I had the stool wrong and cut off half my head....sadly that was an improvement You know what they say....if you look like your passport photo, you should see a doctor.
My dad commented on my first ever passport photo that I looked like "third junky from the left in a New York cop show". Subsequent passports have not seen much improvement.
I have a great book about this, called The Story of English by David Crystal. Basically goes into how the Saxons and Danes actually had a conference in the 900's to decide which of their words would be used. Obviously some didn't accept the decisions so dialect words still crop up in various parts of the country. Then the Normans came along and the whole thing was thrown in the air again. Shakespeare lived at the time of the greatest experimentation with the language, when it was fashionable in court circles to use metaphors for everything. They called these metaphors conceits, and this is what inspired the Bard to write perhaps the most beautiful language of all. Since then, of course, the influence of the people living in all the places English has travelled to has made the language the most diverse in the world. Crystal's main conclusion is interesting though: there is no such thing as "correct" English. This is a concept that arose in the 18th century, when certain people, notably Thomas Sheridan, father of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, tried to Impose order on the chaos the language had become by then, particularly in pronunciation, and it was seized upon by teachers in the 19th and 20th centuries. David Crystal, himself a professor of English, pours scorn on this, and says that language is whatever people want it to be.
It's amazing really that all those centuries of developing the language and us 'ampshire folk don't use the 'h' or the 't' anymore, followed by the current generation who now use numbers as well... gr8 ain't it
Just come back from a long weekend in Italy and used the automated passport thingie at Gatwick. Was rather worried it accepted me, as my passport photo looks like I'm a mad axe murderer doing life in maximum security ..............
I thought that was Humpty Dumpty. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
What's the difference between a Hippo & a Zippo ? One's a heavy Animal , the others a little lighter .......
It's a long one, but an excellently-written piece and from a journalist who has been all over this from the beginning, David Conn.
Shane Sutton (GB cycling) has resigned after allegations about insulting female and disabled cyclists.
What do people think of the GB Olympic kits? http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/36150239 Personally, I prefer the new England football kit Seriously, the worst pieces of this are the track suit and the top with long sleeves. Don't really know why but I don't like the bottom of the sleeve in red and the whole thing just looks a mess.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-bitten-penis-venomous-redback-7842776 Australian bitten on penis by redback spider Bet that made you clench.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36150192 The goings on at BHS really are outrageous. Apparently all legal although still being looked into. You've got to feel for the staff and those with pensions in the BHS fund which has strangely built up a £571m deficit since Green bought them in 2000. It may all be legal but it looks dodgy as hell.
