I was thinking about this speech in Tolkien from the Lord of the Nazgûl. I wonder how one would one put into good idiomatic French the last bit about one’s shrivelled mind being laid bare to the Lidless Eye. @olivierroth.bsky.social

The tube strike is off. Hurrah!

Jacques Brel on footballers #301 🎤🎼 Cantona que l’amour …

Poems for Historical Linguists #501 “Hope” is the thing with asterisks - That perches in the soul - And sings the words without the tune - And never stops - at all - (With deepest apologies to Emily Dickinson)

If there is an upside to being awoken at 05h30, it is hearing the Radio 4 shipping forecast. It has the same highly niche appeal as reading the abbreviated notations used to record bridge or chess matches.

Here is a Turkish writer in 1961 trying to explain the close central unrounded vowel [ɨ] found inter alia as Turkish ı and Russian ы. It is possible that in his variety of English the relevant segments of ‘wanted’ , ‘remarkable’, and ‘this’ (!) all sounded the same. Not in mine.

From a friend who is airside early:

Seeing a reference to someone being “given a criminal record”, I thought of that old Morecambe & Wise joke: “Oh, you mean one by Des O’Connor?”

Quo modo sedet sola civitas … youtu.be/Uef7fDVN54E?...

In late middle age, I find myself regretting not doing philosophy for Greats. I did the Plato for Mods with the great Jonathan Barnes. It was brilliant. He encouraged me to continue for Greats. I didn’t. Mistake. I told him so recently. He very sweetly said he was sorry I was sorry.

Today is also the 126th anniversary of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's birth. In the early 1920s she used Saha's Equation to determine that stars are overwhelmingly Hydrogen-based, but was pressured to downplay her revolutionary results. tinyurl.com/2px4rrdd #WomenInSTEM #AstroSky 🔭

Spem in allium?

Aww. I felt very sorry for this abandoned domestic, all by itself. As my late mother would have said, bless its little cotton socks.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s gravestone. He died on 29th April 1951. Why the little ladder? I am not sure. But IIRC he says that there are some philosophical ladders that we are obliged to make the effort to climb up before we are entitled to kick them away. I assume this is a reference to that. Is it?

Remember that scene where Mick Dundee says, “Knife? No, THIS is a knife?” I thought much the same about this product called Serious Mass (LHS). No, THIS (RHS) is Serious Mass.

Oh dear. I’m sure we’ve all had moments when we can’t find a bit of text we know very well we have just read in some book or other. But his Bible is apparently full of post-its and he still can’t find his way about Isaiah. Maybe brandish it less? youtube.com/shorts/r8HRH...

I came across a report in The Sun (don’t judge me) about twin brothers who died from electrocution by high voltage cables in Italy. I assume Sun journalists were not intending to make a sick joke with the phrasing below. So I can only assume they are utterly tactless and inept.

I know how they feel. I really do.

Somebody said to me today, “Because you are OLD …” and went on to offer some practical advice. But it stopped me in my tracks. Last year someone asked if I wanted an adult ticket. She meant “or pensioner?” But, gentle reader, if I live to 2027, I shall be 60. Am I OLD?

Some paradox here, one feels. 😉

In French stylistics, there is a saying: Pour “chose”, dites autre chose! I just thought much the same upon meeting the word “wordsmith” in an obituary. Call me a snob, but it makes me reach for the sick-bag every time. It lazy and tired.

I enjoyed Project Hail Mary at the cinema. I had wondered why it was so called. Hearing that Ryan Gosling’s character was Dr Grace, I thought “Hail Mary, [a ship] full of Grace”. But of course not. Turns out a Hail Mary (in *this* context) is some sort of long shot in baseball.

You can’t even go to Mass without word of The Orange One intruding. Although in his and his cronies’ case, it’s more likely to be “make” than “wake”. ☹️

Happy Easter to those of my Orthodox friends celebrating it today. Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Khristós Anésti! Alithós Anésti! Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!

This is the unveiling of a statue of, er, Baphomet. In Arkansas, I gather. Truly, some people will worship anything. But then I guess we already knew that.

On the one hand, Cousin Jasper is annoying. On the other, one has to salute the sheer verve of his invective.

Just seen on the shelf at Waterstone’s. Presumably not selling like hot cakes. (Unless somebody desperately needs to discover what the CofE readings were in 2024 and can’t think of another way to do it.)

Last night at the Easter Vigil we had 11 baptisms (mostly adults) and 10 receptions into the Catholic Church. Of those 21 people, 17 were also confirmed. The others (younger) will be confirmed by the bishop later this month. This wasn’t in London, but up here in Cumbria! Storm Dave raged outside.

Surrexit Christus, alleluia!

🤣🤣🤣

When hyphens really do matter.

Almost any time I ask for something at Boots, I am treated like a moron. Last time, I was told I couldn’t have some ear drops because they were for otitis externa and externa meant exclusively the big flappy bit you put your glasses over. Well, no. It’s not. 1/

When I first joined the London Library some 20+ years ago, the philology section had a whole lovely mezzanine floor to itself. Then it got bumped down to the basement. Now there are building works, specific philology books being fetchable twice a week. Fortunae rota volvitur.

Seen on a wall in SW1:

In Belmont is a laundry richly left … Merchant I. 1. 168 (Little-known variant reading in some early printings.)

Delighted to see that the mighty Kushan emperor did not, in fact, perish circa 150 CE but is alive and well in the hospitality trade in W1:

It’s all very well putting up signs. But there’s only one l in marshal.

Hard to think it’s 22 years since we saw The History Boys @NationalTheatre Lyttleton. It brought together some immense talents. It’s nice to see that Jamie Parker and Sam Barnett are still singing duets. From Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered to … this: youtu.be/Jt669YYWYiY?...

I recall being interviewed by a rather grand civil servant who thought that Holy Week was the week AFTER Easter. No doubt at the front of his mind were bank holidays and staff quotas. He wasn’t pleased when I told him he was wrong. And when his colleague sheepishly concurred with me.

I’m having lunch at a pub in the City. You realize you’ve got old when a perfectly familiar banknote from your childhood is now an exhibit in a gilt frame.

In paradisum deducant eos angeli; in eorum adventu suscipiant eos martyres, et perducant eos in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum eos suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeant requiem. x.com/ewtnews/stat...

I do dislike rubbernecking by fellow passengers on the tube whose attention span means they have to gawp from their phones over to my reading to see if mine’s more interesting. Short answer: of course it is. Today’s was the attached. I hope my nosey neighbour enjoyed it.

I was listening to “Vienna” by Ultravox. It spent four weeks at No 2 in the UK singles charts in 1981. Then I remembered that, in Rising Damp, the name of Rigsby’s cat was Vienna. That puts a different complexion on the song. Imagine Rigsby serenading his cat. “This means nothing to me …”

Ah, yes, Mayfair. As I gaze about me, words like “artisanal” and “curated” threaten to surface in my consciousness.

You know you’re back in London when you’re standing on a TfL escalator and the man next to you is hawking so loudly you can hear him through your expensive, supposedly noise-cancelling, ear pods.

Dear Oliver Lyne, my erstwhile and much-missed tutor, once said to me “Horace is a middle-aged pleasure.” He was younger when he said that than I am now. But he was so right. I’ve been re-reading Horace a fair bit of late. Looking just now at the Soracte ode, I recall this: