At great risk of being misunderstood, it is very clear that the age of chivalry is over. The most senior of the other two should have given up his seat for the lady. Perhaps the difficulty they had was that the first one to have stood would have been claiming precedence over the other 😉
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Demographics
It was heard said..
It was mentioned one day that a geography teacher had come across some quite interesting statistics. Well, if you are a geography teacher I suppose you would find this sort of statistic to be quite interesting. The question had been asked: How far away from where you are now living were you born? He had noticed that of people living in the UK 60% had been born within 30 miles of where they now live. In France that rose to 70% (presumably the French figure was in kilometres so the extra 1.7km would skew the answer slightly, in fact by about 6%, so even making this allowance and adjusting the 60% by 6% still shows that the French are 6% more indolent (not used pejoratively in case you are wondering) than the British).
Continue readingTriptych
The uncovering of an ancient gold mask in China has caused a few ripples on Weibo, so Coco thought he would join in the activity. However as he does not have a Weibo account, and probably would no longer have one after this post anyway so it makes little difference, the post had to be made elsewhere, and out of respect for anyone who may read this and wishes to retain their own Weibo account, placed his images else where.
Continue readingFlea slaves
It seemed to be an ordinary sort of day, the kind of day when the sun shines, the bees buzz and the lilac blossom falls gently on the ground. Passing a house where several cats make their home, the slave came out angrily spraying a can of noxious vapours at anything that moved. It seemed that the cats had introduced some unwanted guests into their home and the slave was determined to remove them.
Coco watched in astonishment as three free fleas fled.
Beowulf
Further to the mysteries of a past day, Coco read* today ‘that a great and worthy twentieth century’ Irish poet ‘declined to produce a translation of’ Beowulf ‘because it was considered that someone of a different enthnicity, genre and mother tongue’, not to mention culture, to the Old English author ‘could not accurately reflect and interpret’ this great poetry.
For the real story of Beowulf he refers you to Professor Heather O’Donoghue, here and to her book…
Continue readingInanity?
Sonic backgrounds: Obloquy to the message.
I thought I would say something really important. After listening to yet another performance of Götterdämmerung, and I hasten to add lest already I have given the wrong impression, that it was a very good performance apart from the ‘Bravo’ hurled out at the end. The voice, by the way, which penetrated the air was very similar to that which resounded at a different, and much reduced, performance in the promenade concerts many years ago. It seemed that the utterer of that earlier bravo may have listened to the rebukes of his peers at the quite untimeliness of the oral intrusion of his voice on the earlier occasion, ah, but me! I have been distracted and consequently left unfinished, an error which my better grammaticastic friends will not let me forget, a sentence which now lacks both a subject and a verb. Let me start again with what I really intended to say. Just for the sake of distraction: Did you notice the importance of the second comma in this paragraph?
Continue readingOffences
Offences, which do not like a joke – an open letter
Have you heard the one about the Yorkshireman, the Cornishman and the man of Kent? It doesn’t quite have the ring about it as an opening line as ‘Have you heard the one about the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Englishman?’ But if Coco used the latter, Coco would get away with the rest of it in an English public house, providing none of the English liberal elite were present, and might regret the long, but deserved, stay in hospital if Coco tried it in Clonmel. What the reaction would be in Aberdeen is as clear as whether Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead.
Continue reading(In)equality acts
Gloom descends
It was a rainy day and Eeeyore had taken a walk through the gloomy gloom of the gloomiest glade in the Hundred Acre Wood that he could find when all at once Gloom fell all over him.
How do you do?, he said.
Continue readingThe Turk’s head
Knotty problems require several solutions
It was an article on the BBC which reminded me, but Coco forgets which among the many thousands it was.
The building work had at the last reached its completion and Lakshmi, the very capable and ferocious forewoman, had left her three workers, Erdogan, Mahmud and Stephen, whom she trusted without reservation, to clear up. Stephen, who was able to read and assimilate plans and instructions quickly and accurately, was a bright and sparkling electrician but willing to turn his hand to most aspects of building work. Mahmud was as strong as an ox, ready, willing and able to carry out any instruction given to him with a swiftness and certainty unparalleled among men. He was not given to reading but could mix plaster and cement in huge quantities and lay bricks in straight rows and even lines. Erdogan was every bit a plumber by nature, a plumber by trade and a plumber by size, but knew his rafters from his joists without even thinking about it. He was also exceptional with plaster. If anything could be plastered, he could skim it.
Continue readingFarming targets
How to use a cane
A tautologous repetition of conceptual ideas will not produce the making of a taxonomic classification of factual data items however well clothed with an investment in a garb of reasonable logic, but it may provide a cane with which to rod those with whom your tolerance will have nothing to do.
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