On the Beat

I don't mean to be pedantic. Ok, maybe I do.

Twice today, I have read factual errors in works by authors who should frankly know better. The problem is, if they get THAT wrong, what else that I don't know about isn't right, either?

The first was a piece by Paul Theroux in Granta. I have read a lot by Theroux over the years - I used to like his travel books, and that lead to his fiction.

In this piece, he was describing being an alien in London in the 1970s. Sitting on top if the 29 bus in Lavender Hill, smoking, moving slowly through Clapham.

When I last lived in London, I was on the route of the 29 bus. It ran then (and still does) between Wood Green in north London and Victoria. It is a great bus route - not as iconic as the 24 perhaps, but pretty close. And I was surprised to learn that in the 1970s it had extended its route south of the Thames to Clapham.

So obviously there was only one thing to do.

I looked it up on Wikipedia , which details lots of route changes. But all at the north end of the route. And so whilst it is possible for Wikipedia to be wrong, I seem to trust it more than Mr Theroux.

The second episode was easier. Reading the introduction - the introduction, mind - to Stuart Maconie's "Hope and Glory", he attributes as famous quotation about the success of the French revolution - "it's too early to tell" - to Mao Zedong. This is so famous that I have heard it before, many times, ascribed rather to Zhou Enlai. And whilst he may been misquoted (and actually referring to the 1968 Paris students' uprising), he was certainly NEVER Chairman Mao.

So here I am on page 1 of a book I was expecting to enjoy, and all credibility has been blown out of the water.

Which reminds me, I really must write about Skyfall sometime soon.

This morning on Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland, they interviewed Simon Calder, the Independent's travel writer, about an article in today's paper on the new St Pancras station, and what it means for travel within Britain.

During the interview, either Calder or the GMS team (I can't remember who) said the fast rail link both "redraws the map of Europe" and "brings [Europe] closer to London".

I am pleased to say that neither of these things happened. The Channel is safe - Paris hasn't suddenly been dumped nearer Kent; and the maps are the same - though I guess someone may need to redraw the OS maps of south east England to include the new rail line. And it will take less time to get to Paris.

I must remember to visit the redeveloped St Pancras - the photos look wonderful.

I wanted to write inordinately.

Perhaps I was spelling it wrong. But what predictive textive gave me was goosegoatfly.

This made me laugh.

Inordinately.

Last week, on a corporate website, I read this:

" in short, can we use the board to drive policy learning to help us to stimulate the system change that will lead to a step change in achievement around the smarter outcomes?"

I have absolutely no idea what they were talking about. None at all. (Although frankie_ecap thought she understood it perfectly. I found this worrying...)

Along similar lines, today I read this:

" This strategy is set within the improvement agenda to provide momentum and structure for change".

Once more, baffled.

What’s worrying, though, is the thought I might actually write stuff similarly vacuous.

Lastly, I recently read a bottle of washing up liquid (the sad life I lead!) which promised:

"Hygenic Cleaning"

which just got me to wondering how many products were offering me unhygienic cleaning? Or am I missing something?

I am sitting listening to the Proms. The introducer - I think it is Petroc Trelawney, but I wasn't really paying attention - has just described Bruckner's Seventh Symphony as having two opening movements.

Surely one has to come first?

On Tuesday I watched a tv programme about Paris. Rather than the in-depth inverview with Ms Hilton I had been expecting, it was a travelogue of the city. It reminded me that I hadn't been to Paris for many years (which made me a bit sad).

It was a fairly cliched travelogue - lots of pictures of Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower, patisseries, cafes and bars; and the Louvre. But in the Louvre, as well as Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa and the Mona Lisa, they showed a full screen image of Courbet's Origin of the World. The reviewer in the Independent described this as "the greatest crotch shot in world art", and it was kind of surprising to see it given such prominence on BBC2.

On the radio this evening, they described Jacqui Smith, the newly appointed Home Secretary, as "a former teacher, mother and housewife". I am still trying to work out how she could be a former housewife mother.

Edited after frankie_ecap and white_hart correctly pointed out that I meant to write mother rather than housewife...

I bought a cheese grater the other day. The one I had was annoying me – it was a large, steel box thing, hand to get at the cheese which would fall in the middle. It just annoyed me.

So I was in the supermarket when saw a very simple, flat – and that was important to me, I wanted a two- rather than three-dimensional - cheese grater.

I bought it.

It had no packaging. It was just a cheese grater, with a label.

The label said “please keep the packaging for reference”.

It had no packaging. I think the label was just trying to confuse me.

For the past few weeks, I have been working in quite a large office building; it houses maybe two or three thousand people. And each part of it looks the same.

A couple of times – usually first thing in the morning, as I walked in to work thinking about something else - I have given myself a shock by forgetting to walk up a flight of stairs. Instead, I walked to where my desk would be if it were on the ground floor (or, for that matter, an alternative universe) and thought, Father Bear-like, who’s sitting at my desk? At which point I realised, once more, that I was on the wrong floor.

( Read more... )

I was half listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 as I ate my breakfast. John Humphries was interviewing an American, and the debate got more and more heated.

I then heard John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the UN, describe George Soros as "extremely left wing".

I had to laugh.

Soros is a capitalist who made a lot - an awful lot of money - in hedge funds before they became famous; he made billions by betting against the pound on Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the pound was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

He may be a philanthropist, and a critic of US foriegn policy; even left of centre. But not "extremely left wing"!

Bolton finished off by criticising Humphries and the BBC for being leftist, too.

We went to a new bar yesterday, just for a coffee - Circus Cafe in the new Town. It was quite good; they have a great wine selection, in the basement - it is a former bank, the wine is stored in the strongroom!

I read the menu. And got annoyed. They have a section called "Martini's". D'oh! And they have a section called "Bloody Mary's". D'oh! D'oh!

But what really, really got me was that they have a section in the food menu called "Antipasti's"! So not only is there an completely unnecessary apostrophe - but there is a completely unnecessary s, as well - antipasti being the plural.

Aaaagh!

(Interestingly, the website has PDFs of the menus; which don't have the apostrophes! Take my word for it - they are there in the printed version on the table!)