I have recently informed friends on Facebook that I don't want to be LinkedIn. I don't need another social network. I have not ventured into the world of tweeting and twittering. My husband is even worse ( or should that be better?) as he is a Facebook refusenik. He simply doesn't want anything to do with it. Just as well, I suppose, as it takes him all his time to deal with the emails that come in.
And now I've just read about someone employing a "social media manager" for a month. She can't keep up with her Facebook likes and comments, her tweets and her twitters and is experimenting with having an agency deal with it for her. I suppose that if you are a journalist you need to have a respectable number of "followers". It's a credibility thing apparently. But really, if you haven't the time to go through your Facebook stuff, does it matter? Surely it's better to be actually living your life and doing things than living a virtual life through the electronic media. Weird and strange! All part of modern magic and witchcraft.
In my Italian conversation class we have been talking about Hallowe'en. Yes, I know it's been and gone but we had a week off for half term when Hallowe'en came along. Now, I am one of those who has gone on and on about Hallowe'en, at least in its modern "trick or treat" incarnation, being an American invention. A lot of the things we talked about and read about revealed that youngsters going round from house to house was a traditional part of activities at this time of year. Granted what they were doing was offering to pray for the souls of the dead but they were receiving sweets, fruits and occasionally money for it.
It all goes back, of course, to pagan rituals. We had been asked to come prepared to talk about our own childhood memories of Hallowe'en. So I talked about "apple bobbing" at hotspot suppers and going around asking for a penny for the guy in the run up to bonfire night. A little investigation showed that the game of floating apples in a bucket of water and trying to get them out with your teeth was almost certainly introduced by the Romans as part of the celebration of the goddess Pomona, goddess of fruit trees and represented by ... wait for it ... an apple tree. It's all about fertility rites and stuff like that.
And even the song sung by kids collecting (no, begging!!) pennies for the guy (We come a cob a coalin', come a coalin', come a coalin'
We come a cob a coalin' on/(for) BonFire Night. ) is believed to have been part of old Mummers Plays before the Gunpowder Plot stuff along.
So first we had pagan rituals, which the Romans combined with the worship of their many gods and goddesses. Then along came Christianity and overlaid it's celebrations on the pagan, Celtic, Roman stuff. And now we can put it all out into the world via social media.
Is nothing new under the sun?
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
Monday, 10 November 2014
Understanding Languages.
I stood at a bus stop in Oldham town centre today. Two women were talking away nineteen to the dozen, probably in Punjabi but it could well have been one of the other Asian languages. After a while, a large, red faced man looked around at the rest of in the queue and said, " I can't understand a word they are saying". "No," I thought, "and you probably wouldn't understand if they were speaking German either."
Except that I didn't just think it; I said it out loud. He was a bit surprised but finally agreed with me and went on to mutter something about the women having their faces covered. One of them was wearing the headscarf while the other did have a black veil as well, hiding her face. "If you live in this country," he observed, "you should live by our rules". Ok, fair enough, but I don't think we have rules about what you can wear in the street. And so long as there is no obvious security problem we should maintain our country's freedoms. I don't think there was any question that this was a woman chatting to a friend. And provided she would be prepared to unveil in private when asked to do so by a female police officer, I really don't see what the problem is.
I can't say I really like the increase in the wearing of the burka in our towns and cities but neither do I like rules and regulations that say what you can and cannot wear. If we go down that road, we'll ban young people from dressing as Goths, young men from shaving their heads and wearing aggressive looking piercings, not to mention tattoos. It's far too easy to take offence at what people wear and to judge them by their outfits.
What I didn't say was that if the fat, red faced man had been standing at a bus stop in a city in the Indian subcontinent, chatting away in English to a friend, there would probably have been people at the stop who understood him. And quite possibly those two ladies also understood what he said. When Phil and I are abroad, even in a country where we speak the language well, we tend to speak English to each other. It's normal. Although I know people who claim that after years of living out of the UK the language of their adopted country has come to dominate their brain, I still think your first language does to some extent define who you are.
Which brings me to languages that are at risk of disappearing. The language expert Christopher Moseley of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies has compiled a list of 33 languages that are under-threat, including four languages spoken in British territories: Jersey French, Guernsey French, Manx and Cornish. Jersey French still has about 1000 native speakers but Manx is in a bad way because the last first-language speaker died in 1974. There are still Manx speakers in the Isle of Man but English is their first language. Dr Moseley says that Cornish and Manx have been / are being revived in a systematic fashion and there are tourist organisations running study holidays for all the languages.
And once again, I find myself in two minds about the whole business. It's a shame for languages to disappear but if they are kept alive in an artificial way is that truly a good thing? Is such a language still a living language?
I'm reminded of something I heard on one of Stephen Fry's TV programmes about language, in which he went around the UK looking at local dialects and showing off his ability to put on regional accents. In one of the programmes he interviewed an American who had spoken only Klingon to his small son for the first two years of the child's life. Dr d'Armond Speers, a linguist from Minnesota, wanted to see if it would be possible for his son's first word to be "vav", Klingon for "dad".
Now, Klingon is a language invented for the TV series Star Trek and lacked a whole lot of everyday vocabulary, such as "baby bottle". Consequently, despite Dr d'Armond Speers working very hard at it, his project was only partially successful. Add to that the fact that his son was spoken to in English by everyone else and quickly learned that Daddy also spoke English and you can see why the child pretty soon made more progress in English than in Klingon. Here's a link to an article about Dr D'Armond Speers' project.
Even languages such as Basque have had to "borrow" from languages such as Castilian Spanish to provide modern vocabulary. And Basque is a language that has probably been around longer than almost all others so what chance does a totally invented language have.
You can't legislate for the way a language develops. Maybe the minority language speakers need to find an additional way of asserting their identity.
Except that I didn't just think it; I said it out loud. He was a bit surprised but finally agreed with me and went on to mutter something about the women having their faces covered. One of them was wearing the headscarf while the other did have a black veil as well, hiding her face. "If you live in this country," he observed, "you should live by our rules". Ok, fair enough, but I don't think we have rules about what you can wear in the street. And so long as there is no obvious security problem we should maintain our country's freedoms. I don't think there was any question that this was a woman chatting to a friend. And provided she would be prepared to unveil in private when asked to do so by a female police officer, I really don't see what the problem is.
I can't say I really like the increase in the wearing of the burka in our towns and cities but neither do I like rules and regulations that say what you can and cannot wear. If we go down that road, we'll ban young people from dressing as Goths, young men from shaving their heads and wearing aggressive looking piercings, not to mention tattoos. It's far too easy to take offence at what people wear and to judge them by their outfits.
What I didn't say was that if the fat, red faced man had been standing at a bus stop in a city in the Indian subcontinent, chatting away in English to a friend, there would probably have been people at the stop who understood him. And quite possibly those two ladies also understood what he said. When Phil and I are abroad, even in a country where we speak the language well, we tend to speak English to each other. It's normal. Although I know people who claim that after years of living out of the UK the language of their adopted country has come to dominate their brain, I still think your first language does to some extent define who you are.
Which brings me to languages that are at risk of disappearing. The language expert Christopher Moseley of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies has compiled a list of 33 languages that are under-threat, including four languages spoken in British territories: Jersey French, Guernsey French, Manx and Cornish. Jersey French still has about 1000 native speakers but Manx is in a bad way because the last first-language speaker died in 1974. There are still Manx speakers in the Isle of Man but English is their first language. Dr Moseley says that Cornish and Manx have been / are being revived in a systematic fashion and there are tourist organisations running study holidays for all the languages.
And once again, I find myself in two minds about the whole business. It's a shame for languages to disappear but if they are kept alive in an artificial way is that truly a good thing? Is such a language still a living language?
I'm reminded of something I heard on one of Stephen Fry's TV programmes about language, in which he went around the UK looking at local dialects and showing off his ability to put on regional accents. In one of the programmes he interviewed an American who had spoken only Klingon to his small son for the first two years of the child's life. Dr d'Armond Speers, a linguist from Minnesota, wanted to see if it would be possible for his son's first word to be "vav", Klingon for "dad".
Now, Klingon is a language invented for the TV series Star Trek and lacked a whole lot of everyday vocabulary, such as "baby bottle". Consequently, despite Dr d'Armond Speers working very hard at it, his project was only partially successful. Add to that the fact that his son was spoken to in English by everyone else and quickly learned that Daddy also spoke English and you can see why the child pretty soon made more progress in English than in Klingon. Here's a link to an article about Dr D'Armond Speers' project.
Even languages such as Basque have had to "borrow" from languages such as Castilian Spanish to provide modern vocabulary. And Basque is a language that has probably been around longer than almost all others so what chance does a totally invented language have.
You can't legislate for the way a language develops. Maybe the minority language speakers need to find an additional way of asserting their identity.
Sunday, 9 November 2014
Names, nostalgia and entertainment.
On the BBC Radio 4 programme "Last Word", where they talk about famous people who have died in the last week, today they included Acker Bilk, jazz clarinettist, much admired by my late father. Acker Bilk died last weekend, aged 85, not a bad age at all. Phil wondered aloud where the name Acker came from. So I googled it. It turns out that his real name, given name, call it what you will, was Bernard. Acker is Somerset slang for "mate" or "pal". There you go. You learn a little every day. Somehow Bernard Bilk lacks the ring that Acker Bilk has. Would he have become famous if he had not used that stage name? I wonder!
I mostly remember Acker (aka Bernard) Bilk for his 1962 hit, " Stranger on the Shore". Why do I remember it? Because the year before it became a hit, the BBC used it as the theme tune for a series about a French girl who came to England as an au pair. I had just started learning French at school, thought my young French teacher was wonderful - as you do when you are 12 going on 13 - and loved all things to do with France and the French. The tune was originally called Jenny but they changed the name to match the TV series. Another bit of useless knowledge!
That's my bit of nostalgia over. For the time being anyway. I have read today that a team of psychologists have been researching nostalgia and have decided that on the whole it is good for us, helping us to deal with difficult times in life. Apparently women in the German concentration camps spent a good deal of time talking about family meals they had enjoyed in the past. Strangely enough, this actually made the hunger they were going through easier to bear. One of the conclusions that the psychologists came to was that children whose parents indulge in reminiscing about good times they have had, both with said children and before they came on the scene, were better at creative writing than those whose parents never talked about such things.
In the last few days we have been to the cinema twice, not having been for ages and ages before that. It's a bit like buses: you don't see one for ages and then two come along at once. So it is for us with films at the cinema. Having seen "Le Jour se Lève" on Wednesday, we decided yesterday to head back into Manchester to see "Mr Turner", a new film by Mike Leigh about the painter Turner. So we saw a very old film and a very new film.
I can highly recommend "Mr Turner". The scenery alone is enough to take your breath away, views obviously chosen to bring to mind Turner's landscapes. The make-up artist need to be praised as well for the tremendous job they did in ageing the actors as time went by. Timothy Spall as Turner was splendidly expressive in his use of the grunt as a means of communication. Here is a link to the official trailer for the film.
Today we took advantage of the sunshine to take ourselves out for a walk around the area. You have to seize the moment. Tomorrow it might be raining again. Who knows.
Mind you, if it is we can perhaps go and see another film!
I mostly remember Acker (aka Bernard) Bilk for his 1962 hit, " Stranger on the Shore". Why do I remember it? Because the year before it became a hit, the BBC used it as the theme tune for a series about a French girl who came to England as an au pair. I had just started learning French at school, thought my young French teacher was wonderful - as you do when you are 12 going on 13 - and loved all things to do with France and the French. The tune was originally called Jenny but they changed the name to match the TV series. Another bit of useless knowledge!
That's my bit of nostalgia over. For the time being anyway. I have read today that a team of psychologists have been researching nostalgia and have decided that on the whole it is good for us, helping us to deal with difficult times in life. Apparently women in the German concentration camps spent a good deal of time talking about family meals they had enjoyed in the past. Strangely enough, this actually made the hunger they were going through easier to bear. One of the conclusions that the psychologists came to was that children whose parents indulge in reminiscing about good times they have had, both with said children and before they came on the scene, were better at creative writing than those whose parents never talked about such things.
In the last few days we have been to the cinema twice, not having been for ages and ages before that. It's a bit like buses: you don't see one for ages and then two come along at once. So it is for us with films at the cinema. Having seen "Le Jour se Lève" on Wednesday, we decided yesterday to head back into Manchester to see "Mr Turner", a new film by Mike Leigh about the painter Turner. So we saw a very old film and a very new film.
I can highly recommend "Mr Turner". The scenery alone is enough to take your breath away, views obviously chosen to bring to mind Turner's landscapes. The make-up artist need to be praised as well for the tremendous job they did in ageing the actors as time went by. Timothy Spall as Turner was splendidly expressive in his use of the grunt as a means of communication. Here is a link to the official trailer for the film.
Today we took advantage of the sunshine to take ourselves out for a walk around the area. You have to seize the moment. Tomorrow it might be raining again. Who knows.
Mind you, if it is we can perhaps go and see another film!
Friday, 7 November 2014
Words, wasps and whatnot!
The French word "meurtre" which now means "murder" originally meant bruise. The English word "kill" originally meant "hit", giving a little insight into "a hit man". This is one of the odd facts I have picked up over the last week.
Here's another: texting while driving kills more American teenagers than drink-driving does. I wonder what the statistics are for the UK? And how many people do you see on a regular basis using their mobile phones while driving? Too many. Texting is extra crazy, however, even if you think you can text-type without looking. The average texter, I read, takes their eye off the road for less than five seconds but at 55mph, that’s like driving the length of a football field blindfold. Selfies come into this madness as well. One in three Britons under 24 admitted snapping away while at the wheel in a recent survey for Ford. The latest stupidly dangerous trend is for making Vines, or short video clips, while driving; last month it emerged that a 23-year-old had filmed himself being chased by the police at 60mph through Burnley, ending with the prophetic words: “I’m going to prison now.” Not my kind of thrill seeking!
Last night we stayed up late to watch TV. Phil goes out to play chess on a Thursday evening and when he came in last night we decided to watch the last episode of a series about the fire of London: The Great Fire, a romp through the London of Charles II, with splendid sets and well dressed rich people and dirty looking poor people. Not a bad series, it had a rather Disneyworld happy ending where Thomas Farriner (the aptly named baker from Pudding Lane - surely Farriner must have connections to farine or flour) saved his sister in law from being hanged for starting the fire as part of a papist plot, King Charles proved himself to be a strong king, despite what his brother thought of him earlier and good old Samuel Pepys and his wife learned to live with the love they had. As I said, a bit sugary!
Oh, and the adverts! Because the mini series was on ITV there were commercial breaks. We have lost the habit of having our watching interrupted in this way. I swear the breaks were almost as long as the segments of drama. Back when I was a teacher and had to produce complicated lesson plans for inspections and observations, we were advised to plan our lessons in 10 - 15 minute chunks. This was the maximum expected attention span of students! Really! I wanted mine to study a text, work together at understanding it and extract some facts to relate back to the class. This demanded being on task for rather more than 10 minutes! However, if that is truly the maximum attention span of today's 16 to 18 year olds maybe it is as a result of watching TV programmes with too many commercial breaks. OK, another rant over!
Anyway we stayed up late and so I went to bed later than usual. Phil stayed up even later and went off to sleep in the attic so as not to disturb me. All in vain because at five in the morning he did disturb me when he was woken by an angry wasp who stung him, probably because he turned over in bed and disturbed its waspy slumbers! Where did a wasp come from in November? Had it inadvertently flown in one sunny day and decided to winter over in our attic bedroom? How long would it have stayed there if Phil had not rolled over and made it angry? All unanswered questions. And that was the end of the wasp's attempts to spend winter in a warmer place than the great outdoors! And the end of the wasp, in fact!
Now, when I commented yesterday on the difficulty of keeping to any kind of routine, I wasn't expecting disruption of that kind!
Here's another: texting while driving kills more American teenagers than drink-driving does. I wonder what the statistics are for the UK? And how many people do you see on a regular basis using their mobile phones while driving? Too many. Texting is extra crazy, however, even if you think you can text-type without looking. The average texter, I read, takes their eye off the road for less than five seconds but at 55mph, that’s like driving the length of a football field blindfold. Selfies come into this madness as well. One in three Britons under 24 admitted snapping away while at the wheel in a recent survey for Ford. The latest stupidly dangerous trend is for making Vines, or short video clips, while driving; last month it emerged that a 23-year-old had filmed himself being chased by the police at 60mph through Burnley, ending with the prophetic words: “I’m going to prison now.” Not my kind of thrill seeking!
Last night we stayed up late to watch TV. Phil goes out to play chess on a Thursday evening and when he came in last night we decided to watch the last episode of a series about the fire of London: The Great Fire, a romp through the London of Charles II, with splendid sets and well dressed rich people and dirty looking poor people. Not a bad series, it had a rather Disneyworld happy ending where Thomas Farriner (the aptly named baker from Pudding Lane - surely Farriner must have connections to farine or flour) saved his sister in law from being hanged for starting the fire as part of a papist plot, King Charles proved himself to be a strong king, despite what his brother thought of him earlier and good old Samuel Pepys and his wife learned to live with the love they had. As I said, a bit sugary!
Oh, and the adverts! Because the mini series was on ITV there were commercial breaks. We have lost the habit of having our watching interrupted in this way. I swear the breaks were almost as long as the segments of drama. Back when I was a teacher and had to produce complicated lesson plans for inspections and observations, we were advised to plan our lessons in 10 - 15 minute chunks. This was the maximum expected attention span of students! Really! I wanted mine to study a text, work together at understanding it and extract some facts to relate back to the class. This demanded being on task for rather more than 10 minutes! However, if that is truly the maximum attention span of today's 16 to 18 year olds maybe it is as a result of watching TV programmes with too many commercial breaks. OK, another rant over!
Anyway we stayed up late and so I went to bed later than usual. Phil stayed up even later and went off to sleep in the attic so as not to disturb me. All in vain because at five in the morning he did disturb me when he was woken by an angry wasp who stung him, probably because he turned over in bed and disturbed its waspy slumbers! Where did a wasp come from in November? Had it inadvertently flown in one sunny day and decided to winter over in our attic bedroom? How long would it have stayed there if Phil had not rolled over and made it angry? All unanswered questions. And that was the end of the wasp's attempts to spend winter in a warmer place than the great outdoors! And the end of the wasp, in fact!
Now, when I commented yesterday on the difficulty of keeping to any kind of routine, I wasn't expecting disruption of that kind!
Thursday, 6 November 2014
Routine remarks.
They say we are all creatures of habit and yet it doesn't take much to throw your routine out. In my case, going off for a weekend away is enough to remove all semblance of a routine in my life. Not that I am complaining, far from it. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
Of course it doesn't help if, like me, you manage to lose your purse and so have to spend an inordinate length of time cancelling cards, renewing cards and running around seeing if the missing purse has been handed in anywhere. Most of the taxi drivers in central Oldham must now know my face as I have tried to locate the taxi driver in whose cab I almost certainly dropped the purse.
And who knew the hoops you have to jump through to cancel cards? In order to do so you have to answer almost as many security questions as when you do online banking and suchlike. I suppose this is to prevent malicious exes from cancelling their previous partner's cards and making life difficult for him or her: the modern equivalent of cutting up all the suits in your ex- (or unfaithful) husband's wardrobe. Come to that, it was that kind of jealous "make life difficult for him" action that was the basis of Woody Allen's film "Blue Jasmine".
One of the best catch-22 moments of this card replacement stuff was the website for a store loyalty card that asked for my loyalty card number. Yes, if I had the card I would give you the number, Mr Website, but I don't have the card. Doh! How silly can life get?
Talking of films, yesterday we went off to the Cornerhouse Cinema in Manchester to watch a remastered (I believe that is the correct term) version of Marcel Carné's film "Le Jour Se Lève" with Jean Gabin and Arletty, one of those stars known just by one name. A sad tale of love and passion, it still holds up well even though made in 1939. The number of police deployed to capture one man was astounding and it was interesting to see the 1939 forerunner of the modern French CRS police force used to clear the square of sympathetic onlookers: a wall of police riot shield simply pushing the crowd backwards. Quite a scary image!
I wonder who they would cast nowadays in the Jean Gabin role, smouldering eyes under his flat cap! It would be a quite different film, of course, if they made it now. Perhaps the music hall dog trainer, the older man who seduces the young woman and interferes with the romance, would become a fading older rock star. Or in the light of recent scandals, an ageing DJ. No, they shouldn't do a remake. On the whole I don't really see the point of making a new version of something that worked well in the past.
And finally, here is a bit more in the continuing spider saga. I read the other day that a singer I've never heard of called Katie Melua had a spider living in her ear for a week. Granted it was only very tine but even so, it was still a spider. And it was living in her ear.
For those interested here is a link to the whole story.
Of course it doesn't help if, like me, you manage to lose your purse and so have to spend an inordinate length of time cancelling cards, renewing cards and running around seeing if the missing purse has been handed in anywhere. Most of the taxi drivers in central Oldham must now know my face as I have tried to locate the taxi driver in whose cab I almost certainly dropped the purse.
And who knew the hoops you have to jump through to cancel cards? In order to do so you have to answer almost as many security questions as when you do online banking and suchlike. I suppose this is to prevent malicious exes from cancelling their previous partner's cards and making life difficult for him or her: the modern equivalent of cutting up all the suits in your ex- (or unfaithful) husband's wardrobe. Come to that, it was that kind of jealous "make life difficult for him" action that was the basis of Woody Allen's film "Blue Jasmine".
One of the best catch-22 moments of this card replacement stuff was the website for a store loyalty card that asked for my loyalty card number. Yes, if I had the card I would give you the number, Mr Website, but I don't have the card. Doh! How silly can life get?
Talking of films, yesterday we went off to the Cornerhouse Cinema in Manchester to watch a remastered (I believe that is the correct term) version of Marcel Carné's film "Le Jour Se Lève" with Jean Gabin and Arletty, one of those stars known just by one name. A sad tale of love and passion, it still holds up well even though made in 1939. The number of police deployed to capture one man was astounding and it was interesting to see the 1939 forerunner of the modern French CRS police force used to clear the square of sympathetic onlookers: a wall of police riot shield simply pushing the crowd backwards. Quite a scary image!I wonder who they would cast nowadays in the Jean Gabin role, smouldering eyes under his flat cap! It would be a quite different film, of course, if they made it now. Perhaps the music hall dog trainer, the older man who seduces the young woman and interferes with the romance, would become a fading older rock star. Or in the light of recent scandals, an ageing DJ. No, they shouldn't do a remake. On the whole I don't really see the point of making a new version of something that worked well in the past. And finally, here is a bit more in the continuing spider saga. I read the other day that a singer I've never heard of called Katie Melua had a spider living in her ear for a week. Granted it was only very tine but even so, it was still a spider. And it was living in her ear.
For those interested here is a link to the whole story.
Monday, 3 November 2014
The end of the weekend.
So he we are back in Delph after a weekend in the sunny but windy North East of England, where they all speak with a lovely singsong lilt and an astounding number do actually go out in the evening without their coats. Coming back from a meal out on Saturday night we heard a bunch of youngish men, all in jeans and t-shirt, no jackets, mocking another friend just a little further up the road: "Look at him in this TRENCH coat!!!!"
There were even little kids yesterday morning out and about with their bare arms. As for me, I had my woolly hat and gloves on.
The bus and metro into Newcastle centre worked fine. Our train was waiting at the platform but no-one was allowed on until about two minutes before the train was due to depart. This of course led to a flurry of activity as people hunted for their seats prior to departure. A lot of pointless hanging around on a windy platform.
The public address system on the train advised those who had standing-only tickets (who knew that you buy such tickets?) could upgrade to a seat by paying an extra £6.00. After Darlington, (well, I think it was Darlington) there was another announcement that people who had boarded the train with tickets for the earlier train which had been cancelled could collect a form from the company's complaints desk at their destination and apply to have their fare refunded. If your train is delayed by more than an hour, it seems, you can do this. What an excellent bit of customer service!
I heard one poor soul trying to buy a single ticket for a station a little further down the line, only to be told that our train would not be stopping there. He would have to go on to York and catch another train back, presumably costing him rather more money. The moral of that story is that you should always check your train before boarding. Someone else obviously had the same idea as she was frantically asking people if this was the Manchester train as the doors closed. She expressed some concern to her small daughter that Grandma and Granddad might have just ushered them into the first train that came along in their haste to be rid of them Are there really grandparents like that?
We however had our reserved seats and were fine. Perhaps not quite so exclusive as on our toward journey when we had travelled first class and received free coffee and buns. For some crazy reason, when we booked our tickets online it had been cheaper to travel first class on that particular train booked on that particular day. How very odd!
So there we were, in our seats, equipped with the newspaper to keep us busy. I discovered some interesting facts:
We chatted about Russia and how English people view it. He told me that reading Tolstoy in translation was no good, rather like just looking at pictures of food. Well, I would probably agree with that but Russian isn't one of my languages, unfortunately. Our conversation was cut short when Phil found us two seats together and I moved over. Shortly after this my new Russian friend came over to ask for advice on getting to his final destination, a hotel in Oldham. We consulted websites on the phone and found out which was the best tram stop for him. Others in the compartment joined in the advice-giving and by the time he and his friends alighted they were accompanied by a couple of locals prepared to point them in the right direction for the last stage of their journey. Perfect!
There were even little kids yesterday morning out and about with their bare arms. As for me, I had my woolly hat and gloves on.
The bus and metro into Newcastle centre worked fine. Our train was waiting at the platform but no-one was allowed on until about two minutes before the train was due to depart. This of course led to a flurry of activity as people hunted for their seats prior to departure. A lot of pointless hanging around on a windy platform.
The public address system on the train advised those who had standing-only tickets (who knew that you buy such tickets?) could upgrade to a seat by paying an extra £6.00. After Darlington, (well, I think it was Darlington) there was another announcement that people who had boarded the train with tickets for the earlier train which had been cancelled could collect a form from the company's complaints desk at their destination and apply to have their fare refunded. If your train is delayed by more than an hour, it seems, you can do this. What an excellent bit of customer service!
I heard one poor soul trying to buy a single ticket for a station a little further down the line, only to be told that our train would not be stopping there. He would have to go on to York and catch another train back, presumably costing him rather more money. The moral of that story is that you should always check your train before boarding. Someone else obviously had the same idea as she was frantically asking people if this was the Manchester train as the doors closed. She expressed some concern to her small daughter that Grandma and Granddad might have just ushered them into the first train that came along in their haste to be rid of them Are there really grandparents like that?
We however had our reserved seats and were fine. Perhaps not quite so exclusive as on our toward journey when we had travelled first class and received free coffee and buns. For some crazy reason, when we booked our tickets online it had been cheaper to travel first class on that particular train booked on that particular day. How very odd!
So there we were, in our seats, equipped with the newspaper to keep us busy. I discovered some interesting facts:
- The NHS pays out huge amounts of money for agency nurses - up to £1,800 per day per nurse - because there has been a reduction in training places for nurses!! Can you believe it?
- UKIP is recruiting young members. the junior branch is called Young Independence and some 2,600 young "kippers" are out campaigning for the party!! Not good!
- The latest trend is for breakfast raves. In London, and now apparently in Liverpool, there are monthly opportunities to dance in the morning before going on to work. Organised by people who enjoyed going to raves in the 1980s, these are like early morning parties but without alcohol there are people who get up early, spend an hour dancing happily and then get changed into their office clothes and go on to work. The dancing gets the adrenalin going and sets them up for the day.
- Leading tobacco manufacturers are backing an organisation aimed at warning people that if they don't help defend rights of smokers then their right to overeat and overdrink might also become subject to "regulation". This as there is already talk of putting warnings on bottles about the calorific value of alcoholic drinks - 170 calories in a glass of wine or half of lager, etc., as if they will stop people drinking. Somehow I have my doubts, and anyway that's not really a reason to say that smokers should be allowed to pollute our atmosphere. Not until watching people eat makes you put on weight anyway. Although I might agree to the forced closing of smelly hot dog stands.
- And then we were back in Manchester and catching the tram back to Oldham. There were few seats available. A smart young man occupied an aisle seat, leaving the window seat empty. When I asked him to move over, he gestured for me to sit by the window and then proceeded to ask me how the tram system worked and what he needed to do about a ticket. I pointed out that he should have bought a ticket before boarding and he produced such a ticket but he was confused about who he needed to show it to. So I told him about ticket inspectors and so on and then, being a nosy person and somewhat intrigued by his accent, I asked where he was from. He was Russian and was on his way to "study" in Oldham, together with a couple of compatriots, something related to his unidentified profession.
We chatted about Russia and how English people view it. He told me that reading Tolstoy in translation was no good, rather like just looking at pictures of food. Well, I would probably agree with that but Russian isn't one of my languages, unfortunately. Our conversation was cut short when Phil found us two seats together and I moved over. Shortly after this my new Russian friend came over to ask for advice on getting to his final destination, a hotel in Oldham. We consulted websites on the phone and found out which was the best tram stop for him. Others in the compartment joined in the advice-giving and by the time he and his friends alighted they were accompanied by a couple of locals prepared to point them in the right direction for the last stage of their journey. Perfect!
Saturday, 1 November 2014
Languages, eggs and dogs.
English is the most common second language in the world. It's official, at least according to this website.
The site also tells us that Polish is the second language in England and Catalan is the second language is Spain. By second language I assume they mean the language with the most speakers in that country, rather than the second official language. I can think of some Galicians who would be a bit upset to think that Catalan was the second language of their country.
I also discovered that second language of Portugal is something called Mirandese. I did not know such a language existed. This is not really a surprise. I am sure that there are lots of languages in the world that I have never heard of but I thought I had a pretty good idea about Romance languages. And Mirandese is in that family, originating, I have since found out, in the Leon region of Spain and still spoken in parts of Portugal. It's an old language. I wonder if it predates Galician for I know quite a lot of fanatical speakers of that language who tell me that it is just about the oldest language around in the Iberian peninsula, certainly more ancient than Castilian Spanish. It's always interesting to come across something new, even when it's really old.
From reading my friend Colin's blog, I understand that Hallowe'en seems to have morphed into "Alowín" in Spanish. Strange, considering that today is Todos los Santos, All Saints' Day, the more traditional celebration in countries like Spain and Italy.
Here in the North East of England, where we are staying at a friend's house, celebrating Hallowe'en has long been a tradition and many houses are decorated with broomsticks, spiders and goodness know what else. This did not prevent some of the houses in our friend's street having eggs thrown at them last night - another local tradition. They must have run out of eggs before they reached her house for her front door was spared.
Our friend Sharon has a dog. She looks like a very fierce dog and does have a very gruff bark. All of this is belied by her name: Mitzi. In fact, though, once she knows you she is very soft and sociable and just barks and rumbles at you when she wants some attention. Now, Mitzi really thinks she is human and when you sit down to eat she wants to join in, not just to beg food but to be around, sharing the experience. This is borne out by the fact that when she has her food she will push her bowl into the room where her people are, not really willing to share her food but to have you join in the conversation with her about how good it is.
None of this, however, convinces me of the need to have a dog!
I also discovered that second language of Portugal is something called Mirandese. I did not know such a language existed. This is not really a surprise. I am sure that there are lots of languages in the world that I have never heard of but I thought I had a pretty good idea about Romance languages. And Mirandese is in that family, originating, I have since found out, in the Leon region of Spain and still spoken in parts of Portugal. It's an old language. I wonder if it predates Galician for I know quite a lot of fanatical speakers of that language who tell me that it is just about the oldest language around in the Iberian peninsula, certainly more ancient than Castilian Spanish. It's always interesting to come across something new, even when it's really old.
From reading my friend Colin's blog, I understand that Hallowe'en seems to have morphed into "Alowín" in Spanish. Strange, considering that today is Todos los Santos, All Saints' Day, the more traditional celebration in countries like Spain and Italy.
Here in the North East of England, where we are staying at a friend's house, celebrating Hallowe'en has long been a tradition and many houses are decorated with broomsticks, spiders and goodness know what else. This did not prevent some of the houses in our friend's street having eggs thrown at them last night - another local tradition. They must have run out of eggs before they reached her house for her front door was spared.
Our friend Sharon has a dog. She looks like a very fierce dog and does have a very gruff bark. All of this is belied by her name: Mitzi. In fact, though, once she knows you she is very soft and sociable and just barks and rumbles at you when she wants some attention. Now, Mitzi really thinks she is human and when you sit down to eat she wants to join in, not just to beg food but to be around, sharing the experience. This is borne out by the fact that when she has her food she will push her bowl into the room where her people are, not really willing to share her food but to have you join in the conversation with her about how good it is.
None of this, however, convinces me of the need to have a dog!
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