Sin Tax

Tags

affixation, clauses, complement, compound subject, declension, Eats Shoots and Leaves, imperatives, Lynne Truss, marriage, Robert Browning, subordination, The Grammarian's Funeral

When I was a student we had to read The Grammarian’s Funeral

by Robert Browning.

Today I have just returned from singing at a wedding and I thought

I’d re-blog this oldie, also on a grammatical note:

 

 

Sin Tax

Marriage was revered as a conjunction;

two main clauses fused by a word like and.

God-joined pairs could not, without compunction,

split an infinity forged by a band.

A compound subject was most’s intention,

instead of being the mere complement

of a life sentence (with much declension).

No male nor female, said the Testament:

the adjunct was as Christ loved the Church, so

husbands ought to love their wives as their own

bodies… but that was centuries ago:

things don’t change through imperatives alone.

Most wives still suffer subordination:

bound morphemes.  Eve’s sin tax?- affixation.

Austerity Round Robin

Tags

Artem, Danny Alexander, Duchess of Cambridge, Eminem, Grayson Perry, Harriet Harman, Kirstie Allsopp, Lynne Truss, meggings, nausea, onesie, Portsea Island, Strictly Come Dancing, Tiger, Tracey Emin

Dear Victoria,

Am slightly ‘put oot,’ as they say north of the border, by Lynne Truss, that

witty journalist, nicking my idea for a satirical response to the Round Robin

letter, especially as I was just about to write mine.

We wish you and Andre a healthy and prosperous New Year.  You’ll be glad to

know that Kirstie Allsopp has popularised the de-worming, not only of pets,

but of all kinds of old skip-rescued furniture, so you will be able to continue

shipping your trove of tat over here for some time to come.  Austerity is good

for business.  Or your line of same. Sounds like it should be a proverb.

It’s been a hectic year as usual, with it being Suttonford’s turn to host le

jumelage exchange visit with Bric-a-brac.  The exciting news is that Ola,

Ginevra’s erstwhile carer, –the one who went off for some deeper mutualite

with the widower who had been billeted with your mother- is in a state of

infanticipation and her EDD coincidentally matches that of The

Duchess of Cambridge.  Magda, the replacement carer from the agency,

has gone over to Normandy to visit her compatriot and to help see

her through the period of la nausee – (wasn’t that a book?  I must

look it up on Amazon.) She might just be doing some research on the

the availability of spare widowers.

Gyles is fine.  Working hard to pay all the school fees.  Of course,

Tiger being a scholarship girl helps a bit. (15%)  I hope he likes the meggings

I have purchased for his Xmas.  I also hope he agrees to wear the onesie I

bought him for Brassie’s Strictly party on Saturday Night.    It’s either that or a

bare-chested Artem glitter special for his samba number.  We all have to do a

dance, but he said that he wanted to cover up and wished everyone would.

Spoilsport.

Talking of Tiger: it was an amazing privilege for her to have been

asked to carry the Olympic torch in the summer.  Gyles and I were

annoyed that she refused to wear the uncool white tracksuit.   It

wasn’t so very different from her polar bear onesie, I thought, and she never

takes that off.  Grey onesie, really.

Rollo went on a Parisian parkour programme in the hols and Ming

went wingsuit skydiving.  We did not tell their grandparents, though.

They were very proud of Ferdy winning the Mini Scientist of the Year

Award, all because Mr Milford-Haven had the foresight and nous to send his

essay on recessive genes and hair colour to Danny Alexander and various

government nobs.  Spelling? After the Harriet Harman episode, the Treasury

was only too happy to provide a generous grant for the newly instituted

award.  They seem to have the finances for some things. Of course, Gyles

spent half a term helping Ferd with the wretched thing, bless.

Ming was singled out for his ceramic project and has been making

pots with Grayson Perry.  He has to wear an overall to protect his

school uniform from all the slip clay, but wonders how his mentor

manages in those baby dolls.  He tries to remember to call him Clare.

Of course, Tiger’s heroine is Tracey Emin, or Eminem, as the boys have

dubbed her.  I don’t think Tiger has made her bed for a year now and

she refuses the cleaner entry to her room in case she disturbs her

work-in-progress installation.  I still have to pay the woman the full amount,

though, so no Chrissie bonus for her, since she takes that attitude. She earns

more than Gyles’ PA, in any case.  Or Gyles?-can’t remember which.

Gyles and I fancied island hopping in the summer, but in these times

of austerity, we only managed Portsea Island, Hayling and the Isle of

Wight.  We skipped Lee-on-Solent after remembering Alan Bennet’s portrayal of

it in Talking Heads (First Series) – the one with Julie Walters and the film crew.

More anon,

Have to make my mincemeat!  No suet.

tbc

Princess Syndrome

Tags

Andy Murray, Ben Ainslie, Brassica, kids, Lynne Truss, Olympics, Suttonford, teaching, Victoria Pendleton

On looking in the mirror, parse that Lynne Truss, I spotted a roll of flab like a swimming lane demarcator. However, the minute I left the house to exercise, I was caught in a shower.  I met my friend and we sprinted up to Costamuchamoulah for a very skinny latte with surface-sprinkled coffee granules, which might have been 24 carat gold dust, judging by the price, and we practised the high jump by leaping onto high bar stools.  Lots of toddlers were running around wearing medals which they probably had won for screaming. I knew what I would like to have given them.

I was relieved when they were carried into 4x4s which had windscreens bearing the legend:  Keep your Distance!  World class mini-athletes on board.  Personally I always have to stifle the urge to drive into the back of such vehicles, as if I am on the dodgems.  Anyway, they can rest easy.  I would definitely obey the injunction.

I told my friend, Brassica, about a study that I had heard being discussed which showed that if you over-praised kids for scribbling and framed their every effort and gave them the mini-equivalent of a Turner Prize, in the form of a Kinder egg every time they covered the wallpaper with wax crayon , you would destroy their ability to discern what was truly laudable and what was, frankly, average.  I complained about all the yummy mummies who had confided to me that their children were in the running for the Nobel Prize for Literature, simply because at prep school they had written little sagas about flopsy bunnies. Once serious issues had to be studied at secondary school, the poor little mites were having nightmares because a fictional puppy keeled over.  If I had agreed to censor all upsetting episodes from the classics on the syllabus, in order to protect their precious sensitivities, I would have had to present them with blank pages, simulating their parents’ tabulae rasa, or tabulas rasa- oh, whatever!

Andy’s mum would not have presented him with his Playstation, just because his racquet had made contact with the ball, when he was fourteen and three quarters.  On the other hand, she probably had not encouraged him to waste much time on books either. Or girlfriends.

We discussed whether Kate Middleton’s mum had had a windscreen sticker which announced: At least one princess on board. Why should anyone take more care when bumper-tailing and slamming on of brakes, consequently ejecting an embryonic celebrity from a gilded carrycot, than when tailgating a beaten up old banger with a sticker that reads: Disreputable old bag of a moaning mother-in-law on board?

Surely we are all equal in the sight of the gods?

With some annoying old biddies on board, though, you might invite an impact worthy of a meteoric crater the size of the Olympic stadium, so maybe better to play it safe if you carry such passengers.

Good old Ben Ainslie had voluntarily gone round a marker buoy again, when challenged, even though he knew he had been right, which shows that his parents hadn’t put any special stickers on their windscreens, or treated him as Prince Ben.

Victoria Pendleton accepted that she had made an overtaking mistake in the heat of the moment and she had not made a fuss, nor challenged the decision by whining that she had been momentarily distracted by a fit bloke in the velodrome. She said that there were good and bad days and she simply progressed to the next challenge.

Bully for her, I thought.  That is the true Olympic spirit.

Moral Improvements

Tags

Andy Murray, badminton, Gore Vidal, Jimmy Savile, Language Police, Lynne Truss, Wiggo

Jimmy Savile’s chair and jewellery are going under the hammer today. I bet that his medallion will do well at the moment.  I presume that it isn’t made of chocolate.

There is going to be a full moon tonight.  If Wiggo isn’t victorious  tomorrow, then he could always try howling and be placed in the lycanthropy section, I reflected.  He might only achieve silver if Engelbert enters, but Hump. hasn’t done well in recent competitions.

Mustn’t be frivolous, I thought. The government said that the games would improve us morally.  Yes, there had been a good example of this last night when the badminton match had been fixed and the crowd had shown their moral outrage.

I cannot imagine Andy Murray’s mum exhorting him to hit the ball into the net deliberately. The officials should send her over to South Korea and to China so that she can give these teams a good drubbing by sending in the chamberlains with the drugged possets.

Come to think of it, she could take in Iran on the same trip and could bang their heads together for daring to assert that they are only enriching uranium for peaceful purposes.  You wouldn’t pull the wool over her eyes. Come on! she’d say- or even, Come off it!  Still, interesting to hear the Chinese promoting fair play.

Lynne Truss- she of the Language Police-did some arithmetic on radio 4 to show that she was numerate as well as literate. She felt that four medals already bagged were not in the running to provide us with an estimated eighty five.  Modesty is not to be confused with defeatism, she reminded listeners, as a kind of self-appointed morality coach.

Mind you, she has a point about some young people not being realistic about success.  I have seen it all in schools.  Kids will beat themselves up and their parents will beat teachers up-sometimes literally- if the world does not sufficiently recognise their offspring’s genius.

Gore Vidal, whose death has been reported this very day, said that failure was more important to friendship than success.  John Bell of the Iona Community could probably take that up and run with it for a Thought for the Day.

The Rev. Joel Edwards underscored this concept by eulogising Jimmy Savile for loving his neighbour, in addition to running marathons.  Andy’s mum might not agree:  she is a medal biter.