Holiday insurance - for suckers

My wife and I tend to to take our holidays together, When you've been married to the same person for a few years, such as and eg nearly 48 of them, it's what you do. You plan the holiday, you pay for the holiday, and you look forward to the holiday during the dismal winter months. 

But ah! there's a catch that you only find out about if you have to cancel at the last minute because one of you is suddenly taken ill. That holiday insurance, which cost you a big chunk of the holiday itself, is per person, not per couple. While your nearest and dearest is mopping your fevered brow as you're convulsing and hallucinating with a temperature of 105F, your insurance company is drafting the letter which says: 'so only one of you is dead, then?' And you've cancelled very late (says your travel company) so there are penalties. 

You'll be lucky to get back 40% of the cost of your joint holiday.

Spouses do not desert each other, however great the disappointment at losing a holiday. What do insurance companies expect? That husband will hook up with a temporary surrogate wife, and wife with temporary surrogate husband, for the duration of the holiday? And what do they sign in at the hotel as - Mr and Mrs Smith? Some hotels still look a bit askance at such goings-on.

When a couple take out insurance for a holiday, the insurance should cover both in the event of cancellation by either.

But it's not going to happen. Insurance works by virtue (if that's the right word) of the small print, with all those exclusion clauses that mean they don't have to pay out if you've ever had an ingrowing toenail or an aunt with dandruff.

We're wiser now. Next holiday my wife has invited Hugh Quarshie to step in if I am unavoidably dead, and I am torn between Carol Vordeman and Tuppence Middleton. Oops, sorry. Hugh Smith. Carol Smith. Tuppence Smith.

But we won't be travelling with the same coach company and their insurers again. Ever.

Some thoughts over sloppy reportage

We used to keep a foam-rubber brick for hurling at at the telly, but it disappeared in a house move. I miss it (the brick, not the telly - I was a very good shot). I've given up waiting for the hypothetical, though perfectly possible 'US troops evacuated over Iraq' because there's now a more insidious assault on the English language than the all-purpose preposition 'over' - and that is the prevalence of the dramatic present (aka historic present) in news reports, usually at tea-time when innocent children might be watching. Newspaper headlines use the historic present for two good reasons - it has impact and immediacy, and it takes less space, 's' being shorter than 'ed'. But once the headline is out of the way, newspaper reporting reverts to a more conventional linguistic treatment of past, present and future.

Not telly reporting, though. Tense abuse is widespread, often with ludicrous consequences when desperate newsreaders try to cope with the tripe the work-experience kids who write the reports churn out, lacking any familiarity with the pluperfect or anything else much, innit. Tense shifting simply doesn't work in TV reportage. "Police are now searching the area. Later, a spokesperson said..." It's nonsense.. It's Doctor Who territory. 

Just two quotes:

"If you introduce things which are past as present and now taking place, you will make your story no longer a narration but an actuality."
(Longinus, On the Sublime. Out of print, publisher unknown, authorship uncertain, but probably 1st or 3rdC AD)

"Avoid the use of the historical present unless the narrative is sufficiently vivid to make the use spontaneous. The historical present is one of the boldest of figures and, as is the case with all figures, its overuse makes a style cheap and ridiculous."
(James Finch Royster and Stith Thompson, Guide to Composition. Scott, Foresman, 1919)

Rant over (oh bugrit, I've used that word)

Really really interesting blogs

Very rarely an interesting and literate blog turns up while surfing. Cathy Thinks and Mary Jackson are today joined as a favourite by 

http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/

(blog pseudonym Leander).

Browse, read, possibly enjoy. It's centred on history and historical fiction, true, but that's just the start.