The blessing of homonymity

Well good day to you all and welcome to an installment of the wonderfully bloggy account of my life.
Many have come to expect this place to be just a general bitching ground where I rail against a world that, I feel, is designed pretty much entirely to piss me off. However, I do occasionally come across genuinely interesting nuggets of information that, just for a while, distract my attentions from things that irritate me, but not for long. Towards this end of this blog I have prepared a short piece about the Norse god “Tyr” who I am going to guess no-one has really heard of, even though we all use his name at least once a week and we certainly will see it written down at least once a day, but Tyr brings me very conveniently to the subject of todays rant because he was also known in old English as Tiw (as many Norse gods were such as Odin/Wotan, Freya/Frygg (the schoolboys favourite), etc – and that’s the last hint to Tyr’s identity you’re getting!) and homonyms are something I do particularly enjoy. Now I have come to realise over the years that my somewhat puritanical attitude towards spelling, and more particularly towards grammar and punctuation are not something that everyone shares. In fact I’d probably go as far as to say that in linguistic terms I’m probably bordering on the autistic, or certainly aspergers at any rate. Anyway I love language I think English is a stunning language and anyone who mangles it deserves to be stabbed with a set square.
As I stated earlier I love homonyms (or words that are spelled the same and have different meanings) a well placed homonym can often bring the bookish language lover a genuine smile on a dreary day, I’m reminded of the wonderful Sandi Toksvig anecdote where she tells about smiling at a sign saying “Enjoy Reading” and wondering why a sign declaring the joys of the county town of Berkshire would be at a fair in Suffolk when actually the sign was instructing the studious among us to actually “Enjoy reading” though in fairness as she claims the huge tent of second hand books behind it ought to have been a hint. Now for the pedants among you I know that’s technically a heteronym rather than a homonym but if you picked up on that to be honest you should close this blog down and book yourself into the local remand centre for the safety of the rest of us! Anyway what I am trying to get to in my roundabout way is something linked to a homonym that greatly angers me, I call it an “Idionym” myself. For example if someone came to me in work and asked to “Borrow your compass” I would look at them with a look of mock incredulity before casually informing them that sadly I have left my crampons, ice axe and other mountaineering equipment at home. If however they would like to draw a circle perhaps my “pair of compasses” could be of some use? Equally if for example I was playing a nice game of “Trivial pursuits” (well it is the season) and granny asked to borrow the dice I would take the singular of that item and insert it viciously up her nostril until she realised that “dice” is plural, what she would like, I believe, is “The die”, it’s not hard people! To be honest I think I just have anger issues, I’m not certain what would happen were I ever on a date in a seafood restaurant and my date asked to “Borrow a piece of scampi”, to be honest I’d probably stave her head in with a lobster hammer! Firstly how can you borrow food????? Secondly NO! You may take SOME scampi or A scampo, scampi is the plural for gods sake, but you know I’m a bit on the cranky side also possibly making threats against my dining companions with various pieces of speciality cutlery for not knowing the plural and singular of their dish is perhaps one of the main reasons I am still spectacularly single!

Now I’m fully certain you’ll all be sat there sniggering at my rage and thinking it’s unimportant but to me it’s vital. Now you probably don’t care what I think, and all power to you, but be aware if you do come to me and ask for the dice or a compass obviously I wouldn’t really react angrily, I would just give you the pair of compasses or the die and end up venting my spleen via a blog, but I will also judge you. Now if you can live with a 5.5ft man with a dodgy beard judging your grammar then go for it, god help us all should there ever come a time when some other arbiter of intellect is chosen such as wrestling a bison to the ground or some kind of physical exercise, should that happen to be honest I’d be screwed (more than likely by the bison!), but until that day comes embrace our beautiful language and use it properly!

Now as we end just a word about the wonderful Tyr who I mentioned earlier. Now I’m almost certain you all worked out that he is the god who gave us the fine day of “Tuesday” but relatively little is known about this god who is so important that we use his name on a daily basis. We don’t even know if he was Odin’s father, Odin’s son or indeed just Odin’s right-hand man. All that is known of him is that he is the god of battles, heroism and swords, deeply ironic given that he only had one hand, to be honest you’d think that they’d at least have chosen someone to be god of battles that wasn’t forced to fight southpaw. What’s even stranger is the manner in which poor Tyr lost his hand. Loki, the all-round bad egg of Norse mythology, had a son called Fenrir who took the incarnation of a wolf and he must have been quite a thick wolf to be honest because he kept letting himself be chained up by the other gods before breaking his shackles and going on a killing rampage. Obviously the gods were slightly concerned by this feral wolf wandering around and so they commissioned some helpful local dwarves to create them a ribbon made of some of the rarest things in nature such as fishes breath, bird spittle, mountain roots and (most bizarrely) a womans beard (clearly the Scandinavians like a gal with a bit of bristle!). Anyway the ribbon was created and the gods went to tie up Fenrir who in a fit of bizarre piquancy agreed to be tied up but only if one of the gods would place their hand in his mouth as a gesture of good faith that he would be released. Only Tyr was brave (or in my opinion stupid) enough to place his hand in the wolfs jaws and when Fenrir was secured by this “Gleiphnir” ribbon they all just laughed at which the angry Fenrir bit down hard on Tyr’s hand severing it, which, by all accounts, the gods found even funnier, clearly a slightly masochistic bunch! Fenrir of course would have the last laugh finally escaping his chains to join the final battle of Ragnarok (Armageddon) on the side of the giants against the gods and would ultimately kill Odin before being killed himself by Odin’s son Vidar (keeping up?). As for poor Tyr who has now been cruelly cast into history, he and his stumpy right hand were there at the final battle where he is killed by Garm (a dog not incomparable to Cerberus in Greek mythology, some versions say he is the brother of Fenrir interestingly enough). Along with Odin, Thor and Freya he has been given his own day so next Tuesday just give a little thought to brave stumpy armed Tyr the only god stupid enough to put his hand into a feral wolfs mouth and sadly consigned to history.

This week Matt:

• Struggled with the demands of his man-flu and drank a small lake's worth of Lemsip.
• Every time he had cough mixture felt the need to bellow "Covoooooooonia!" at the bottle, which really isn't advisable if you have a sore throat.
• Had an argument with a chemist, perhaps I'll make that the first blog of the new year.....

going off track

• Well hello my friends and welcome back to the bitching record of life, now I know what you’re thinking; you haven’t had two updates so close together in quite a while, however something happened this morning that irritated me so much I couldn’t believe I was yet to record a blog about it, I am going to talk today about Railway Station (and to a lesser degree Bus Station) etiquette.
  
  The thing this morning that annoyed me so much was when I got to the station for my usual commute to work. And those of us that work (Looking at you with jealous eyes students and unemployed people!) know how traumatic this time of the morning can be, it takes all your wits just to avoid getting mowed down on the zebra or toucan crossing (New word I’ve learned by the way, a toucan crossing is one where bikes and people cross simultaneously “two-can” you see, isn’t that clever!) and you’re not entirely certain you’ve managed to get that last crescent of toothpaste off the corner off your mouth so you’re trying to surrepticiously lick the corner of your mouth but anxiously avoiding eye-contact with the hot girl lest she think you’re making lustful advances towards her (which in fairness you are but you’ve seen her boyfriend and he’s built like the proverbial outhouse!). Anyway it’s that kind of time of the morning and all you want to do is buy a ticket and get on the train out of the cold but no there’s somebody at the front of the queue arsing about with something. People trying to buy on card who haven’t read the sign saying Maestro and Electron not accepted, or is paying off a fine and grumbling loudly about it, or they’re not sure where they want to go and are planning their route and you just find yourself thinking “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE AT THIS TIME OF THE MORNING! THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WITH JOBS TO GET TO AND YOU’RE HOLDING THEM UP!” And then begins that most wonderfully middle class language, the communal tut, it’s a beautiful thing, when the whole line just thinks as one “what a ****”.
  
  Other train station related things that annoy me include people coming off (or down to) platforms where one of the escalators is broken and you can tell which one it is because the other one works and shows which way it’s going so by simple deduction you know which side is broken, and yet some people still think “Well if it’s stopped surely anyone can use it” and when you come sprinting down/up it and inadvertently maim their toddler/spouse/pet camel or whatever it may be that this cretinous person has in tow they look accusingly at you as if its your fault, no you absolute pillock it’s your fault for going up/down the wrong escalator, maybe if both were out of order I could forgive you but yours is working fine so don’t use mine!
  
  The final real irritant to me comes from these new electronic barriers they seem ever so keen on installing at stations these days, you can guarantee you will always end up stuck behind someone whose ticket isn’t registering and the desire to take that latest Dan Brown book that they’re obviously reading (this type of idiot always reads Dan Brown!) and beat them senseless with it is overwhelming. You just have the desire to say “For gods sake you’re either senile, an idiot or a criminal, whichever it is I don’t care but your ticket doesn’t work and mine does so would you please move yourself and your filthy tracksuit (too snobby?) out of my way so I can get on to actually do some work and depress myself just to earn more taxes and keep you in white lightning so you can keep on not buying tickets for trains and acting surprised when that ticket you picked up off the floor of the carriage isn’t valid!”
  
  This week Matt:

• Had a wonderful time watching the Alan Bennett Season on BBC 4, he has such a lovely soothing voice!
• Got very annoyed with incompetant staff at the Greek Taverna who insisted I didn't have the money on my credit card to cover the transaction..... what a suprise it was because he was trying to charge me £16,000 for my £160.00 bill, put a decimal point between the dots you cretin!
• Lost his favourite set of cufflinks, if anyone sees them please let me know, they're silver set with faux-diamonds.

The slow walk of death

Well hello to you all my friends (and casual acquaintances who just want to know what I’m complaining about today!) and welcome back to my, recently lapsed blog. Now you may be forgiven for thinking my lack of updates of late were to do with a lack of things to be angry about, oh how wrong you ate! Anyone who knows me knows that every day brings fresh things for me to complain about (like adverts for lawyers during daytime TV, that’s a whole rant right there, but not for today.

What I thought I’d talk about today is something of great personal anger to me, slow walkers! Now if, like me, you are a lover of walking there is nothing more irritating than being stuck behind a slow walker, or even worse a group of slow walkers! I think the main irritant about it is that there’s a certain etiquette to the subtle passing manoeuvre that must be performed to pass these people who have not got a clue about the speed a normal person walks.

The first situation, and probably the most common, that you may find yourself in is trying to walk somewhere and seeing in the middle distance a person of, shall we say, a certain age that you know before long you are going to have to try and pass and you are now left with an internal dilemma. Do you slow your own pace to a ridiculously slow pace and hope the old dear takes a side road leaving you free to continue your journey at the correct pace unobstructed. The problem with this idea however is that if the old dear does not divert her path however slowly you are walking you are going to end up catching up with her because even your slow walk is faster than her. And so we find ourselves approaching her and she is not going to be diverted from the same course as you and you know you are now going to have to perform a tricky pass because do you suddenly walk at top speed and just rush past her knowing that you will have to maintain that pace until you are out of her sight? Alternatively you can subtly increase your pace so it looks like you are just naturally faster, a perfectly reasonable assumption given her age, however there’s going to be a time when you’re walking side by side which is always an awkward situation. Another option is to cross over the road and walk on the other side but you’re then on the wrong side for what you want and you know full well that you will have to cross again at some point and what happens if there’s traffic and you then rejoin the correct side still behind the old lady the whole idea has been pointless!

Another situation could be getting trapped behind a group of slow walkers, if there’s a group, particularly one which expands across the whole pavement, you can’t use the time honoured tactic of simply speeding up and passing them subtly to one side (for some reason acceptable with younger people but not older people). Therefore quite often you’ll get stuck behind the group zig-zagging back and forth waiting for them to notice you are walking faster than them and want to pass. The only other alternative is to walk in the gutter to go past them, but perhaps this is a sign of the times in which we live I always feel very unsafe doing this almost as if at the first opportunity the group are going to push me in front of a passing motor-vehicle just for having the temerity to walk past them! Even worse if you do get past them at a faster a pace and then come to a pelican crossing (incidentally why are they called that anyone know? No? I’ll wiki it!) you find yourself being absorbed by them, and uncomfortable position because you suddenly look for any gap in traffic to try and get across the road to relieve yourself of the socially awkward situation!
My personal advice to anyone like me who likes to walk but finds themselves personally irritated by slow walkers is to walk at all times in a cycle path if available because no-one slow goes in them and if the cyclists complain (well my hatred of cyclists is well known already) blame the old dears and the slow walkers and tell them if they want you out of their cycle lane they should petition the council for fast and slow walkers lanes, the only possible solution to this socially awkward situation!

This week Matt

• Re-discovered the wonders of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, I do like a bit of inappropriate racism!
• Had a mild heart attack at his credit card bill
• Found out that a a pelican crossing is so called because it is a contraction of the phrase "Pedestrian Light Controlled (PELICON) Crossing", isn't that fascinating, god love Wiki!