Thursday May 2nd 2024 "Other people's tyops - don't you just hate 'em?!!"

Do you ever stop and correct other people's bad English grammar or typos? It's an easy trap to fall into, isn't it, but there's no quicker way of losing friends, as I've found, and disputes over grammar can even destroy whole marriages, according to counsellors.

Plus, it's not often talked about, but I know from my contacts in the Worcestershire County Police, that grammatical "obsessions" have destroyed the careers of many a promising young cyber-criminal, like local man, the notorious Ben Kerrigan (source: Onion News).

And if I may just briefly mention the New York Police Department's recent problems with the two competing style "bibles" in the US, "The Associated Press Stylebook" and "The Chicago Manual of Style", I think you'll know what I mean, won't you!

Well, I hope there's no elderly "old codger"-style violence tomorrow here in Malvern, when our local U3A "History of English" group is due to get together for its monthly meeting, especially as the topic for the month is "Prescriptivism", which is essentially all about the issue of so-called "busybodies" "laying down the law" or "prescribing" to their co-workers, friends and relatives about what constitutes "correct English" - a contentious subject almost designed to fray tempers and start arguments. Oh dear !!!!

Joe, a braver man than me (or is that "braver man than I" ?!!) has volunteered to give  a presentation on this incendiary subject and has even been bold enough to circulate some of his notes, which I've been read today. 

Knowing Joe for several years in U3A circles, as I do, I'm not surprised to read that leading Joe's "favourite unfavourite" rules is, first and foremost, the careless use of split infinitives, e.g. Captain James T. Kirk's signature catch-phrase "To boldly go where no man has been before", notoriously one of Joe's favourite "hobby horses", that he'll talk about for hours, if you let him!

Other favourite talking-points of Joe's are going to be his controversial call for the criminalisation of the use of double negatives, e.g. his campaign for the arrest of popular singer Labi Siffre because of his lyric, "Loving never done me no good no how", or for the incarceration of author Rick James because of his best-selling exposition on West Coast rum-smuggling, "Don't never tell nobody nothin' no how".

You can see how grammatical disputes can quickly make people's "hackles" rise, can't you!

Let's hope there's no violence at tomorrow's U3A meeting. And new member Peter, I see, has already been attempting to sooth jangled nerves and "lower hackles" by circulating some of his so-called "grammatical jokes", all a bit feeble, admittedly, but which hopefully will "lighten the mood tomorrow" and prevent tempers becoming too frayed too quickly!

I'll share a couple of Peter's so-called "jokes" with you now - they're not very good, but they should serve to lower the temperature ahead of tomorrow's meeting, which will be good, to put it mildly, and we can all have  jolly good laugh whenever the mood starts to turn ugly, which will be good.

I think all of us members can step back and have a jolly good laugh over those particular "doozies", I think you'll agree. So fingers crossed there should be no serious injuries tomorrow afternoon haha !!!! Plus, nobody's going to want to tangle with Peter, who's an ex-rugby player and a bit of a "bruiser", to put it mildly!

20:00 Looking back on our day, apart from contentious arguments over English grammar, today has been an exciting day generally for my wife Lois and me  - a not-too-early morning (9:45 am) delivery of groceries by the local Morrisons supermarket, followed by an afternoon in bed for "nap time". 

Tomorrow will be really busy again [I'd like to see proof of that! - Ed], so we decide to "recharge our batteries" this evening in preparation, and wind down for bed by looking at tonight's programme in ex-Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo's current series of "Great Coastal Railway Journeys".

This week, Michael is travelling around the coast of East Anglia. He points out that the area is a bit of a backwater today, but it was the first place where our Anglo-Saxon ancestors settled after arriving across the North Sea from Denmark and Northern Germany. And in former centuries, Norwich, for example, was England's second-biggest city and King's Lynn was the country's foremost seaport.

The history of the area, however, goes back millions of years further than the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century AD, as we're reminded this evening, when Michael is shown the cliffs along the coast at West Runton, near Sheringham, by local palaeontologist Dr David Waterhouse. 

Yes, that's the "beef stock cube layer" all right! It's just dried out mud that hasn't been turned to stone yet, and it's packed full of fossils.

You may have noticed that Dr Waterhouse is carrying something unwieldy on his back, which Lois and I first thought must be some sort of musical instrument, like maybe a slightly shabby and tarnished tuba, but it turns out in fact to be the smallest bone in the leg of a prehistoric mammoth.

And the amazing thing that since the discovery of this shin-bone sticking out of the cliffs, plus its associated pelvis, by 2 local walkers 30 years ago, almost the whole of the rest of the fossilised remains of this mammoth - 85 to 90 per cent - has now been recovered. 

It's the oldest, largest and most complete example ever found in Britain. The animal was twice the size of one of today's elephants and stood 13 to 15 feet tall (4 to 4.5m), weighing 10 tons. It was alive at least half a million years ago and it died in its prime when it was 40, due to a dislocated knee. 

The area was at the time was pretty much like the Norfolk Broads today, a mile from the sea, and it was populated by, not just mammoths but also hyena, bears, wild boar, rhino and hippo. There was a slow-flowing river here, at which the mammoth arrived one day, and he dislocated his knee, so the top end of the shin-bone "popped out" of its socket and that's how he died.

Yikes! Poor mammoth!!!

And nearly a million years later, I find I can really feel that 40-year-old prehistoric mammoth's pain, because I myself have just had an operation for a hip replacement last month, and I was discharged from the hospital in Redditch with strict instructions about how to avoid dislocating it.

 Yikes (again) !!!!!

And strangely, when our 48-year-old daughter Alison rings us this evening from Hampshire for our weekly "catch up" session, there is more news of arthritis and that kind of malarkey. Not that Alison or her family - husband Ed and 3 teenage children - suffer from it, I'm glad to say, but it's the family's Danish dog Sika, who has the leg problems. 

flashback to Boxing Day 2019: Lois (right) with our daughter

Alison, son-in-law Ed and their 3 children, playing a game of "Dixit"

Alison says she took Sika to the vet today, and poor Sika again is having to wear what Ali calls "the cone of shame" around his head, to stop him licking his leg and making it worse.

a typical "cone of shame" worn by a dog, to prevent it

licking things it shouldn't be licking

Thank heaven for small mercies - at least Redditch Hospital didn't make me wear a "cone of shame" to stop me "licking my hips" or anything of that type of malarkey, not that I've got any great desire to do that, if I'm going to be brutally honest!

man wears "cone of shame" to stop him licking his hips - yikes!

Meanwhile Ali's husband Ed has been at the House of Lords again this week, busy lobbying peers over the Labour Party's threatened renationalisation of the UK's railway companies if they come to office: Ed is legal adviser on the board of a number of these companies. 

In other news, Josie (17) who passed her driving test in Portsmouth last weekend, is now routinely driving herself to her high school in Guildford each day and today she got her hepatitis B shots for her upcoming project in Tanzania this summer. 

our eldest grandchild Josie (17) with her car

And young Isaac (13) is singing tonight with his band at an "open-mike" session at a venue in nearby Elstead. On Saturday his group will be "opening up" for other acts at the Rotary Spring Festival, Godalming.

What's all that about, eh? When Lois and I were their age, back in the 1960's, there wasn't anything but homework on the agenda, that's for sure. And to get to school we had to use the local bus services.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!