Outstaring the Gorgon

One of the things that keeps amusing me is how appalled -- and amused, it must be said -- my friends tend to be when faced with the uncomfortable plot summaries that are so crucial to the creepy parlour game of Name That Film. And for what it's worth, of yesterday's 22 plots, I've already been contacted with correct answers to thirteen of them, which is pretty good for less than a day.

But the odd thing is that if you try this with Greek myth, say, people just shrug, because such horror is entirely normal there. If I say to you something like 'Jilted wife murders husband's new wife and own children in act of vengeance, Gods approve,' you'd just think, 'Yes, it's obviously Medea, what's your point, Thirsty G?' Likewise if I go 'Man stubbornly insists on primacy of letter over spirit of law, son and wife kill themselves, locals chalk it up to experience,' you don't even blink and say, 'Antigone,' wondering what all the fuss is about, as you have probably always wondered why Sophocles didn't name the play Creon.

So here are ten more Classical plots for you to play with. If you're a Classicist and don't get them within about three seconds, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If you're not, a lower and slower strike rate is forgiveable, in this philistine age. Give it a shot in the comment box, if you like.

1. Poor loser takes out anger on livestock, commits suicide.
2. Townspeople pay token respect to handicapped transsexual, but frequently disregard his advice.
3. Traumatised veteran returns home and butchers wife's guests.
4. Bisexual man kills perfect husband and mutilates corpse to avenge death of gay lover.
5. Musician has difficulty accepting wife's death, is assaulted and murdered by drunken gang.
6. Exotic dancer helps new lover murder her deformed half-brother.
7. Beautiful young wife trapped in unsatisfying daily routine, having to get up early for work while decrepit husband invariably stays in bed, muttering to himself.
8. Man keeps daughter captive, and is horrified when girl becomes pregnant after golden shower; daughter's son later kills man at sports event.
9. Scientist attempts murder of nephew, builds sex toy and dungeon, causes death of son.
10. Woman's brother kidnaps and rapes her daughter, woman develops eating disorder.

Ah, the things that every educated Westerner used to be expected to know. I wonder how Bible stories would work when written this way.

Name that Film... again

Right, so, here's a fresh challenge for you, just to flex your brains. I'd meant to post this this morning, but I was just too deeply immersed in the auld books to drag myself away. You know how it is...

So, the rules are the same as last time, in that all you have to do is think about the plot description and identify the films. Two rounds, so a general one with all plots described by me, and a specialist one, where some plots are my own, but most are sourced from Dorian & Co, though I've tweaked them a bit.

Here goes.

Round One

1. Insecure woman, threatened by technological advances at work and besotted by workmate, is publicly humiliated by workmate to impress his new girlfriend.
2. Macho racist, obsessed with brother's wife, mutilates corpses and spends years plotting niece's murder.
3. After suspected advances from open-minded politician, homophobic man befriends but is killed by politician's enemy, who the politician subsequently kills.
4. Vegetarian begins cycle of repeated clashes with authorities after being thrown off train.
5. Escaped Muslim convict helps embittered veteran in campaign of civil disobedience.
6. Artist's wife is romanced by old schoolfriend and finds pregnancy isn't the worst of life's complications.
7. Lonely woman experiences sequence of traumatic events and enters into relationship with sociopath.
8. Writer cheats on wife and enjoys watching lover sleep with teenage boys, is threatened by lover's father.
   
9. Radiantly healthy prostitute is threatened by doctor and embarks on love affair with drug-addict cop.
10. Teenager murders women and children and is sentenced to death, but escapes and marries older woman.
11. Fat jealous man persecutes schizophrenic follower of Atkins diet while on road trip.
12. Vegetarian celebrates birthday and gets married, dog dies.

Confused yet? Don't worry, you'll surely have seen most of them.

Round Two

1. Handicapped mass murderer kills old man, religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.
2. Barbaric terrorists destroy major government construction project, killing thousands of contract labourers, handicapped mass murderer kills old man.
3. The United States provides arms, equipment and training to violent Islamic fundamentalists.
4. Alcoholic suicide bomber destroys valuable technology and kills thousands in deluded act of vengeance.
5. Rag-tag group of underdogs succeed at a massive undertaking despite overwhelming odds, credit success with faith in God.
6. British civil servant conspires with Islamic fundamentalists in terrorist campaign, plants bomb on plane, kills American general.
7. Politician arranges for assassination of terrorist leader who had orchestrated murders of civil servants and anachronistic killing of policemen.
8. Alcoholic and bereaved religious fanatic attempt suicide bombing, survive and find love.
9. In clandestine operation, gay masochist trains savage tribesmen in terrorist warfare.
10. Terrorists fight government, die.

Okay, so the last one's an old TV series. Off you go now, while I get back to work.

Foiled by Grace Kelly

On the subject of films, by the way, any of you who've been pondering my March post on my vastly superior mental reworking of A Beautiful Mind can't fail to have noticed the most superficially implausible aspect of my Hitchcockian fantasy, which is that the age gap between Gregory Peck and Grace Kelly wasn't utterly ludicrous. Gregory P would have been 40 in 1956, whereas her Serene Highness the Princess of Monaco, as Grace Kelly became that year, was a flawless 27. Only thirteen or so years between them.

You might think that's a lot, though I'd beg to differ, but given Grace's history with leading men, what can't disputed is that this age gap is negligible!

Look at her career, rounding things off a bit. In High Noon she was 23 to Gary Cooper's 51, and in Mogambo she was 24 while Clark Gable was 52. In Dial M for Murder, she was 25 to her husband Ray Milland's 49 and her lover Robert Cummings's 44. 25 again in Rear Window, her fiancee Jimmy Stewart was 46, and still 25 in The Country Girl and Green Fire, Bing Crosby and Stewart Granger were 51 and a sprightly 41 respectively. The Bridges of Toko Ri, from 1954 again, saw her 25-year-old self in a reasonably normal relationship with the 36-year-old William Holden, who she'd also been drawn to in The Country Girl, but she returned to form the following year, a ravishing 26-year-old seducing the 51-year-old Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.

And then there's High Society, in which 41-year old Frank Sinatra vied with 53-year-old Bing Crosby and 45-year-old John Lund to win her 27-year-old hand.

So it seems that of all her leading men, only William Holden was closer to her in age than Gregory Peck, who, as I've sadly noted, never acted with her. The league table of age gaps runs something like this: William Holden a meagre 11, Frank Sinatra 14, Stewart Granger 16, John Lund 18, Robert Cummings 19, Jimmy Stewart 21, Ray Milland 24, Cary Grant 25, Bing Crosby 26, and Gary Cooper and Clark Gable both having a positively indecent 28 years on her peerless self, Clark Gable reigning supreme with a magnificent 28 years, 10 months, and 11 days!

Yes, I know, I've left out The Swan, but I haven't seen it and it doesn't seem to be available on DVD in this neck of the woods. This one looks to have a 42-year-old Alec Guinness perplexingly indifferent to the infinite charms of the Twentieth Century's most elegant woman. I know, it makes no sense.

Still, absurd though the premise of the film may be, I'm rather keen to see it, not least because it features this scene:

I know. Grace Kelly and fencing in one film. Can such perfection really exist in this fallen world?

I suspect the plot is rubbish.

And the Answers to Thursday's Quiz...

Well, that was fun. Thank you for emails - unsurpurprisingly, Dr M did the best of you. The answers, should you be interested, are as follows for the film round:
1. 300, 2. Beauty and the Beast, 3. Breakfast at Tiffanys, 4. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 5. Ghostbusters, 6. Leon, 7. The Lord of the Rings, 8. Red Dawn, 9. Taxi Driver, and 10. Vertigo.

Meanwhile, for the television round, the answers are:
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2. Doctor Who, 3. Firefly, 4. Star Trek, and 5. Batman.

And finally, answers to the bonus round are, as you surely guessed:
1. Coraline, 2. Mirrormask, 3. Neverwhere, and 4. Stardust, with all four having been penned by the one and only Neil Gaiman.

I may just try this again next week, as some light Monday morning entertainment to help you deal with the start of another working week. I'm hoping you'll not have gone straight to the source by then.

Brevity at the Expense of Clarity

It occasionally astonishes me how few films some of my closest friends have seen, though the truth is probably just that I've seen a ludicrous number of good ones; I was very lucky to become an ardent filmgoer at a time when cinema was celebrating its centenary so television and Dublin's cinemas were awash with reissued classics and modern masterpieces.

I tend to forget this, though, which is why I tend to be baffled when my friends look at me blankly when I casually allude to films that mean nothing to them; people have looked at me blankly when confronted with my fifty quotes from a couple of months back. It probably goes without saying that I have a weakness for playing 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon'.*

Still, I can't help but look at things like Dorian Wright's list of Uncomfortable Plot Summaries and think what a marvellous parlour game lies within.

How about challenging people to guess the film, based on the plot description?

1. Gays kill blacks.
2. Peasant girl develops Stockholm Syndrome.
3. Pretty redneck girl fools socialites, flirts with gay gigolo.
4. Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.
5. Unemployed college professors destroy hotel with nuclear weapons.
6. Hired murderer sleeps with little girl.
7. Midget destroys stolen property.
8. Despite shock-and-awe tactics, a superior occupying force is no match for a tenacious sect of terrorist insurgents.
9. Modern dating proves challenging for working class man.
10. Stalker drives woman to suicide.

And there are more than a hundred more. No, I'm not telling you the answers, not till tomorrow anyway. Work them out for yourselves, or look it up if you can't be bothered thinking.

Actually, not all the plots are from movies; try these TV shows:

1. Teenage serial killer destroys town in fit of semi-religious fervor.
2. Elderly man serially abducts young women.
3. In an analogue of the post-Civil War west, a white man on the losing side bosses around a black woman.
4. Over-sexed officer routinely places crew in danger.
5. Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.

And then, for a final bonus round, try identifying the following, and figuring out just what -- or who -- they have in common:

1. Misfit discovers she is special person in a secret world just beside our own.
2. Misfit discovers she is special person in secret world just beside our own.
3. Misfit discovers he is special person in secret world just beside our own.
4. Misfit discovers he is special person in secret world just beside our own.

As a hint, they're in alphabetical order and number 3 isn't a film, at least not yet...


*And I'm sure you'll be glad to know that according to the Oracle of Bacon, I have a Bacon Rating of 3.

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'?