Staying at my son’s house in Buckinghamshire I often admire the red kites which fly around the area. Mostly they are impressive dark shapes soaring around. This morning I looked out of the bedroom window and looked down on one which was flying in the sunshine (the brief sunshine, I must say, for not much later the drizzle returned) and suddenly the range of colours on its feathers were properly revealed. Not just red but a whole gamut of golden browns. Wonderful!
The same happens with magpies. You tend to think of them as black and white birds and then the sunlight catches them and you see shades of blue in there. Also wonderful!
Headlines are always interesting. Here’s one from this morning:
“Harrison Ford’s 1976 Star Wars script sells for more than £10,000
Actor left fourth draft of screenplay for first movie in the London flat that he was renting while filming”
How did he come to simply leave a draft of his screenplay behind? A bit careless. It turns out that the original working title was “The Adventures of Luke Starkiller”. “Luke Skywalker” was undoubtedly an improvement. Anyway, the draft of his screenplay was sold at auction for £10,795. Another bundle of papers, odds and ends related to shooting schedules and the like, sold for £4000+. Once again I am amazed at how much people will pay for memorabilia related to the famous - just as they used to pay for saints’ bones and the like.
New names have been announced for some lines in then London Overgound : the Suffragette, Windrush, Lioness, Mildmay, Weaver and Liberty all referring to buts and pieces of London history. Some people are not happy with the names. One commuter who was interviwed, Own someone who didn’t want to give his dull name, said: “It’s nice to have the different sides of London, rather than just royalty. My only apprehension is that the names might be a bit hard to say for tourists.”
Goodness, if we really worried about foreigners being able to pronounce place names we would have to change names like Worcester, Gloucester, even Southhampton (which some French people find really difficult), let alone places like Slaithwaite (pronounced Slawit). I used to know someone who called Fuengirola Finger-ear-hole!
To underground/overground names commentator also pointed out that the new Suffragette line already had an unofficial name – rail workers had abbreviated Gospel Oak to Barking line as the Goblin – while the Euston to Watford section, with stops at Harlesden and Queen’s Park, had been known as the Harlequin in the 1980s and it seems that the Northern line was nearly named TootanCamden in the 1920s, according to the historian Robert Graves, a pun on the Tutankhamun craze of the time and the line’s route through Tooting and Camden.
But, after all, what’s in a name.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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