Good Grammar? No Thing Cost!

I went to an English grammar school, but I don’t remember learning any English grammar while I was there.

Similarly, I have GCSEs in English Language and English Literature, but I don’t recall ever being really explicitly taught anything about the former. Just a lot of the latter.

I also did GCSE Latin, which is pretty much the only reason I know anything about grammar today. In retrospect, the modern languages we did at school covered a lot of grammar, but at the time I don’t think anyone really appreciated that that's what it was.

Now, before anyone loses their shit at me for despoiling their childhood, I’m not saying this is good or bad or even that this is what actually happened. This is just how I remember it 20+ years on.

What I am saying is that, on the internet these days, there seems to be a thing called being a “grammar snob” or even a “grammar Nazi” – which consists of sneering at other people’s ungainly efforts to express themselves, presumably from a position of knowing the “right” way to do it.  Or complaining about people who do that. Whatevs.

And I find this strange, because I find myself having – at best – an instinctive sense of what English grammar is and not an explicit understanding. I’m fairly well educated and I’ve made a living out of online content (not THIS! My real job!) for some years now. So I ought to know more than most, right?

I have found that it is only my vestigial knowledge of Latin (why does the stuff you learn at school stick around? “Then, first, before the rest and with a great accompanying crowd, Laocoon came blazing down from the citadel...”) and my subsequent attempts to learn German that have taught me what auxiliary verbs are and what “subjunctive” means. No English teacher ever did.

How many self-proclaimed grammar snobs can tell a gerund from a gerundive? I can’t. And how many of the tiny percentage who can say yes can only do so because they learned a different language?

Now, I don’t believe for one second that I have ever been unable to communicate with a fellow English speaker because of a lack of formal grammatical training. I suspect that one of the good things about this language is its openness to innovation (errors, if you prefer, snobs) and its flexibility.

Grammar snobs can piss off, telling people they are using language wrong. No - if you think language is a delicate flower that needs to be protected from use then you're wrong. The nail got knocked in whether you did it with a wrench or a hammer. When it comes to our own language (not your own), communication is what matters. 

But might our national problem with learning other languages not be ameliorated a little if all that conjugation and declension bollocks we got forcefed was treated as something we are already coping with just fine every time we speak or write? Something that is not completely new and alien, but just another way of doing something we’re doing all the time?

I certainly don’t want to be called a grammar snob, but a little grammar would surely help a lot.

Comments welcome below. First person who works in education to make a snidely predictable remark about Michael Gove wins a commemorative tea towel. 

Don't Stand So Close To Me

There are roughly 63 million people living in the UK, and its area is 243,610 square kilometres. That gives around 3867 square metres – or just under an acre – per person.

So why is that people choose to live in such uncomfortably close proximity to one another?

I looked out of the train window yesterday on my journey from London to Leeds – something I don’t normally bother doing very much – and saw vast tracts of farmland, derelict land, meadow land. And yet, I used to live in a flat where we could hear the people upstairs having sex (I can’t remember the bloke’s name, but his wife was called Unita – which I always remember, because it’s also the name of an Angolan paramilitary organisation).

It’s not like all that farmland is being used to grow crops for people to eat. In fact, god alone knows what farmers do with all those crops that appear to be just grass. At least in Lincolnshire you can tell what’s growing in the fields...

Pretty much everything we eat is imported from abroad. If that wasn’t the case, nobody would make a song and dance about “buying British”. I’m sure the Canadians don’t pay extra for “Canadian flour” – even if it does have selenium in it.

As you know, I live in Bradford. The specific bit we live in is constantly being targeted by the council for more and more housing developments, despite the glaring inadequacy of local facilities (see ODHSNM passim). This is in spite of the fact that, within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council’s territory, vis to the west of the city, there is BUGGER ALL as far as Halifax.

Obviously the reason is that the bit we live in is very close to Leeds, which means houses built there can be sold for a lot more than houses built on a rain-soaked crag 10 miles further west.

I don't want to alarm my neighbours (who have been very understanding to date). But equally, I do - for example - sometimes want to go out into my back garden in my underpants without self-consciousness. 

I am English! I demand privacy! Privacy in which I will do weird things I want to keep secret!

I Was A Teenage Dungeon Master

A few blogs ago I referred to my shady past as a role playing games fanatic. I feel that it is now sufficiently far in the past that I can speak out about it.

Sufficiently far in the past and – I should add – sufficiently rehabilitated.

The world has come on a long way from believing that Dungeons and Dragons promoted Satanism – see Tom Hanks’ 1982 movie debut “Mazes and Monsters” for details.

It has even made it through the assumption that anybody who engages in such activities is a sad, lonely spree-killer in waiting who will never have sex with a human partner – thanks in large part to the triumph over the nerds over popular culture. The internet and video games have, in some way, made my wasted adolescence acceptable – nay, even avant-garde – in glorious retrospect.

Now, the weekends my friends and I squandered pretending to be wizards – in our own heads, FFS – or moving little lead men around bedroom floors in completely heavily carpet-distorted “battles” is deemed evidence of our “old skool” credentials rather than of our blatant social ineptitude and weirdness. 

Hell, we were in it long before every town had a Games Workshop. We had to get to Nottingham if we wanted goblins to paint.

I could have spent those five or six years learning something useful. Like how to speak to girls. Or how to enjoy physical exercise.

Or becoming an expert in anything – ANYTHING – other than the fighting statistics of imaginary monsters or lists of magic spells.

So I am not celebrating any après-la-lettre cultural vindication. Even if it's ok to like dragons now thanks to Game of Thrones, it was certainly NOT ok to like dragons back in the early 1990s. 

I still regard that period of my life as a very poor use of my finite lifetime. That’s not to say I didn’t have fun – I just had no appreciation of what other kinds of fun were out there.

Anyway, back to the title of the blog. Unless you were playing D&D – or rather Advanced D&D, because D&D was for thickos – the referee was a gamesmaster. I ran our group’s AD&D campaign though, so I was – formally – the dungeon master.

At the time, that was not a funny name to us. It denoted this guy:

Not this guy:

Being the dungeon master meant that I had to come up with the stories and challenges and whatnot, while my friends played characters in the world I had dreamed up – barbarians, clerics, assassins etc.

In retrospect, I can’t figure out why we just kept buying more and more of these different games – so as to play the same basic “swords and sorcery” scenario under yet another set of rules.

It’s always swords: anything involving guns had to confront the problem that getting shot usually results in swift death (or at best, immediate incapacitation) no matter how many experience points you have.

That’s why sci-fi is best suited to wargaming rather than role playing – because it doesn’t immediately mean you have to go home (or outdoors) if your little space marines or chaos squats in exo armour die in droves.

At least I got out in good time, thanks to the greater attractions offered by underage drinking and paid employment. It’s a slippery slope – one day you’re a teenage dungeon master, the next you’re a middle-aged English Civil War re-enactor. 

Seven Pieces of Folk Wisdom Debunked (that will blow your mind)

You must excuse my recent lack of blogging. I have mostly been working in the medium of Facebook status updates of late.

Today, I want to debunk, puncture and lampoon some bits of folk wisdom, which people continue to say, despite being manifestly and demonstrably untrue.

Why? I dunno. Attention maybe?

Muscle is heavier than fat

I have comforted myself with this for years. Whenever I start an exercise regime, and the immediate results are weight gain – I reassure myself that this is the reason.

It may be true for the same volumes of the two substances (look it up yourself – what do you think I am? Wikipedia?) but my problem is not a giant rubber ring of muscle around my abdomen.

He won’t get there any faster

I don’t know if real people actually say this or if it’s just something that old women in sitcoms say when someone overtakes them.

This is just wrong. All other things being equal, he will get there faster - because he’s going faster. There might be traffic lights ahead, but if he goes really fast, he’ll get through them before they go red.

Bullies are really cowards

Now, I know that this one has an educational or moralistic purpose behind it – but again, it’s just not true. Picking on someone weaker than oneself does not necessarily mean that you’re a coward.

It might mean you’re an arsehole, but that’s not the same as cowardice.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Derived - I’m told - from Nietzsche, this has been debased into what “Loose Women” might deem philosophy. That is, it is bollocks that people repeat without thinking how completely false it is.

A life-threatening illness or injury will almost always leave you more susceptible to future ill-health. Nobody increases their resistance to bullets by shooting themselves.

Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight

While I have found that a red sky at night does indeed usually presage pleasant weather the following day, I think it is probably ascribing an unfairly restricted set of interests and concerns to shepherds to say – without qualification – that not getting rained on is a source of “delight”.

Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning

Shepherds are often up and out before sunrise and are therefore fully aware of weather conditions. No warning that comes too late is worthy of the name.

Also, very few people are shepherds. The amount of folk wisdom that applies directly to them is entirely disproportionate to their social, economic or demographic significance.

Don’t play with it or it’ll fall off

This is actually true. 

The Cat Who Let Himself Go

Rufus is our Maine Coon cat. He is nine years old. Or ten. I can never quite remember.

Anyway, he’s quite old by cat standards. Middle-aged at the very least.

Late last year, Rufus’ long-term companion Dudley died and we got a new cat, Simba.  

Dudley was of indeterminate but great age. He was fully grown when we got him and he lived for at least twelve more years. My wife may correct me on these details – the point is not the precise number. The point is, he was spectacularly old.

Anyway, imagining that (i) Rufus would be lonely and (ii) that this time (contrary to all previous experience) the kids would be interested in a new animal for more than a couple of days and that the new animal would not spend its entire life in hiding from the kids, we got Simba.

That was the name he came with, and the children insisted we keep it.

Anyway, Simba is now around two years old. So he’s a lot younger than Rufus.

New boy Simba

As you might expect, they do not get on brilliantly. Although they have settled into a tolerable routine, it is premised on Rufus bullying Simba whenever he gets the chance. He has even started to bully the dog a bit, sitting in her beds for pure wind-ups. 

At the same time as this new side has come out in Rufus, he has also pretty much DOUBLED his weight in the last six months. The long hair (semi-long hair, Elvira would correct me) in the picture above conceals it a bit - but it's basically the same thing as an enormously fat man wearing a even-more enormous football shirt to conceal his blobby contours. 

Rufus was never much of an athlete, and he still isn’t. So it’s not like he has stopped exercising.

The only thing it can be is that Rufus is eating EVERYTHING he gets the chance to eat.

The question is, is he doing this to intimidate Simba or to protect himself? Or, has he just decided, “Look at that young guy – I can’t keep up with him. And as I had my balls chopped off nine (or ten) years ago, what’s the point?”

I literally don't give a toss

David Bowie and his Opinions

“Scotland – stay with us”: so said David Bowie (via the medium of Kate Moss) at the Brit Awards earlier this week, causing a frenzy of online speculation over “what did he really mean?”, “how should we reassess his entire life and work in the light of that remark?” and “is it still ok to love him any more?” in the media.

You might as well be asking what David Bowie meant when he said “ha ha ha, hee hee hee, I’m a laughing gnome and you can’t catch me”.

Strange how “The Laughing Gnome” never seems to come up in the regular broadsheet Bowie wankfests.

I find the perplexity of apparently grown adults (men mostly) hearing an ageing pop star expressing a political opinion they disagree with pretty hilarious. Not as hilarious as Bowie’s performance in “Labyrinth”, but still pretty funny.

I don’t know why David Bowie supports the union, or for that matter why anyone would expect him to support Scottish independence. I suspect he wants Scotland to stay as part of the UK because he’s an old man and old men like things to stay the way they know them. Particularly old men who live abroad.

Surprise! Everyone has opinions. All the people of Scotland will have theirs too and those are the ones that matter. Well, the ones that bother to vote.

My opinion - which is worth precisely as little as David Bowie's - is here. 

Failing to Achieve Mindfulness

This weekend, I undertook an experiment: I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t muck about with my smartphone for two whole days.

The motivation came about on Friday evening, when I received a bunch of depressing work emails which I didn’t want to read. I knew, however, that I would not be able to resist doing so unless I took some dramatic action. So I declared to Elvira that I was going to “go without” until Monday.

By “go without” I naturally included a number of exceptions:

• Use as a music player was ok.
• People ringing me was ok.
• Amusing the children by showing them my photos was also ok.

Essentially, it was a matter of not using the internet.

What were the results of my experiment?

Well, I managed not to look at it all weekend.

I thought about looking at it a lot.

It’s the sort of thing one does at any empty moment. When you’re waiting for someone or something. When you’re bored and hoping something interesting might be there. When you’re in the middle of a conversation... and so on.

Did I learn anything from this experience?

No.

I’m afraid my life was not especially enriched. I didn’t discover new or wonderful vistas of anything that I was missing out on by not checking Facebook in every spare 30 seconds. The world didn’t end because I didn’t read the news. No new cat video went unshared. Nobody was deprived of important developments in my life. 

Maybe you have to do it for longer to achieve “mindfulness”. All I achieved was an inbox full of even more crap than it was on Friday evening.