Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

From today's Daily Telegraph

"Fears over the eurozone crisis saw stock markets fall again yesterday. The FTSE 100 closed down 1.1 per cent *. French and German shares also fell.

Meanwhile, a leaked document seen by The Daily Telegraph yesterday showed ** Berlin has drawn up radical plans for an intrusive *** new European body which will be able to intervene directly in beleaguered countries.

Sir John Major, the former prime minister, warned last night that the growing integration of the eurozone nations threatens democracy in those countries. He told Al Jazeera television **** that richer euro members led by Germany and France will “insist on moving towards what we call fiscal union. By that I mean common control over budgets and fiscal deficits”."

* it didn't. It closed down 1.1 percentage points, which is a completely different matter.

** the little word 'that' would have helped. The phrase "The Daily Telegraph yesterday showed Berlin ..." requires an object. Readers have to go back and rethink before they can make sense of the sentence. This is considered rather impolite of writers.

*** 'intrusive' is sneaky, because it is a loaded word. The Telegraph, like the Guardian, is very clever at sending subliminal messages to its readers, most of whom are stuck in an ideological stasis anyway, and need regular injections of Orwellian soma lest they start thinking for themselves

**** Erm, excuse me, but why was Sir John Underpants talking to Al Jazeera (a respected and honourable news service in the Arab world) ? Is he now so far off the radar that only Al Jazeera will listen to him?

You can enjoy the Telegraph's characteristic slipperiness in its language for its own sake. It stands supreme as the paper of Tory spin, and it has many years of experience in keeping baying Tories foddered and watered by its clever use of subtly emotive language.

But all too often Telegraph writers wobble off arguments that they might have made persuasively by snapping to the party line, and by golly it shows.

The real story in all this fluff was that John Major was talking to Al Jazeera.

Does the Telegraph know something that it is only hinting at to its readers?

The breath is bated. 

One's Mobile - or worse, 3's Mobile

I was chuffed to bits when my wife bought me my first 3G phone – a Galaxy Europa from Carphone Warehouse, on the 3 network. £15 a month for unlimited Internet, 300 voice minutes, and 3,000 SMSs.  It was exactly what I needed. From 18 August, when I was given it, to last week it was utterly and totally reliable. Three months trouble-free 3G - too good to be true?

Yes, it was. Last week the phone stopped working. I went onto the 3 website (three.co.uk) on the lappie, popped in my postcode, and discovered that because of 'maintenance work' there would be no signal for 6-8 hours. Well, fair enough, I thought. We’re a bit borderline round here. Perhaps 3 are boosting the signal.

Hollow laugh.  Since the maintenance work a signal – any signal – is now a rare event.

A week ago the 3 map of our little neck of the woods showed just a few pale pink islands in our area (= indoor reception unreliable) in a sea of dark purple (= strong signals indoor and outdoor.) Now the whole of our area is pale  pink.

3 has reduced the power of the signal to FY6 0xx to boost it elsewhere. Orange signal has also been affected, coincentally or otherwise.

I am now fed up with the circularities of troubleshooting, which take hours and hours and only get you back to where you started. As far as I am concerned 3 no longer provides a reliable service in FY6 0xx.  Shame. It was good while it lasted.

The Vodafone signal, however, is excellent, as is O2.

Back to Carphone Warehouse next week.  Switch me from 3 to Vodaphone or O2, please. I just want a 3G phone that actually connects to a network when I switch it on, and does it reliably. That’s what I pay for, but am not getting. 3’s packages are very good on paper, but no good at all when you can’t connect to the network for days on end.

Miles Coverdale and the Psalms

An extract from the Choirstalls column in the November parish mag:

"... On Bible Sunday [23 October] we listened to readings from KJV, and to other translations; we heard one of the psalms in Miles Coverdale’s translation that were taken wholesale into the Book of Common Prayer; and a few Sundays ago the whole of Coverdale’s 23^rd Psalm was given on the service sheet for the day. Or so I thought.

It is easy to be wise after the event, and the following day, quite by chance, I came across another reference to Coverdale’s 23^rd Psalm. It seems that quite a bit of editing of Coverdale went on before his psalms reached the Book of Common Prayer, for where BCP has “thy rod and thy staff comfort me”, Coverdale had actually written “thy staffe and thy shepehoke comforte me.” What a compelling word is shepehoke, or sheephook, as we would now spell it, if it hadn’t dropped out of use a few hundred years ago, as the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary points out. It is a word whose meaning is graphically as well as orthographically clear.

But what authority did Coverdale have for using it?  He had no Hebrew, and worked mainly from the Latin of the Vulgate, in which rod and staff appear as virga and baculus, both instruments of punishment rather than comfort. I suspect that Coverdale was attempting to impose meaning on a difficult passage by contrasting staff, a defence against any passing ravening wolves, perhaps, with the shepherd’s crook, used to gather strays back into the fold. But in any event, shepehoke didn’t make it into BCP, so we’re left struggling to understand what distinction the original psalmist made between rod and staff. And in the process of revision for BCP a valuable word disappeared from the English language..."

The starting-point for what became a lengthy and still continuing  journey was a Google search for Coverdale + psalms + facsimile. What I am convinced used to be there on the Web isn't there any longer. Instead, all search combinations led eventually to the same website:

http://www.studylight.org/desk/?query=ge+1&t=mcb

The Coverdale Bible is there, transcribed and digitised by some people in the Ukraine: it's riddled with transcription errors that render it virtually useless for purposes of textual comparison, but it was there that I picked up 'shepehoke'.

I'd sent a friend a draft of the article for the parish mag, and unknown to me he joined my quest for a sight of an original Coverdale Psalm 23. He has contacts in the academic libraries of the Benelux countries, and knew that the library of the University of Utrecht had an original, and, as it turned out, an e-book made from the original.

And that's where the snags started to arise. This e-book could easily be transmitted via the library network, but to set up the licensing would cost me over £600.

I have, for the moment, given up, thanked my friend for his goodwill, and asked him not to trouble himself further.

But there are nasty smells lingering. The Ukrainian digitisers claim copyright on their digitisation of Coverdale's work, although copyright is not a word that would have figured in Miles's vocabulary because it hadn't been invented.

I can understand that the libraries in which the treasures of the past are kept don't want any Tom, Dick or Shifty Sid getting their grubby mitts on precious vols and probably nicking a page or two to flog on the dodgy antiquities market, but denying access to originals in the Internet age, when facsimiles can so easily be made, smacks a little of ivory towers. Miles Coverdale wanted his translations of the psalms (let alone the Bible) to be voiced abroad, loudly, in every place where the flock foregather, to educate and illuminate the lives of people who probably couldn't read or write.

It is now far more difficult to see or hear his words as he spoke them and wrote them than it was in his lifetime.

So here is an appeal.

If you have an e-Coverdale, could you send me Psalms 23 and 121 (that's all I need)? Post a comment and I'll set up a short-lived e-mail address.

If you are a biblical scholar and understand ancient Hebrew could you explain the origins of what became virga and baculus in Latin, and then rod and staff in KJV?

Holiday Nightmares - The Cast - Part 1

After nearly 12 hours on coaches on the hottest day of the year (in Britain, at any rate - I can't speak for Louisiana, Northern Territories or Botswana) I came back down to earth with a thump.  I knew I was home.  


The Boss had sent me for fish and chips. For 200 yards (sorry, I don't do metres unless in Europe) on the home straight, with the chippie doorway firmly in view and the shop unusually empty, I kept a beady what'sit out for people who might get there first (usually there's about 30 of them, vying and shoving). But not a one, apart from an octogenarian gent taking the evening air, inch by trudging inch, poor soul. Until he saw me, that is, and sensed a rival for First in the Queue, and with a final sprint that Seb Coe might have been proud of he made it, a big smirk of triumph spread athwart his whiskery mush.


This will strike a chord with some readers (won't it Steph?) For he, or his double, is the principal character in this week's dramatic presentation - 


The E-Type Cripple


('cripple' is not a word that I would normally use. But it is the word this man used. It is therefore permissible, but only in the context of this little fable)


Objective:  to attain the front seat when the human contents of two coaches merge for a trip, and all seats are up for grabs.


Strategy:  finish breakfast early by demanding preferential service, on account of urgent appointment at cripple clinic; then sprint to coach in coach park; alight via offside door while driver is conducting pre-flight checks; squat on front seat; and stay put. If challenged when passengers embark, say "I are poor cripple, also I are pay £30 for this seat", thus gaining sympathy vote.


Resources:  wife modelled on lines of Nora Batty, providing cover in hotel breakfast room by excessive flashing of wrinkled stockings and/or dewlaps/gaudy headband.


Qualifications:  retired teacher; admirer of that woman who once got to be prime minister by a fluke in the Tory voting system; owner of flat cap or beret, stained beige mac, and clunky walking stick as character props.




next time... the Grand Master of his Lodge tells how he provided 50kg of  free butties for the initiated by exploiting loopholes in security in European hotels' breakfast buffets.

Fascinating Aida (veni, vidi, bought the DVD)

I must be the last person in the world to embed this wondrous video, but honest, I bought the DVD as soon as I saw it.  Hilarious women do not get much better than this.

Surreal? Elio Crociani also took the two following vids of our son Robin at La Scala Milan

Robin at La Scala (he does sing, honest, but whoever took the vid was more interested in Allison...)