Because He Knows What He's Talking About

The Brother used to be an avid attender at football matches back in the day, and has written about them on more than one occasion, whether talking about watching the only two footballers ever to have taken his breath away, or personal experiences of what our continental cousins used to call the English disease. I'm always puzzled by his never having posted anywhere an email he once sent me filled with musings and memories of Crewe station, which before getting to the holy of holies, dallied with some football-related observations.

'When I stopped living in Liverpool and moved to Birmingham, I retained my season ticket at Goodison and so at least every second week - and of course for every midweek game including the never to be missed Simod Cup clashes - I headed north and often found myself in Crewe rather than on the direct train . . .

It was in Crewe station that I sat unspeaking among English national team supporters as we all headed for Dublin and a spiteful International fixture. Seated either side of me were two large giggling skinheads from Millwall who were doing their own spotting - that of notorious thugs among the English fans. As I silently drank my tea between them I noticed the backs of the hands of both of the skinheads as they drank theirs. Tattooed on the hand of one was "TRACY" and on the other was "MICHELLE". The next time I saw them was in Dublin as part of a marauding English gang that waded into the Irish crowd with boots and fists. I held screaming women for their protection, by inches missing receiving a kicking from skinheads in brown suede jackets. By the time we all ended up back in Crewe their faces were cut and bruised, and my Irish scarf was never more hidden.'

All of which is a circuitous way of saying that I expected he'd have quite a bit to say about today and his memories of what happened twenty years ago, when 96 people died and the English disease wasn't to blame, despite what some claimed at the time. And he does. You should read it, even if football means nothing to you.

Some People May Have Issues With This

So the other day I sent the Kittybrewster a Facebook message asking her how this was not an April Fool's story: surely it wasn't really the case that someone had reworked Pride and Prejudice as a Zom-Rom-Com, an English Heritage take on Shaun of the Dead?

Her response was an eloquent 'what?', soon followed by a rather more astounded 'what?!'

We chatted about this the other evening, with neither of us really convinced that the story was true. Surely, we felt, it had been an April Fool's story somewhere, one that had been belatedly picked up on by the Guardian.

Alas, no, though. I indulged in some casual Googlage, and aside from discovering the book is for sale all over the net, found a fascinating article about it in the Times. Seemingly an American chap of my age, one Seth Grahame-Smith, who's never been to England and who only recently read Pride and Prejudice when he thought of introducing zombies to the tale, having failed to work his way through it in his schooldays, has indeed reworked Jane Austen's most popular novel in a rather ghoulish way.

Allow me to sample the opening chapter, which differs ever so slightly from the original:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead.

"My dear Mr Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is occupied again?"
Mr Bennet replied that he had not and went about his morning business of dagger sharpening and musket polishing -- for attacks by the unmentionables had grown alarmingly frequent in recent weeks.
"But it is," returned she.
Mr Bennet made no answer.
"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"Woman, I am attending to my musket. Prattle on if you must, but leave me to the defense of my estate!"
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, Mrs Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune; that he escaped London in a chaise and four just as the strange plague broke through the Manchester line."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley. A single man of four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? Can he train them in the ways of swordsmanship and musketry?"
"How can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Marriage? In times such as these? Surely this Bingley has no such designs."
"Designs! Nonsense, how can you talk so! It is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. And besides, we mustn't busy the roads more than is absolutely necessary, lest we lose more horses and carriages to the unfortunate scourge that has so troubled our beloved Hertfordshire of late."
"But consider your daughters."
"I am considering them, silly woman! I would much prefer their minds be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune, as your own so clearly is! Go and see this Bingley if you must, though I warn you that none of our girls has much to recommend them; they are all silly and ignorant like their mother, the exception being Lizzy, who has something more of the killer instinct than her sisters."
"Mr Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves."
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard of little else these last twenty years at least."

Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and self-discipline, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. And when she was nervous -- as she was nearly all the time since the first outbreak of the strange plague in her youth -- she sought solace in the comfort of the traditions which now seemed mere trifles to others.

The business of Mr Bennet's life was to keep his daughters alive. The business of Mrs Bennet's was to get them married.

To be fair, vomiting aside -- read the Times article -- it sounds rather fun, though most of the best comedy is Ms Austen's own work, and not Mr Grahame-Smith's. I like the idea of Bingley and Darcy having trained to combat zombies in Japan. Colin Firth could probably wield a katana with some panache.

Sure there's a Recession on, don't you know?

So today being glorious, I was briefly tempted away from the books, lured from my work by the prospect of a trip to Lyme Park, of which I'd been thinking just moments before the enticing text arrived. Instead, though, suspecting that that pseudo-Pemberley would by jammed, we went to Dunham Massey instead. It too was creaking with people.

'What are all these people doing here?' I muttered.
'Well, it's a bank holiday,' I was told.
'Well, yes, I know that,' I said, 'but this is England. Shouldn't they be at B & Q?'
'Credit crunch.'
'Ahhh.'

The Other God Who Died in the Reign of Tiberius

Every so often, in perusing the auld books, I come across a fascinating little nugget that begs to be turned into the kind of story Neil Gaiman used to tell so well in Sandman. I came across a marvellous one the other week, when looking through Plutarch's Moralia.

‘As for the death among such beings, I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of Aemilianus the orator, to whom some of you have listened, was Epitherses, who lived in our town and was my teacher in grammar. He said that once upon a time, in making a voyage to Italy, he embarked on a ship carrying freight and many passengers. It was already evening when, near the Echinades Islands, the wind dropped, and the ship drifted near Paxi. Almost everybody was awake, and a good many had not finished their after-dinner wine. Suddenly from the island of Paxi was heard the voice of someone loudly calling Thamus, so that all were amazed. Thamus was an Egyptian pilot, not known by name even to many on board. Twice he was called and made no reply, but the third time he answered; and the caller, raising his voice, said, “When you come opposite to Palodes, announce that Great Pan is dead.”

On hearing this, all, said Epitherses, were astonished and reasoned among themselves whether it was better to carry out the order or to refuse to meddle and let the matter go. Under the circumstances Thamus made up his mind that if there should be a breeze, he would sail past and keep quiet, but with no wind and a smooth sea about the place, he would announce what he had heard. So, when he came opposite Palodes, and there was neither wind nor wave, Thamus, from the stern, looking toward the land, said the words as he had heard them: “Great Pan is dead.”

Even before he had finished, there was a great cry of lamentation, not of one person, but of many, mingled with exclamations of amazement. As many persons were on the vessel, the story was soon spread abroad in Rome, and Thamus was sent for by Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius became so convinced of the truth of the story that he caused an inquiry and investigation to be made about Pan; and the scholars, who were numerous at his court, conjectured that he was the son born of Hermes and Penelope.’

(Moralia 419)

We've no idea how well-known this story was in Antiquity, but it seems pretty clear that it did no harm to Pan's cult which continued to thrive throughout the Graeco-Roman world. As far as his devotees were concerned, reports of his death -- if they even heard of such tales -- had evidently been greatly exaggerated.

Early Christians, on the other hand, were only to glad to seize hold of this story, which though it cannot be traced earlier Plutarch -- who wrote around 100 AD , and was hardly the most careful of historical magpies -- nonetheless was thought to have taken place several decades earlier, during the reign of the emperor Tiberius. It was during the reign of Tiberius, as you surely know, that the ministry, death, and resurrection of Our Lord took place. In fact, having mentioned Pan, it's probably worth adding that was in the Panium, in the vicinity of the great shrine of the shepherd Pan at Caesarea Philippi, that St Peter first recognised Jesus as the Messiah, and was in turn honoured as the kepha, the rock on whom Our Lord would found his church.

It's not really surprising that early Christians liked this tale of Pan dying. Easter just struck me as a good time to share it with you. Happy Easter.

I'm Sorry, I'll Play That Again

So I rang the Kittybrewster this evening, all aflush with excitement.

'I've been dying to call you all day,' I declared, 'I learned a new word, and it's superb!'
Her delight was obvious, as is fitting for someone who so recently exhorted me to save the words*, and a broad grin was quite audible in her 'Oh yes?'
'It's "mondegreen",' I burst out, 'it means a misheard line in a song, like "Gladly, the Cross-eyed bear," or "there's a bathroom on the right". Apparently the word was accepted into the Merriam-Webster dictionary last year, and has been around since the fifties when someone misheard a line in a song about how someone killed Lord So-and-So and laid him on the green as a line that someone killed Lord So-and-So and Lady Mondegreen.'

She was suitably thrilled, and really, who can blame her?

Just for the record, it was 1954, and it was one Sylvia Wright who coined the term, after having misheard a line from the seventeenth century Scottish ballad 'The Bonnie Earl O' Murray', which should read:

'Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And laid him on the green.'

Yes, somehow it seems more poetic if the poor Earl had shared his terrible fate with Lady Mondegreen, whoever she was, but alas, no.

I'm sure we've all got our favourite ones. Sister the eldest used always to wonder why Macy Gray would sing 'I wear goggles when you're not here.' A friend at home used to sing along to the Beatles with the words 'pay per bike rider'. Me? Well, as a child I used to hear songs in a muddied form, being played by the Brother in the room below my bedroom, so is it any wonder that I used to think the Pogues sang a song called 'Dirty Old Man', or that I always thought Kate Bush opened Peter Gabriel's 'Games without Frontiers' with the words 'she's so popular.'

Yes, I know it's jeux san frontieres. I only learned that a few months ago. All my life I've misheard that. The Brother's still disgusted with me. Ah well.

*I like 'slimikin', and keep meaning to use it when chatting to a fair damosel or two with whom I occasionally witter. Look it up.

When does a joke become so multilayered as to stop being funny?

So, this evening I'm going to a hen party.

I know, there are at least two obvious things wrong with that sentence, being that I'm no hen and that today is Good Friday and hardly a party day, but even so.

I was invited a couple of months ago, by the sister of the bride, and I frowned and typed a hasty reply, asking in what universe I constituted a hen. In the bride's apparently, as I was on the list of people to invite. So off to my phone I went, there to dash off a text querying this certain error. Why had I been invited?

'Since you'd be entertaining,' came the reply, 'There'll be lots of single frauleins. I'll be upset that you're not here.'

Well, not wanting to upset one of my dearest friends and indeed my birthday buddy, and still determined to comply assiduously with all rules of fast and abstinence, I shall be heading out in a few minutes.

And I shall be doing so, I might add, while contemplating the timely comedy potential of the phrase 'the cock crew', which strikes me as a multilayered pun magnificently suited to a man at a hen party on Good Friday. 'Cock' as in male hen, rooster, even penis, and 'crew' as in noun meaning a gang or group and as the verb 'crow' in the past tense. It works in so many ways. Nobody else finds it funny, though.

Doctor M? Surely you?

Comma Comma Comma Comma Comma Chameleon

Unlike Vampire Weekend, I think the Oxford Comma is quite an important device. It's a rather important piece of my grammatical furniture, up there with the jewel that is the semi-colon, that prince of punctuation marks.

You're aware of the Oxford Comma? No? Well, sometimes referred to as 'the rhetorical comma' or 'the serial comma', it's the comma that falls before the final 'and' in lists. Often disregarded, I was long ago convinced of its rightness by Con Houlihan in a series of articles on good English he wrote for Ireland's long defunct Evening Press, once upon a time.

The Oxford Comma makes rhetorical, aesthetic, and logical sense. Okay, you can argue with me on the aesthetic point, but not the other two. Think about it. Do you say 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity' or 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity'? Do you say 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' or 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'? Do you say 'red, white, and blue' or 'red, white and blue'?

Listen to yourself. You pronounce that comma. And you know it makes sense. If you're going to drop one comma because you're too lazy to make a small mark on the page, well, why not drop the rest?

Language Hat has a fine little post today on the importance of the well-deployed comma. I'm going to quote it in full, though you'll need to go there to see the thriving comments thread.

'Over at the Log, Geoff Pullum provides an excellent example, from The Economist (April 4, p. 11), of why the "comma-heavy" style (with the "Oxford comma" before and and commas after introductory phrases) is preferable:

Traders and fund managers got huge rewards for speculating with other people's money, but when they failed the parent company, the client and ultimately the taxpayer had to pay the bill.

To me, that unambiguously means that when they failed the parent company (i.e., let it down), the client and the taxpayer had to pay the bill. Unfortunately, that's not what the author meant to say. When the intended meaning is pointed out, I can force myself to read the sentence that way, but it's a strain. As Geoff says, the sentence should be rewritten as follows:

Traders and fund managers got huge rewards for speculating with other people's money, but when they failed, the parent company, the client, and ultimately the taxpayer had to pay the bill.

Nobody could possibly misunderstand that.'

It's nice to learn from the original Language Log post the name of the other key grammatical point at issue here: 'the post-adjunct comma'. I shall annoy people with that too.

Someone should have a word with the Morketing People

I'm in Oxford for the next few days, attending a conference, seeing friends, and visiting my sister's clan for the first time since that marvellous August week in the dark summer of 2006., which began with me in the company of my brother and nephew watching Everton win, was followed by drinks and lots of tea with cousins galore, then a train to Oxford for family stuff and old friends, a hasty lunch with the Fairy Blogmother (ret.) in London, a wonderful evening and a very fond farewell in Brighton, and a convoluted return to the madness of Manchester, stopping for tea in Oxford with another old friend.

The conference has been excellent so far, and I've high hopes for the rest of it: it's rare you go to a conference with so many papers and want to attend them all.

This evening we dined at Pizza Express, a favourite haunt of the academic in whose memory the conference is being held.

I happen to like Pizza Express a lot, and have indeed eaten there twice this week, but I always think it's ill-named and that its Dublin monicker, Milano, is a far superior name, one that the chain could well adopt. Pizza Express is a ridiculous name for the chain for two reasons.

1. It's a tacky name for a place that's far from tacky. As chains go, you'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer one, and yet it's saddled with a name that makes it sound as though it's squabbling for business with Domino's Pizza.

2. It's anything but express. Seriously, has anyone ever experienced service there at a speed that exceeded 'glacial'?

Sage Advice in the Fourth of Dublin's Crown Jewels

Just before I got on the plane in Manchester the other day ,a German fella in the boarding queue asked me if there was anything in Dublin he shouldn't miss under any circumstances. Well, I didn't even blink. The Treasury of the National Museum, I said. The Long Room. The Chester Beatty Library. And Mulligans. Ah, Mulligans. Forget your Guinness Storehouse, except for the view. If it's a decent pint you want, Mulligans stands supreme.

I've been a largely teetotal gargoyle of late, but felt that if I was going to have even one drink at home it'd have to be there, so after lunch and an anxious blood donation yesterday I hooked up with an old friend of mine and sauntered into that most special of Dublin hostelries, where I was glad to see Pat Ingoldsby in the corner, improbably not flogging books on Westmoreland Street.

Hunched over our pints, my former protegee told me of a dilemma facing her about going to Rome. Ought she to go pronto, as planned, or take some highly opportune work first, though this would mean that her travelling partner, less well-trained in Roman ways than her, would have to find his own way in the Eternal City for a month or so.

'Sure, tell him not to worry,' I said. 'After all, there are only three things he really needs to know if he wants to get by in Rome.'
'Oh?' she said, raising an eyebrow.
'One,' I said, 'it wasn't built in a day. Tell him to remember that. Two,' I continued, 'all roads lead there. Except maybe that one that's paved with good intentions. And three --'
'Do what the Romans do?' she ventured.
'Exactly! Follow their lead. When you're there, at any rate. Sure, if that was a good enough policy for Ambrose of Milan, it ought to be good enough for the likes of us.'

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a lecture to attend.

If Only Hitchcock had made 'A Beautiful Mind'...

The Brother and I watched A Beautiful Mind the other night, with him commenting on how strange it is watching it a second time. He's right: I saw it when it came out in the cinema a few years back, but hadn't seen it since, and it's a very different film when you really just how much of it is simply meant to be John Nash imagining stuff. Basically, ninety per cent of the film is him being mad, with the maddest thing of all being the film's suggestion that you can basically sort out schizophrenia through sheer willpower.

The other thing that's troubling about A Beautiful Mind is how it bears about as little relationship to the reality of the tale it purports to tell as the cinematic John Nash's delusions do to his on-screen life. To say it takes liberties is putting it mildly. Granted, there is indeed a hugely influential mathematician called John Nash who suffers from schizophrenia, was married to a woman called Alicia, and shared in the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, but that's about as far as it goes. The rest of the film is pretty much made up. Yes, even the Princeton pen ceremony, that Dead Poets Society tear-jerking climax of the film. It's not that that never happened to him; it never happens at all.

So as we nattered, dismantling it away to our hearts' content, I mused that Alfred Hitchcock would have had great fun with a story like this, especially given that the film as it stands is hardly ten per cent factual anyway. Why not drop that ten per cent down to three per cent and really have fun?


The pivotal scene in the film, as far as I can see, is the bit when John Nash is giving a lecture and panics when he sees some mysterious men in black standing at the doors to the lecture theatre he's in. He quits his lecture and runs from the platform, scurrying out of the building and running down some stairs, being pursued by an aged Christopher Plummer, who cries out something to the effect of, 'John, John, stop, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm here to help you!' Professor Nash is tackled to the ground and sedated, waking in shackles some time later in Christopher Plummer's opulent office, where he is told that he's a very sick man, that he's been imagining everything, and that even his crucial government work is all an illusion. While he sits trying to take this in, Christopher Plummer goes and tells Mrs Nash the bad news.

So, hand that material over to Alfred Hitchcock, circa 1956, making the film he should surely have made, starring Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly, who never acted together, in what always strikes me as the greatest of the Twentieth Century's cinematic tragedies . . .

Just imagine . . . Gregory Peck is John Nash, a promising young professor of mathematics in Princeton, who's as socially awkward as he is intellectually dazzling. A charming young student of his, Alicia, played by Grace Kelly, asks him out, and witty banter ensues. Around the same time, his old college roommate, played by Cary Grant, shows up and recruits him to do some top secret work for the government. John courts and marries the glamorous Alicia, all the while conducting clandestine work of national importance. One night he's pursued by mysterious armed men, and grows increasingly distraught, but he can't tell his wife what's bothering him. She starts to worry, and wonders to whom she can turn for help . . .

And then, a few weeks later, he gives a prestigious lecture and panics when he notices several men in black stationed around the lecture theatre. He breaks and runs, darting through a fire door, bounding down some stairs, being pursued across the grounds of the college by an aged Claude Rains, who cries something along the lines of, 'John, John, stop, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm here to help you!'

John is bundled to the ground by the men in black, sedated, and wakes in shackles in Claude Rains's opulent office, all leather and mahogany, where Claude Rains patiently explains to him that he's a very sick man, that all his government work is an illusion, that he's imagined it all. And then Claude goes and talks to Alicia, telling her just how sick her husband is, asking her whether she'd ever wondered why she'd never met Cary Grant, and saying that she needs to keep a close eye on John, to check through his files to see what he's writing, and to bring copies of them to Claude so he can help her husband . . .

Because of course, this is just a gaslighting operation, an attempt to convince a sane man and his wife that he's going mad, so that these sinister Cold War era baddies can get their nasty communist hands on military secrets crucial to America's defence!

I know, it sounds far fetched, but it's not much more so than the film as it stands, and in Hitch's hands it'd definitely work.

If only . . .