Personal Blogs

Why did the fox cross the road?

To get to the other chicken.

Not everyone appreciates how smart fish can be. For instance flatfish - soles, plaice, flounders, and similar - are often highly intelligent. Astonishingly there are undersea crime gangs operated by these fishes.

Once, in a submarine investigation I had a sea cliff at my back, whilst in front was a flatfish I knew had been paid to kill me.

And as it happens I had just put my foot on some gluey seaweed. I thought: has my life come to this?

Stuck between a rock and a hired plaice.

James Joyce is said to have disliked inverted commas (AKA quotation marks); in Ulysses and elsewhere he avoided them in favour of the dash. He referred to perverted commas, although the quip seems to go back earlier [reference needed]. Here's a famous example

~WELL~...

I like quotation marks (a.k.a 'quotes', I think they are fun. You can nest them and that's the kind of stuff I like, it's the wordpuzzleist/programmer/mathematician/... in me. In the UK the nesting goes

""
"''"
"'""'"

In the US they start with the single quote*.

You can in principle nest as deep as you need or please, but it gets hard to construe after about three levels. Grammar books often have artificial examples such as

Jack said "Jill said, 'Never say, "Never say, 'Never'"'"

The deepest nesting I know where it arises naturally from the plot is from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (who  —they said,  —spoke in Polish, thought in French, and wrote in English, which was more or less correct). The narrator, Marlow, is describing what someone else said about someone else. Marlow says

“I was broad awake by this time [...] The fat man sighed. 'Very sad.' 'And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you—that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it's—' Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit."

Colours help us follow the speakers

“I was broad awake by this time [...] The fat man sighed. 'Very sad.' 'And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you—that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it's—' Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit."

I am pretty sure Conrad is using this as way of building up the atmosphere of the book, which is quite (and quote) deep. Heart of Darkness has many levels; the grammar echoes them.

* Why? I don't know either but the sparkling David Crystal explains somewhere in one of his books (I think).

If you love parrots please award them ✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️now on our rating app. It may influence government attitudes to these unique birds. Our campaign name is “Polly Tick All”.

Q. What’s the difference between an introvert and an extrovert mathematician?

A. When conversing, the introvert mathematician looks at their own shoes. The extrovert look at yours.

* Not mine, it’s old, but contains an element of truth.

I sent you a joke 

But I guess you didn’t get it

Laughter all.

Home Planet's message

Is all good in your locality?

I was

Too ashamed

To

Reply

I came across a song, Vergiss Mein Nicht, performed by the tenor Fritz Wunderlich, famous for Mozartian roles according to Wikipedia, but this is more in the tradition of singers such as Richard Tauber. I sent a link to a friend who is very into operetta style songs - it is a shared interest! - but he wanted to know what the lyrics would be in English. He couldn't find an English version and neither could I, so I had a go with the aid of Google Translate and some tidying up. I think the original and the translation stand quite well on their own as poems, which is often true of this song genre, but not of all song lyrics of course.

I took a certain liberty in line 3, because red is not mentioned in the original, but I think it works and it helps with the rhythm of the verse.

I turned up at some pottery classes

And found them all reciting vases.

A slip of the ears

It appears.

I found these English words by computer search using a small program I wrote. What is unusual about them?

Abroad

Breach

Please

Spending

Stable

Stone

Strain

Here’s a little puzzle, that no-one can find out,

Whether every little swing has a little roundabout.

I've been sheltering for 12 weeks, because I am quite vulnerable.

Today I went out, at last. Infection in my locaility is down to the level just before the lockdown. So I decided that, given the good weather, it would be safe to emerge blinking into the sunlight. It could be "Now or never", with "Now" being the better option.

Here is a record of the exploration* I made on my mobility scooter.

*  "X" marks a spot where a car pulled up on the other side of the road and the driver wound down the window and said "Dr Walker, I presume."  Well not exactly that, it was someone I knew, who said "How are you?" but roughly similar.