Seriously...

How thick would you have to be...?

Urbi et Orbi...

Not your standard Papal Balcony affair, I'm afraid - just a few Easter things I need to get off my chest.

Stop moving it around...

It's confusing and inconvenient. Last Easter Sunday I was here...

(...where, coincidentally, it was also snowing)

...but that's not twelve months ago to the day - it was actually on April 8. Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This year it's about the earliest it can ever be because the spring equinox was on Thursday and the full moon was on Friday, so here we are. No wonder Tesco had to have their Easter Eggs on display by Boxing Day...

It was stolen by Christianity...

As we all know, the days used in the calculation - spring equinox, all druids and Stonehenge; full moon, all witches and werewolves and magic - are totally pagan things and nothing to do with the crucifixion or the resurrection. This is because Easter was happily going on for donkey's years before Christianity hit Britain - as a celebration of spring, new life, fertility etc... hence bunnies, eggs, chicks. It was a celebration of the goddess of spring and fertility Estre (or Oestre or Ishtar) and the word comes from her. As does the word "Oestrogen"...

"Do you wish to remove unused files?"

I went to Church of England primary school, so stored away in my brain, taking up valuable space, is...

There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell
What pains he had to bear
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffer'd there.

He died that we might be forgiv'n
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heav'n,
Saved by his precious blood.

I will never need this for any useful purpose again in my life (ie. beyond blogging and quizzes)and yet I can remember it verbatim. I didn't look it up. Some kind of brain clean-up facility is needed, along the lines of the excellent example here...

Even at the age of 8, I remember being bothered about "without a city wall" because I thought that it meant it hadn't got one. It was only a green hill far away, why would it have needed one? Only as my grammatical understanding progressed did I realise it meant "outside the city wall..." (Makes mental note to use this construction more often in everyday speech to confuse people... "Where's Starbucks? Just down the way, without the front doors...")

I'm still bother'd by the whole rhyming of "forgiv'n" and "heav'n" and the sing-them-as-if-they've-only-got-one-syllable thing, both of which happen loads in hymns. I suppose it was because the tunes and the words were probably written by different people, maybe centuries apart, and someone had to crowbar it all together. Maybe if Rice and Lloyd-Webber had done it instead...*

Open the bloody shops...

Why are they closed?

It can't be to force people into church, because it doesn't work...
It can't be an objection to making profit, because all the little shops can open...
It can't be an objection to trading per se, because of car boot sales...

It must just be to remind us about suffering...

Sod health and education and social justice, in the next election I'm voting for whoever sorts the Sunday Trading laws out. Or moving to Scotland.


*Oh...

"Tell me Christ how you feel tonight
Do you plan to put up a fight?
Do you feel that you've had the breaks?
What would you say were your big mistakes?"

They did...

What am I bid...?

A different slant on rip-off mobile phone charges. I was very pleased to see that my old mobile phone sold on eBay. And was somewhat surprised to see what it sold for...



Of course, as it was a bog-standard mobile phone, and not one of those Vertu diamond-encrusted ones which someone tried to nick on the motorway this week, the reason it sold for so much was that someone had been a bid ham-fisted with the keyboard when making a bid and then been, quite frankly, a bit scared that both eBay and I would hold him to it...

Hi i,m a freind of *** he is efin stupid portugse he is very sorry but he f*cked up I am english and just come back from the beech can we sort this out please yours in hope ALAN P.s. my e.mail is ************@hotmail.com

Anyway, I didn't - partly because I'm kind and partly because there was no
chance of me getting that much money out of him. But for a while, it did entertain other bidders...

is there a mistake on this phone over 1000 pound email me please im in stiches

...but only ones who can't punctuate or spell. Does that count as positive feedback?

Arbetsmiljoverket

Just as you might be getting your IKEA tea lights out to make Christmas glimma, a foray (for your own good, you understand) into Swedish Health and Safety.

I think this is what the first few mean. Please add comments for the others...


Do not allow your candle to talk to R2-D2 on a sunny day...


Be careful if using your teapot for archery practice...

Don't vomit on your candle before extinguishing it...

Don't use candles as big as your chair, or you may disappear...

Do not allow your child to kiss pets by candlelight...

Paris in a Day (4): L'Open Tour...

L'Académie Française seems to be fighting a losing battle with the the purity of the French language if such things as "le mp3 player" and "L'Open Tour" are in general use.

But who gives a stuff? €25 for all the landmarks, commentary in English, Edith Piaf singing and free headphones, you can't really complain about a little anglicisation of the language. Especially when you're only here for the day.

Here are the highlights...


Le Bus et le shop (Printemps is basically Debenhams, only French)


Les Invalides, L'Assemblée Nationale et Le Centre Pompidou...

Didn't have time to stop at any of these. They were probably all shut anyway.


Le flag, les policemen roller-skatés et Le Grand Health et Safety Issue...

Paris in a Day (3): Sacré Bleu, Monsieur Langdon...!

Even the celebrated (and made up) cryptologist Sophie Neveu wouldn't have any difficulty solving this Code...



...primarily because she is French anyway, so it wouldn't actually be in code as far as she was concerned. But also because it was translated underneath...



If only Dan Brown had set the book on a Tuesday, it (and the film) would have been mercifully short.

So never go to Paris on a Tuesday either.*

Still managed to get a shot of the famous pyramid though. Built on the mysterious Rose Line and under which are buried the bones of Mary Magdalene...**



*The Rough Guide did actually mention that the Louvre would be shut on Tuesdays, but as with all guide books, they are only useful if you read them.

**All bollocks, of course.

Telling the truth about the world...

I'm pleased the Snakes on a Plane school of naming has extended its reach.

They have started putting the stupid little biscuits you get with a cup of coffee in this.

Which I applaud.

Off their trolley's...

Flagrant abuse of the apostrophe!
Flickrd by sebFlyte.

I have now blogged twice about signs with bad grammar and no-excuse spelling but, worryingly, (or perhaps fortunately?) it seems I'm not the only one.

There's a whole "badgrammar" photostream on flickr where other like-minded people can gather and celebrate their pedantry.

So I'll put any future photo's their and shut up going on about it here.

Are Generious Offer...

I know this is my second post on this theme recently and I could be accused of being obsessive, but I thought you should know that Next in Calcot near Reading has the following vacancy for someone to "relenish" stock...



Make sure you speak to Ben. If you write to him, there could be all sorts of problems...

Floored...

As seen in Mablethorpe...



I presume you would have to expect...

• two carpets where you only needed one, or
• one where you actually wanted two, or
• a completely different carpet to the one you actually needed...

Does what it says on the tin...

The summer can't end officially until I've seen...



You have to wonder how many less obvious titles were mulled over in the boardroom before they finalised via the Plain English Campaign. I'm going for...

• Ophidiophobia
• No-Legged Freaks
• Lord of the Fangs
• The Poisoned Adventure (Almost an anagram...)
• Slytherin' (Cash in on the Harry Potter crowd...)
  

Please feel free to add yours.

More interestingly, I wondered what this approach might throw up if applied to other films. Would you have gone to see...

• Bomb on a Bus?
• Prats on a Boat?
• Monsters in Space?
• Christians in Bedroom Furniture?

But the best thing about the film is the website, where you can persuade people to go and see it (even though it will be utter toss of the highest order), by leaving them a personalised voicemail narrated by the totally bona fide (or possibly a fairly convincing sound-a-like) Samuel L Jackson.

How can I resist?

"Special Subject: The Bleedin' Obvious..."

Seen at Barton Peveril on Wednesday evening...



Barton Peveril now officially twinned with here...

Croeso y Gymru...

Bore da!

(There seems to be no Welsh word for Hello, so Good Morning will have to do...)

Anyway, brief weekend away to Caerdydd to see Gina. Not much time for sight-seeing, but did get to see the Wales Millennium Centre (Canolfan Mileniwm Cymru - don't know whether Minnellium is easier to spell in Welsh or not...)

It wasn't finished last time I went and looked a bit like this:

(That was in 2003 - it's the big thing in the background with the scaffolding. All the people were there because Sinead Quinn off Fame Academy and Marc Almond were performing...



...people didn't know who Sinead Quinn was, and they threw bottles at Marc Almond, so it was a classy crowd...)

Anyway, back to the point...

It is finished now, all made out of slate and rain. As is so much in Wales. It is also five years late to have anything to do with the Millennium, but I guess they think they can get away with it here. It looks impressive...



...featured in Dr Who...



("Never mind Cardiff, it's going to rip open the planet!!!")

...and the inscription on the front isn't actually an inscription, it's windows. They say...

Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr O Ffwrnais Awen
In These Stones Horizons Sing



It's a symbol of the Welsh culture, its beautiful language, its history of music and song...
What's on? Saturday Night Fever, Harry Hill, The Wizard of Oz and, next year, Jerry Springer -The Opera.

Also saw the new Welsh Assembly building...



...not yet fully assembled, but assembled thus far of slate and glass.

(It's obviously some kind of law that all new building of any consequence in Wales must be made mostly of slate - as if the weather didn't make it grey and depressing enough...)


And just before I came back to England. This is SALT in Mermaid Quay...

Allegedly, Charlotte Church falls out of here in the early hours of the morning, three sheets to the wind, with great regularity. And once, Gina saw Noel from Hear'say there too. It all happens.

Mae f’ysbiwyr wedi dweud wrtha popeth amdanat...

You see! I am not the only one!

I now have an ally in my, seemingly until now, one-man war against the abhorrence seen left.

And he runs a big dictionary too, so he's a good person to have on side.

Read his thoughts here.

Especially all the people I know who do it to annoy me.

(And by the way, the plural of "text" -noun - is "texts", not "textses". You know who you are.)

Rant over.