Frank rights a wrong…
In a comment on Brit’s Dabbler Diary, Malty celebrated “Dabbling back to basics, dosh, booze, football, politics, seventies rock”. It occurred to me that these are all topics which have been woefully neglected in Key’s Cupboard. Time, then, to put that right, at one fell swoop.
Dosh. Phonetically, almost identical to “Bosh” which was Ambrose Bierce’s favourite word, according to his biographer Richard O’Connor. Ambrose Bierce was one of thirteen siblings whose names all began with the letter A. From oldest to youngest, they were Abigail, Amelia, Ann Maria, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, and the twins Adelia and Aurelia. Another American family attentive to the alphabet in terms of nomenclature were the Johnsons. Lyndon Baines Johnson was one of five LBJs resident in the White House in the 1960s, the other four being his wife Lady Bird Johnson, his daughters Lynda Bird Johnson and Luci Baines Johnson, and his dog, Little Beagle Johnson.
Booze. This word is most commonly found in the phrase “primordial booze”, which boffins use to describe a sort of highly intoxicating gloop, or fluid, much favoured by our distant, oh impossibly distant!, ancestors. Several decisive steps in human progress – grunting, lolloping, dancing, babbling, being Glaswegian – are now believed to have been kick-started by gulping huge amounts of primordial booze. Or just kicked. In a gutter.
Football. It is a wonder of the modern age that this word, used to describe an activity in which men in shorts scamper around a field, occasionally falling over, in pursuit of a ball, is almost invariably misspelled. To my knowledge, the only person ever to spell it correctly was Geoffrey Willans, who, in his books about St Custard’s, gives it as “foopball”, which is, after all, how it is pronounced. I am starting a campaign to have the Willans spelling used as widely as possible, and would be grateful for your support.
Politics. An activity best engaged in from the comfort of your armchair. You can either be reading a newspaper, watching television, or listening to the radio. At some point, a stray sentence or remark will send you into a seething frenzy, and you will start spouting intemperate blather, contradicting what you have just read or heard. This sets the heart pumping, that vein twitching on your forehead, and is deeply satisfying. Most other forms of political activity are harmful, indeed corrosive of the soul. If ever you find yourself standing outside a railway station in the rain hawking papers to passers-by, you should seek medical attention.
Seventies Rock. Everything you could possibly need to know about rock music in the 1970s can be reduced to the single image of a wild-eyed hairy man standing on one leg while puffing a flute. This may actually have been the pinnacle of Western civilisation. The rest, as Ambrose Bierce would undoubtedly have said, is bosh.
Superb. Worthy of Websters, especially ‘politics’.
“Everything you could possibly need to know about rock music in the 1970s can be reduced to the single image of a wild-eyed hairy man standing on one leg while puffing a flute.”
perfect!
Without the poetic nature of LBJ’s parents naming sessions where would the anti Vietnam war protesters (and their military wing, Hanoi Jane) have got their lyrics from. If LBJ wasn’t LBJ but something like Cedric Smith then ‘LBJ, he ran away’ would never have graced the charts, coined from that incident in his youth when he tanked his daddy’s Chevy and did a runner. Likewise if Hank had called the wee tot Mavis instead of Jane then much of the street cred would disappear. ‘Hanoi Mavis’, never.
Similarly if Ho’s dad had called him Go instead of Ho then the aforementioned Vwp’s would have baulked at the line ‘Go, Go, Go Chi Minh’. Which of course leads us on to Frau Merkel Snr, had she named the little kraut Jurgen then todays headlines in the Süddeutsche Zeitung would not have screamed ‘Kanzlerin Merkel verteidigt EU-Gipfelbeschluss, Bundestag will nun doch über ESM abstimmen’, after all chaps, what decent fellow that we know would ever have been so duplicitous. In mitigation, it must be said, her favourite eleven have just been shafted by the Ities.
That hairy man was born on the same street as me, albeit several decades earlier. I think he’s a fishmonger now.
I recently saw the lead flautist of Jethro Tull in the Money section of one of the Sundays. He’s now an expert on how to manage your money and looks like one of those accountants who are into motorbikes on the weekend.