What about Scotch broth?
EE BA GUM! Yorkshire pudding makers have begun an attempt to get European Union protection against outsiders using the name of their product, in the same way regional delicacies such as Scotch whisky and champagne are protected.
Is there no end to this kind of absurdity? Already port wine and sherry are proscribed terms – unless they come from the relevant regions of Portugal and Spain – even though they have been generics in the English language for centuries.
Next the Harris family will assert their rights and make us find a new name for the famous tweed. How long before Dublin asserts its rights over Irish stew and the Israelis over the Jerusalem artichoke? It's amazing we're still allowed to grow and eat Brussels sprouts – there's an anomaly, under the very noses of the EU bureaucrats.
Is there really a need for any of this pettifogging stuff? Are the pud-makers of Yorkshire really in danger of being undermined by the Japanese doing the same thing?
Daft, I calls it!
Coffeemobile
A CAR that runs on coffee has been developed in Britain and is to do a test run between Manchester and London. The Carpuccino has been developed by the team on a BBC science show and has been designed to show there are alternatives to conventional petrol and dieseline.
The Carpuccino does 4.8km per kilogramme of ground coffee and will use about 7.8kg on the trip.
Does it take milk and sugar? Only on the hills.
A little honey
LOUIS Curtis submitted the attached lines to the editor of the in-house newsletter of his retirement establishment, hoping it would provide some amusement.
"As it was not published, I assume it was deemed too indelicate for consumption by our residents. Perhaps your readers have stronger stomachs."
There's nothing I like better
Than to have a little honey
Spread across a bed of creamy white.
So languidly reclining, and being so damn enticing
Just makes my heart rise up in sheer delight.
"Dear me", I hear you say, as you gaze on me with dread.
But it's just a little honey spread upon a slice of bread!
Publish and be damned! That's what I always say.
Zeroing in
READER David Crampton questions last week's assertion that the first decade of the 21st century ends at midnight on December 31, 2010 and that the new millennium did not in fact start in the year 2000.
"But according to that logic," he says, "the year 1960 would be part of the 50s and so on. Is there perhaps not a different law that applies to decades?"
This begins to boggle the mind. Yes, if you take 1950 as the start of the "50s" and you count 10 years, it takes you to 1959.
But the thing is 1950 is the equivalent of zero. You can't count that year until you've completed it. It's like a run in cricket. So to talk about decades is not quite the same thing as to talk about the 50s, 60s, 70s etc. The 50s will always start a year earlier than the new decade. Perhaps it's less confusing to write them out as "fifties", "sixties", "seventies" etc. It would be ridiculous to say 2010 is still in the "noughties" – it ain't – but we're still in that decade that began at midnight on December 31, 2000, and will end this year at midnight on December 31, 2010.
Or so I sez. Does anyone else say different? This starts to break the head!
Bought a pup
ANOTHER snippet from Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books):
After buying a puppy for $40 from a stranger, Bruno Alti of Milan, Italy, couldn't help wondering why the damned thing never barked. He took his pet to a veterinarian, who quickly spotted the problem and informed none-too-perceptive Alti that what he had bought wasn't a dog but a lion cub.
Tailpiece
A POLE is having his eyesight tested. The optician shows him a chart that reads C-K-O-P-V-W-X-S-C-Z-Y in letters of descending size.
"Can you read that?"
"Read it? I know the guy!"
Last word
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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