Naming of Stuff

Innominate Blog

Auster III

G-AHLK is you will agree a useless name for a blog and I am sorry. It is called that after an Auster which belonged to my father and was the first aircraft I went up in, when I was but 17 days old.  Its registration number was G-AHLK and when my infant brother was learning to read he looked at the aeroplane and sounded out the letters, Guh, A (as pronounced in 'apple'), Huh, Ull (as pronounced in 'full'), Kuh, and asked my mother 'What does that spell?'  What a dear little fellow!
 

Airbus A340 property of R. Branson

Now he is a  pilot himself and flies giant Airbusses.

Since that incident G-AHLK has always been pronounced Guh-A-Huh-Ull-Kuh and anything awaiting a name gets called that in default, eg. puppies, new babies, yachts, mansions, racehorses hem hem and as you can see, blogs, while arguments go on: 
 'NO. No son of mine is going to be christened "Annachie". Imagine in Waitrose having to say "Put the papaya down, Annachie."  His name shall be John.'    'All right then but can he have Annachie as a second name?'    'No. I gave in over calling that ridiculous cat "Vodka". It's MY turn to choose.'    'Yeah? Well I HATE calling the boat the Dolores Haze. You owe me for that' etc. 
Naming a blog is impossible, and therefore it is still called G-AHLK. Also I would like someone to think up a new word for 'blog' which I consider a despicable term.

 

 

 

 

More Instructions on Use of English

'So'

This troublesome word is often used incorrectly to mean 'very', usually with an exclamation mark; 'Julia was so grateful when the torturers left!' meaning, 'Julia was immensely grateful when the torturers left.'

This custom has arisen because people ought to be employing the expression 'so... that...' eg. 'Julia was so grateful when the torturers left that she permitted herself a wan smile.'

Exclamation marks should be used with extreme care and are rarely a good idea. 
 



The Queen fascinated by details of my journey 

Beware of sentences like this one, where the 'so' has got in without an exclamation mark to put you on your guard: 'It was my travel arrangements that the Queen found so interesting.'  Here the writer should put 'The Queen found my travel arrangements very interesting,' or, 'The Queen found my travel arrangements so interesting that she questioned me about them at length.'
 

N.B. 'such' holds identical dangers. 'It was such a relief for Julia when the torturers laid down their instruments!'  Such a relief that... what? Come, come. 'It was such a relief for Julia when they laid down their instruments that she thanked the torturers piteously.'   Poor old Julia. 

 

Journalists have developed the habit of beginning their articles with 'so.'  Eg. 'So it's Saturday morning and the torturers are wiping the smile off Julia's face.' This is a very fine example as it uses the present tense as well. Here, 'so' is completely meaningless and is only there to increase the word-count.
It is possible that the columnist imagines that it sounds friendly and makes the reader feel as though he is being personally addressed; if this is the case the columnist deludes himself and should be furnished with a P45.
 

Cancel your subscription to any newspaper that permits the practice. We must fight back, everyone.

Resentful Diatribe

Lent:  Here we are on the fifth Monday of it and I have really had enough. Lent has many nasty points:

1. The hymns are absolute dirges. They have boring tunes, and dour words written by well-behaved people.
2. Almsgiving. There are precious few alms around here and we can not spare any.
3. Confession. I have got to go and squeal to poor Fr O'Hanrahan from whom no secrets must be hid.
4. Fasting. I give up chocolate every Lent, but the reason for this is beyond me. It achieves NOTHING and depletes my endorphin levels. And imagine renouncing CLARET! I don't renounce it - there are limits - but there are people who do, to my certain knowledge. That strikes me as being borderline insane.
5. They have covered up the statue of Gentle Jesus at the Sacred Heart with a hideous purple cloth.

   
   

   Primroses. Nicer than Lent

   
   
6. Worst of all, Lent is LONG. Why does everyone think it consists of only 40 days? It stretches on and on, week after dreary week, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. The number of days is given by the formula 7n+4 where n = the number of weeks. There is no integer n such that 7n+4=40, as any toddler could tell you.

In fact Lent lasts for 46 days, which means you get 6 extra days in the arid desert where no chocolate is and no claret consoles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Say it to Julia

 

These are some words and verbal practices which are repugnant. Their use is forbidden at the blog headquarters.

 

• Calling films 'movies'. This is akin to saying moo-cow when you are actually referring to Bos taurus or the common domestic cow, and it demeans both the speaker and the person addressed.

• Use of 'to be like' instead of 'to say'. To increase my disapproval, this is frequently found in an inappropriate present tense. eg. 'I'm like, Do it to Julia, ok?' meaning 'I said "Do it to Julia"' [though 'I pleaded with the torturers, saying  Do it unto Julia' is preferable to either].  You wouldn't say 'Her Majesty was like, have you come far?', now would you? If you would then you have no business mingling with royalty and should return to your cave immediately.
 

• The construction 'just because... doesn't mean...'. eg. 'Just because the Queen asked if I'd come far didn't mean she gave a tinkers' cuss whether I had or not.' This completely fails to be a sentence, since the verb, 'did', has no subject. You must put in 'it' -  'Just because the Queen asked if I'd come far it didn't mean she gave a tinkers' cuss.' Even so, the form remains ugly. A happier phrasing would be 'Her Majesty cared not a rap whether I'd travelled an inch or a thousand miles, yet still she asked me how far I had come.'  
 

• The term 'wellies'. Often applied to what are properly Gumboots. Should only be used when conversing with persons of 6 months' age or younger, but is ill-advised even then. The child will behave better if treated like an adult from an early age.
 

• Saying 'like' instead of 'as if'. eg. 'Julia felt like she was being speared with a thousand arrows.' No: Julia felt as if she were being speared with 1000 arrows. She felt like St Sebastian.
 

• 'Out the window'. eg. 'They  threw Julia out the window.' This is incorrect. It should be: 'They threw Julia out of the window.'   The Latin e, ex (out) takes the ablative case and one must say 'out FROM, or (in English more usually) out OF, the window'. To do otherwise betrays ignorance, and scorn for one's hearers' sensibilities.

 

Another thing that annoys me to high heaven is the gratuitous alteration of Prayer Book language in the fatuous name of making it more accessible to the oikery. eg. 'Unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid' is apparently easier to understand if rendered 'to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden'. Really, if you're as thick as that you aren't going to have much chance of comprehending the mysteries of the catechism anyway. When I was a baby I thought 'Hallowed be thy name' was a posh way of saying hello to God because God was too exalted to be said hello to like an ordinary mortal, but once the proper meaning was explained to me I could see the logic perfectly well and was quite unharmed by the experience. It's not difficult, and there is considerable value in using words which you know have been used by your forefathers for centuries. It lends a reassuring constancy.
DO NOT MANGLE THE CRANMER.

 

 

 

 

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When shown this advertisement for proofreading he said  "Have you seen my phone? What's for lunch? What time's the last bus to Taunton? Please could you sew my shirt back together, it got torn."

What a lamb.