Danskcolin: Thursday February 15th 2024

Gosh - it's been a "Big News" story round these parts, hasn't it! Have you seen any of the headlines from the "County News" Desk of Worcester News?

crowds queueing to use the women's toilets in Church Close, Broadway,

after news of the award broke this week

How often have you heard people say, "Nothing ever happens in Worcestershire!". It's become a bit of a 'truism', but not since the first time Wychavon won the award back in 2020. Wychavon has been making not just local but national headlines every year at about this time.

Incidentally, this is just a minor gripe, but an important one to make, I think. Did you notice the way Worcester News again gave the story to their County News Women's Desk to investigate?

Don't get me wrong - I've got a lot of respect both for women's desk stalwart Sandhya Suresh and for District Councillor Emma Stokes, and it may be just me - but has the paper got a tendency sometimes to ignore the men's angle when it comes to toilet "threads"?

"Have we not bladders? Do we not pee?", as Shakespeare said.

Let's all just pause a moment to reflect on that!

I wonder......!

"Do we not have bladders? Do we not pee?" -

men waiting outside the toilets at the Mildstone Ground Car Park,

Childswickham, while "female operatives are inside, cleaning"

What a madness it is, isn't it, in the final analysis!

10:00 And I need a bit of quiet "me time" for reflection myself just at the moment, because once again Lois and I find that our plans for the next few days have been thrown up in the air, and fallen to earth in a great pickle - you would not BELIEVE!

flashback to February 1st: Lois and me, seen here

in happier times, enjoying small cakes at a local café

Change number one: we hear from our daughter Sarah that she will, after all, be coming over at tomorrow Friday teatime with the twins, to stay the weekend. Plans by Sarah and husband Francis to go away on a family trip this weekend have had to be scrapped. It'll be wonderful to see them, as always, but it means Lois and I have to do our usual conversion job on the house - "two person pigsty" into "five person "show-home"" - before they arrive. Yikes!

And change number two: some last-minute plans by local U3A "History of English" group-members have led to a postponement of tomorrow Friday's so-called "presentation" by me, all about "Changes in the English Language 1774-2084".

the start of the quill-written notes for my so-called "presentation"

Woah!!! A postponement will be nice in a way for me, however, because I've so far only written 2 pages of my estimated 16-page "paper" on the subject, and I can now put away my trademark "medieval renaissance scholar quill pen", sticking it back into my "Medieval Renaissance Scholar" hat for a few more days, while a rescheduling debate rages among group-members.

this is me - I can afford to relax now, and stick my

Renaissance scholar trademark "quill" pen back

in my trademark Renaissance Scholar hat for a few days

which will be nice!

Yes, "this is me....I can afford to relax now". Did you catch the way I just "threw" that sentence in, so casually - like - seemingly?

This phrase is interesting to me, because my "presentation" on the English language is planned to go up to, and include, the English of present day Britain. And did you know that in one of the modern varieties of English around among, especially younger people today, is MLE, or "Multicultural London English"?

In MLE, for instance, a commonly heard phrase is "This is me. Let's get out of here!", which is threatening to oust the "still modish "I was like - let's get out of here", which in its turn recently ousted the more conventional "I said, 'Let's get out of here!", which is what old codgers like Lois and me would tend to say.

typical speakers of Multicultural London English (MLE)

It's all a madness isn't it!

And I'm glad about the postponement of tomorrow's group meeting anyway, because ideas for my talk's specially featured section on "What I hate most about the way people speak English today" are still coming in from readers of my blog.

Steve, my American brother-in-law writes: The whole time I was college getting both Journalism and English degrees, one teacher was an avowed Orthoepist. The main reason he was adamant about words was because he made the point (back in the late 60s & verified by studies in the 80s) that 'noise' led to confusion and, therefore, detracted from effective communication. He maintained that Journalists should be the paragon of clear, concise communication. Noise can (verbally) be mispronunciation, emphasis on the wrong syll-a'-ble, poor syntax, or superfluous words.

That "noise", Steve says, includes superfluous words and expressions that clutter up people's conversations, words like: well, um, ahh, you know, kind of, sort of, type of, really, basically,

for all intents and purposes, definitely, actually etc.

Steve is absolutely right, and Lois and I often get so muddled by modern TV programmes that we switch off with impatience, tired of waiting for speakers to "get to the point".

And I've checked back, by the way - and my blog is (almost) completely free of these "noise" words, which is nice. And don't bother to verify that statement for yourselves - basically, I can assure you it's true, "deffo" ! [I find that hard to believe! - Ed]

The key takeaway from all this is that you've got a few days' reprieve, blog-readers, so get your quills out now - I haven't seen them in your hand for a while! Or, if you're emailing your suggestions, I recommend "Blackadder" font.

I'll be waiting haha!!!!

a typical blog-reader at his laptop, with pen poised -

a superior quality "turkey quill" in his hand, but don't worry if

yours is just the "bog standard" model - it's what you say that counts!

21:00 Lois and I wind down for bed with a rerun of episode 1 of the BBC's 1993 "classic drama series" version of D H Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover".

An atmospheric, if slow-moving first episode, setting the scene and introducing the main characters: poor old wheelchair-bound Sir Clifford, his thoughtful wife Lady Connie, and the brooding menace of the couple's earthy gamekeeper Mellors, who's already got his eye on Connie.

In this scene, Connie, alone in the couple's bedroom and admiring the painting of a nude on the bedroom wall, hears her husband Clifford ringing his "bell-for-assistance" down in the library, where he sleeps in a bed that Connie has made up for him.

Connie quickly "loses" her nightie and drifts down the stairs and into the library.

Lois at this point is sharply critical of Sir Clifford's rather lukewarm response to her lack of nightie.

All right, so he's paralysed from the waist down due to a war wound, and also impotent, but he could have shown a bit more enthusiasm, Lois says, and I think she's right.

And did you notice that writer DH Lawrence unaccountably doesn't have Connie saying "You rang, M'lord?", a pretty obvious but perhaps over-corny(?), cultural reference to the famous sitcom of that name from the 1980's. [I think you'll find Lawrence wasn't watching much TV in the 1980's! - Ed]

Pity - a missed opportunity there perhaps!

22:00 We've got to be in bed promptly after the Chatterley's over - we've got an Ocado supermarket delivery coming tomorrow between 7.30 and 8.30 am, and it's David driving the "Cabbage Van" again - so it'll be as close to 7.30 as he can make it, knowing Our David.