean Gordon, Brown is neither a Smoker nor a Midnight Toker, but may well be a Joker. Let’s face it, an unelected prime minister’s gotta be having a bit of a chortle, hasn’t he?

Isn’t it about time you lot stopped pandering to popular opinion, or enforcing your own toffee-nosed holier-than-thou views on the general public just because you can? Is that just wishful thinking on my part? You can’t keep banning shit just because you, personally, don’t like it. Handguns, Fox Hunting; relatively harmless dope… Where’s it going to end? You keep messing with people’s lives on the flimsiest of pretexts for the odd vote here or there (which you clearly don’t need, see Golden Brown’s unelected status) or just because it feels good. I might not like these things either (nobody asked me), but chat with the experts and you’ll get a majority opinion that many of your banning measures (a) are based on false pretexts and (b) wont address the problems in any event.

Besides which, can’t we please have some ‘government lite’ for a while? Minimal interference in our daily lives? That might even buy you some votes! Have a read of my old pal Niccolo Machiavelli’s masterwork. He asks the question whether a prince (and I do you more service than you deserve by comparing you lot to a prince) does better by being loved or feared. The government’s recent actions mean that’ its neither loved nor feared; just laughed at, distrusted and despised.

Credit the populace with some intelligence, and treat us with some respect. We don’t expect you to always tell us the truth, you’re politicians so that would go against the grain. But when everyone can see you’re taking the piss, that’s irritating. Listen to your experts. And remember, if you’ve bought a dog, then stop trying to chase the postman yourself (when they aren’t on strike because you’ve screwed up the Post Office that is).

Anyway, my ride to the pub’s due any minute, and I’m off for a pint to wash that bloody fluff down. While it’s still legal.

Rhymes with Brindle

Last week was a momentous one for the avaricious consumer within me - I got hold of a 'toy' I've been lusting after for ages, yet have been denied on the unfortunate ground of geographical disadvantage.

I finally got my mitts on an Amazon Kindle which, until last Monday's release of the 'international' version, was only available to folks living in the US. For the uninitiated (heavens, where have you been?) the Kindle is an e-reader - a dedicated device that stores and displays digital, downloadable versions of regular books. Its pencil-thin 14x21cm frame can hold the equivalent of up to 1500 books - enough to keep the most voracious reader occupied for a little while.

Despite the fact that I am a compulsive gadget buyer and will surely die should I not continue to amass an ever growing collection of technically advanced yet potentially useless gewgaws, I always make some attempt to justify my purchases. Sometimes that can be quite a tortuous process resulting in a complex excuse, I mean justification, which would be quite a challenge for even the most credulous of us to accept as realistic.

This time, though, justification was an absolute doddle: the only thing I buy more of than gadgets and gizmos is books. Be they paperbacks, hardbacks, fact, fiction or fantasy I must have a ready supply of things to read around me. Work colleagues will attest to the regular deliveries from Amazon, and Mrs Grumbler will confirm that, in extremis, I will resort to reading the nutritional information panels on breakfast cereal packets if there's really nothing else to hand.

And don't ask me to part with a book once Ive bought it - dear me no. I'd rather give away the children (there is no truth in the rumour that I'd actually like to do that). So, there are, as a result, books all over Grumbler Towers - a situation which drives the good lady wife to distraction and threatens to cause friction in our otherwise happy existance. Now there's finally a gadget (and a very pretty one at that) which stores books! How fantastic is that? Even 'er indoors likes it despite the fact that I'll probably never let it out of my sight!

So what's this particular marital aid like, and will I go blind if I use it too much? Here it is, on the left. I've already quoted the size, in case you think that size is an important characteristic. It weighs about the same as, well, a book really. And the screen's a particularly nice 'electric-paper' thingy that shouldn't be (and hasn't so far been) a cause of any eye strain. In regular operation you can hold it in either hand, which is a relief if you get a tired wrist. And there's a handy text-to-speech format which is almost like someone else doing it for you. I've got to say that I absolutely love it and I just can't get enough! (Am I stretching the marital aid joke too far?)

Now, if you want one of these - and you should want one - there may be a couple of things with knowing.

At present, you have to buy it via the Amazon US website where it's advertised at $259 (it was twenty bucks more than that, but the price was reduced days after release and - get this - Amazon sent us early adopters a refund!) But then you need to add shipping - which is in the order of $20, and excise duty - another $45 for the customs men, damn their eyes! Of course, if you happen to be in the US for a visit, you can save quite a bit of this.

Now, once you have the device, it needs to be registered. If you've bought it for yourself, this will already have been done for you. This associates it with your Amazon account (where else would you get the books to put on it) and also sets the 'country' for the device. Since my 'main' Amazon account address is based in the UK, so was my country set. This is important!

Amazon's goal is to have every book it sells available on the Kindle. In practice, there are about 350,000 on the US Kindle bookstore, and 290,000 on the UK one. This really shouldn't present a problem - or so I thought at the time. After all, they're gonna put the popular ones on there first, arent they? As long as you aren't after the Siberian edition of the 1968 Toenail-clipping Collector's Almanac youre gonna be golden, right? Wrong, actually.

Now, my reading tastes might be eclectic - the first book I searched for was 'The Fourth Bear' by Jasper Fforde, having just been lent (and hugely enjoyed) its prequel 'The Big Over-Easy' in paperback. No luck. OK, so I'll try the greatest living author - lets look for anything by Sir Terry Pratchett. Nope, nothing, nada. There was a book about the great man, but nothing by him. OK, lets aim for a classic then - how about Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation', my own dead tree copy having sadly shed its pages, lost its cover, and been regretfully consigned to the recycling bin some months ago. No. That's not there either. I tried a few more, my heart sinking with each fruitless search. Had I finally got my hands on the kindle, only to have nothing to read? Oh cruel, cruel irony.

Still, I'm nothing if not resourceful - I'd had the Kindle delivered to the US, I was in the US at the time, so I set the beast up to think of itself as belonging to the land of the free. Nothing wrong with that, is there? It's pretty easy to do this, by the way. Just use a US 'delivery address'. If you wanna try that on iTunes you'll find it a lot harder, because that system uses your credit card address - whatever you try. Now, let's go book buying again, shall we? This time, everything I searched for is on the store. My guess is that the UK store will catch up with the US one soon, and when that happens I can go 'legit' again.

There are other implications of letting the Kindle think its US based. For one, now that I'm back home in Blighty, buying a book and having it delivered 'wirelessly' (the Kindle makes use of the 3G mobile phone networks) incurs a roaming charge of $1.99 on top of the book price. Of course, you can avoid that by downloading to a computer then USB transferring, but where's the fun in that, eh?

The other twist involves our old friends the pirates, I mean customs and excise, again. Dead tree books are exempt from Value Added Tax - I assume because they are 'food for the brain'. Not so digital books - is that not silly? Anyway, the upshot is that technically, I'm rooking the VAT-man for about a quid every time I buy a book while sitting at home. I don't *think* they'll hunt me down like a dog, but if they do, Ive got the two quid I owe them here in a jar.

I will doubtless discover more oddities, and I might note them down here. I've had to resort to a little trickery to get the Kindle to play nice, but I'm still rating it nine out of ten for now...

Oh yeah. Brindle... refers to the colouring of a horse. Or cow. Or dog. Not Kindles though - they can be any colour you like, as long as its white...

The Long Way Found

Last month, my pal Bob the B'stard and I toured the UK on motorbikes, taking in John O'Groats and Land's End on the way. It took us just over a week, and was rather good fun.

If you'd like to read about our adventures then you're in luck, the Grumbler has spilled the beans, told the secrets, and gossiped the gossip in mini-book form! You can download this short pictorial account here in PDF form.

(For those who don't want a 16Meg download, there's a web version - but it really doesn't match up to the loving care put into the PDF!)

Byte Night, Thames Valley Park, 2nd Oct 2009

Last night I had the honour of sleeping outside the offices of my illustrious employer in Reading. I'll spare the usual jokes and sarcasm, because this was all about Byte Night.

For the uninitiated, Byte Night is a yearly occurrence where a bunch of IT professionals basically give up the comforts of home and bed for a night in order to raise money for and better understand the plight of homeless children. The monies raised go to a charity called Action for Children, and the understanding gained, well, that's right here. Hopefully I can convey a little of it to you...

Those of us taking part (about 150 in Thames Valley Park this year) have been raising sponsorship money over the past few weeks and last night we all gathered in one of the Oracle buildings for the evening. The format was pretty simple - registration for the event, some speeches, some food, a fundraising raffle and an auction before heading outside to bed down under the clouds. Since I've not done this before, many of the things we were told were news to me, and Ive still got a bit of a lump in my throat.

What sort of kids end up in care, or on the streets? Troublemakers, misfits and junkies, right? No - dead wrong. Example stories we were told of cases typical of those in which Action for Children find themselves involved:

1) A teenage boy, sleeping rough on the streets. His parent were seperated, and living at his Mum's house had become impossible for him, since there were only two bedrooms and he has a younger brother and sister. He'd tried staying with his Dad, but his Dad's hooked on smack, so its not the nicest of places, with junkies in and out all day. He'd stayed with one of his Dad's 'straighter' pals for a while, but that hadn't worked out, and he was on the street. Without Action for Children's intervention he'd probably still be there, but they managed to help him find somewhere to live, set him up, and start him out with a job. A chance of a normal life.

2) A teenage girl, also sleeping rough. Every Friday, her Dad and Uncle went drinking. When they came home, her uncle would sexually abuse her. This had been going on for years (it started when she was 13) by the time she decided that living rough on the streets was better that what she had to suffer at home. Her Mum had known the abuse was going on - she was certain, because "when I cried, Mum would turn the TV up so she couldn't hear me"...

3) Sometimes the charity can get involved before a Kid hits the streets - perhaps communication has broken down at home, there are arguments, maybe more. Action for Children can often mediate, counsel, generally get things back on track before they get as bad as they can get...

33% of the kids who've been driven to live rough on the streets will attempt suicide. One kid in every three.

So its pretty desperate, isn't it? But, there are always some sad and desperate cases, aren't there? Surely there cant be that many of them? What's the scale of the problem?Well, according to a survey in the UK conducted two years ago, there were 75,000 kids living rough on the streets, and every single one of them will have had a story like those Ive just told you.

I wouldn't say I'd been particularly complacent about the whole issue - I'd read a little of the background before I signed up, and I'd spoken to a few people, but its weird how last night kind of concentrated the mind and helped me to understand why I was really doing this...

At about eleven, we were all shepherded outside. I'd had a vague picture in my mind of being left to find somewhere to huddle on the path round the building, but were were all to sleep on a grassy patch at that back which, in sunnier days, serves as a BBQ area. And let me be clear that the organisers weren't taking any chances with us - we were supplied with groundsheets, bivvy bags, fashionable(!) and warm hats and there would be a constant supply of hot drinks available all night (many decide they'd prefer wine and beer which they'd thoughtfully brought along in their packs). And, if any of us were to feel 'poorly' there were volunteer medical staff on duty. Clearly, none of this is on hand to the kids we're trying to help here but, even so, I still felt a certain amount of trepidation and I wasn't the only one!

Yes, I did get some sleep - about four hours. I woke at about six, gritty eyed and disoriented to discover that breakfast in the form of hot tea and bacon rolls was laid on. Another thing you don't get after a night in a box under Waterloo bridge.

And then, of course, I could drive home, have a hot bath, and get another couple of hours shut-eye in my own bed, if I had a mind to. So what has all this acheived, then?

Well, I've certainly got a new found appreciation of what it must mean to have to sleep rough, rather than to choose to experience a watered down version (paradoxically it would have been more realistic if we had been watered down, but the rain stayed away). But most important of all is not what I did, but what everyone who sponsored me to go through with it has done. Together, we have raised GBP 1700 as I write this. If you want to see what Action for Children do with the money they raise, then look here, but I can tell you that 1700 quid could pay to help that young lad I wrote about set up home for the first time, keep the doors of an emergency drop-in centre open for a week so the poor girl in the story, and many others like her can get a little respite and still leave enough left over for help for that final kid we wrote about to prevent him from being taken into care or hitting the streets himself. And with that one in three attempting suicide, between us we might actually have saved a life here, but of course we'll never know.

So I'm hugely grateful to everyone who has sponsored me, and fit to burst with pride at having such a fantastic, generous and caring bunch of friends and family. And if there's anyone reading this who hasn't sponsored a byte night sleeper this year, then the donations page will be open right through December.

Quite simply, I want to thank you, you're all fantastic.

Byte Night Update - 13 August

Well, a week into fundraising and we are nearly halfway to the total... what a generous lot! Of course, as I get nearer the target, I'll move the goalposts. Main reasons for that:

• I'll probably have to move them anyway - If I've got Rowley with me he's likely to wee on them
• Without casting any aspersions on what my illustrious employer asks me to do on a regular basis, I've got no chance of hitting the target if its not moving

Click on the inexpertly doctored picture to the left if you feel a burning desire to visit the donation page...

Preparing for my retirement?

You know, you've gotta love the IT industry.

No, I mean it quite literally, if you don't love the folks I work for, they send the boys round to "do" you...

Actually, its not so bad, they're a pretty good bunch, and they train us for all manner of life's little wrinkles. Management training, presentation skills, data privacy, you name it, there's a course for it.

This new one's a humdinger though! Mindful of the credit crunch and the likely effect on our pension schemes, they're giving us the opportunity to sleep rough outside the office so we know what's waiting for us when "gold watch" day comes!

If you don't beleive me, then check this out... Oh, but before you do go over there, have a listen to my pal Dudley Saunders, and have a think about 'unslapping' a child - that'll get you in the mood I need you in when you get to my site... ... and thanks, in advance...

Now what?

Yes, it's been a while and no, I havent given up blogging - or podcasting for that matter, but I am on a bit of a go slow. Comes of being a busy lad at work, and having - if I may be frank - too many hobbies.

On which subject... I'm planning a bit of a motorbike tour later in the year (with luck), so I thought that might be a worthy subject for a blog all of its own...

Interested? Take a look at The Grumbly B'stard Tour...

Taking the fear out of project plans

I've recently had quite a lot more involvement in project planning exercises than I have in the past, and I've been struck by the fear that a deadline inspires in people. Frankly, being afraid doesn't help much, so Ive been seeking ways of reducing this irrational, date inspired terror.

Whether I'm considering things that people are chasing me for, or I'm talking to people who owe me something on a given date, one thing is becoming quite clear... The amount of work outstanding is almost irrelevant - what scares people is knowing that the due date is rapidly and inexorably approaching.

I think I have the ultimate solution... Its as simple as renaming the months - probably on a regular basis. That way, its gonna be much less obvious that your boss needs that great big project all wrapped up on his or her desk in a mere five weeks, and thus, the fear goes away.

With some fanfare, then, here is my list of suggested month names:

Plimsoll, Bungalow, Trumpton, Horseapple, Hobbit, Spam, Wimbledon, Carrot, Nutter, Tweak, Frotter and Minge.

As an aide-memoire, here's the updated version of several old and well loved rhymes...

Thirty days hath Nutter,
Horseapple, Spam, and Frotter;
Of twenty-eight there is but one,
And all the rest have thirty-one.

Remember, remember the fifth of Frott.
Gunpowder, treason and plot...

And finally...

'The Best Month to Marry'
(Traditional Rhyme UK)

'Married in Plimsoll's hoar and rime,
Sweaty and smelly before your time.
Married in Bungalow's sleepy weather,
No stairs to tread in time together.
Married when Trumpton winds shrill and roar,
Your home will be on a puppet shore.
Married beneath Horseapple's changing skies,
A chequered path before you lies.
Married when bees over Hobbit blossom flit,
Strangers around your board will sit.
Married in the month of roses-Spam,
You're Up the Duff, go buy a pram.
Married in Wimbledon with flowers ablaze,
Tennis on TV for days and days.
Married in Carrot's heat and drowse,
You'll see in the dark your chosen spouse.
Married in Nutter's golden glow,
Smooth and serene your life will go.
Married when leaves in Tweak do thin,
You'll wish you'd stayed living in blissful sin.
Married in veils of Frotter mist,
Fortune your wedding ring has kissed.
Married in days of cheery Minge,
What an excuse for a big beery binge.'

Anti-Aging Excuses, #34

I'm not old and these arent wrinkles.

My face is ribbed, for extra pleasure...

The Winalot Diet

OK, this isnt 'mine', but it was sent to me by my good freind Louis, and it needs a wider audience! Though I do have 2 dogs, and I wish I had said it!!!

A real story by a Man who was standing in a queue in Tescos.........

I have 2 dogs & I was buying a large bag of Winalot in Tesco and was standing in the queue at the till.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Winalot Diet again, although I probably shouldn't becauseI'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care wardwith tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and the way that it works is to load your trouser pockets with Winalot nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the queue was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned.

I told her no, it was because I'd been sitting in the road licking my nuts and a car hit me...

Helping with Homework

The Grumblettes are currently both at college, working on an introductory course. They've recently been given an assignment to write "a report". The assignment guidelines are quite detailed, laying out exactly what's expected of them. As usual, though, there's quite a gap between the the abstract explanations of the college tutor, and what he or she is actually trying to convey.

Mrs Grumbler requested that I help, so I knocked up a quick example which, she says, I should publish. Since I know when to do as I'm told... Here it is. If anyone else has observed similar behaviour, or resorted to the same approach, I'd love to learn about it... (That means, leave comments please)...

Update: 28 January. Clearly hacked off with being reviled by the 'junior workers' the dishwasher itself has gone on strike, claiming to have triggered its 'leak prevention system'. This has precipitated a call to 'appliance repair man', who will arrive in his souped up Transit Van on Friday. Its also raised the question, why doesnt the UK Government have a leak prevention system?

Dishwasher Behaviour Report

Introduction




Figure 1: AEG Dishwasher


This report describes a number of behaviour patterns displayed by the junior workforce at “Grumbler Towers” and observed by the Senior Management after the workforce has been requested to Empty and Refill the Dishwasher. One specific behaviour will be analysed in detail, and the implications of a second behaviour will be discussed, prior to making a conclusion based on the effects of all of the behaviours.

Observed behaviours


OK
This is a desirable but rare behaviour. When exhibited, the junior worker will complete the task properly, promptly and without complaint.

I Hate the Stupid Dishwasher
This particular behaviour is an expression of dissent. Often, it merely takes the form of a grumble, but it may also be followed by a second behaviour and will then usually result in non-cooperation.


It’s Not My Turn (AKA I Did It Last Time)
The junior workforce consists of two individuals. Both are keen to ensure that one does no more work than the other. Sometimes the statement may be based on truth, and at other times it may simply be a preface to non cooperation.


They Aren’t My Dishes
This statement of the blindingly obvious is presumably an attempt to justify non-cooperation. As with all of the other behaviours, it is utterly irrelevant, and futile.


I’ll Do It Tomorrow
On the face of it, this may actually be a genuine attempt to put an unpalatable task off until a later date. However, if the request to defer the activity is granted, it often results in no-cooperation in the morning, especially if no reminder is issued. If the worker is questioned as to the reasons for failure to execute the task as agreed, it will often respond with “Forgot”.


Detailed Analysis of: It’s Not My Turn
The objective of this behaviour is to avoid the task by having it assigned to an alternate resource. This is usually a junior worker, but on occasion a management resource will be called upon to perform this individual contributor task.

As discussed above, the behaviour may indeed be based on fact – sometimes a worker is requested to perform the task on successive occasions. More often, however, this is an unsophisticated attempt to avoid work.

Management has attempted, with various degrees of success, to discourage this behaviour by assigning set days to perform the task, or by posting a written rota. Neither solution has ever worked satisfactorily for any extended period of time.

Implications of: They Aren’t My Dishes
Recent over-use of this excuse led to an alternative strategy by a member of the management team. Rather than attempt to refute a substantively correct, but nonetheless irrelevant statement, the workers were invited to clean their own dishes, immediately following any meal, and by hand (reference, telephone conversation during January between management team, one of whom was at the Headquarters location, and the other travelling on business in the USA).

This approach was highly effective, since it brought home that there are indeed less enjoyable ways of treating dishes than the requested dishwasher related activity.

Conclusion
Each of the behaviours listed, with the exception of “OK”, is exhibited with the sole aim of avoiding the dishwasher related task – at the expense of another party. All are irrelevant, since the task needs to be done, and all are counterproductive since they use more time and energy than actually completing the task without complaint. The fact that the junior workers are fully aware of this simply serves to make the behaviours utterly bewildering to the management team.


Reference List
Figure 1: AEG 60780 Dishwasher – Amazon.co.uk.
Telephone Conversation between Management team, January, 2009.

Offensiveness, philosophical musings...

Preface: This article contains some words. It is not my intention to cause offense to anyone having actually used 'words', but I found it very difficult to express myself without doing so. Er, sorry.

Note (16-Feb): Quite a few comments on this one.. not entirely a surprise, to be honest. Some, I have rejected, so in case anyone is wondering where their comment is, here's the guidelines I've been sticking to:
1) Some comments have been racist. That not what I was trying to do, so they wont get published.
2) Some comments were offensive towards an individual. Oddly, not to me, but to other people who have commented.
3) Common to both of the above, some comments have been anonymous. If a commenter wishes to take a pop at me, or one of the other folks that have commented here, they can damned well identify themselves to me. Contentious is OK, Anonymous is ok, but its either or, not both. My blog. My rules. OK?

Further oddness. Someone (anonymous) picked up on my Enid Blyton comments - shortly before Carol Thatcher got herself into hot water... Note the BBC's reasoning for her removal froma TV show - not because of what she said, but becuase they didnt like her apology. I'm not sure if this actually proves anything, other that I was right, this whole business is a minefield. (NB, no offence to mines is intended in this statement).


Good ole Prince Hal is up to his protuberant lug-oles in hot water again (must be a slow news day) for having (quite inadvisedly) referred to one of his colleagues (a gentleman from Pakistan) as a "Paki". Actually, that wasn't all he said, but its this particular word which is relevant to the thought which popped into my head while watching the item on the news this morning.

Now, the thought is this - If it is indeed offensive to refer to a Pakistani as a Paki, to the extent that the BBC feels it necessary to have a representative of said nationality on breakfast TV to debate the issue, can we assume that the next time someone calls me (note, I was born in the United Kingdom and am therefore British) a Brit, then I get to dress up as John Bull and get all pouty on TV?

The third in line to the throne (this is something Harry and I have in common - I often have to queue for the bathroom too) maintains that he had not intended to cause offense. Language, however, remains a minefield, with words that are considered perfectly innocent one day turning taboo overnight. If you don't believe me, go and dig up Enid Blyton and see what she has to say.

Finally, because I like to leave you with a disturbing mental image whenever I can, I mus pose this question. If Harry had called his mate a "Wanker", would the BBC have interviewed a short sighted gentleman carrying a copy of "Reader's Wives" magazine and a box of tissues?

TTFN,
Grumbler...

Is Bad Poetry Hereditary?

I have a guilty secret. Well, to be honest, I have quite a lot of guilty secrets, but only one I'm going to ramble about here - there is, after all, a limit to how much of my dirty laundry I want to wash in public.

I have begun to write bad poetry.

Strictly speaking, this isn't an intention to write bad poetry, just poetry. But bad is the result.

For some time, Ive made an occasional habit of answering the long-suffering Mrs Grumbler in rhyme. The first time was an accident, but I discovered that it annoyed her and, well... There's a challenge in being able to respond to a question like "Do you want a cup of tea" with an instantaneous sonnet, and the little 'frisson' of excitement while waiting to find out whether I have misjudged the current lie of the land and am about to wear said cuppa, rather than consume it. So far Ive been lucky, and have not had any need to retire, liberally moistened with steaming Darjeeling, for a change of apparel.

Things took an interesting turn in recent days when I composed a ditty, in Iambic Pentameter, offering to fetch some Christmas beer from a local brewery for my Friends and colleagues in the office. The resulting verse is truly, shockingly appalling - so much so that I shan't reproduce it here. This missive isn't meant to be an opportunity for me to ape the great William McGonagall, but rather the cause and effects behind this current dalliance.

The fact is that the offending ode plumbs depths which would make even Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz wince which has led me to speculate on whether there is in fact some extra-terrestrial makeup in my DNA. After reading the vicious verse to my pal Andy (who sits close to my office and therefore plays, unwittingly and uncompensated, the part of my resident, on-call shrink) I told him about my theory that I was, perhaps, part Alien.

Frankly, Andy pooh-pooh'ed the idea, telling me not to be so silly. How, he reasoned, could I be part alien when (a) I am not green and (b) I have never knowingly consumed a live rat. We've both watched a lot of TV, so we know that these two things are inherent characteristics of any martian or other non-earthperson. That's one of the things I really appreciate about Andy - while I might harbour quite ridiculous concepts, he always has a much better grasp of reality. Closer to the ground, if you like.

So, I'm back to the drawing board, in a manner of speaking. Carrying around a stump of pencil and a small notepad in my back pocket in case I'm struck by a stray piece of inspiration. The next bad poem might not be a result of my ancestry. But it's certainly in my jeans.

Fat.

Sylph-like is an adjective rarely applied (other than with heavy irony, or while I have been temporarily located in Florida, USA) to your Grumbler. Even so, it's become apparent that my manly physique has, in recent times, begun to exhibit characteristics more traditionally associated with the better fed strata of our society.

You may appreciate that I greet this realisation with the same dismay previously reserved for the discovery that one of the cats has seen fit to gift me with half a dead mouse in my left-foot carpet slipper. (One of our dogs has eaten the right-foot slipper - either as a form of dietary protest, or some utterly misdirected expression of adoration. Personally, I have never found the consumption of garments belonging to an objet d'amour to be a reliable declaration of infatuation. My advice, once you've ripped your chosen article of clothing off the wearer using nothing but your teeth, stop while you're ahead.)

The rib-cage of a field mouse, incidentally, is a very good fit on the second toe of my left foot. A useful fact that I shall file away should I ever take up the business of producing costume jewelery for the S&M/Goth/Foot-fetishist community.

My burgeoning rotundity is as welcome as a trouser cough in an Extra-Vehicular-Activity suit, and has crept up on me in much the same contemptibly surreptitious fashion that I imagine a a low-earth-orbit fart would employ.

It's quite evidently been a gradual process, and subject to a good deal of self-delusion. I've been more than comfortable assuming that our new tumble dryer bears sole responsibility for the fact that my heavyweight cotton T-shirts now stretch so thin across my abdomen that they take on a disturbing transparency more commonly associated with expensive fashion garments targeted at the well-to-do metrosexual.

I've been able to rationalise the tightness of my belt as 'leather shrinkage' - a direct result of the fact that I was recently rained upon, a common occurrence in these geographical parts. As for the bathroom scales, don't they all over-read when the battery gets low?

I've even been capable of believing that when someone shouts "Oi Fatty!" in my general direction when there is no-one else to be seen is attributable to my failing eyesight. (Odd, isn't it - more comfortable with incipient myopia than obesity?).

I suppose that the final straw came the other day whilst I was crossing the road. (I wouldn't usually do that, but I suffer from a rare condition known as Alcoholic Constipation. Basically, I have extreme difficulty in passing a pub.) An elderly lady driving a Mitsubastard Dungbeetle or somesuch equally execrable far-eastern economy-microcar shot out of a previously un-noticed side road and bore down upon me at speeds that must have been approaching twelve miles an hour.

I don't mind admitting that for quite a long while I thought I was a goner - proof if it were needed that a low speed traffic incident is a lot more frightening than a fast one. But then she stopped, looked right, and proceeded to drive round me, 180 degrees, and back the way she came. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the silly moo thought I was a mini-roundabout.

Oooh, the ignominy of it.

Its not that I have anything against street-furniture of this type. Some of my best friends are traffic islands. But lets face it, this isn't the time of year for that kind of career change. Its cold enough to freeze one's bollards off out there.

There's nothing for it, I'm going to have to go on a diet. Otherwise the next time you see me the town council will have stuck a Christmas tree on my head, and I'll be surrounded by boy-scouts singing "Away in a Manger", and I've always hated that one.

"U" Gotta be kidding

At the very core the Grumbler is, of course, little more than a loose collection of generalisations, prejudices and bizarre compulsions wrapped up in a loose bag of skin with just enough spare room for the occasional beer and curry to be added. Same as any bloke I suppose.

This doesn't automatically make for a bad fellow (my Mum told me that, so it must be true) but it does need some work to ensure a positive result. Happily, most of these attributes can be disguised as the kind of eccentricities for which 'the English' are justly famous. Of course, great care must be taken to ensure that one remains at the correct end of a scale of 'unusualness' which stretches from Peter Sellers to Peter Sutcliffe, although maintaining the tantalising promise of being prepared to operate at either extreme can give one an incredible advantage in negotiations.

In today's character defect under the microscope session, we will concentrate on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as manifested in the form of extreme grammatical pedantry. For example, my reaction to the greengrocers' apostrophe. This particular crime against humanity involve's the placement of an apostrophe where none is necessary. (Did you catch that one?) It takes its name from the fact that it's commonly seen on signs outside greengrocers' shops - such as "Potato's, twelvepence per bushel". To the disgust of the ladies in the Grumbler household who believe that there are more important things in life, I am rarely able to let one of these things pass without comment.

Of course, my high moral standing is fatally weakened by the fact that I am a little careless and thus, occasionally, I do tend to 'drop one' myself. I like to think of this as the literary equivalent of accidentally farting in church - a bit embarrassing if anyone notices. (Of course, being noticed farting in church on purpose, rather than embarrassing the offender, tends to lead to the sin of pride.) Anyway, I digress.

Now, I've never actually been one to stalk the streets with a bottle of correction fluid and a selection of marker pens, with the intention of altering apostophical atrocities. But an obsession with a related subject has recently been threatening to 'push me over the edge'...

...It's well known that English spelling differs, depending on whether one is resident in its birthplace, or the other side of the Atlantic. I've never really thought much about it before, but recently I have begun to suffer a series of agonising temptations to return the letter 'u' to its customary place in so many words in 'American English' from which it has been removed. For example, our cousins in the US have cruelly emasculated words like colour, flavour and labour in favour of alternatives that I can't bring myself to type.

This weird compulsion first manifested itself when replying to emails, but its become more frequent and harder to resist. Recently, in a bookshop in California, I was sitting skimming through an American edition of "Rogue Herries" by Hugh Walpole, and I suddenly came over all peculiar. I felt my hand creep, as if under the malevolent control of some invisible puppeteer, towards a (arguably) mis-spelled word with the clear intention of re-inserting the missing letter. Terrified, I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth, and infiltrated a place of medical practitionery to seek a diagnosis of my plight.

It turns out, much to my relief, that my malady is actually a reaction to too much 'processed' text. Apparently, if I start reading quite a bit more stuff that hasn't been messed about with - you know, words with the dirt left on, organic text, that kind of thing, it'll clear up quite nicely. Apparently, what I have is called "Irritable Vowel Syndrome" and it should clear up once I get enough literary roughage. "Why don't you try a little extra punctuation?" the doctor asked me. That, of course, was just seconds before I smacked him with one of the "Organic Cucumber's" I'd been forced to buy while arguing about grammar with the illiterate shopkeeper next-door and fled, screaming, into the night...

Credit crunch (again)

Now, I don't usually just republish things on this blog, but I was just sent something by my good friend 'Chicken Jon' which was so good that 'I want to share it with you'.

(I learned, to my intense displeasure, while captive in an airport bus in Los Angeles, that the phrase "I have something I want to share with you" is often the preamble to a sales pitch delivered, on behalf of some crappy pyramid selling organisation, by someone with terminal halitosis and no personality. I suppose its better than being informed by a one night stand that you now have 'crabs', but not much. Anyway, this one, you will like... I promise).

A modern Aesop’s Fable.

Once upon a time...
in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.
The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.
The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.
While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.'
The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once more there were monkeys everywhere.
Perhaps now you have a better understanding of how banking and the stock markets work!

Relativity as an excuse for tardiness

How many times have you waited in all day - sometimes for several days in a row, for something to be delivered, only to feel that perhaps you could actually grow old and die before it actually arrives?

Or maybe you work in some computer related industry, and find yourself eagerly anticipating a particular piece of hardware or software which, the supplier tells you, will, with absolute certainty, be ready on schedule and within budget. It never is, is it?

Now, never mind the inconvenience of not actually having whatever it was you were waiting for in your eager hands (metaphorically speaking, obviously, if the item in question is a fridge) - no, what really 'does my head in' is how the cheeky bugger at the other end of the telephone line can so absolutely confidently trot out and assurance that 'it will be there on Wednesday' when he or she has demonstrably never once managed to hit a predicted time or date. Oh, and why are these people almost always called Keith?

You know they've no more chance of making it this time than you have of getting a decent bacon sandwich in a synagogue. And yet you could wire these people up to a full-on lie detector setup, you could attach elestricles to their tectrodes, kidnap their children and threaten to return them over a period of time in a series of minute parcels and you wouldn't get a blip. Their confidence is unshakable. How on earth can this be?

Well, the answer is obvious really. As Arthur Conan Doyle was overfond of declaiming "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? ".

They aren't lying to you. That's right, they're telling the truth.

And yet, the eagerly awaited gizmo, doodad, widget, gimmick or ethereal piece of intellectual copyright still fails to manifest itself. Paradoxical? No - let me explain.

Its all down to Einstein's theory of relativity, and something called the Twin Paradox (look it up in Wikipedia if you don't believe me). Put simply, if you take identical twins, stuff one of them into a rocket, and send it off quite a long way at speeds approaching that of light, then bring it back, the traveling twin will be younger than the one that stayed behind. Or to put it another way, the twin who's moving might have spent a week in the rocket, while the one that stayed behind has waited a year to be reunited with his sibling.

This has been proven, by the way, in a complicated experiment involving flying clocks. There's another proof to look for as well. When you accelerate an object close to the speed of light, you can pump immense amounts of energy into it with out it going any faster. In fact, the energy is turned into mass.

So what's happening is that the delivery man, or purveyor of technology is actually moving so fast to be sure of not disappointing you that they nearly reach light speed. In the process, they get quite a bit heavier than they were when they started.

When, eventually, a hugely fat individual turns up with what you've been waiting for, relativity has kicked in, they think they are on time, and you know they aren't. This also explains their child-like look of bewilderment and unjust hurt when you berate them for their tardiness.

So next time this happens to you, please don't give the guy a hard time. Tell him how much you appreciate his efforts, and give him a cup of tea.

OK, I have to go now, I have to take a mug of Lapsang souchong to 'Colossal Keith' in the office.

This has been a public service announcement issued by the Royal Association of Fat Lazy Buggers.

Dog training...

So, tomorrow, at the grand old age of twentysomething (where something is a number larger than twenty) the Grumbler goes back to school. This has come as a surprise to a number of people, including the Grumbler himself.

You see, what’s really happening is that I’m taking Rowley (our four month old Golden Retriever) on a course of puppy training classes. This proves necessary as he has singularly failed to take on board the information in the book I bought him. I know that he’s digested the contents because I had to clean the results up from the kitchen floor the other day.

In my relatively simple world, taking the pup on a course equates to taking him to be trained. However, in reading up a little beforehand, all of the indications are that it’s the owners that are the target of the educators… This is just weird, for at least three reasons, namely:

1) It’s been a very long time since I last ran away with the single minded intention of impregnating every female I could get my paws on. (note, Im not saying I never tried this, just that I don’t any more)
2) I don’t make a habit of crapping in the kitchen. (I’d say I have never done this, but its conceivable that ‘mother Grumbler’, who has an outstandingly long memory for childhood misdemeanours, might disagree.)
3) Last time I was taken on a course, it was me that was trained, not the taxi driver who took me.

Still, I intend to keep my mind as open as Rowley keeps his bowels and so I shall embark on this course in an optimistic and resolute frame of mind. By the time Rowley and I are finished; one of us will walk to heel, sit, lie down and come on command. Mrs Grumbler thinks this is very funny.

Apart from refusing to walk under ladders; steering clear of black cats; obsessively counting magpies; throwing spilt salt over my left shoulder and touching something wooden just about every time I use the phrase “it should all be ok” in conversation, I am not a superstitious man. Ask anyone and, fingers crossed, they’ll confirm this. However, I can’t help wondering if the fact that I have just discovered, that the course location is one “Prat Hall”, is portentous.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Wiping a smile off someone's face.

It's a funny thing, how we deal with stress at work.

Some people rant and rave, while others go quiet.
Some give up on their tasks, and others just get more determined.
Some will seek counseling, and others have more 'individual' approaches to coping...

I know quite a few people who vent their cube-rage on innocent fitness training equipment, clocking up countless miles in the air conditioned splendour of a building virtually next door to the office that causes the angst in the first place. (Hint, buy a bike, fellas, and get away from the damned place)...

One gentleman of my acquaintance who shall remain nameless (we shall, for convenience, refer to him as 'C' - this isnt a give away clue, my having referred to him as a 'gentleman' will already have put many people off the scent...) has a positively bizarre practice of rapidly clapping his hands together or against his crossed forearms. The rhythmic, fleshy slapping noises which result have caused many a raised eyebrow as unenlightened folk walk past his closed office door. Now, I don't know what it does for him, but watching the expressions on peoples' faces as they wonder what on earth he's up to makes the rest of us laugh and thus, this is actually a very effective stress reduction technique.

And then there's a lady I know who's office wall bears scars gouged by ricocheting staplers, paperweights and computer peripherals. Once again, there's an unintended positive side to this behaviour. If you want to know which track-ball pointing device can best survive instant deceleration from 70mph to 0, she can tell you. Show you, in fact. If you're going to wind her up, though, remember the rues of the golf range (and firearms range) - the safest place to be is behind her...

As you'd expect, I've got my own idiosyncratic approach to work related stress management. I like to imagine creative ways of freeing myself from the job which is causing the problem in the first place. Some are constructive, others less so, but all have remained (to date) mere exercises in thought, and therefore nothing to get me in to trouble (and come on, do you really want me to believe that you've never considered drowning your boss in a vat of Malmsey?)

Recent flights of imagination had me stocking the rest-rooms of our headquarters building (well, just the boys' ones, I'm not allowed in the girls' ones) with rolls of lavatory paper - every sheet of which bore the image of some individual (or indeed manager) who has caused me angst in recent times. Of course, this isn't a completely original idea... it was (maybe still is?) possible in the late '90s to obtain 'bog roll' with the face of Maggie Thatcher on every sheet. Utter genius.

Clearly this idea was too good to keep to myself, so I excitedly took myself off to chat to one of my good friends in the office. Conscious of the fact that this particular lady is no fan of the current president of the USA, I asked her to imagine this product with the grinning chimp-like fizzog of G-dubya proudly stamped between the perforations. To my surprise and disappointment, she frowned, and told me it was a terrible idea.

"Are you nuts?" she said in what I (correctly) took to be a rhetorical question "Shrubbie makes any mess he's involved in a lot worse than it was in the first place, and you want to put him on toilet paper?"

She was right, as it happens. and when I think about some of he other faces I'd imagined having printed up, well, nothing sticks to them either...

Back to the drawing board - I'm sure there'll be another daft happening to inspire me soon!

Experience which cannot be bought

An acquaintance of mine is, at present, in the happy position of being able to recruit into his little team at work. Of course in these days of political correctness and rules on what you can and cannot put in a job advert he is a little restricted in what he can say.

For example, a lawyerly friend of mine was recently successfully prosecuted for discriminatory behaviour by a Vampire on the basis that, having read what he was not allowed to ask for, he simply stated "Individual required for busy law practice. Must have pulse."[1]

Anyway, there's always a silver lining, and in this case, the restrictions on what can be said prevent the employer from detailing the full horrors awaiting the successful applicant for this position. So the little white card with the job description was taped inside the global news-agent's window of the internet and, being rather vague, it has elicited several diverse resumes (or Curriculum Vitae as we like to call them in the old country).

One such CV from a fellow who we shall call Fred proudly announces that, in his current position, he has experience of bugger 3.2.

Version 3.2??? One can only imagine the press releases:

Bugger version 2.0 - sixteen new levels of difficulty!

Bugger version 3.0 - internet enabled - choose to play with the computer, your friends, or yourself!

Bugger version 3.2 - multi-player is here!

The problem here, of course, for all the (admittedly puerile) amusement this causes, the context of the resume clearly indicates that this is a software package of some sort. Now, I don't know about you, but when someone refers to a software package I've not heard of before, I look it up.

I wonder what will happen if I type 'bugger 3.2' into Google...


[1] This is not strictly true. If one was to bar entry to the legal profession on the basis that the applicant is 'undead' there wouldn't be any lawyers. But as an illustration, I'm sure you get my point.

An untrue history of King Henry VIII

A bloke in the pub told me that you cant libel a dead person. This should test that theory.

King Henry the Eighth built the Tower of London in the fifteenth century as a residence for his wives. Now, hundreds of years later, the Tower is more of a museum than a residence and is where one can see the quite spectacular display of the ‘Crown Jewels’.

Modern day visitors to the Tower of London may see a suit of Armor said to have belonged to Henry, complete with an impressively large codpiece (designed, of course, to protect the ‘family jewels’ rather than the crown ones). Whilst it undoubtedly suited Henry to nurture a belief amongst the peasantry that he was blessed with a fearsomely proportioned todger, the rather more prosaic truth of the matter is that closer inspection of said codpiece (Later used as a model for the Dome of St Paul’s Cathedral by Leonardo DaVinci) reveals that it actually contains three packets of king-sized cigarette papers and a rolling machine.

What would the king be doing with such unusual smoking requisites? Well, by way of an interesting historical footnote it’s worth pointing out that Henry had earned his numerical adjunct not by virtue of having succeeded seven other likely lads of that name to the Kingship of England, but rather because of his habit of never buying more than an eighth-ounce of ‘Moroccan Black’ hashish from his longtime drugs supplier “Marrakesh” Pedro.

Drugs were not the only habit Henry acquired from Pedro – who was in fact the first polygamist of his acquaintance. Having asked Pedro why he had several wives Henry, who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, misinterpreted Pedro’s mumbled explanation regarding Moorish customs – as in “these potato crisps are moreish, you cant just have one can you?” The rest, obviously, is history (that is, after all, what we are talking about here). It’s well known that the king had six wives, but not quite as widely appreciated that the purpose of such a complicated matrimonial arrangement was so that he could have one wife for each day of the week. (While, as a deeply religious man, continuing to respect the Sabbath, of course.)

Contrary to popularly held belief (which espouses a theory based on the general disapproval of divorce by the church), it was this polygamy that was ultimately the cause of Henry’s excommunication from the Church of Rome by pope Clement (The successor to Julius, who had held the post for hundreds of years since escaping an assassination attempt whilst acting as Caesar in ancient Rome). Clement was in fact wildly jealous that Henry had so many wives, whilst he was forced by the constraints of his position to sit in the Vatican stationary cupboard with a borrowed copy of “Swiss Guards’ Naked Wives” and dream of what might have been or, if he was really lucky, to cuddle one of the nuns behind the bike-sheds in St Peter’s square when no-one was looking. Failing, quite spectacularly, to live up to his name (which means ‘merciful’) Clement simply cut Henry off.

Meanwhile, back in the Tower, as Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon might have been expected to be assigned to the first day of the week. However, her seniority allowed her to choose her day for warming the king’s bed and she settled on Wednesday since there was no EastEnders on the TV, and Saturday was her bingo night. This freed up Monday for Anne Boleyn, who was the second spouse, chronologically speaking. The remaining wives followed on successive days of the week as might be expected – with Jane Seymour staking Tuesday, Ann of Cleves claiming Thursday, Kathryn Howard holding Friday and Katherine Parr settling for Saturday.

There was a great deal of serendipity with this final appointment. Henry was a documented lover of sports and, as he grew older, like so many men before and since, he took up golf. Saturday was his golfing day, and he enjoyed nothing better on a Saturday than finishing a few holes on par. (Or if he was particularly lucky, under par.)

One might have expected Kathryn to have been Henry’s most favoured wife. However, this honour actually goes to Jane Seymour, since she produced an heir to the throne (later to be known as King Edward VI due to his uncanny resemblance to a potato). Unfortunately, it was customary for royal males of the time to be born in full suits of armor, and Jane was, understandably, never quite the same afterwards.

When considering Henry, we should not neglect his musical skills. He would sit for hours by an open window, idly stroking a lute (a small, but spiteful, animal related to the polecat) and is credited with having written the well-known song ‘Greensleeves’. Greensleeves earned its name because it was written during the summer, the king was a hay-fever sufferer, and the handkerchief was not a popular accessory until a hundred or so years later.

Several rather stodgy historical references suggest that it may have been a love song for Anne Boleyn, but in actual fact, it was composed under contract to a company manufacturing cheap telephone answering machines as a piece of generic hold music. Henry’s business acumen was as awful as his musical taste. The song itself is recognizably awful and the company which commissioned it went, quite deservedly, bankrupt. This was mainly due to the fact that the telephone itself was not invented for a further four hundred years and thus the market for answering machines was somewhat lacking at the time.

Henry died, from the ground upwards, in January 1547. He’d suffered a leg injury during a jousting match after which he’d become a bit of a bloater and had to be moved about by crane. The leg had turned gangrenous and ultimately carried him off at the age of 55, in the palace of Whitehall. Inexplicably, his last words are reported to have been “Monks! Monks! Monks!”

Approximately 100 years later, medical professionals were still arguing as to whether he had also suffered from Syphilis or Diabetes. This was entirely academic, there being no treatment for either at the time, and the rudimentary diagnosis being along the lines of “Starve ye the patient twixt the crowing of the cock and the setting of the sun. If he still be awake, ensure that ye shagge him notte, lest ye too suffer the pox”.

Word of the Week - Anemic

Anemic: A 21st century, internet enabled Irishman.

Usage:
"Hello Paddy, Oi've not seen you digging the roads recently, to be sure!"
"That's right Seamus, Oi had to get an office job because the Dr told me Oi'm anemic."

To forestall complaints from my countrymen, I'd like to point out that I know how to spell Anaemic as well but the Us version is so much easier...

Shakespeare on a plane.

Sitting on the third floor of my bungalow, which overlooks a magnificent natural harbour on the spectacular Buckinghamshire coastline, I am struck by the delightful realisation, while reading a Chinese biography of William Shakespeare (the celebrated Welsh pole-vaulter, and inventor of the first commercially successful flushing television), that it's not entirely necessary to be 'correct' in order to be considered amongst the greatest proponents of one's chosen field.

Mr Wm Shaksp himself, for example, has been known to sign his name in up-to eleven different ways (there is some conjecture as to whether all of the known signatures are genuine) proving, or at the very least suggesting, that he either couldn't spell consistently, or frankly didn't care to. Consensus has it that he was also an indifferent typist (a trait which he and I share).

The biography to which I have referred is written by the most excellent Bill Bryson[1], of whom I have been a dedicated fan for absolutely ages - some several years, in fact, before I'd ever heard of him.

Having read approximately three quarters of this book I am much gruntled by the fact that Shaky (as his friends almost certainly didn't refer to him) steadfastly refused to allow such trivial issues as geographical inaccuracy to bother him. Bryson points out that, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Bard of Avon has Prospero and Valentine set sail from Milan and Verona, even though both cities were a good few hours train journey from salt water in the 1600s.

Anachronisms probably didn't bother him either - given how easy it would have been for him to look things up on the internet to establish their temporal veracity. (For example, he seemed particularly unfazed by the presence of a 1960's police telephone box in his room during a recent episode of the BBC's Dr Who.)

And he positively revelled in neologism, an art in which he was clearly a master.

This is all most excellent news to me, and there's hope for me yet, it would seem. Why? Well...

I've a tendency to tell porkies - sometimes under artistic licence, but more often simply because I'm fundamentally dishonest. This is not a laudable trait and its particularly annoying to me that, while obdurate in their refusal to follow any good example I try and set them, my kids have picked up on the art of lying pointlessly with what is evidently some gusto.

I'm also a lazy fellow. For example, despite having only a sketchy appreciation of European Geography, I have taken Mr Bryson's assertions as to the landlocked nature of those two (Italian?) cities on faith. Mind you, it's not easy for me to check the facts because I am currently on an aeroplane (I lied about being upstairs in a bungalow - see the earlier reference to dishonesty) and the stewardess I just asked doesn't know either.

Finally, I have (as recorded elsewhere in this blog) been an accidental neologist myself for some time - and a very enjoyable practice it is, too. Pausing for a moment of introspection, I must now abandon my dislike of the word 'updation' (coined, according to urban legend, in the burgeoning technical industries of India). If I don't, then I'll be guilty of hypocrisy in the extreme by using words like 'confustion', and indeed going on to invent more new ones. Like this, for example: Fallacio: The unfortunately mistaken act of orally stimulating the wrong gentleman's wedding tackle.

Right, well, I appear to have been rabbiting on for a considerable time, and I want to get back to the book now‚ there's only a couple of hours until we land, and I wanna find out how it ends before we get to San Fransisco.

Time and weather permitting, I shall commit further offences against the written word whilst on my Californian odyssey. I'll bet you just can't wait, can you?



[1] Bill Bryson: Shakespeare. Wonder how long it took him to think THAT title up?

Scrobulous!

I love words. Primarily in English, although other languages are fun too.

I like to write as well - although typing, it really has to be said, isn't my forte. Actually, what I originally typed there was that 'typing isn't my frote' which has an entirely different, although not entirely incorrect, meaning. This sort of proves my point.

Sometimes, my poor typing, when compounded by a lack of spell-checker, can get me into serious trouble. Imagine, if you will, the repercussions of missing the final 'o' from the sentence: I tried to talk to her but she was out for the count. Actually, even the linguistic airbag and seatbelt combo of the spell checker failed to save me on that one.

Happily, however, the results of my mistyping are frequently creative and sometimes informative. The best typos are those which look like they should mean something, but really aren't 'genuine' words. For example, it was in this way that I 'invented'[1] the word 'confustion' a good few years ago. At the time it didn't show up on any web searches but, more recently, it has appeared in the urban dictionary. Happily, the first definition attributed to it is pretty much exactly what I thought it should mean: a cross between confusion and frustration. (In which respect it adequately describes my day job.)

Some time later, a similar happy accident resulted in the apparent birth of the word 'scrobble'. Obviously, before 'laying claim' to it and giving it a meaning I had to Google it to see if it was already in use, but I thought it sounded like a friendly sort of word. The name of a over sized but amicable ginger cat, for example. Or maybe it should be a verb - some kind of well meaning, bumbling searching activity. As in, "She scrobbled in the depths of her handbag and managed to extract a mint humbug - miraculously still protected from the pocket-fluff that lived there by its rustling cellophane wrapper." You can imagine, then, my disappointed horror when the Google search threw this up:

Urban Dictionary: Scrobble
To scrobble is the action of shaving ones testicles with a rusty blade.

My nice friendly word has been hijacked to describe a bizarrely unpleasant activity. What would the neighbours have thought If I'd stood on the back doorstep of an evening calling in the cat... 'Scrobble! Scrobble! Din-dins!' Doesn't bear thinking about. I didn't bother to search any further, and certainly didn't click on the link.

Fast forward a couple of years to the point where the Grumbler is now a podcaster as well as a blogger and interested in all things to do with music. A friend recommended to me that I should check out last.fm as a source of legitimate music and inspiration. And indeed it is, but I nearly had heart failure when it advised me to download a piece of code which, it said, would scrobble my music collection! It brought to mind quite horrific images which I have spent weeks trying to forget, and frankly I don't think many of the artists would have reacted well to the prospect. Its doubtful that Ian Dury, for one, would have reacted positively to the idea that he attempt to deforest his family jewels with the aid of a tetanus encrusted pen-knife, and I really don't think its something Melissa Etheridge would take lying down. I'm not prepared to guess how Iggy Pop would view it, but there's always one dum-dum boy.

There are two possible morals to this story.

• Either Last.fm should have been more careful with the naming of this practice,
• or it really doesn't matter what someone else thinks a word means, as long as you know what you mean when you use it.

I strongly suspect that latter approach is how a lot of the people in the company I work for treat language - they will clumsily raid the craftsman's toolbox of language, and happily use an expensive chisel to undo a two cent screw. Bloody Philistines.

Still, if you cant beat 'em, join 'em. So you can hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't![2] Know what I mean?


[1] No, of course I didn't invent it. But I hadn't seen it before, and I couldn't find any use of it on Google at the time.
[2] With apologies to the great Douglas Adams who, being dead, probably doesn't give a toss.