David Bowie: one of those musicians I always respected as a genuine talent, without actually being a fan. For years now, Jen has been trying to convince me that, in his heyday, the Brixton Bard was a genius. With evidence like this, who am I to argue?
BBC: Johnson wins London mayoral race
Boris Johnson has won the race to become the next mayor of London - ending Ken Livingstone's eight-year reign at City Hall.
Dick-wit in town… Geddit?
Suit yourselves.
(I should be a headline writer for the Sun, you know.)
BBC: Ofsted 'can deter would-be heads'
Ofsted inspection pressures deter talented teachers from taking on the top jobs in schools, research suggests.
A National Association of Head Teachers survey of 500 members found 86% thought the impact of Ofsted meant potential head teachers were put off applying.
Yeah, and I could have been a great ballerina, if only I'd been prepared to lose a few pounds and go through the sex-change.
Stop bloody whinging. Dealing with Ofsted inspections is part of the job of being a head teacher. You can't pick and choose which aspects of the role you want to fulfil. Managing a school requires an entirely different set of skills to overseeing a class of kids. If you don't think you've got what it takes, don't apply for the bloody job.
Simple as that.
BBC: Nuclear threat sparked tea worry
The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released reveal.
Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be "very serious" after a nuclear war.
Those were the days: a UK government actually getting its priorities right. Tea had got us through two world wars, and we were going to need reliable supplies to make it through a third.
Of course, it all started going downhill in 1938 with the invention of Nescafé. Now, we've turned into a nation of hyperactive, migrane-ridden instant coffee swillers. It was all part of a sinister American plot to destroy our empire.
More tea? Don't mind if I do!
I'm sorry, Beeb, you'll have to give us more to go on that that. Which particular tax are you talking about?
I repeat:
In case you didn't quite catch that…
No comebacks, Phil. They're not dignified.
Is it my imagination, or are there more ducks than is usual for the time of year flying about at the moment? Not significantly more, but noticeably more. Noticeable enough that, if you happened to have a website where you were prone to make observations of such a nature, you would probably mention it on the off-chance that you had actually noticed something rather profound. I admit it seems unlikely, but you never know: perhaps there's a reason why there are noticeably more ducks flying around than is usual for the time of year. Or perhaps it really is just my imagination.
They're mallards mostly, from what I can tell at the sort of distances I'm talking about. Actually, I haven't mentioned distances yet, but I'm just about to: 50 to 100 yards, approximately. They tend to be flying very fast, very low and very determinedly in a straight line, quite often in an easterly direction. I suppose they could be the same ducks going round and round, but this seems unlikely, bearing in mind how very determinedly they are flying in a straight line. Not to say impossible.
Ducks are surprisingly fast fliers. In fact, I'm pretty sure my edition of The Guinness Book of Records from some time in the 1970s said that the fastest horizontal bird flight ever measured was that of a mallard. I forget the speed. Peregrine falcons can reach faster speeds, of course, but only in a vertical stoop.
A surprising thing I've noticed about ducks' flight while I've been observing the noticeably more of them than is usual for the time of year recently is how short their wing-beats are. They're very short indeed, bearing in mind the horizontal speeds they achieve. Ducks take tiny wing-beats, but travel at great speed.
There's a lesson for us all there, I think.
Makes you proud to be British.
The more observant of you—the more observant of you who are not reading this via an RSS reader at least—might have noticed that the banner across the top of the page has changed from a tasteful orange colour to a rather dramatic red. At the same time, the text has changed from black to white.
Why have I made this change? Well, exactly the same red and white colour scheme will soon be adorning my new study. The shelves, windows, skirting board and ceiling will be white, and the walls red. This exact red, in fact. For some reason, the paint manufacturer has chosen to call it incarnadine. It's a disappointing name, compared with those of some of the other reds I was tempted by: blazer, dragon's blood, volcanic splash, and something I can't remember with the word passion in the title. Even rectory red has more of a ring to it than incardanine. Didn't he star in Kung Fu in the 1970s?
Unfortunately, incarnadine turns out to be a rather specialist (for which, read expensive) paint, so the shop didn't have enough. They've had to order some more.
The new study, once it has a desk and computer will become the official new Gruts Central. So I thought I might as well change the colour scheme at the top of the page to be a bit more corporate.
I don't know how long it will last.
Sunday Times: No MMR? Then you won't start school
Children will be banned from starting school until they receive the MMR jab, under new Labour party proposals. Parents will have to provide proof their offspring have had a full range of vaccinations when they put in applications for primary schools.
You've got to hand it to this Labour government: in power for over a decade, and they're still somehow managing to dredge up new stuff to ban. Who says they lack imagination?
If you remember, back in February, I proposed a much more logical solution to this MMR nonsense.
I've just worked out why, when the Halifax Bank merged with the Bank of Scotland to make HBOS, they chose to merge the two banks' initials in the order that they did.
What Jen and I and most of Jen's family misheard her (Irish) mum to say in the pub last night:
What's the difference between a ship and a boat?
… Is it a yacht?
For reasons I won't bother you with, I was thinking about the syllable pib yesterday.
As syllables go, it's not all that unusual: consonant-vowel-consonant, easy to pronounce, not an actual word—but there's no reason on earth why it couldn't be.
Then I tried to think of words which begin with the syllable pib. I eventually came up with pibald.
I found pibald a totally unsatisfactory answer to my self-imposed challenge to find a word beginning pib_ for two reasons: (1) piebald is how I (and, I hope, most other people) would normally spell the word, and, more importantly, (2) the letters P, I, B are not pronounced as a single syllable: it's pi-bald. Like I said, totally unsatisfactory.
So I racked my brains for a while, trying to come up with another word which begins pib_. I failed.
So I've just looked in my Compact Oxford English Dictionary (the full-hit dictionary printed so small that it comes with a magnifying glass to help you read it), and here are the pib_ words listed in it:
- pibald
already got that one! - pibil/pibble/pible
an obsolete spelling of pebble - pibble-pabble
an alteration of bibble-babble (obviously) - pibcorn
an obsolete word for a form of hornpipe formerly used in Wales - pibling
some famous writer's misspelling of pipling (the dolt!) - piblokto
a form of hysterical illness in Eskimo dogs (no, really!) - pibroach/pibrach
variations on a particular musical theme for bagpipes in the Scotch (sic) Highlands
So now I know.
I wonder why so few words begin with pib_.
(Don't get me started on beb_.)
ABBA, Ace of Base, Alfred Nobel, Anders Celsius, Anders Jonas Ångström, Anita Ekberg, Björn Borg, Britt Ekland, Carolus Linnaeus, Greta Garbo, Hans Blix, IKEA, Ingrid Bergman, Janna Svenson, Max von Sydow, Roxette, Saint Birgitta, Sven-Göran Eriksson, Ulrika Ericsson, Ulrika Jonsson… I could go on all day.
The simple truth is, we have a lot to thank Sweden for.
By way of a small tribute, therefore, and to make Gruts more Swede-friendly, I have now included a translate this page into Swedish facility at the bottom of the Gruts home page.
Tack, Sverige!
BBC: Indiana Jones is back - and on form
… Director Steven Spielberg has largely jettisoned computer generated effects (much to the chagrin of tech freak Lucas) with the result that the film's action sequences have a visceral, physical quality you rarely find in modern-day blockbusters.
My biggest fear for this film was that the CGI would take over. That's not what Indiana Jones is about. CGI is too clinical and elegant; Indiana Jones is totally inelegant (in an extremely stylish way).
Glad Spielberg put his foot down. Pity he couldn't overrule Lucas on Jar Jar Binks.
I spotted a really cool butterfly yesterday. It looked for all the world like a dollop of bird poo. Remarkable mimicry. That's evolution for you.
This afternoon, I spoke with Stense on the phone and told her about the butterfly. I explained how I had tried to look it up in my Collins Complete British Insects book, but it hadn't been in there. I said that I was pretty confident I had discovered a species of butterfly which was entirely new to science. That being the case, I would name it after her: Lepidoptera stensonis, or something like that.
Stense said she didn't want something which looks like a dollop of bird poo naming after her. I said that some people are never bloody satisfied.
Stense needn't have worried: I later worked out that my butterfly was a female orange-tip [Anthocharis cardamines].
The female orange-tip doesn't have an orange tip. That's what threw me.
Do you know how to twist? It goes like this, goes like this, goes like this…
Echo & the Bunnymen, Do It Clean (live):
I've added a new feature to the Gruts homepage sidebar: Recent bookmarks. It contains links to stuff elsewhere on the web which might be of interest to anyone who finds the sort of stuff I write about on Gruts vaguely interesting. I sometimes bookmark stuff I'm thinking of writing about on Gruts, so this new feature might well end up scooping me.
For the nerds amongst you, it's run using del.icio.us, and there's an RSS feed.
Having the surname Carter, I occasionally had to put up with farter jokes at school. It never really bothered me. Donald Trump had a similar problem, I understand, and it didn't do him any harm.
I do wonder, however, how Dean Windass ever managed to cope.
The poor bastard.
Hebden Bridge Times: Society to disband after 74 years
Mytholmroyd Chrysanthemum Society has disbanded after 74 years…
Former secretary for 23 years Stuart Jackson, 64, said: "I am sad to see the group go after 74 years. No one grows chrysanthemums in Mytholmroyd any more…"
They should keep it going. I love the idea of a society whose members aren't in the least bit interested in whatever it is that the society is supposed to be about.
If anyone's thinking of starting a society called The Ballet Society, specifically for people who don't go to the ballet, count me in.
(The red carpet was red, of course.)
The Liverpool city centre moved a significant distance further west yesterday. No, not an earthquake: phase one of the new multi-million pound Liverpool One shopping and business centre opened in the middle of the biggest building site in Europe.
I went to have a look. Even though only 20% of the complex is open so far, it's seriously impressive. It's scheduled for completion in September. Can't wait to see the result.
This time, they want to ban logos on cigarette packets to discourage kids from smoking.
Hoorah! That ought to do it!
The really important thing is to be seen to be doing something, no matter how ineffective and petty it might be. Change is progress. If the government isn't doing anything, then what do we need a government for?
Yes, banning cigarette logos was top of my list too, Gordon. Glad to see you're getting your priorities right. Very well done!
Well, more like grin from ear to ear than smile, really:
- In the main shopping street in Liverpool: one of the local tramps dressed in an immaculate full evening suit, contentedly walking along, smoking a two-foot-long cigar.
- At the side of the road near my house: an elderly couple walking their elderly dog. Hanging delicately from the dog's mouth, a small, knotted plastic bag with some poo in it. I assume it was the dog's own poo, but it was hard to tell.
