More Things I Like, Things I Don't Like

Things I like: Trains.

These past two weekends, I've ridden my bicycle to Cambridge and ridden a train back, and taken a train to Stevenage for a running race and come back. In both cases, my wait for a train was minimal and travel time was tolerable. Train service is frequent and more often reliable than unreliable. You can get to more than 2,500 destinations by train. Now if you ask a Briton, it's gone downhill since Margaret Thatcher reorganized it. And having been on Swiss trains recently, I can say that they appear to make more allowances for bicycles than British trains do. But still, the rail service makes car ownership optional for a larger share of the population than the United States.

Things I don't like: Northern accents.

I shouldn't make fun of the way people talk, but there is something in the northern English accent that rubs me wrong. I love a broad Scottish brogue and a Welsh lilt, but strong Yorkshire and Liverpudlian accents are at times almost incomprehensible to me. The TV serial Hollyoaks best exemplifies the accents I hate. See if you don't want to punch your computer screen when you click through to this Hollyoaks clip for which embedding has been disabled.

Death Of An English Folk Tradition

Without comment, I'll note this following article about the feared demise of Morris Dancing:

The numbers of people participating in the traditional British folk dance are dwindling whilst the age of the dancers is increasing, according to the Morris Ring, an association representing over 200 Morris troupes across Britain.
It is warning that "unless younger blood is recruited during the coming winter months, Morris dancing will soon become extinct".
Charlie Corcoran, Bagman of the Morris Ring, said: "There's a distinct possibility that in 20 years' time there will be nobody left.
"It worries me a great deal. Young people are just too embarrassed to take part.

Embarassing? I'll let the reader be the judge:

The PSA Tales

I might have mentioned in the past that public service advertisements are a bit different here, with a tendency to scare instead of persuade. Here are a couple more examples:



Dear Hollywood,

My film-going habits have changed in recent years not because I'm downloading pirated movies, but because I've grown weary of your constant recycling of superhero movies and remakes. I could tolerate this advert if it were simply on my television--that's what mute buttons are for. However, that I'm forced to sit through this advert in a cinema after I've paid £8 to get in is well beyond insulting. Knock it off.



Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

I doubt even 1 percent of this advert's viewers are benefit thieves. I would applaud your vigilance if I didn't know that this ad was instead aimed at me, the taxpayer, to try to persuade me that you're doing a good job at cracking down on benefit fraud. However, what this ad reveals to me is that the scale of the benefit fraud and the efforts to eliminate it are about equal. Not a good use of resources.

(This one is rather unpleasant.)


Dear Think! ad campaign,

This ad is just disgusting. You know what having this ad thrust in front of me during a quiet night's TV watching is like? Imagine me coming into your house at dinner time, and spitting on your plate. Yeah, it's like that. Please take it off.



Dear Countryside Access,
This one is still enjoyable after all this time. I could watch this one again and again. Thank you, Countryside Access, for coming up with a PSA that is charming and persuasive.

The Return Of Sky One

Recessions tend to do amazing things. Even two egos as huge as Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch can bury the hatchet when the economy turns south. This all is good news for the Werbenmanjensen household, which just finished 90 minutes of Simpsons watching thanks to the return of Sky One.

Now we've been getting by (*sigh*) with the reruns on Channel 4 (home of the Gay-O-Meter), but it just feels, I don't know, right, to see a Simpsons that's been aired in the United States in the last two weeks.

I feel whole again.

From The Annals Of Silly Interviews

Comes the BBC interview of Rupert Murdoch. He can't vote, and I think it's clear what he thinks.


-- Post From My iPhone

Gonna Lay Down My Sword And Shield

The United States has Veterans Day. Britain has Remembrance Day. Unlike the U.S. holiday, Remembrance Day is not a government holiday--everybody goes to work if it's a weekday. But it's in your face nonetheless in the form of plastic poppies growing like weeds on lapels and collars, purchased for the price of a chugger contribution to the Royal British Legion.

While watching football over the weekend, I noticed that no less than 100 percent of the studio commentators for one match were wearing plastic poppies. As an experiment, I just turned on BBC News 24 this moment, and both of the on-screen anchors were wearing plastic poppies. If you walk down a given city street this time of year, you will notice that at least half of the people you see are wearing the poppies. (The always clever Time Out London, in its "Lies To Tell Tourists" column a couple of years ago, urged Londoners to tell tourists that any person wearing a plastic poppy had actually killed a German in combat.)

But I won't.

I have the greatest respect for veterans and their sacrifices. I do like to know that people who come back from war with physical, psychological or emotional wounds are taken care of. I will give money to the cause. And I'm aware of the cultural significance of the Flandrian poppy in reference to the horror of World War I. But I won't wear the poppy. I guess I resent the overtones of it--the suggestion that if I don't wear the poppy I'm somehow disrespectful of veterans. And to me, the poppy remains a symbol of war, rather than the peace we should hope for. Give me a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament peace symbol any day.

Rotten Butter

Your eyes don't deceive you: That is John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon, the onetime frontman for the Sex Pistols, doing adverts for butter.

It's probably important to note that Johnny earned his "Rotten" moniker in the '70s because of his personal hygiene.

Oh, wait, here's a video!



(Johnny Rotten and Morris dancers? Heavens!)

That's OK, though: The folks from Madness are also doing food advertisements:



It's no "Baggy Trousers":

Stay Tuned For This Party Political Ad

Or not. Annie Mole is hot on the trail of a Tube ad campaign featuring Barack Obama's image that nobody is quite sure about.

Famous For Britain, The Answer

Before any more of the Olympics slips past, the answer: Yes, Middle Kid got it right, it was Daley Thompson, Olympics decathlon champ in 1980 and 1984. He looks a little, well, beefy in that ad. I remember him looking a little more like this ...


... but maybe the tracksuit doesn't do him justice.

Famous For Britain

We now bring you part 2 of our continuing series:


This ad confused Mrs. W and me for awhile, although I figured it out at long last. The big bloke with the 'stache is a famous British athlete who actually might be known in other parts of the world. Can you name him?

Advertisements I Miss

I don't think Americans got this one, but we did. All the time. And now it's gone.



Looks like they're having fun.

'We're Not America'

The lead story on BBC News 24 is this one about the creation of a pledge of allegiance to Queen and Country in the schools. A teacher's union representative suggested this was was a bad idea: "This isn't America. This is Britain, and we have a healthy skepticism."

English2American: The Dead Tree Version

The author of the English2American dictionary, blogrolled on the right, sends an email to the various beer-buyers on his list:

Some time in the last ten years you emailed me with suggestions about “The English-to-American Dictionary”, my dictionary of British slang. Perhaps we exchanged several emails. Perhaps you bought me a drink. In any event, at some point I sent you a mail saying that you were to appear in the honour roll on my contributors list, and there your name resides to this day.

For about half of these ten long years I've been dribbling on about how I'm going to turn the web site into a book, become wealthy and famous and leave this dirty town for good. That'll show them. Well, in the last year or so I've managed to get my act together somewhat on this, and within the next few months it should be available at Lulu.com - it's not a real publisher, it's one of those places that will just print a copy and send it if anyone orders one. I may be in this dirty town for the foreseeable future.

If you want to be notified when the real book comes out, go here.

Public Service Announcement: The Final Word

BBC Radio 6 Music awarded Emma the Don of the Week award, whatever that means.

English As A Second Language: Dead Man's Chest

Wafty.

I guessed its meaning from the context of an occasional Radio 6 feature, "Wicked or Wafty?" in which they play a song and ask listeners to text in their judgment.

Things That Are Familiar To Me Now

The theme song from Hollyoaks, but only because it comes on after the Simpsons. I swear I've never watched an episode.

And speaking of Channel 4 programs ...

Things that I get now: Tony Slattery's jokes on the original "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Public Service Announcement: You're Fired

The voice of London Underground loses its job.

I'd link to another of my favorites over on Emma's website, but sadly, since the story broke, it appears her site is overloaded.

I'll save 'em for later.

Updated: Oh wait, I can get through. Here's one for you sudoku fans.

Updated again: Well, no you can't after all. We'll see how long this takes.

A Very Special Catblogging

Because we know our readers come for the cats and stay for the cats, here is a Very Special Wednesday edition of catblogging.


Greg with vanishing tail. Yes, in natural light*, Greg's tail vanishes like Pigpen's head in "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

*This post contains your recommended daily allowance of pretension.

Signs You're Becoming An Englishman

We were watching Fawlty Towers on DVD last night, when the following bit of dialogue took place:

The Major: Strange creatures, women. I knew one once... striking-looking girl... tall, you know... father was a banker.
Basil: Really?
The Major: Don't remember the name of the bank.
Basil: Nevermind.
The Major: I must have been rather keen on her because I took her to see... India!
Basil: India?
The Major: At the Oval... fine match, marvellous finish... now, Surrey had to get thirty-three in about half an hour... she went off to powder her... powder her hands or something... women... er... never came back.

I found myself laughing at the reference to the Oval. It would have been lost on me two years ago.

More Cultural Exchange

The London Paper, one of the free newspapers thrust into commuters' hands as they head for the Tube in the afternoons (and later at night carpets many train carriages), sent a reporter to accompany Miami Dolphins fans to a game last week. Among the passages:

We hear the first strains of the tune as we approach Dolphin Stadium on Dan Marino Boulevard--named after the Dolphin star who's one of the the greatest quarterbacks in history. You may know him as the one who got kidnapped in Ace Ventura.