I herewith eat my own words.
My defeatist cynicism on the success of Wales’ opening game in the Six Nations Championship was completely unnecessary as the splendid result in the Millennium Stadium this evening magnificently demonstrates.
Who would have thought that The Grand Slam would come to a team whose performance in the World Cup was so woeful! Well done Wales!
Meanwhile, euphoria in Wales does not help misery in Catalonia!
The traditional way to start a teacher’s holiday: streaming cold, cough and generally unwell.
Some things never change – though I think that contact with a whole range of new exotic childhood illnesses may perhaps be some explanation for my incapacity.
The one thing that my body will have to understand is that it does not have the freedom to snuffle its way through to wellness utilizing the expansive holidays that characterise the educational system of Wales. My Easter holiday is a miserly week plus a day rather than the expanse of the fortnight to which I have become accustomed!
The other horror which concentrates the mind is that the summer term has no half term. And with this Owner, no settled end to the summer term either! When the present inmates of the institution were invited to sign their contacts in September of last year, the more astute among them discovered that there was no date for the end of the year!
When this ‘interesting’ anomaly was discovered and questioned a rather grudging date of early July was given. This has been extended to a possible 13th of July, but we are going into the last term of the year with no real idea of when the end date will be.
I think that the Owner has been hearing about sessions of the British parliament where some sittings have been recorded as taking place on a single day, but in reality the unbroken gathering of MPs has extended over a greater period of time. Perhaps her idea is to have the 4th of July (another end date bandied about by the unfortunates who work in the school) extended by a week. It makes movies like ‘The Lost Weekend’ look like momentary lapses compare with the spatial rearrangement that she is proposing!
It says something for my indiscriminate Renaissance Man attributes and most of my books being in durance vile in Bluespace that my present reading is centred on two books:
Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf’s ‘The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (ISBN 0-679-74944-6) and 
Huysmans’ ‘Against Nature’ (too old for an ISBN number, but published by Penguin for 6/- in 1968 and therefore read by me first when I was 17!) Perhaps that was the right age for Huysmans, we will see!
‘Politically Correct’ (which, as this fascinating little book points out has “become co-opted by the enemies of language reform as a label with which to belittle the multicultural movement, is alas itself no longer ‘politically correct’”) is one of those reads which you think will be idea loo material. It is, but it is the sort of loo reading that a wishy-washy liberal like me feels is slightly condescending and right wing. It is, therefore a guilty pleasure. Or at least it should be, but this book transcends the easy, snide remark (usually, though not always) and as you flick through with an attitude which is alternately amused, shocked, angered and bewildered you find that you are beginning to see reason behind apparent madness.
“Methinks he doth protest too much” has been the way forward for many worthwhile causes which have had to suffer ridicule until their value has been appreciated. From slavery to the overloading of ships; from votes for women to maternity leave; from sick leave to homosexual rights – all these ‘causes’ have been dismissed as ludicrous concerns until society (or at least enlightened thinkers) have recognised that there is a case to be answered. In the course of their various campaigns overstatement has been one of the ways in which the voice of the oppressed has been heard. The human animal is not necessarily convinced by reason, but can always be swayed by emotion – the play on the sleep of reason!
One of the interesting linguistic developments I have witnessed in my time in education has been the addressing of the leader of the meeting. When I was a pupil in Cardiff High School for Boys we were taught that when we were referring to both sexes then the singular pronoun used should be masculine, so, for example, ‘Everyone should send his friend a card at Christmas? Would have been unexceptional in my school – or correct!
In spite of, or because of the inherently sexist teaching I received and also because I believed that Barbara Castle could be Prime Minister, my feminist credentials were good. Good, that is for the times in which I was living in a provincial city in the sixties!
In school we were taught to refer to the chair of a meeting as The Chairman irrespective of sex. In a more enlightened moment we were taught to say ‘Madam Chairman? Then we were given ‘Madam Chair’ and then, finally ‘Chair.’ Not a difficult progression, but one that took some twenty years to be generally accepted.
On the M4 toll on the Severn Crossing bridge the payment kiosks are referred to a ‘Manned’ it is surely a small change, but a significant one to change that to ‘Staffed.’ A change worth making.
I will not spoil the delights of reading the higher reaches of insanity loving catalogued in ‘Politically Correct’ except to say that you begin to doubt your own sanity when you read of some of the inanity perpetrated by academics in search of publication!
Read it and find out for yourselves!
My defeatist cynicism on the success of Wales’ opening game in the Six Nations Championship was completely unnecessary as the splendid result in the Millennium Stadium this evening magnificently demonstrates.
Who would have thought that The Grand Slam would come to a team whose performance in the World Cup was so woeful! Well done Wales!
Meanwhile, euphoria in Wales does not help misery in Catalonia!
The traditional way to start a teacher’s holiday: streaming cold, cough and generally unwell.
Some things never change – though I think that contact with a whole range of new exotic childhood illnesses may perhaps be some explanation for my incapacity.
The one thing that my body will have to understand is that it does not have the freedom to snuffle its way through to wellness utilizing the expansive holidays that characterise the educational system of Wales. My Easter holiday is a miserly week plus a day rather than the expanse of the fortnight to which I have become accustomed!
The other horror which concentrates the mind is that the summer term has no half term. And with this Owner, no settled end to the summer term either! When the present inmates of the institution were invited to sign their contacts in September of last year, the more astute among them discovered that there was no date for the end of the year!
When this ‘interesting’ anomaly was discovered and questioned a rather grudging date of early July was given. This has been extended to a possible 13th of July, but we are going into the last term of the year with no real idea of when the end date will be.
I think that the Owner has been hearing about sessions of the British parliament where some sittings have been recorded as taking place on a single day, but in reality the unbroken gathering of MPs has extended over a greater period of time. Perhaps her idea is to have the 4th of July (another end date bandied about by the unfortunates who work in the school) extended by a week. It makes movies like ‘The Lost Weekend’ look like momentary lapses compare with the spatial rearrangement that she is proposing!
It says something for my indiscriminate Renaissance Man attributes and most of my books being in durance vile in Bluespace that my present reading is centred on two books:
Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf’s ‘The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (ISBN 0-679-74944-6) and Huysmans’ ‘Against Nature’ (too old for an ISBN number, but published by Penguin for 6/- in 1968 and therefore read by me first when I was 17!) Perhaps that was the right age for Huysmans, we will see!‘Politically Correct’ (which, as this fascinating little book points out has “become co-opted by the enemies of language reform as a label with which to belittle the multicultural movement, is alas itself no longer ‘politically correct’”) is one of those reads which you think will be idea loo material. It is, but it is the sort of loo reading that a wishy-washy liberal like me feels is slightly condescending and right wing. It is, therefore a guilty pleasure. Or at least it should be, but this book transcends the easy, snide remark (usually, though not always) and as you flick through with an attitude which is alternately amused, shocked, angered and bewildered you find that you are beginning to see reason behind apparent madness.
“Methinks he doth protest too much” has been the way forward for many worthwhile causes which have had to suffer ridicule until their value has been appreciated. From slavery to the overloading of ships; from votes for women to maternity leave; from sick leave to homosexual rights – all these ‘causes’ have been dismissed as ludicrous concerns until society (or at least enlightened thinkers) have recognised that there is a case to be answered. In the course of their various campaigns overstatement has been one of the ways in which the voice of the oppressed has been heard. The human animal is not necessarily convinced by reason, but can always be swayed by emotion – the play on the sleep of reason!
One of the interesting linguistic developments I have witnessed in my time in education has been the addressing of the leader of the meeting. When I was a pupil in Cardiff High School for Boys we were taught that when we were referring to both sexes then the singular pronoun used should be masculine, so, for example, ‘Everyone should send his friend a card at Christmas? Would have been unexceptional in my school – or correct!
In spite of, or because of the inherently sexist teaching I received and also because I believed that Barbara Castle could be Prime Minister, my feminist credentials were good. Good, that is for the times in which I was living in a provincial city in the sixties!
In school we were taught to refer to the chair of a meeting as The Chairman irrespective of sex. In a more enlightened moment we were taught to say ‘Madam Chairman? Then we were given ‘Madam Chair’ and then, finally ‘Chair.’ Not a difficult progression, but one that took some twenty years to be generally accepted.
On the M4 toll on the Severn Crossing bridge the payment kiosks are referred to a ‘Manned’ it is surely a small change, but a significant one to change that to ‘Staffed.’ A change worth making.
I will not spoil the delights of reading the higher reaches of insanity loving catalogued in ‘Politically Correct’ except to say that you begin to doubt your own sanity when you read of some of the inanity perpetrated by academics in search of publication!
Read it and find out for yourselves!
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