Bleurgh

I am up at 'theoretical o'clock' on a Saturday morning. That is to say I got up at 7.30, which is largely unheard of. The plumber is coming supposedly between 8.00 and 8.30 to take a look at the boiler and renew its gas safety certificate.

That means that in lieu of a lie in, I may have had a whole three and a half hours sleep last night. I have no idea why I couldn't doze off, but there we are.

Bleurgh

I am up at 'theoretical o'clock' on a Saturday morning. That is to say I got up at 7.30, which is largely unheard of. The plumber is coming supposedly between 8.00 and 8.30 to take a look at the boiler and renew its gas safety certificate.

That means that in lieu of a lie in, I may have had a whole three and a half hours sleep last night. I have no idea why I couldn't doze off, but there we are.

Five Words Meme (ii)

In my second foray into this meme, here are the five words suggested by pax_draconis. I clearly manage to promote a certain image of myself quite efficiently, since there is some similarity with the previous selection. If only I could turn that public perception into cold, hard cash...

British
A strange and magical brew of tolerance and intolerance, guile and naivety, brilliance and stupidity.
I think that these days to be British is to be rather lost in the world, at least in terms of the national psyche. The effortless command of earlier ages has gone and with it much of the national confidence, to be replaced by a combination of haughty arrogance and a slowly increasing inferiority complex. Last year, to be British was to be the big boy in the lower school, while this year Little Britain (pun) is the little boy in the big school and he has yet to find his place in the scheme of things. The habitual bluster is still there, but there’s rather less confidence to back it up.

Romulan
The bloody ancient Romans get everywhere. When it was just the Romulans from the planet Romulus, well that was okay, just a human word for an alien race in Star Trek-land. But then came along the little known sister planet, Remus, and suddenly it’s Caesar in Space.

That all said and done, I always liked the Romulans better than the Klingons; they are the baddie half brothers to the Vulcans and have, in latter years, evolved beetle brows under the pageboy hair cut that is de rigeur in green-blooded races. No one would want to confuse the races after all, would they? In classic Trek, we saw little of these chaps, but they had the most powerful torpedo in the known universe, that nearly did for the Enterprise. For some reason, in the game, Star Fleet Battles (any resemblance to Star Trek purely coincidental), the Romulan plasma torpedo was so slow you would just step aside and let it go past.

I don’t like Trek as much as I once did; there’s just too much of it around and (not having seen the new movie) has become too self referential and weighed down with continuity. But I like the Romulans and I recall the thrill down the spine when they reappeared in the final episode of the very unpromising first season of the Next Generation. To paraphrase: “We have neglected our borders for too long; but now we’re back”.

Cor.

Salop
My home county and still the place where my roots are, though sadly I think that the likelihood of me returning there permanently are reducing and tending towards zero.

Of course, Salop is the shorter nickname foir the county more properly known as Shropshire and derives ultimately from the fact the Normans couldn’t get their collective heads around the Old English Sciropescire (or however it was spelt – I have some sympathy for the barbaric knuckleheads). The confusion for French speakers continues to the current day and partly explains why the county council, after the reorganisation of 1974 made Salop the official name of the county changed it back about five years later. I had a French pen friend, Brigitte and she was scandalised when I wrote ‘Salop’ as part of my address, confusing it with the French slang, salope (which, given the parlous state of my command of the French language was understandable). Salope, of course, has an entirely more savoury meaning than being the contraction of an English county name.

Cheese
I have already eulogised the mighty curd, and even been corrected gently by littleonionz. I stated that it was the food of Kings and she wisely pointed out that it is also the King of Foods. Quite right, too.

Pass the crackers.

Scroat
As the least offensive definition of the Urban Dictionary would have it: An inferior, Lawless member of society. The strange little troglodytes that crawl around in the social gutter, making no attempt to get out of it or do anything worthwhile. Scroats are the underclass that inhabit the council estates depicted in The Bill and who cause Daily Mail-reading retired Colonels to have embolisms over their morning brandy. The modern scroat is a descendent of Dickens’ street urchins and ragamuffins, but without the excuse of a society that ignores and outlaws them.

In the past couple or three decades, they have become symptomatic of society’s ills, but there’s nothing new about them and in another twenty or thirty years, they will have been rebranded.

Five Words Meme (ii)

In my second foray into this meme, here are the five words suggested by pax_draconis. I clearly manage to promote a certain image of myself quite efficiently, since there is some similarity with the previous selection. If only I could turn that public perception into cold, hard cash...

British
A strange and magical brew of tolerance and intolerance, guile and naivety, brilliance and stupidity.
I think that these days to be British is to be rather lost in the world, at least in terms of the national psyche. The effortless command of earlier ages has gone and with it much of the national confidence, to be replaced by a combination of haughty arrogance and a slowly increasing inferiority complex. Last year, to be British was to be the big boy in the lower school, while this year Little Britain (pun) is the little boy in the big school and he has yet to find his place in the scheme of things. The habitual bluster is still there, but there’s rather less confidence to back it up.

Romulan
The bloody ancient Romans get everywhere. When it was just the Romulans from the planet Romulus, well that was okay, just a human word for an alien race in Star Trek-land. But then came along the little known sister planet, Remus, and suddenly it’s Caesar in Space.

That all said and done, I always liked the Romulans better than the Klingons; they are the baddie half brothers to the Vulcans and have, in latter years, evolved beetle brows under the pageboy hair cut that is de rigeur in green-blooded races. No one would want to confuse the races after all, would they? In classic Trek, we saw little of these chaps, but they had the most powerful torpedo in the known universe, that nearly did for the Enterprise. For some reason, in the game, Star Fleet Battles (any resemblance to Star Trek purely coincidental), the Romulan plasma torpedo was so slow you would just step aside and let it go past.

I don’t like Trek as much as I once did; there’s just too much of it around and (not having seen the new movie) has become too self referential and weighed down with continuity. But I like the Romulans and I recall the thrill down the spine when they reappeared in the final episode of the very unpromising first season of the Next Generation. To paraphrase: “We have neglected our borders for too long; but now we’re back”.

Cor.

Salop
My home county and still the place where my roots are, though sadly I think that the likelihood of me returning there permanently are reducing and tending towards zero.

Of course, Salop is the shorter nickname foir the county more properly known as Shropshire and derives ultimately from the fact the Normans couldn’t get their collective heads around the Old English Sciropescire (or however it was spelt – I have some sympathy for the barbaric knuckleheads). The confusion for French speakers continues to the current day and partly explains why the county council, after the reorganisation of 1974 made Salop the official name of the county changed it back about five years later. I had a French pen friend, Brigitte and she was scandalised when I wrote ‘Salop’ as part of my address, confusing it with the French slang, salope (which, given the parlous state of my command of the French language was understandable). Salope, of course, has an entirely more savoury meaning than being the contraction of an English county name.

Cheese
I have already eulogised the mighty curd, and even been corrected gently by littleonionz. I stated that it was the food of Kings and she wisely pointed out that it is also the King of Foods. Quite right, too.

Pass the crackers.

Scroat
As the least offensive definition of the Urban Dictionary would have it: An inferior, Lawless member of society. The strange little troglodytes that crawl around in the social gutter, making no attempt to get out of it or do anything worthwhile. Scroats are the underclass that inhabit the council estates depicted in The Bill and who cause Daily Mail-reading retired Colonels to have embolisms over their morning brandy. The modern scroat is a descendent of Dickens’ street urchins and ragamuffins, but without the excuse of a society that ignores and outlaws them.

In the past couple or three decades, they have become symptomatic of society’s ills, but there’s nothing new about them and in another twenty or thirty years, they will have been rebranded.