On Saturday, after I had said goodbye to the friendly group of former students who had treated me to a good Spanish lunch I strolled towards St Ann’s Square. I crossed a side road, one of those semi-pedestrianised roads which connect Deansgate to Cross Street. Two young women also crossed just behind me. A car was coming, rather faster than he should have been. I overheard one of the young women say to her friend, “Get a move on. he’s coming at pace!”
At pace !!! What sort of expression is that?
Well, to answer my own question, it’s another of those supposedly trendy expressions which annoy me. I keep hearing it in news reports and the like. What’s wrong with “fast” or “quickly”.
Another one is “going forward”. Nobody talks about stuff happening “in future” or “in the future”. It’s all “going forward”. And it really annoys me.
No doubt I’ll think of other examples. We need to speak clearly and plainly.
Kirsty Wark has left BBC’s Newsnight after 30 years. This article in praise of the presenter goes on quite a lot about her excellent earrings, her internet shopping habit, her love of labels, her deep feeling for a pattern or a row of buttons and the fact that her Instagram account reveals a hinterland as wide as the Firth of Clyde (she reads, she cooks, she darns socks). Do they go on at such length about male presenters wear? I wonder. I suppose it might happen as regards Owain Wyn Evans, DJ, drummer, TV presenter and for a while a weatherman, with his very dapper appearance in three piece suits in a range of colours.
On the whole though, there is almost always a lot more fuss made about what women in the public eye wear. Maybe it’s because we wear more varied styles of outfits that the men do. I spotted a report yesterday about Catherine, Princess of Wales (still sometimes referred to as Kate Middleton) meeting Carlos Alcaraz, the new young Spanish tennis star. The report was at pains to point out that she wore a bespoke dress costing something like £1,700!!
Sometimes I rate my clothes according to how many times I wear them and therefore how much each “wearing” is worth. So if a dress cost, for example, £50, by the time I’ve worn it 10 times, that’s £5 an outing, making the initial outlay worthwhile. (This is also the justification for spending money on good quality underwear, by the way.) Special occasion dresses, usually more expensive, are a different matter. I have a couple of outfits that are running at about £40+ an outing.
How many time will Princess Kate wear that very expensive dress? I wonder. Some years ago I saw criticism of Letizia, now Queen of Spain but then simply the wife of Felipe, Prince of Asturias, for wearing the same outfit on more than one occasion. Maybe they do have “standards to maintain” but it does seem rather extravagant to spend such a large sum on one dress when there are people who can’t afford to feed their children. Life is unfair!
I hear that they have discovered a deep cave on the moon. They reckon it could be used as a base for explorers and scientists. One report says that spacemen would need to abseil down into the cave and use booster packs to get out. Presumably, if they get around to exploiting it they will install some kind of system of lifts. Personally I think it’s where the moon-men are all hiding!
On the subject of aliens, here’s a cartoon which made me smile:
The captions translate as follows:
Small boy: “Grandad, in films why do the extraterrestrials always only attack the United States?”
Grandad: “They want to protect the world.”
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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