I think I’ve found it today on the cricket field. It was the first time I’ve played in a year, no practice, and I batted better than I have in years – so don’t play, don’t practice, then just go out there.
And I got to see probably the best legspin bowling I’ve ever seen, from the sharp end, and survived the experience, if only by an inelegant scramble of bat, pad and any other bit of the body that came in handy.
* The good – MPs suggest that the age of starting driving on the roads be lifted to 18:
Young male drivers are now the biggest killer of young women in the UK, according to the report from the transport select committee. They are also a danger to themselves: more than three times as many are killed as young female drivers, although they are more likely to pass the driving test.
* The bad – another leak from the quake-hit Japanese nuclear power plant, which may have been built on a fault line!
* The informative – a story about a Portugese woman who fooled everyone by dressing as a man for two decades – amazing how easy this is in societies with rigid gender divides – shows you how much gender is performative.
An email list to which I subscribe to help my (currently stalled) study of the French language this morning informed me of a new (to me) idiomatic phrase: parler le français comme une vache espagnole (speak French like a Spanish cow).
Well I hope I don’t, quite, although on a bad day I wouldn’t guarantee it – perhaps like an intelligent talking horse.
Must be a gift to cartoonists…
On Blogging the Renaissance, Hieronimo has constructed a stylish Carnivaleque No 28. There are some gorgeously misguided linguistic theories, some lovely Jacobean slandering of men, and a 17th-century clock calibrated to 9999 – that’s what you call optimism.
My mobile is currently missing, fate unknown. Calling me will not work; please email until further advice.
Yes, it has been one of those days….
Camden High Street in the market area isn’t a great place to ply your trade – everyone will automatically assume you are a drug dealer if you approach them cold in the street…
Apologies to the person I told to “piss off” today – I didn’t spot that your T-shirt was all wrong for a dealer until afterwards. I’m usually marginally more polite to chuggers.
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