arifirh

Content soon. Much to post. This journal awaits tales of Parisian wanderings, exploding cider, Disneyland, forecasts of an exciting summer of travelling, and maybe even romance. For now, I will infuriatingly write nothing of detail whatever, and simply enclose largely for own reference ( Best Nightmare Ever. )

Spent a marvellous weekend in Oxford with the OULES. The society has changed a bit, but the new ones are just as lovely as the others and damnedly talented. Apparently tales of me to the new folk led to me becoming a fictional character and several people tried to deny my existence after meeting me. Slight Needham moment, there.

The Aeneid was fantastic. Having been present at a single blurrily remembered scriptwriting thing, there were a couple of moments when I was watching where I went "That line sounds oddly familiar. I wonder if it's me... Yes! I remember the bit about the fanged sheep." That was fun. Then I got to be in it the next night, which was glorious. I got to play a shepherd (with very slight ad libbing), the middle head of Cerberus (with KISS make-up), and the back end of Monty (with back ache). Happy Phil.

Cast party was grand. There was some strange unpleasant loud hanger-on who didn't seem to want to leave but he did no harm and was ignored. There were lots of other lovely people, very fine gin, and some very relieved writer/directors, one of whom was rather overwhelmed by all the relief and slipped out of consciousness in the hall.

Back in France now. Despite maintaining my general contentment and unsinkable affection for the world, a small wave of homesickness came along at the beginning of the year...

Homesickness: wave "Hi."

...and was skulking somewhere in the corner of the apartment when I got back from my holidays.

BUT.

My contentedness is unendangered, for I have a mere couple of months left in France, and some joyous visitors at one or two points. Also I have lots of writing to do. Time for a cup of tea.

*potters to the kilogramme of tea brought back from the Cambridge Tea Man*

Hello world.

I am home for the holidays, and have done the Cambridge visit. On Thursday I am doing an Oxford visit, more on which in a moment.

The CULES Golden Jubilee Ball was wonderful, as the many (260?) photos attest. I'm now one of probably very few who have played harp for and punned at Andy Hamilton in one evening. (I didn't know who he was six months ago, but that doesn't lessen my disproportionate sense of satisfaction.) Marvellous music - huge brass swing band during dinner, and lovely ceilidh band later.

Also wonderful was again seeing the Cambridge Tea Man. I now have another kilogram of teas to help while away my last few months in France. On an afternoon when we were meant to be busy with important ball-related organisation, benparker took me to the rather exciting new tea shop/cafe/thing and we accomplished tea while we contemplated accomplishing the more strenuous goals. They have a lovely cabinet on one wall made up of tiny drawers full of tea leaves. I had some China Blue Silver Needles, which costs £200/kg. A single pot was mercifully cheaper at £3.50. It was quite nice. Tasted slightly gingery. benparker and I later met a lovely but absolutely loopy lady who said that she'd tried that tea and cried at its beauty. She seemed slightly disappointed that I hadn't. Part of me was sad that I can't taste what she does. Another part of me thought she might have been a bit allergic to ginger.

* * *

I'll be in Oxford Thursday 'til Saturday. While I'll be mostly with OULES in the evenings, first of all watching then being in The Aeneid: The Pantomime, my days are empty and need loving friends to fill them with tea and cake and things. Oxford folk who I haven't seen in an age - I miss all of you lots. Communicate your shared desire for tea via phones, comments or wordless shrieks and manic flailing gestures. I will respond in kind.


Also in the news

I have bought an Irish flute. It's in the post. Excited.

I believe I have a small project. This is a device which supposedly turns off all electrical things with infra-red receivers. This is a sonic screwdriver. The obvious thing to do is to cram the workings of one into the other.

Finally, I will have a small boring black box that makes a sonic screwdriver noise!

Now to locate a copy of Electronics for Dummies.

Afterthought: ...and if I could fit the little St. Hugh's door-opening magnetic widget on the other end, it would also unlock doors. Well, a few.

The other day I was walking through town, and heard someone shout "Arrête de parler à cet hélicoptère!" They shouted it at noone in particular in the direction of a large antique carousel. There didn't seem to be any helicopters about. I feel fortunate to have heard what is probably a very rarely spoken sentence.

France continues well. Am rather missing England and its contents. Flatmate now has basic grounding in Doctor Who, The Prisoner, and the films of Terry Gilliam. We also have recently watched through all fourteen episodes of Mr. Bean. I tried her on Blackadder but with no subtitles it's a bit tricky to follow.

Have begun cooking interesting things. Recent dishes include chicken biryani, some sort of sausage casserole thing, various risotti (am working on Full English Breakfast Risotto), and marzipan pieces. My favourite is probably marzipan pieces. They are made of marzipan cut into pieces. It can be coloured marzipan sometimes. You can cut them into sticks or spirals or double helices but that is slightly complicated. I've started to develop a tendency to go to the supermarket and buy bacon and marzipan and entirely forget bread.

Teaching's still going all right. Part of this morning's lesson was animal noises. Lots of this was me trying to work out how to write up all the French animal noises my class was making, which I didn't do too badly at. Then they had to try the English ones. They liked cock-a-doodle-do (Fr.: cocorico), and I think they thought that moo was better than meugler. I quite like miauler for miaow, though. Because it's sort of got mewl in there as well it sounds sweeter. Like a kitteny miaow.

I gave an oral exam to Martha Jones on Monday morning. Really, she looked exactly like Martha Jones. It was very strange. I kept looking hopefully at the door (or windows, or ceiling. You never know.) expecting David Tennant. He didn't turn up.

Marché Plus has bacon!!! Hahahaha!!!! Hahaha!!! Ahahahaha!!!!
Yrs,
The Opera Ghost

I've just found a free Fiddlers' Bid concert! These chaps are utterly amazing. If I am honest they are in fact a bit more exciting than Fairport Convention.
http://www.visitshetland.com/about-shetland/music/
A little way down on the right. Nice quality webstream.

There is a lovely moment half an hour in when they're playing the Tangerine Dream Jig, and one of them goes into Jim Craig's one run too early, and you can almost hear him go 'Buggritbuggritbuggrit. Root note! Play the root note! Everything's fine.' Fortunately it's in the same key.

This reminds me (warning - dreadful pun at end of paragraph), I was looking around some folk music forums and someone had posted asking the history behind all of the hags in Irish tune names: Oh, Hag You Have Killed Me; The Hag With The Money; The Hag At The Churn; The Hag With The Lawyer, and so on. There were a few explanatory posts about witches and things. One of them said that he wasn't sure, but that his favourite hag tunes were Hag At The Christie and Haigín Deas, 'a chilling sort of tune'.

I think I might have to write those.

( Doctor Who Quote Meme )

( Chapter 3 and last - Through The Looking Glass )


I failed to actually think of anything interesting to do with language today. More likely, I thought of several things and then forgot them.

However, I found this a little while ago when trawling Wikipedia for linguistics articles:

Article: Disputes in English Grammar. First line - The neutrality of this article or section is disputed. ^_^

The slightly weaker middle section. All stories need a middle. This one just happens to have happened before the beginning. Good finish tomorrow. Through the Looking Glass. It has tea.

( Chapter 1 - OULES )

( Miscellaneous languagey wondering number two. )

Computer back to it's old self. Considering steampunk conversion, on the grounds that that would make it easier to invent kettle attachment. Read last week of Friends page. Watched Doctor Who. Had toast. Thrilling, these last couple of days.

New design of TARDIS. Want one.

Speaking of Doctor Who, those who liked the Master watching the Teletubbies may like to know his fondness for children's television goes back a long way.

Oxford is done with me for the moment. I shan't be going back there as a student for another sixteen months. In October I bugger off to France for an academic year, making a living from being English at people. Somehow I feel this suits me.

Large post about the last fortnight has been excitingly divided into chapters which brazenly disregard chronology and chapterification. Today, ( Chapter 2 - CULES. ) Tomorrow, Chapter 1 - OULES.

( Miscellaneous languagey wondering, number one. )

I ATE'NT DEAD.


Same not quite true of laptop. Very minor overhaul of everything in progress. Done soon.

I've just come home from the first night of OULES, and the cast dinner. More detailed post later when I have time to think.

I'm reading Le Mariage de Figaro for an essay in tomorrow morning.

Figaro. Come, come; let us study our parts well for the Play in the evening:
and do not let us resemble those Actors who never play so ill as on the first night of a
Piece; when Criticism is most watchful to detect Errors, and when they ought to play the
best—“We shall not have an opportunity of playing better tomorrow.”

Bugger that. He never saw OULES.

( Flosscars )

See, foulds - this is why you need fifty buttons. So that you can remember which button is Super Pause.

neoanjou, Marc and I went to the Port Mahon folk night last night, and Sharron Kraus was there. I had never actually heard of her before, but her website has a long list of albums with excellent reviews, she has an incredibly beautiful voice and has just recorded an album whose guests include Spiers and Boden. And there were so many exciting instruments there than night - Sharron had a dulcimer (whose headstock had been fixed back on with superglue), one chap had a bouzouki, and the other fiddle player had a purple fiddle! I played more Chris Stout things which went down well, and I even remembered what I was playing most of the time. Nearly.

Also I have bought a tassley thing to put on my violin scroll like Chris Leslie's and Alisdair White's, which is fun and swishy.

Slightly less wonderful was that last night I managed to break my nice big mug by dropping it on my desk. While it was full of water. Lots of which went on my laptop. This was then hastily hard-shut-down and put upside down to dry out on my chair with a couple of packs of silica gel under the keyboard (Lord knows why there were on my desk. Possibly for this very eventuality.) Everything fine now, except for a slightly odd backspace key. It squeaked, so I took it off, and now it won't sit properly. It doesn't go back on quite as easily as the rest of the keys... Ah, my laptop has been through so much. Still in fine fetlock and fettle.

Harry Potter and Edward Gorey!

Twice!

Those who don't know Edward Gorey, and particularly the Gashlycrumb Tinies which this is based on, ought to look here. The humour of Mr. Ogdred Weary is a bit black. But just look at Neville.

Something less macabre, more beautiful, and very, very odd is his first book, The Unstrung Harp. It's about a novelist who takes rather a funny turn. Quarter of an hour read. The lady who linked to it wrote "To all writers, to put us in our place."

D. Awdrey-Gore has the finest mind for beautifully strange names I have come across. (For example... "Mr. Earbrass escapes from Messrs. Scuffle and Dustcough, who were most anxious to go into all the ramifications of a scheme for having his novels translated into Urdu. [...] The night before returning home to Mortshire Mr. Earbrass allows himself to be taken to a literary dinner in a private dining room of Le Trottoir Imbécile. Among his fellow-authors, few of whom he recognizes and none of whom he knows, are Lawk, Sangwidge, Ha'p'orth, Avuncular, and Lord Legbail. The unwell-looking gentleman wrapped in a greatcoat is an obscure essayist named Frowst." Furthermore, Mrs. Regera Dowdy was very fond of anagrams.

Port Mahon tomorrow evening - last folk night I'll be at for many a while. Pub, music, violins, mad old folky people, songs about pirates! Northerly people meet outside the Eagle and Child at half eight?

I've just found a lovely pair of authors' names:

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) A University Grammar of English. London: Longman.

I imagine at least one of them had a large moustache.

The one on understatement is now one of my favourite Wikipedia articles.

There is a terrifying advert from Orange which I saw on Facebook. It has a beehive, with a swarm of text message icons flying around. This is not a comforting image. Then I moved the mouse over to get rid of it (NukeAnything, lovely Firefox extension), and the cursor changed into a flower and they all attacked it. I panicked and changed tab. Haven't looked at it since.

I've decided my room lacks posters so I've put xkcd strips up.

Inspired by Mr. foulds's lovely classical summary, here are ( two or three excerpts from today's linguistics essay. )

And ( something on memes. )

( Discworld meme )

( Donkeys. )

Lovely thing I've just seen. If you ask Google to define hello, the second result is rather odd: the larva of a frog or toad at the stage when it lives in water and has gills and a tail.

This is because the poor thing gets confused, and has taken its definition from a Grade 3 vocabulary quiz which asks pupils to match up the jumbled words and definitions.

I can't actually finish that quiz and make it make sense.