Have dog, can't travel
MISS, the dog ate my homework … Welsh rugby flyhalf Jason Tovey had to phone his coach with a variation on this story last week to explain that he couldn't play for Cardiff Blues against Toulon, in France. His labrador puppy, Buster, had chewed up his passport.
Tovey had been packed and ready to go when he discovered that Buster had been having great fun with the passport, savaging it beyond repair. It had two gaping holes and canine teeth marks all over. The emigration/immigration authorities could never have accepted it.
He had to watch the match on television – and see his side go down heavily. Would he have made the difference?
Tovey's plight was greeted with hilarity on Twitter. Said one tweet: "Not true that Jason Tovey can't play against Toulon because his dog ate his passport. According to his mother's letter he forgot his PE kit."
New haka?
A PASTING from England in a rugby Test at Twickenham a few weeks ago; innings defeats by South Africa in cricket Tests in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.
They say that in New Zealand they're developing a new dance. It's called the Humble Haka.
Heh, heh!
Damage
CRICKET lends itself to classy writing. Here's an extract from Andrew McGlashan's match report on the Second Test for the website, Cricinfo: "In the main, Boult at least tried to stay in line and hammered a straight six down the ground which resulted in a smashed window. It is about the only significant damage New Zealand have caused in this series."
Heh, heh!
Soldiers' lingo
WHILE there's a lucifer to light your fag … It seems much of our day-to-day talk has its origins in the trenches of World War I.
Words and phrases like "cushy", "crummy" and "blind spot" come from that source. Also "blotto" and to "binge". Or if you're feeling "washed out", "fed up" or just plain "lousy".
Research by British military historian Peter Doyle and Julian Walker, an etymologist, traces, via thousands of documents from the period - letters from the front, trench newspapers, diaries, books and official military records - how the language changed during the four years of the war.
Military slang came into the mainstream, as well as imported French and German words and bits of English local dialect. "Binge", for instance, was until the war a word heard only in the Lancashire dialect. "Scrounge" came from illicit small-scale hunting.
Walker says the war was a melting plot of classes and nationalities, with people thrown together under conditions of stress.
"It was a very creative time for language. Soldiers have always had a genius for slang and coming up with terms."
Many of the words were created by soldiers to describe their unfamiliar surroundings and circumstances. They had to come up with names for new things like "trenchcoats" and "duckboards". "Lousy" and "crummy" both referred to being infested with lice, while "fed-up" emerged as an expression of weariness.
Many of the technical devices encountered by soldiers could be quite baffling and hard to describe, which explains the word "thingummyjig".
I'm sure World War II and subsequent conflicts did much the same. Wizard prang, old chap! But what a disastrous way to enrich and develop the language.
One name
THEN of course there was the British Tommy who came out to South Africa for the Anglo/Boer War. He wrote back home: "Every dog is called Voetsek, and when you call him he runs away."
Tackled
KENYAN runner Edwin Kipsang Rotich was bodily tackled by a spectator as he approached the finishing tape in a 10km race in Brazil.
The slightly-built Rotich barely missed a stride as police rushed to his assistance and he went on to win the annual Kings Run through the streets of the city of Cuiaba
Has our own renowned tackler from the South Coast – the one who tackled the ref during a rugby test at King's Park – perhaps emigrated to Brazil?
No, the culprit in this case was a local man known to the police to be slightly unbalanced and with a history of this kind of thing.
Tailpiece
I TOOK the shell off my racing snail to make him go faster. But it just made him look sluggish.
Last word
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
No comments:
Post a Comment