It's cold and frosty this morning. I was cheered up by seeing a Blue Tit in the olive tree when I opened the curtains. But, apart from that, it's pretty Siberian out there. This weather reminds me of the opening lines of The Eve of St Agnes, which Keats wrote at this time of year ...

St Agnes' Eve - Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold…

A presenter on Sky News just pronounced 'piracy' as 'pirracy' ('i' as in 'it'). How odd.

Perhaps he was thinking of the correct British pronunciation of 'privacy' ('i' as in 'it' rather than 'i' as in 'eye').

Of course, it's not always that way round. In the UK, we say 'missile' with the second 'i' pronounced like 'eye'. Whereas the Americans say 'missile' as in a 'missal' in church or a 'mistle thrush'.

And then there's 'fertile'. We pronounce the second syllable as 'tile' of course. But they say 'furtle'. So a fertile turtle would be a 'furtle turtle'. How ridiculous. How wrong. Sorry American friends. But it's preposterous and you must stop it now.

I was watching the BBC's Young James Herriot last night with a relative who can't hear too well, so we put the subtitles on. A good third of them seemed to be missing. But at least they were better than the live news subtitles which are clearly written by a confused Dadaist poet with an absinthe habit.

They did reveal something interesting though. Having gone on about sarcastic punctuation marks, I realised that subtitlers actually use them. When one of the characters said 'And worth every penny' sarcastically, they added an exclamation mark in brackets -

And worth every penny (!)

In the end, I found myself analysing the subtitles rather than actually watching the programme. COW MOOS was a good one. I also rather liked DOG GROWLS and SHEEP BLEATS.

I always advise my media clients to avoid sarcasm during newspaper interviews, because you can’t really convey tone of voice in print.

And it's the same with social networking. The sarcastic Twitter hashtag #blamethemuslims - sending up the tendency to blame Muslims for everything - got into trouble when some people took it literally.

Perhaps its inventor should have written it in Ethiopian, which has a temherte slaqî punctuation mark (¡) to denote irony.

A more recent irony signifier is the SarcMark – an inverted @ sign with a full stop inside.

But, until now, there’s not been a sarcastic font.

Cue Arial Sarcastic

It’s basically a backwards-leaning italicised Arial font. Not sure it'll take off, but it's an interesting idea. Perhaps new fonts could be devised to convey other tones or textures of voice - even accents. You could have a horribly mangled, distorted font for hardcore Geordie, a posh-looking Edwardian font for a county accent (ie. how the Queen speaks), an oddly extruded font for a Norfolk accent. Oh, and a comedy one for Birmingham.

Sadly, I can't do fonts on Peacockshock, so you'll have to make do with this one (which looks a bit Hertfordshire to me).

A Sarc Mark

Behold, the Large Hadron Collider shall bring forth a particle, and they shall call its name the Higgs Boson, and journalists shall call its name the God Particle. And Peacockshock explaineth it herewith.

I've always taken a dilettantish interest in particle physics, which looks at the loony behaviour of the tiny particles making up atoms. Top, Bottom and Charm Quarks have long been my favourites. But I also have a soft spot for the most elusive particle in the universe – the Higgs Boson.

Basically, it's a teeny creature which has to exist if there's any truth in the classic theories about particles and how they behave. But no-one's ever found it.

The reason it has to exist is that particles have sizes or 'mass'. You have a size. I have a size.

We obviously take mass for-granted. Otherwise we'd go mad thinking about it.

But, in the 60s, Peter Higgs (and various others) decided that mass must be caused by something. A thing must exist that causes particles to have a size.

This became known as the 'Higgs Boson'. And it's proved extremely elusive.

But, on December 13th, there's a chance that a bunch of scientists in Switzerland will announce they've found the Holy Grail – confirmed the existence of the theoretical little varmint that causes mass, makes everything what it is, and keeps Weightwatchers in business.

The scientists are based at CERN (the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) and have spent years trying to get a photo of it, so to speak, by blasting particles at each other. They do this in a 17-mile-long chamber, in a thing called the Large Hadron Collider.

And they've been doing a heck of a lot of colliding.

In every 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001 square centimetres (known as a femtobarn), they've performed a vast number of collisions. This is to smash the particles up and, maybe just maybe, isolate the thing that's giving them mass – the tiny Higgs Boson.

In fact, in each teeny femtobarn, they've performed millions of collisions.

The exact figure for this vast number of collisions is 'five inverse femtobarns'. Just one 'inverse femtobarn' is about 70 million million collisions.

So – it's hoped that a reasonable number of Higgs Bosons have popped out to confirm their existence. If they haven't, they'll have to rethink particle physics ... the study of what everything's made of. If they have, I suspect it will be mince pies all round and the Higgs Boson will become a celebrity and tour the chat shows.

This must all be very exciting for Professor Higgs, who's in his 80s and lives in Edinburgh. Like all great intellectuals, he was born in Newcastle – Wallsend, to be precise.

I was intrigued that the tiny, microscopic areas where subatomic particles live are known as 'barns'. So I checked it out.

Basically, physicists studying a uranium atom's nucleus (during the Second World War) quipped hilariously that it was 'as big as a barn'.

The barn then became the standard unit of measurement for such critters. And nowadays we have several variations on the theme, such as the -

megabarn

kilobarn

millibarn

microbarn (or outhouse)

nanobarn

picobarn (or silo)

femtobarn

attobarn

zeptobarn

and

yoctobarn (or shed)

A Microdonkey

Moving swiftly on from barns ...

Bored with inches? Centimetres getting you down? Here are some eccentric units of measurement from the world of physics and elsewhere ...

A Beard Second
The length a physicist's beard grows in one second.

A Canard
A Canard is a unit of quackery.

A Dirac
Speaking at a rate of one Dirac, you'd manage just one word an hour. This unit is based on observations of the famously taciturn Cambridge academic Paul Dirac.

A Donkeypower
One Donkeypower is a third of one Horsepower.

A Helen
One Helen can launch a thousand ships, obviously. To launch just one ship, you'd require a Microhelen.

A Mickey
A Mickey is the smallest detectable movement of a computer mouse. This is roughly 0.1 mm, but it depends on the equipment used.

A Sheppey
A measure of distance equal to about 7⁄8 of a mile, defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. This comes from The Meaning of Liff, by Douglas Adams.

A Warhol
Derived from Andy Warhol’s 'everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes', this unit represents fifteen minutes of fame. It can be used in multiples -
1 kilowarhol — famous for 15,000 minutes, or 10.42 days.
1 megawarhol — famous for 15 million minutes, or 28.5 years.

The excellent new Kate Bush album 50 Words For Snow has brought back memories of my first year at university, when we were told Eskimos had hundreds of words for the pesky stuff.

This is an urban myth of course, sparked off by Franz Boas in 1911 who decided they had four.

Then in 1940, amateur linguist Ben Whorf famously opted for seven. He argued we perceive the world through the nuances of language. So the Eskimos have piles of words for types of snow and shades of white in their Inuit and Yupik languages.

Not so. But they do have over 50 or so versions of the word. The Inuit language uses root words that can have almost limitless variations – a bit like calling a dog a dog, a doggy a doglet and so on. This is called polysynthesis.

The myth snowballed so ludicrously that one article in the 50s claimed there were 400 words for it. Four to 400 is quite a leap.

As linguist Geoffrey Pullum puts it in The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax there were soon

hundreds of words for different grades and types of snow, a lexicographical winter wonderland, the quintessential demonstration of how primitive minds categorise the world so differently from us.

And he suggests Inuits probably don't discuss snow very much anyway -

Snow in the traditional Eskimo hunter's life must be a kind of constantly assumed background, like sand on the beach. And even beach bums have only one word for sand.

If you want a blizzard of snow words, I suggest you turn to the Sami. They have hundreds. That's because they herd reindeer. And snow really makes a difference if you're dragging a bunch of big old deers across the Arctic.

So they have vahca (loose snow), moarri (brittle snow), soavli (extremely wet snow), spoatvia (compacted snow), soatma (slush on the surface of a lake) and, well, you get the picture.

There are more in this scholarly paper on Sami words for snow and reindeer.

Here are Kate's 50 words for snow. They're a bit odd. But she is Kate Bush.

1 drifting
2 twisting
3 whiteout
4 blackbird braille
5 Wenceslasaire
6 avalanche
7 swans-a-melting
8 deamondi-pavlova
9 eiderfalls
10 Santanyeroofdikov
11 stellatundra
12 hunter's dream
13 faloop'njoompoola
14 zebranivem
15 spangladasha
16 albadune
17 hironocrashka
18 hooded-wept
19 phlegm de neige
20 mountainsob
21 anklebreaker
22 erase-o-dust
23 shnamistoflopp'n
24 terrablizza
25 whirlissimo
26 vanilla swarm
27 icyskidski
28 robber's veil
29 creaky-creaky
30 psychohail
31 whippoccino
32 shimmerglisten
33 Zhivagodamarbletash
34 sorbetdeluge
35 sleetspoot'n
36 melt-o-blast
37 slipperella
38 boomerangablanca
39 groundberry down
40 meringuerpeaks
41 crème-bouffant
42 peDtaH 'ej chIS qo
43 deep'nhidden
44 bad for trains
45 shovelcrusted
46 anechoic
47 blown from polar fur
48 vanishing world
49 mistraldespair
50 snow

I've just had a promotional email from Pizza Express, declaring

In Dough Balls We Believe

It's clearly the latest thing – putting the verb at the end – as in Radio 1's

In New Music We Trust

And it does have its advantages. It allows you to frontload the noun, the big idea, and gives the verb lots of oomph.

I guess that's why Latin often defaults to that word order, even though any old order will do. As I'm sure you know, Canis puerum mordet (Dog boy bites – ie. the dog bites the boy) has exactly the same meaning as Mordet canis puerum or Puerum mordet canis.

Quite a few languages do use the subject-object-verb (SOV) or object-subject-verb (OSV) order. We even do it in conversational English, when we're contrasting two things – I hate tea, but coffee I'll drink (verb at the end for emphasis). It does sound a bit mannered, as in With this ring, I thee wed. But I'm sorely tempted to use more OSVs -

In Hertford I live
In cats I believe
In coffee I trust

My motto that is. This ridiculousness shall I now stop.

I heard the word faucet on American TV the other day and thought how old-fashioned it sounded. So I looked it up ... and it's a 14th century English word which we ditched in favour of tap.

It's not the only old English word used in the USA. Fall (autumn) is another one they kept but we trashed. Trash is an old English word by the way. So is gotten.

It's an urban myth that people in the Appalachians and the Ozarks speak pure Shakespearean English, but the southern backwoods do have Elizabethan influences in their culture. Some folk tunes and dances can be traced back to Elizabethan courtly music. The Virginia Reel is derived from the English formal dance Sir Roger de Coverley.

Appalachian grammar certainly has a few old English touches. I know because I was a-studying it. The Appalachian folk certainly aren't a-feared to use archaic-sounding verb forms such as a-going. I also rather like the possessive forms his'n, our'n, and your'n (his, ours, yours) which we no longer use, although an old man in Oxford did once say your'n to me. And me is often used with verbs – I bought me a dog.

The spellings can be pretty Olde Worlde too. Appalachian Waspes live in nestes. And cucumbers are cowcumbers.

They've preserved some older English pronunciations as well, such as obleeged.

Some other old English words which still survive in the Appalachians but became extinct over here -

Counterpane
Hussy
Poke – sack (as in a 'pig in a poke')
Skillet – frying pan (recently revived here, in the form of the 'sizzling skillet')
Varmint – small animal
Victuals - food
Yonder – in the distance
And ...
gallusses - an Appalachian term for 'braces holding up trousers'.

That's actually an old Geordie word. Wherever you gan, you're sure to find a Geordie, as they say in the Ozarks y'all.

Please note, Asda voiceover person, that it's pronounced COMP-rable and not com-PARR-able.

Am I alone in finding two things extremely odd in the Fox-Werritty story? (1) The top of Liam Fox's head is alarmingly flat and (2) Werritty's surely not a real surname.

Made-up surnames can fool you though. I did think 'Walliams' was real, until I read that he just replaced the first 'i' with an 'a'. And novelists shift letters around quite a lot to create distinctive surnames. In a novel, I'd probably be Ian Petcock or something.

I used to think De'Ath was a made-up name, disguising the actual surname Death. But it turns out that D'Eath, D'Eathe, De'Ath and D'Aeth have been around for centuries.

There was an actual surname 'Death' though, and it had an interesting provenance – reserved for people who played the character of Death in medieval pageants and mystery plays. That's where King, Knight and Angel come from too.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, they didn't really bother with surnames until 1811, when Napoleon made them a legal requirement. The Dutch thought this was just a short-term thing, so they gave themselves comedy names such as Mr Lunatic Asylum (Gekkehuis). But the names stuck, as you then had to get a royal decree to change them.

Changing your surname's pretty easy in Sweden, and that's led to a recent trend for hippydippy designer surnames such as Flowerland and Swedenrose.

In South Africa, there's a Zulu tradition of giving a first name which relates to a nearby contemporary event. So, following the 2010 World Cup, there are toddlers running round with names such as Kickoff Shabala, Tickets Ngubane, Substitute Shandu, Halftime Hlatshwayo, Stadium Gumbi and poor little Offside Mchunu.

And another thing, while I'm on about names ...

I'm a big fan of ubiquitous Hertford celebrity Peter Ruffles ... and of his surname, as I've always been fond of names which could be verbs.

I'm sure Peter rarely ruffles. But some verb surnames do fit their owners. Larry Speakes, for instance, speaks quite a lot. He was President Reagan's White House spokesperson.

More comedy verb names -

George Burns
Bill Withers
Tom Waits
Jeremy Irons and
Britney Spears

Three years ago, back in the day, I fulminated about the phrase 'back in the day', used by the young as a nostalgic reference to the old days, which, to them, means roughly 2007.

Now, I've noticed they just say 'in the day', which is even more irritating.

Meanwhile, news broadcasters have taken to randomly inserting 'back' at any given opportunity, as in 'back in 2009'.

Dad recently gave a talk about his childhood, 'back' in the 1920s, to some children. And they thanked him for telling them about 'the olden days'. I suppose they were the olden days to them. (My friend Dan once asked some ten-year-olds how old they thought he was when he was doing teacher training. One said 84. He was 22.)

Oddly, the phrase 'olden days' was first used in, um, the olden days (Aelfric - 12th century). But the phrases 'olden days' and 'olden times' only made it into English books around 1800, when the whole Gothic/Romantic thing peaked. See the graph below.

I personally hate it when people say 'in my day', as it presumes that they've had their day. The same goes for 'the good old days' which (dating me) makes me think of that old TV music hall programme with Leonard Sachs. And 'those were the days' upsets me greatly, as these are the days IMHO.

Bizarrely, terms for the 'old days' tend to date really quickly. I can't recall ever referring to 'times long past', 'bygone days', 'way back when', 'antiquity' or 'yesteryear'. If I did, it must have been 'aeons ago' - another term I rarely use. And I suspect 'auld lang syne' only gets used at New Year in that dreadful song where you have to do the funny arm thing, unless you're the Queen.

If I have to use a term for times past, or past times, I tend to opt for 'antediluvian', which very few people seem to understand. This then allows me to bore them with the explanation that it means 'before the flood' (the Noah one).

And I have been known to refer to the 'Golden Age', as in 'the Golden Age of email' or 'the Golden Age of the X Factor'. The Golden Age seems to pop up in most mythologies. The Hindu Vedas are very nostalgic about it.

During the 'First and Perfect Age' ...

People neither bought nor sold. There were no poor and no rich. There was no need to work. There was no illness. There was no decline with the years. There was no hatred or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever, no sorrow, no fear.

Yes. That's what life was like in the day.

The Olden Days, as mentioned in books - from Google NGrams

The Boke of St Albans, and Dame Juliana

Thank you to Richard of Bengeo for alerting me to the fact that there isn't a collective noun for collective nouns.

Prompted by his suspicion that collective nouns were a Victorian concoction, I decided on a 'contrivance'.

But then I did a bit of rootling and discovered they've been around since at least 1450. And the ultimate 15th century bible of collective nouns was written in these parts – Hertfordshire.

The Boke of St Albans (1486), by a nun called Dame Juliana Berners, included lists of collective nouns for 'companys of beestys and fowlys'. Known as 'terms of venery', they were used by aristocratic hunting types as a sort of tribal shibboleth.

There is still a sort of snobbery, I suppose, about knowing a business of ferrets from a badling of ducks or a peep of chickens, and knowing the difference between a gaggle and a skein of geese.

As for Dame Juliana Berners, she was allegedly brought up in court (which explains her enthusiasm for huntin', shootin' and fishin') but found God and became a prioress. It's been claimed she was the earliest female author in England and she wrote the first ever guide to fishing - A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle (1496). That's if she really existed. No-one's quite sure.

An interesting footnote is that the Boke of St Albans came back into fashion in the 16th century, when it was edited by Gervase Markham who renamed it The Gentleman's Academic.

By sheer coincidence, I interviewed Gervase Markham's namesake and descendant, Canon Gervase Markham (1910 – 2007), for a Radio 4 Home Truths feature a few years ago. It's pronounced Gerviss by the way. He was one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met – preaching (and dry-stone-walling) way into his 90s and learning one new language per year.

There's a Gervase every second generation in the family, and I interviewed his grandson – also Gervase Markham – who was an entrepreneur and Oxford undergraduate. He's now a web whizzkid and one of the people behind Mozilla's Bugzilla programme.

I suspect the collective noun is a Genius of Gervases.

Revd Gervase Markham

a guinea pig judging panel pores (paws?) over your nominations

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm currently liking -

a wibble (Sarah)

a squeak (Phil)

a squee (H)

a snuffle (Andrew)

But the fluffy jury's still out. Please keep them coming. I'm intending to campaign for a new collective noun at the highest levels.

Mick Jagger of the Circumrotary Monoliths

Having expatiated upon Latinate and Hellenistic verbalisations, I've now become obsessed with making up pompous titles for pop songs. Here are my top ten. Please email your suggestions to ian@peacockshock.com

Persecute me with your rhythmical accoutrement – Ian Dury and the Blockheads

Remuneration, remuneration, remuneration – Abba

Valedictory verbalisations, Ms Transatlantic Patisserie – Don MacLean

Analagous to a vestal personage – Madonna

Adolescent gratifications – The Undertones

I am unable to accomplish satiety – Rolling Stones

Imperfect preternuptial fornication – Lady Gaga

Celestial balustrade – Led Zeppelin

Castigate me, neonate, one more time – Britney Spears

The ornithological canticle – The Tweets

What do you prefer? Dog or canine? ('How much is that canine in the fenestration? The one with the vacillating appendage...') Flood or inundate? Troth or fidelity? Foresake or relinquish? Aware or cognizant? Brainy or cerebral? Harbinger or indicator? Before or prior? Deem or judge? Drink or imbibe? Kind or amicable? Small or diminutive?

If it's the former, then, like me, you prefer Germanic to Latinate English.

I spend half my life ticking people off at a well-known broadcasting organisation for mindlessly using Latinate language where Germanic English sounds much more chatty.

Obviously some people can get away with high Latinate style. Milton for one. And Dr Johnson. But it's pretty clear he was being silly when he defined something as -

Any thing reticulated or decussated, with equal distances between the interstices

A network.

It's odd that even Germanic types like me revert to Latinate utterances when they get a bit carried away. Last year, I described a riverbank as a 'vertiginous abyss' on Radio 4. I was feeling nervous about climbing down it, so I clung for dear life onto lots of syllables.

I guess the same thing happened to a Sky News reporter recently when the anchorperson asked him how things were looking in Afghanistan. 'The auguries are not particularly propitious' came the reply.

Even Greek usages have crept in this week, as the so-called 'Murdochalypse' has engulfed us.

And that's provided a perfect cue for the prodigiously sesquipedalian Will Self (who has monosyllabic names) to describe it as an 'epiphenomenal imbroglio' where we all float around in a 'protoplasmic gloop of titillating supposition, in a strange interregnum between cultural hegemonies.'

Loving the cheeky insertion of 'gloop'. Gloop's my kind of word. But I am secretly partial to hegemonies. I know they're all about assumptions of political-cultural dominance. But they do make me think of cute sea creatures.

To quote Finding Nemo, the sea cucumber turns to the mollusc and says, 'With fronds like these, who needs anemones?'

What a relief. Recent rumours of the death of the Oxford Comma were greatly exaggerated.

'Are you people insane?' asked one apoplectic Tweeter. 'The Oxford comma is what separates us from the animals.'

But it now turns out the controversial comma is only banned in Oxford University press releases.

It's always struck me as a bit of a let-down that we refer, in English, to the charming little symbol '@' as 'at'.

So I did a bit of Marpling and discovered that @ has a more interesting time abroad. In Chinese, it's a 'little mouse'...

In Danish - elephant's trunk

Swedish - cinammon bun

Dutch - monkey's tail

Finnish - sleeping cat, or miaow

Russian - puppy

Bosnian - crazy

Greek - little duck

and my favourite .....

Thai - wiggly worm-like character

Sorry, but 'at' just doesn't do it for me. Would you like to be called 'At'? I think not.

We should salute the allure of monarchy and Britain as a land of history
Tristram Hunt in The FT

This royal frenzy should embarrass us all
Johann Hari in The Independent

No I'm not. I was OK until you asked me.

But your use of 'your' (possessive pronoun) instead of 'you're' ('you are' with the 'a' replaced by an apostrophe) irritated me so much that I'm now furious.

I hope your proud of you'reself.

I was intrigued to learn that Odyssey Dawn is the US code for this week's military intervention in Libya, whereas the Brits are calling it Operation Ellamy. Poetry versus prose.

US military codenames invariably comprise adjective (or similar) + noun.

Some of them sound a bit like nightclubs of a 'specialist' nature -

Urgent Fury
Muscle Trunk and
Long Thrust

Others appear to be inspired by a weird bestiary -

Busy Pelican
Comfy Dog
Constant Owl
Linear Unicorn
Killer Kat
Distant Phoenix
Sentinel Tuna and
Wild Weasel

Some are strangely comforting -

Olive Farm
Creek Pebble and
Senior Citizen

Very few are sinister, but there are exceptions such as -

Whispering Death

Surreal ones include -

Tuba Groom
Nymph Voice and
Baby Lift

But quite a few appear to be inspired by rather cheap and nasty air fresheners or fabric conditioners -

Autumn Forge
Blue Zephyr and
Odyssey Dawn itself.

But back to Ellamy. Apparently, it was generated by a computer, programmed to come up with the blandest codenames possible. According to my military sources, it's because army bosses wouldn't want to announce deaths relating to aggressive or silly codenames -

I'm sorry Mrs Perkins. Your son was killed in Operation Teletubby

It's all because Churchill declared that military operations 'ought not to be given names of a trivial character'. I agree. I must admit I'm not very comfortable with the romance of Odyssey Dawn. There's nothing romantic about war. Not in the real world anyway.

I was on the phone to Cosimo (my resident expert on all things Italian) earlier. And he referred to catching two pigeons with one bean. That's what they say for killing two birds with one stone. Much more bird-friendly and ornithologically correct.

I promptly investigated and discovered they use the same expression as us in Spanish and Catalan.

But other countries have metaphors perhaps more suited to them.

In Russia, you kill two hares with one shot.

In Serbia, you kill two flies with one slap.

In China, you shoot two vultures with one arrow.

In food-obsessed Poland (I've been there - it is), you cook two roasts in the same fire.

And in Jamaica, you siem naif we tek tik shiip tik guot - stab the goat and the sheep with the same knife.

I feel the RSPCA and RSPB should be informed, with, um, the same phone call.

Portrait of John Hunter by his neighbour Joshua Reynolds

My next Radio 4 programme A Tall Story is going out on Monday 28 February at 8pm.

It's about a 21st century giant from Ireland and his connection with a famous 18th century giant Charles Byrne.

At around 8 feet tall, Byrne was a major celebrity. Visitors flocked to view him in his London apartment. And mad King George III was a fan.

But Byrne lived in fear of a fiercely ambitious anatomist, John Hunter, who was after his body. I won't tell you what happened. You'll have to listen. But suffice to say, Byrne's wish to be buried at sea wasn't granted. And I've seen his skeleton, which is on display in one of London's oddest and most gruesome museums.

When we were making the programme, I did a bit of research into the surgeon John Hunter's weird life. He was obsessed with anatomy – and the odder the better. Present at over 2000 dissections, he even had a menagerie in Earl's Court, where he studied the structures of animals. He was said at the time to possess the bones of eagles ...

... Moaning dingos, barking beagles,
Sleek oppossums, prickly hedgehogs,
Buffaloes, dormice, wolves and dogs ...

He also kept jackals and a kangaroo and had a Mulberry tree for his pet silkworm.

He became George III's private surgeon, which meant he had personal access to the king's menagerie, including his pet elephant.

Over the years, he made some important medical discoveries about dentistry and the lymphatic system. But he was perhaps a bit over-enthusiastic in his pursuit of bodies to anatomise.

It was rumoured that he had unusual-looking people followed if they were about to die and used so-called 'resurrectionists' (aka body snatchers) to dig up corpses. But he wasn't quite as bad as his brother William who allegedly had pregnant women murdered.

When the composer Haydn came to London, Hunter offered to perform an operation for the removal of his nasal polyp. But Haydn was more interested in Mrs Hunter than her husband's surgical skills and wrote some folksong arrangements with lyrics by her.

According to one account, 'Haydn had designs on Mrs Hunter. Her husband had designs on Haydn’s famous nasal polyp. Both were refused.'

Hunter's ruthless manner is satirised by William Blake in an unpublished novel An Island on the Moon. The sadistic surgeon Dr Tearguts is based on Hunter. His bedside manner with his poor patients isn't exactly brilliant -

Though they cry ever so, he'll swear at them and keep them down with his fist and tell them that he'll scrape their bones if they don't lie still and be quiet.

Other accounts are more forgiving -

His nature was kindly and generous, though outwardly rude and repelling.

He was certainly renowned for his temper and died of a heart attack during a furious argument about the admissions system for medical students.

As for his connection with the giant Charles Byrne, well, I suggest you take a very close look at the portrait above and listen to A Tall Story on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 28 February at 8 pm. It's then on the BBC iPlayer for a week.

George Osborne just said banks will now pay 'less bonuses'. Fewer, George, fewer. Well - you only went to Oxford.

The BBC is at it as well. I heard a reporter refer to 'less people' this morning.

And there's a deeply irritating Fiat ad on TV at the moment with the heretical strapline 'less emissions'.

This is an atrocity. It must be stopped.

The Plain English Campaign has a simple rule about it -

Less means 'not as much', whereas fewer means 'not as many'. Less pollen, fewer bees and so on.

That's why Tesco, even Tesco, changed '10 items or less' to 'Up to 10 items' (even though the latter is a bit ambiguous).

Get it right George. At this rate, you'll have even less supporters.

An elderly relative recently referred to people getting squiffy after a few drinks, which I imagine to be tipsy with added staggering.

But it's not as bad as pallatic (which, as far as I know, is a Geordie mispronunciation of paralytic).

There are some great terms for 'drunk'. The 'on' ones are quite good -

on a bun

on the turps

and the splendidly British

on a campaign

I like some of the similes too -

drunk as a Plymouth fiddler

drunk as puffed up pigeons

and

boiled as an owl

The celeb terms weirdly don't refer to famous drunks, but they sound right, which is the important thing -

Thora Hirded and

Merle Haggard

As for terms derived from place names, well, they're pretty obvious I'm afraid -

Newcastled

Lutoned and

Balearicised

Over-served is one of my favourites, as it's so understated, in a Maggie Smith sort of way.

Other terms I like include -

badgered

woofled and

zombied

Another expression for drunk is, of course, 'as p****ed as a newt'. But, oddly, newts aren't noted in the amphibian community for binge drinking in newtclubs.

The simile is actually derived from 'as p***ed as a mute'.

Mutes were professional mourners, who operated in the UK from about 1600 to 1914. They were hired to stand around silently at funerals with gloomy, pathetic faces. In Victorian times, they wore black cloaks and top hats.

A character in Dickens says of young Oliver Twist, 'There's an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear, which is very interesting. He would make a delightful mute.'

Presumably they also attended post-funeral drinks and became notorious for getting p***ed.

funeral mutes

an actual newt

I keep hearing it, but 'undoubtably' is not, and never has been, and never will be (if I have my way) a word. The correct words are 'undoubtedly' and 'indubitably'. This is undoubtedly and indubitably the case. Thank you.

At precisely 2.25 am this morning, I was woken up by the unmistakable song of a blackbird in the garden. It was, quite literally, a blackbird singing in the dead of night. I like blackbirds, but 2.25 is a bit excessive.

Was it blind? Was it just a birdbrain? Had it been out clubbing with a chaffinch?

I decided to investigate and discovered that light pollution confuses birds and cons them into thinking it's dawn. Robins, song thrushes and dunnocks (aka hedge sparrows) often sing at night apparently. And corncrakes, nightjars and nightingales are renowned for it, as are mockingbirds in America.

Mockingbirds bear grudges too, so presumably target their nocturnal singing at humans who've annoyed them.

Another theory is that, in big cities, birds actively choose to sing at night because it's too noisy in the daytime.

Anyway - the Asbo Chav Hoody Beelzebub Blackbird From Hell shouted for another hour. Then it went home to bed, where it no doubt had a smoke, sniffed a bit of glue and got wasted on alcopops.

I almost went out to have a go at it at one point, but it would probably have reported me to the RSPB for harrassment.

Bolly, needless to say, slept through the whole drama, then started howling at 4.30

A BAA chap just apologised on the radio for the fact that Heathrow Airport's virtually shut thanks to a bit of snow. He added that they were doing their best to rectify this, 'going forward'.

Business people are always 'going forward' I've noticed, even if they're going backwards.

Do they say, 'I'm reversing the car, going forward' I wonder?

Probably, going forward.

Anyway, as I write, Heathrow's still at a standstill, going forward.

I must stop this, going forward.

As you can see, the whole of the UK's covered with snow. Thankfully, Boll's visible from space, so she identifies where Hertford is on the map.

This image is from the excellent Dundee Uni Satellite Receiving Station

If you register, you can view this and various other spectacular images from space.

human quadruped family in Turkey

I've had a bad back for several weeks now. But thankfully the physio's helping and I'm even allowed to swim ten lengths a day now - very slowly.

Much as I like being a biped, bipedalism's apparently entirely to blame for the whole human bad back thing. It's also to blame for our absurdly big brains, which is why we're all so bonkers (our brains expanded to cope with the ridiculous palaver of standing up).

According to California scientist Dr Aaron Filler, we actually became bipedal around 20 million years ago. So did apes. But they sensibly evolved back to walking on all-fours most of the time.

There is one quadrupedal family in Turkey, but they're the only humans who are sensible enough to do it. The rest of us insist on the hubris of standing up and suffer the consequences. So much for evolution.

After my apocalyptic prognostications regarding wire coathangers, I was hugely relieved to learn that fire and brimstone are still thriving in Inverness, where I spent a few days this week.

And the great thing is, you don't even have to remember your lines. If you feel like a rant, just read the buildings.

As you can see, this pleasing Regency house boasts several useful tips, such as 'Resist the Devil and he will flee from you'. It also offers a handy reminder that you should get yourself written into the Book of Life asap, or you risk getting 'cast into the Lake of Fire'.

I assume local estate agents refer to such things as 'feature walls'.

My friend L from Manchester stayed over last night. I asked him when I should wake him up and he replied, 'Oh, betimes.'

Fast-forward to this morning. Bolly woke me up at 5.20 am, which I think of as early, but not that early.

That's when the panic set in. Was it betimes?

Is betimes early? Or earlier than early? Or later than early? And when the blazes is early anyway?

All I had to go on was a few books, as the computer was downstairs where L was still asleep.

The first thing I discovered was that someone called Mr Barrow once said, 'To rise betimes is often harder than to do all the day's work.' Well, woopy doo.

Then there was Abraham in the Bible, who 'arose betimes' and 'had the asses saddled.' My knowledge of Ancient Middle Eastern ass saddling isn't too hot, so I still had no meaningful reference point.

By that time, Boll had woken L up anyway, so I hit the web and was reminded of the fact that Pepys was constantly 'up betimes'. But at no point did he have the common courtesy to explain what it actually meant. One day, he even got up 'pretty betimes, it being mighty hot weather'. Presumably, 'pretty betimes' is a bit later than your classic hardcore betimes.

But when, when, when is it?

cartoon by Andre Jordan

Please note - especially if you're a TV property show presenter - that the above phrase is pronounced (at last in the UK) -

GENU-INN PRIVV-ACY IN IDD-ILLIC IBB-EETHA

and not, I repeat NOT -

GENU-EYE-N PR-EYE-VACY in EYE-DILLIC EYE-BEETHA

I was sad to hear about the death of Beryl Bainbridge this week.

I knew her through interviewing her a few times and bumping into her at the odd party, and I liked her a lot.

Beryl's house was ivy-clad, and dark inside, but not at all gloomy thanks to her curious collection of icons, artifacts and stuffed animals. I'll certainly never forget walking in for the first time, having to squeeze my way past the horns of a huge stuffed buffalo in the hallway.

A couple of years ago, when I had to use a walking stick for a few months, I popped round to ask her about her views on creativity for a Radio 4 programme I was presenting. I knocked. No answer. Knocked again. No sign. So I turned round and tottered off down the street.

It was then that I heard that familiar voice behind me. 'Ian?' yelled Dame Beryl, sprinting after me. 'Is that you? I'm so sorry. I didn't answer the door because I wasn't expecting the stick, and I thought you were one of the local strays who call round here all the time.'

Back in the house, she shared her views on the creative process. She said it involved waiting till the deadline was looming, having a panic, and then writing overnight on her ancient computer, shrouded in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

There are some great obits in the papers this weekend, but the most eloquent tribute I've seen is a Tweet by her friend the novelist Margaret Atwood -

Old pal Dame Beryl Bainbridge dies - very sad. Wondrous original, great sport, loved her books. Hope she has champagne in heaven and a smoke...

Whenever I tell someone I've done something more active than falling asleep, they say (virtually without exception), 'Oh dear. You'll be exhausted.'

Presumably, they're indirectly saying, 'I'd be exhausted myself if I could be bothered to get off my morbidly obese posterior and do that.'

The same goes for food. 'You'll be starving,' they say if I haven't had supper by 3pm.

My favourite 'you'll' usage is the one used by (some) Scots to explain the difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh -

In Glasgow, they say, 'Would you like some tea?'

In Edinburgh, they say (assume a Morningside accent now), 'You'll have had your tea...'

I just overheard yet another oafish personage in the street yelling into a mobile.

'I text you earlier,' he hollered uncouthly, as he strutted past my house in his nasty Von Dutch t-shirt.

'No you did not,' I retorted (to myself, obviously, as I don't speak to people like that). 'You texTED him.'

The past tense of 'to text' is 'texted'. Fact.

Simple past - I texted him

Present perfect - I have texted him

Past perfect - I had texted him

Future perfect - I will have texted him

I'll be testing you on this later.

I'm editing some interviews with children. And it's like really like irritating me that like every other like word, they say like 'like'.

For years, I've accepted 'de-umming' (editing out ums and urrs) as a hazard of the job.

'Oooo. I sounded much more fluent than I thought I was,' guests normally coo on hearing themselves - blissfully unaware I've been up half the night removing their assorted ums, urrs, grunts, snufflings, ungrammatical tangents and outbreaks of heavy breathing.

Thankfully, an um, urr or lipsmack is pretty easy to remove. Ums used to take up about an inch of tape (at 7.5 ips). They now look like obvious ink blots on editing screens.

But 'likes' are like much more like evasive.

Our children must be de-liked now. Expelled, thrown out onto the streets, disinherited, for uttering this syllable from Hell.

a cat rollercoaster

A warning to the next person to refer, on radio or television, to being on an emotional rollercoaster - I will personally take them up to the top of an actual rollercoaster and fling them off.

'You could buy the garden off of the old lady next door,' said a squeaky presenter this weekend on a property programme.

What's wrong with 'from'?

Teenager 1 - I've - like - run out of adjectives?
Teenager 2 - Awesome!

When I was a lad, everything was mega. Sometimes it was cosmic. I was too old by the time it turned wicked. It was cool for a while (briefly fly if you were very trendy). Now, it's awesome. Awesome's particularly awesome if you're under 20 and slightly posh, as I discovered this morning while eavesdropping on some irritating Hertford teenagers in a café.

This dread word's finally reached us from California, almost 30 years after it was first considered totally rad.

Urban Dictionary defines it variously as -

Something Americans use to describe everything

Greater than cool, wicked, super, kick-ass, and mega put together

and

An adjective overused as an exclusionary Shibboleth to identify Americans and differentiate them from educated English-speaking adults

But that's no longer true. Even academics and scientists use it -

The awesome power of the immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif

Awesome or ordinary? Global diversity patterns of oribatid mites (a cracking read in my opinion)

and

Awesome - Angina With Extremely Serious Operative Mortality Evaluation

Consultant - I'm sorry sir. You've got Awesome.

And the Awesome pandemic has now crept from the Groves of Academe into the cloisters of the Church of England. The Anglican Women Evangelicals Supporting our Ordained Ministry call themselves Awesome. Bitchin! as a Californian might say.

The word is of course English in origin. In the early 17th century, it meant 'in awe of' - We stood in awesome silence before the ancient ruins.

After around 1670, it also meant 'inspiring awe' - an awsome thunderstorm.

The new usage, meaning 'good', was first recorded in 1961. It was all downhill from there.

But the awesome virus has produced one positive mutation - the website 1000 Awesome Things which lists various reasons to be cheerful, on the lines of 'raindrops on kittens' and so on. My favourites are -

No 915 - When there’s leftover cake in the office kitchen

No 905 - Using all the different shampoos and soaps in someone else’s shower

No 899 - The smell of frying onions

No 895 - Getting something with actual handwriting on it in the mail

No 806 - Ducks

No 804 - Gym pain

No 758 - Celebrating your pet’s birthday even though they have no idea what’s going on

No 668 - Walking faster than cars sitting in traffic

No 656 - When the plane suddenly speeds up on the runway

I don't think they've reached number one yet.

It's quite American, but most amusing. And site visitors suggest awesome things too, such as -

Homegrown tomatoes

Being the first person to walk on fresh snow and

When the windshield wipers match the beat of the song you’re listening to

Mega!

Thank you to H for alerting me to this maddening new trend (which seems particularly prevalent in Hertford for some odd reason).

Basically, young people now say 'it's all good' at every given opportunity.

No. It's not. Some things are good. Some things are not.

Urban Dictionary defines 'It's all good' as -

A platitude that covers so many emotions and situations that it says little. Its only real meaning is that the speaker is trying to rise above whatever problem exists, without expressing their underlying negative emotions. Often used in a passive-aggressive way. A favourite of inarticulate teens. Fills in the gaps between: like, dude, whatever, so, I dunno, hey etc.

A: 'I'm breaking up with you.'
B: 'Whatever. It's all good.'

I was watching a property programme today, featuring a posh, 60-something, bespectacled hippy. And every time he saw a nice house, he said 'I like'.

Not 'I like it.'

Just 'I like.'

Occasionally he said, 'we like,' which upset me even more.

'To like' is a transitive verb. You have to like something or someone. You can't just 'like' in a vacuum.

'I like' is the verbal equivalent of wearing your trousers half way down your buttocks.

It's the work of the devil.

I don't like.

Professor Saifuddin Soz

Following my fulmination about 'laters', thank you to my friend Franklin for pointing out that the term 'soz' (meaning 'sorry') is even more infuriating than 'laters'. I agree.

Even more ruffling is the usage 'soz lol', meaning - 'I'm sorry but not really. In fact, I'm laughing.'

Please note that the photo of Professor Saifuddin Soz (a politician from Kashmir) has no connection with the irritating term 'soz' whatsoever. I just found him while Googling the word and thought he had a friendly face.

Soz if this caused any confusion.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.

Actually, I didn't. When I was a child, I didn't like children. I preferred pets, inanimate objects and adults - in that order. And I wasn't taught Babyspeak, so I used to correct grown-ups from my pram.

'Would you like a choccy biccy?' asked one unsuspecting old lady when I was two.

'No thanks,' I replied. 'But I would like a chocolate biscuit.' True story.

I must have been unbearable. I'm surprised my parents didn't give me away to a passing linguist.

To this day, I find hypocoristic forms really irritating. I refuse to eat sarnies and never knowingly give pressies at Crimble.

And so you can imagine my response when someone at the gym said 'laters' to me this afternoon.

Laters? Laters??? According to a reliable source, 'laters' is derived from diminutive forms such as 'Gramps', 'Wills', 'Babs' or 'Bolls' (OK - I plead guilty to that one). But this preposterous word should no more be sported by a person over 25 than a backward-facing baseball cap.

Such infantilist Cutespeak even applies to decades nowadays. Just when I thought we'd escaped from the Noughties or Naughties, we were plunged headfirst into the Tennies, Tenties, Teenies or Tweenies.

Stop this childishness now, or I'll scweam and scweam until I'm sick.

This week, I've spent a lot more time in bed than usual. And I've felt mildly agoraphobic and reclusive.

Am I experiencing some kind of hibernation instinct?

Some scientists argue humans do have the ability to hibernate. Professor Gerhard Heldmaier (Chairman of the International Hibernation Society) claims to have discovered two genes that are thought to trigger hibernation.

There's also evidence that humans in cold rural areas used to sleep for most of the winter. Not hibernation as such, but near enough. After the French Revolution, when Paris bureaucrats strayed into the bosky countryside for the first time ever, they were shocked to find peasants slept from autumn through to spring.

In 1900, The BMJ reported that the sensible folk of Pskov in Russia adopted 'the economical expedient of spending one half of the year in sleep'.

At the first fall of snow, the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of bread.

The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself and goes out to see if the grass is growing.

And 'hibernation' could be the answer to physical trauma. Recently a Japanese businesman, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, strayed from an office party and fell down a snowy mountain. He lapsed into a frozen coma which lasted 24 days, until his apparently lifeless body was found and revived in hospital. He's known in Japan as the 'Bear Man'.

The European Space Agency is now researching induced human hibernation for astronauts who have to go on extended missions.

And Dr Hasan Alam, a Massachusetts surgeon, is trialling artificial human hibernation for severely injured patients en route to hospital.

Perhaps that all explains why I'd rather spend today in bed than do anything meaningful.

But no. It's Christmas. So I'm about to spend the entire day careering round blizzard-blasted Hertford in an insane panic, before transporting a large cat and most of my worldly goods 400 miles to my parents tomorrow, on what could be the coldest day of the year.

Nothing is worth more than this day.

I was walking through town yesterday and thought about one of my friends.

I could see his face and recall his first name. But I'd completely forgotten his surname - even though I absolutely knew I knew it.

In the end, it drove me so mad I had to go home to look it up.

Apparently, on average, we have a tip-of-the-tongue moment at least once a week. And forgetting names of close friends isn't all that unusual.

According to Dr Daniel Schachter (a memory scientist at Harvard) it's because, when you recall someone, the memory isn't filed away in a single location. Different aspects of the memory are scattered all around the brain.

My memory of my friend's name was separated from my visual memory of his face. I was just having trouble connecting the two.

'When we remember something,' explains Schachter, 'that memory feels unified. But the reality is that you assemble each memory out of lots of different pieces. A tip-of-the-tongue state occurs when one of the pieces gets lost.'

So I hadn't forgotten his surname. It was in my brain. I just couldn't access it.

I just watched the top of the 10 Oclock News, which had the headline DAMMING REPORT up on the wall behind Sian. I suspect they meant DAMNING, with an 'n', and await a DAMMING REPORT on spelling at the BBC.

Simon Cowell, who thinks he's clever but regularly says 'somethink', told us not to 'misunderestimate' one of the X-Factor contestants the other day. This presumably means that we're allowed to underestimate them, but not inaccurately. As I'm sure you know, it's not a word. It was famously used by George W Bush and it's been doing the rounds since 1897, but it's wrong, makes no sense and makes me seethe.

It's almost as irritating as 'overexaggerate'.

I'm not overexaggerating when I warn you not to misunderestimate my anger next time I catch you saying somethink that annoys me.

This outbreak of invented non-words is surreal isn't it?

Surreal. That's another abused word that really gets my goat.

Of course, if I had a goat which could be got by a word, that might actually be genuinely surreal. But I'm now confusing myself, so I'd better stop.

Have you noticed how more and more people are using exclamation marks nowadays???!!!!!! I've even started doing it myself (!) And I'm now making a big effort to cut down!!!!!!!!!!!!

Exclamation marks tend to be favoured by particular personality types - the sort of people who use lots of CAPITALS, smileys and wacky fonts such as Comic Sans.

Some of my female friends (and my more excitable gay friends) tend to use them at the end of every sentence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Women do apparently use them more than men!!! The evidence is all there in Dr Carol Waseleski's paper Gender and the Use of Exclamation Points in Computer-Mediated Communication!!!!!

And what about exclamation marks and question marks together???!?!?!?!?!? Apparently, they're called 'interrobangs' and they can be typed as '‽' but only sad people bother doing that.

Interrobangs certainly add emotion to a question.

'What the hell are you talking about?!?!'

arguably has much more shock and disapproval in it than

'What the hell are you talking about?'

But some authors argue that the structure, the words themselves, should do the work, rendering exclamation marks – um - pointless.

Elmore Leonard wrote, 'You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.' That's about one per novel!

'Cut out all those exclamation marks,' said F Scott Fitzgerald. 'An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.' How typical of him!!!!! (!)

Exclamation marks evolved into a dominant species pretty slowly. They only came into English printing in the 15th century. They were called 'notes of admiration' until the 17th. And, until the 1970s, most typewriters didn't even have them on the keyboard!!!!!! !!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!

They were originally only used for actual exclamations ('Wow!), commands (Stop!) or genuine astonishment ('They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!')

But they're now used throughout the world!

In Spanish, they use two!!! One at the end of the phrase and one, upside down, at the start!!!!! The same goes for question marks!!!!! It's because the syntax of a sentence doesn't always tell you immediately whether the sentence is a statement or a question -

¡Feliz Cumpleaños! (Happy Birthday!)

And, in some African languages, exclamation marks indicate a postalveolar click! Gosh!!! If you're from Africa, you probably just clicked three times.

Meanwhile, in Devon (where the scones come from!!!) the poor souls of Westward Ho! have no option. They have to use one after the Ho! This is because the village was named after a Charles Kingsley novel with an exclamation mark in the title!!!

I guess, if you want to exclaim you're from there, you just add another one – I'm from Westward Ho!! Or put it in brackets - I'm from Westward Ho! (!)

As for St-Louis-de-Ha! Ha! In Quebec, well, that's just plain silly.

Perhaps, given their popularity, we should add exclamation marks to the names of dull towns in the UK, to pimp them up a bit.

Basingstoke!

Telford!

Frinton-on-Sea!

Bognor!

Ware!

Mmm. Perhaps not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm looking forward to BBC TV's Lost Land of the Volcano series - about an expedition to remote Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea, occupied by unique creatures which have evolved separately from the rest of the world.

The programme discovered several new species, including frogs with fangs, grunting fish, butterflies the size of books, dwarf parrots and a rat the size of a cat.

All of the creatures were incredibly friendly - not remotely scared of humans, as they'd never seen them before and weren't aware of any danger.

It starts on BBC1 tonight. Boll and I will be watching.

Bosavi Woolly Rat

I'm reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson at the moment (Pulitzer Prize 2005) and it's so good, I keep re-reading sentences and writing out quotations.

As Mr Appleyard wrote in The Sunday Times, 'The sentences seem to have been there forever, waiting to be discovered. I'm not saying that you're actually dead if you haven't read Marilynne Robinson, but I honestly couldn't say you're fully alive.'

Gilead is a small town in Iowa. In a little wooden house, an elderly preacher, about to die, writes a letter to his young son, for him to read after his death.

The preacher's one of those rare literary characters who is good and thoughtful and tries to see goodness and beauty in everything. But he's haunted by uneasy thoughts about one of the characters in the book, which adds a nice twist.

In the letter, he shares memories of his eccentric family and life in rural Iowa, and insights about life. He also describes what he sees as he's writing - his young son playing with his cat Soapy and so on.

It shouldn't work as a novel, but it does.

Here are just a few philosophical snippets from the last couple of pages I've read –

It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity.

Light is constant, we just turn over in it. So every day is in fact the selfsame evening and morning.

Creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. Don't look for proofs. Don't bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.

I wonder what Richard Dawkins would make of this. I'd love to get him and Marilynne together.

Thanks for all the comments about my name. I had no idea Johns and Janes felt the same.

Maybe I should just go for it and rebrand. 46,000 people changed their names by deed poll in the UK last year. You can now do it for a mere £33 on the internet. That’s good news, but it’s apparently led to a boom in ludicrous names (such as Mr Toasted T Cake and Mr Happy Adjustable Spanners) thanks to the late-night-after-a-few-drinks factor.

In fact, the deed poll website warns against silly names, suggesting lawyers should avoid renaming themselves Mickey Mouse for instance.

Of course some people have ridiculous names to start with and try to hide them. A relative of mine knew someone called Roy, but noticed he always wrote his initial as F. So he did some detective work and discovered he was really called Fauntleroy.

Celebrities seem to specialise in landing their children with loony names such as -

Apple Paltrow

Blanket Jackson

Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Muffin Zappa

Pilot Inspektor Lee

Satchel Farrow

and

Paula Yates's children Peaches, Pixie, Fifi Trixibell and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily

And many of our most cherished celebs have made-up names too –

Allen Stewart Konigsberg - Woody Allen

Arnold Dorsey – Engelbert Humperdinck

Brian Warner - Marilyn Manson

Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong – Dido

Maurice Micklewhite - Michael Caine

Norma Jean Mortenson - Marilyn Monroe

Reginald Dwight – Elton John

With the exception of Engelbert, the trend definitely seems to be for simplification. I recall when radio people were advised to adopt single-syllable names. A presenter I knew called James Bartholomew metamorphosed overnight into Neale James when he went to Radio 1, and he's kept the name in his new career as a photographer.

Psychologist Brett Pelham has studied thousands of names and is convinced that they significantly influence our lives. Nathan Leeper, for instance, became a world-class high-jumper.

Dr Pelham's research suggests that an unusual number of people named Dennis become dentists. And if you're named George, you're more likely to become a geologist.

People named Georgia are disproportionately more likely than other women to move to the state of Georgia.

And people often choose partners with similar names - 'It's no coincidence that Tom Cruise dated Penelope Cruz, or that Paris Hilton was once engaged to Paris Latsis.'

Pelham named his own son Lincoln, because of positive associations with the president. 'My cousin Dinky is not going to become the CEO of a major corporation,' he adds. (Steady now. My friend’s G’s dog is called Dinky and is very successful.)

Meanwhile in the UK, a man called Laurence Y Payg analyses names using a 3000-year-old Chinese technique (Yi King Tao) and suggests new names and initials which should produce greater prosperity and happiness.

He famously transformed struggling model Laura Hollins into supermodel Agyness Deyn.

He’s argued that Posh should change her name from Victoria to Laycy Beckham (which would make her less obsessive apparently).

And Amy’s misfortunes may be caused by the H in Winehouse. Mr Payg says she should change her name to Amy CNG Wynegouse. ('They made me go to Laurence Y Payg, I said no, no, no…')

Silly names are nothing new. In 1640, a Mr Praise God Barbon called his son Nicholas Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon. He became a successful economist.

More recently, a baby in the UK was named Urhines (pronounced Your Highness) Icy Eight Special K.

And, in 1991, Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding wanted to protest against a Swedish law banning 'unsuitable' names. They were fined 5000 kronor for calling their baby Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.

They claimed this was a 'pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation.' They then tried to change it to 'A' but one-letter names are illegal in Sweden. So he was finally renamed Albin Hallin. But in his passport his name is given as Icke Namngivet Gossebarn, meaning 'unnamed little boy'.

You may recall I recommended The Meaning of Tingo a while ago. Well – Adam Jacot de Boinod has an quirkilicious new book out, called The Wonder of Whiffling. It’s full of highly-useful words, such as -

To fornale - to spend one’s money before it has been earned.

Petrichor - the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

and

A cagg - a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time.

If you like words, I suggest you buy it now - even if you have to fornale.

The weather’s gone berserk. It’s acting like a manic teenager: mood swings, tantrums, sulks, and occasional short blasts of insane optimism. Hot sun one minute; monsoon rain the next. It loves me; it loves me not. It loves me .....

I’m convinced it’s affecting my mood and making me a bit bipolar. And it's having a peculiar effect on Bolly too.

According to a US study, changeable weather can cause no less than 37 symptoms. The most frequent one is fatigue, followed by bad moods, lack of interest in work, insomnia, and headaches. All of these are completely normal for me, but I’m sure they’re worse when the weather’s weird like this.

This weather is wrong and must stop.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me.
Blaise Pascal

Peacock Towers

The house is full of dust at the moment, thanks to various nearby building projects (they're building 'apartments' which will no doubt be 'released').

I actually had to dust once a day last week and I've now almost got to the point where, like Quentin Crisp, I can't quite see the point in dusting at all. 'After four years, you don't notice the difference,' he quipped, crisply.

George Carlin was a touch more philosophical - 'Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.'

Horace went even further, realising that we're nothing more than a pile of dust ourselves - 'We are but dust and shadow.'

'Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust' as Shakespeare wrote.

I've always liked the Buddhist use of dust, as a metaphor for worldly encumbrances -

Let me remind you of that which is good,
For the dust of the regions below is hard to transcend.

The mind is like a bright mirror.

At all times we must strive to polish it
and not let dust collect.

But, in some cultures, dust is seen as mystical in its own right.

Dust whirlwinds are, after all, known as 'Dust Devils'. In Egypt, they're 'Fasset el Afreet' - ghost winds. The Navajo call them 'Chiindi' - spirits of the dead. Good spirits spin clockwise. Evil ones spin anticlockwise.

And Aboriginal Australians call them 'Yindjibarndi' or 'Willy Willies'. Scary spirits occasionally pop out from these dust storms to tell children off for misbehaving. We need a few more Willy Willies in the UK. They sound more effective than ASBOs and they'd be an efficient use of excess dust particles.

Being a rabbity sort of person, I'm more attracted to 'dust bunnies' myself - clumps of dust and fluff that look like small creatures.

I also quite like the idea of 'fairy dust'. In the old days, BBC sound people used to talk about adding fairy dust to programmes - in other words, special effects such as reverb or flanging or whatever.

And I'm intrigued by the idea of 'smart dust' - which is the term for hundreds of minute electronic censors which can float in the air and monitor everything from atmospheric temperaure to vibration - adjusting air-conditioning and even predicting earthquakes.

But that still doesn't alter the fact that dust is currently ruining my life and costing me a fortune in Pledge and Miele vacuum bags. Perhaps I should just give in, go down the Crisp route (would that make me a Country Crisp?) and turn into Miss Havisham for a few weeks till the builders finally finish.

Please send emails to myself if you disagree with what myself is about to write in this posting. Myself and Bolly promise to reply to yourself.

Why do people – particularly business and admin people with spreadsheets for brains – use 'myself'' all the time, instead of 'I' or 'me'?

'Myself and Darren will be joining you for the 17-hour PowerPoint presentation,' they write. Or 'Please alert myself to any scenarios.' Or 'The meeting will be facilitated by myself.'

Could it be that such people actually have no self, and so they use 'myself' to convince themselves that they exist?

In 99.9% of cases, they should be using 'I' or 'me'. The rule for checking is: remove the other people from the sentence and, if 'myself' makes no sense by itself, replace it with 'I' or 'me' straight away.

(1) 'Tim and myself will walk the dog.'
(2) Remove Tim.
(3) 'Myself will walk the dog.'
(4) This is clearly wrong.
(5) Change 'myself' to 'I'.
(6) 'I will walk the dog.'
(7) Add Tim again.
(8) 'Tim and I will walk the dog.'
(9) Correct.
(10) The dog is now happy. As you can see, himself is wagging his tail.

Basically 'I' is used for the person performing an action.
'I stroked the dog.'

'Me' is used for the person receiving an action.
'The dog bit me.'
'The corgi bit my husband and me.'
(You may think 'I' sounds more correct here, as in 'My husband and I'. But you wouldn't say 'The corgi bit I' would you?)

'Myself' is used when the speaker does something to himself.
'I hurt myself.' (You couldn't say 'I hurt me' or 'I hurt I')

'Myself' can also be used (sparingly please) for emphasis.
'My company uses PCs, but I myself use a Mac.'
'I wrote the blog myself.'

Myself kindly requests that you avoid 'myself' yourself wherever possible.

Myself hereby bans it from Peacockshock.

organised rain

I just heard a weatherforecaster going on about 'angry rain clouds'. The other day, I heard one claiming that the rain was 'organised' and would be 'getting more organised' as it moved south. In the winter, our lovely forecasters were talking about the snow putting on a 'snow event'.

What next? Exasperated thunder? Psychotic humidity? Machiavellian wind? Shy frost? Clinically-depressed fog?

We all anthropomorphise the weather of course. The sort of people who fulminate about organised rain are perfectly happy to say 'the sun's trying hard to peep through the clouds' or whatever. And the 'it' in 'it's raining' does kind of presume that there's an actual 'it' out there, which has chosen to rain. I actually like the use of metaphor and anthropomorphism in weatherforecasts, as long as it doesn't cloud over the story. But I'm not 100% sure I like the idea of rain being organised. Surely the point of rain is that it's a bit untidy.

I once met an Arab weatherforecaster who told me the weather hardly ever changes in his part of the world and so it's quite a tedious job. He admitted to hyping the slightest breeze and also to speculating about rain to excite his viewers. 'There may be rain, God willing' is the phrase. 'God willing' is used a lot in Arabic weatherforecasts apparently.

Meanwhile, my favourite weather anthropomorphism is from George Burns -

'No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.'

I'm off to London today and may wear a hat because the rain's looking quite conscientious out there.

a harvest moon

My Italian friend Cosimo had a look at my olive tree Nana yesterday (now huge, after last year's fire) and warned me not to harvest my olives during a Full Moon. His granny once made the mistake of doing that and her olives went very peculiar.

Apparently, the time to harvest olives is during a New Moon, when there's no visible moon in the sky. Harvest Moons (full) are only called that because they happen a lot in the autumn - not because they're good for olive harvesting. By the way, the Harvest Moon is also known as the Singing Moon and the Elk Call Moon.

I'd never heard of harvesting by the moon's phases, but it sort of makes sense. After all, farmers around the Mediterranean plant by the moon. According to Caren Catterall of Gardening by the Moon:

'The lunar phase controls the amount of moisture in the soil. The moisture is at its peak at the time of the new and full moon. Just as the moon pulls the tides in the ocean, it also pulls upon the subtle bodies of water, causing moisture to rise in the earth, which encourages germination and growth.'

And the author of The Lunar Garden - Planting by the Moon Phases argues:

'Not only does the gravitational pull of the moon affect the tides and rainfall, but it affects the air currents on the surface of the earth as well. Plants are extremely sensitive to any tiny energy fluctuation.'

And so I'll be waiting for a New Moon this autumn before I commence my harvest. I'll then soak my olives - all three of them - in water, and eat them.

Moon Phase Calendar

I had an Italian lesson today and learnt that the Italian word for jellyfish is 'medusa'. I love the way the Italians (and Greeks) are so directly connected to ancient culture and mythology through their everyday language.

My family often quote me saying, when I was about five, that I didn't need any friends. They then point out that I have lots of friends now. I'm not sure why they do this. It's as if they're talking to the five-year-old version of me and telling him he's wrong.

Anyway – I was intrigued to read at the weekend that the average Brit has just three friends (according to a survey of 3000 people carried out by onepoll.com) or - to be more accurate – three friends who can be totally relied on.

That makes sense. How many people could you phone up in a crisis at 3am? I reckon it's about three for me. Well, more than three – but some of them might be a bit snappy at first, so I'd avoid doing it.

Some other intriguing facts from the poll -

Your typical Brit actually has 16 friends. But half of the people in the report said they only kept in touch with these 16 friends out of habit.

Most of us have lost touch with 36 friends. And four in ten of us have fallen out with someone and decided never to speak to them again.

Text messages, emails and social networking sites such as Facebook are now the most popular ways to communicate with friends on a daily basis.

It occurs to me that I have lots of categories of friends – some of them very 21st century in nature.

Friends I'll never meet
I have several really good internet friends who I may never meet. I know some of my internet friends better than some of my 'real' friends and I'm in touch with some of my internet friends more.

Friends I don't like
I can't get my head round this one, but I do have them. If you phone me and ask if you're one of them, I'll say, 'No, of course not!' and then laugh nervously.

Friends I never see
I have some old friends I haven't seen for decades and may never see again. But, if I did, I suspect it would seem as if we only saw eachother yesterday.

Animal friends
Bolly the cat is my best friend. It's not just an adaptive Darwinian thing which I've anthropomorphised. We are friends. Fact.

Famous friends
I have lots of parasocial friends from literature, television and radio. For instance - having just read the Mitford sisters' letters, I feel I know them better than most people I know for real, whatever 'know' means.

Another odd thing is that, working in the media, I often find out stuff about my friends from the TV and magazines. I've just been reading all about my friend Tim's schooldays in Attitude magazine. And I learned about the deaths of two friends on separate occasions via headlines on the Ten Oclock News.

They voxpopped people about numbers of friends on BBC Breakfast News (with my friend Bill Turbull who I've never met) and one guy said he had 4000 friends. Needless to say, he was from the Facebook generation.

According to Facebook's resident sociologist Dr Cameron Marlow, the average user has 120 friends, but only interacts with seven. That fits the hypotheses put forward by various anthropologists.

In 1992, Robin Dunbar of UCL (now at Oxford) came up with what's now called the Dunbar Number – 148. That's the cognitive limit to the number of people you can maintain stable social relationships with. In other words, your brain (your neocortex to be pedantic) is only big enough to cope with interactions with 148 people.

It's the same with apes. Their grooming groups rarely exceed 148, and Dunbar reckons that human conversation is just a linguistic form of grooming. The Dunbar Number also works for villages, tribes, army units and small businesses. The Swedish government, being Swedish, have actually applied the number to their open-plan offices.

Talking of offices – a fifth of the people in the recent friends survey said they offloaded on colleagues because they felt they couldn't with friends.

As for me, I offload on Bolly. She sits behind me on the couch and asks me about my childhood in miaowing noises.

I actually love living by myself, and I'm not alone in being alone. One in three UK households now have just one member, compared to one in five at the start of the 1970s. And half the meals eaten in the UK are eaten alone. The figures are even higher in Scandinavia – particularly in Finland where most people are clinically insane.

A colleague from Afghanistan recently said she was shocked at how many English people live alone. Until a few months ago, she lived in a house with 36 family members.

No offence, but if I cohabited with 36 of my relatives, I'd be sectioned within half an hour. So would they.

There is some research suggesting that living alone can be bad for you and your heart. My heart did admittedly come close to packing up in 2005 but that was due to a family of 36 bacteria moving into it. It wasn't caused by living alone. I actually had my heart tested last week. My resting pulse was 66 and my blood pressure 130/80. Both perfect. So there. The research is wrong.

The only thing that worries me about living by myself is that serial killers often live alone. Their neighbours nearly always say, 'He kept himself to himself.' But I suspect that's because they can't think of anything more original.

I was interested in internet responses to the friends survey. Here's one from the Gloucestershire Forester website (the Gloucestershire Forester is a newspaper, as opposed to a Chaucer character) -

I live alone and for the last 15 years I have had no friends. The only true friend I had died and since then I have been totally on my own. The result is I am happier now than at any time in my life. I have my two cats and I do not need friends. People cannot be trusted and only let me down. I have more money because I am not giving it to scroungers who never pay it back. Bliss. And I am not fooling myself. I am very happy.

Must go. I'm feeling an urgent need to talk to myself and sob over my microwave ready-meal cod in parsley sauce for one. After that, I think I'll go for a walk and cackle disturbingly at my own jokes.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Nietzsche

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
Sartre

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.
Shelley

The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Thoreau

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.
Emerson

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind
Einstein

He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy, whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.
Aristotle

The sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room.
Pascal

I once saw a road sign near Durham that read 'Gan Canny'. This is Geordie for 'Go Slow'. Despite a relatively fast-lane reputation, I love going slowly and often make a point of ambling along and staring at things for ages.

And so I'm excited (if you can be excited slowly) to learn that London is currently experiencing a Slow Down project, run by the excellent Tessa Watt who I know from her time at Radio 4.

I'm hoping to attend some of the events, slowly of course.

St Gertrude of Nivelles

It's St George's Day today. St George is the patron saint of Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro and Ethiopia. And men in white vans, if today's flags around Hertford are anything to go by.

I'd quite like my own patron saint, but there are too many to choose from nowadays and they all multi-task. Amand, for instance, likes to protect boy scouts and barmen. I've met people like that on the internet. And Michael the Archangel covers radiologists, paramedics, postmen, stevedores and people who work in supermarkets.

St Francis is a definite candidate for me, as he liked animals and also preached to birds, possibly Peacocks. And St Gertrude of Nivelles is the saint of cats and gardening, so she's definitely on the list.

I'm also tempted by Gabriel – patron saint of broadcasters and journalists. I guess he did have quite a scoop with the Jesus story.

Bona of Pisa looks after holiday reps (I used to be one) and flight attendants. I could insure my teaching activities with Cassian of Imola or St Thomas Aquinas. Genesius or perhaps Pelagia the Penitent (actors, performers, fools) could protect me when I'm on the air. Isidore could be helpful to Peacockshock, being the patron saint of the internet. And St Homobonus is the patron saint of business people, so I guess I should invoke him when I'm running my company. Perhaps I should offer a homobonus to gay clients. St Bona could help out with that.

But I'm also toying with Christina the Astonishing who can be be invoked against insanity and mental disorders. Meanwhile, Wilgefortis protects against tribulations. Walter of Pontoise fends off stress. William Firmatus – the Paracetemol of the saint world - stops headaches. And St Monica is the patron saint of alcoholics. Must add her to the shopping basket.

The problem is that I'm also tempted by Venerius the Hermit, who looks after freelance people and lighthouse keepers.

Then there's Saint Rita. Rita of Cascia is the patron saint of lost causes, which I have been known to pursue. St Jude also handles lost causes, but I prefer the idea of Saint Rita. I imagine she hangs out with St Doris (knitting) and St Mabel (stairlifts). I made the last two up.

I also enjoy nothing more than fretting about my health, so it would be foolish to ignore St Polycarp (dysentery) and St Fiacre who wards off haemorrhoids. It might also be a good idea to include St Hubert of Liege who'd protect me against being bitten by a mad dog, which is never a good thing.

St Gertrude is currently the favourite, but I'm still open to suggestions.

I've just pre-ordered a book on Amazon.

The terrorist shootings at the weekend were pre-planned, according to a police spokesperson.

I wish someone had pre-warned me of this outbreak of pre-happenings. I might have been able to pre-prepare for it.

Overheard in Hertford today -

'He was tiny ... like a small, little dwarf.'

This is obviously tautology, but it's comedy tautology and clearly deliberate. So I'll refrain from fulminating in this case.

(for plural pedants, hence the apostrophe after the s)

I'm livid - verging on rabid.

This morning, on Breakfast TV, a reporter referred to the bee population of the USA being 'decimated'. 'Decimated' means that every tenth bee has been killed. If this is true, then he's a good reporter. If it's not, then he should be decimated himself.

He then pronounced 'h' as 'haitch'. Sackable.

And then the finance guy started banging on about 'half a percent'. You can't have a 'half a percent'. 'Percent' (per cent) means 'in a hundred'. You wouldn't say 'a half in a hundred', would you? It's 'a half of one percent' or 'a half point'.

This made me apoplectic and I had to switch off before I threw my aspidistra at the screen.

Are these people doing this deliberately to annoy me? Don't they have producers? Don't they have dictionaries to go to?

Someone phoned me earlier to ask me to do some media training 'around issues around teenagers'.

I'm going to make myself unpopular among some of my clients, but what is this 'around' business about? And why is 'around' so preposterously prevalent among people in charities and in social care?

Why is it so un-PC to use the correct, precise preposition? Is using the correct preposition too strident, too controlling, too presumptuous, too macho?

I don't have issues around the word 'around'. I have problems with it and objections to it.

As far as I'm concerned, people who are comfortable around the preposition 'around' are clearly profoundly uncomfortable with making decisions and coming down off their fluffy, liberal fence.

I'm not some harrumphing Telegraph reader. I'm all for subtle language and avoiding offence. But I'm deeply unhappy around 'around' and hereby declare it a swear word.

By the way, if you have issues around my issues around 'issues around', please write something around the issue and email me around it.

The great apostrophe debate has now made it into letters page of The Times.

One correspondent asked why we need them in print when we don't use them in speech.

David Devore of London replied in today's paper that we use 'intonation, expression, gesture and context' in speech. The first three are absent in print - hence the need for apostrophes to compensate. I agree.

And, by the way, I do wish people would stop writing CD's, DVD's and so on for plurals. No apostrophe necessary. It's just CDs and DVDs.

Thank you to Jane for drawing my attention to another apostrophe atrocity, peculiar to Hertford.

St Andrew Street (see pix below) is St Andrew Street. It is not, I repeat not, St Andrew's Street. St Andrew didn't go out and buy it, did he? This apostrophe is a dangerous, feral interloper, and appears in publicity leaflets and on official websites. Occasionally, they simply add an s, just to annoy me. Even the MoD get it wrong on their sites.

We must put a full stop to it now.

Thank you to Lea for kindly observing that I wrote Achilles' heal during my pontifications about apostrophes. I've now corrected this to 'heel'. This misspelling was caused by extreme weather.

While I was googling Achilles, I stumbled on Achilles the cat, posted by someone called Tranzndance - possibly living in California.

Mr Tranz writes, 'Named after Brad Pitt's character in Troy, he's extremely shy so he doesn't exactly live up to the heroic character's name, but it's a cool name for him.'

Achilles looks very sweet and bears an uncanny resemblance to another cute cat living in Hertford, England.

Youve probably read by now that the city of Birmingham (UK) is dropping apostrophes from its street signs. This is because theyve decided theyre 'confusing' and 'old-fashioned'.

In Peacockshocks view, England itself is confusing and old-fashioned, and thats what makes it such an interesting place to live.

Sorry – 'in which to live'. And, by the way, I left the apostrophes out deliberately in the last paragraph.

(And the comma after 'old-fashioned' was an Oxford comma and I'd fight to the death to keep it there. OMG – is 'fight to the death' correct?)

The problem with grammar, spelling and punctuation is that, as soon as you start thinking about it (them?), you get (become?) all self-conscious and everything looks wrong.

But, of course, there's no such thing as right or wrong. Punctuation isn't written in stone. Well - it is sometimes...

I hope he was a grocer and not an English teacher.

Any English teacher would tell you that you won't find apostrophes in Beowulf or Chaucer - because they didn't exist in English in those days. Apostrophes were first used to signify omitted letters (elisions, as in th' inevitable end) as late as 1611 – unless you count Petrarch, who used one or two in 1501.

And they only became widespread as a signifier of possession (Ian's cat's whiskers) in the 18th century (1725). Here's more on the apostrophe's fraught history

I'm well aware that language evolves, which is a healthy thing, and that there's nothing sacrosanct about any of the itinerant squiggles we call punctuation marks. But, as you may know, I have a soft spot for apostrophes, as does Marie Clair (not the magazine - the person) from the Plain English Society. She argues, 'They are such sweet-looking things that play a crucial role in the English language.'

It's good to know that even an organisation devoted to simplicity and clarity is staunchly pro-apostrophe. Unlike the barbarous Scythians behind Kill the Apostophe

Thank goodness for the Apostrophe Protection Society and for the aperçus of apostrophic apologists such as Yossarian the Grammarian

Please note my correct use of the cedilla.

The writer Lynne Truss is a passionate defender of these poor, endangered 'timorous beasties'. (This is a reference to the poet Burns and please note that it's Burns' Night and not Burn's Night. He wasn't Robert Burn.)

'Those spineless types who talk about abolishing the apostrophe,' rants The Great Truss, 'are missing the point, and the pun is very much intended.' She goes on, in the excellent Eats, Shoots and Leaves, to rail at at the title of the Sandra Bullock film Two Weeks Notice, insisting it should be Two Weeks' Notice.

Correct. I forced myself not to watch it. How would Sandra feel if a critic wrote This film is Bullocks instead of This film is Bullock's?

In Birmingham, Gateway to the Visigoth, they no doubt failed to notice the missing apostrophe in Weeks. According to the city's traffic bigwigs, 'Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed. More importantly, they confuse people.'

They've even tried to argue that they confuse Satnavs, but TomTom say no. GPS users type in postcodes rather than street names.

And so 'King's Heath' is now 'Kings Heath', because it's no longer owned by a king. It was once owned by a king. But Birmingham clearly doesn't give a fig for history, which explains a lot about Birmingham.

While I'm on the King's/Kings'/Kings/Queen's/Queens'/Queens issue – I must touch on Oxford and Cambridge. Having lived in both cities, I'm well aware of how fraught this issue is and how it keeps people awake at night.

In Oxford, Queen's College (The Queen's College, to give it its correct title) has an apostrophe before the 's' because it relates to a single queen – Queen Philippa.

Oxford is full of singular queens to this day, but that's another story.

In Cambridge, Queens' College has an apostrophe after the 's', because it was founded by two queens – Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville. The Queens' College website even has a page dedicated to what it calls that apostrophe

Apparently, before 1823, no-one seemed to care how many queens were involved and they normally put the apostrophe before the 's'. The post-s apostrophe only became official in 1831.

The full, formal title of the college is actually - The Queen's College of St Margaret and St Bernard, commonly called Queens' College, in the University of Cambridge.

Note that the name of the college, when qualified by the patron saints, is spelt in the singular. The short-form name is spelt in the plural.

The Queen's College of St Margaret and St Bernard, commonly called Queens' College, in the University of Cambridge

Language usually evolves into simpler forms and I'm sure some academic will one day argue for an Oxbridge apostrophe culling. I live quite near to St Albans, which has lost its apostrophe (as has St Andrews). But we tend to keep our placename apostrophes in the UK, as in 'Land's End'.

Not so in America, where apostrophes are bunk. There are only five possessive apostrophes in USA placenames, Martha's Vineyard being the most famous. The island's apostrophe was briefly killed off in the 19th century but was resurrected in the early 20th.

They're lucky their vineyard wasn't named after St James. Newcastle United play at St James' Park. Officially, this should be written as St James's (as in St James's Park in London). But there's a convention that you can remove the final 's' if the resultant possessive sounds inelegant and too sibillant (hissy) – as in 'Mephistopheles's cat'. 99% of Geordies call it 'St James's Park' in conversation.

But do they say 'Jesus's disciples' I wonder? Jesus normally has his final 's' dropped. So does Moses. Same goes for Achilles. It's Achilles' heel as opposed to Achilles's heel. The convention is that, for ancient names, this is fine.

But the possessive Jesu's is an abomination unto mine ears – even though Jesu is an acceptable form of Jesus (as in 'Jesu – Joy of Man's desiring'). As I'm sure you know – 'Jesus' (or 'Iesus') is the nominative form in Latin. 'Jesu' (or 'Iesu') is gentive, dative, vocative, ablative and locative. This may be a useful fact to call upon when stuck for conversation at a dinner party.

Getting back to St James', there's a heretical rumour that it was printed as St James's in match programmes before 1941, but I haven't found any evidence of this – yet.

There's more on the great St James'/St James's debate on the BBC Tyne website, where the argument rages, with viewers' comments such as -

The name of the ground is 'St James Park'. That is its name. One does not say 'Buckingham's Palace' or 'Victoria's Station'

It's black, it's round, it makes a proper sound - apostropheeee, apostropheeee. Give us back the 's

and

Hoy man. There must be more important things to discuss than a stupid name like - are we ever ganna get a cup in the trophy cabinet?

Good point.

Newcastle FC players, fighting over the placing of the St James' apostrophe

I won't dwell for too long on Tescos (without) versus Sainsbury's (with), but I guess it makes sense, as Sainsbury's belongs to the Sainsbury family, whereas Tescos (formally called 'Tesco') doesn't belong to the Tesco family.

As with Jesus and Achilles, older shops tend to lose their apostrophes – as in Harrods, Selfridges, Fenwicks, Harvey Nichols and Fortnum and Mason (in the St James's area of London).

It's normally called Fortnum and Mason's or just Fortnum's in conversation, but really ought to be Fortnum's and Mason's. And to complicate matters even further, it often calls itself Fortnum's, referring to Fortnum's tea and so on.

Poor, dear old Mr Mason. He actually got there before Mr Fortnum, with his market stall in 1705. Mr Fortnum was an interloper from Oxford, where he no doubt often walked past The Queen's College.

Fortnums's 'n' Masonses

Apostrophes are complicated things – especially when they signify ommission rather than possession. The nautical term 'forecastle' can be spelt 'fo'c's'le' (must note that for Scrabble). And, if you really wanted to, you could refer to the boatswain's forecastle as 'the bo's'n's fo'c's'le', which is frankly enough to make you want to run away to sea and do crosswords with sailors.

George Bernard Shaw had it in for apostrophes, calling them 'uncouth bacilli', and wrote can't as 'cant' and he's as 'hes' in Pygmalion. But he was quite happy to write I'm and it's. Hes a great author but I cant endorse this.

Meanwhile, Lewis Caroll lived in apostrophe wonderland and liked nothing better than shoving them in wherever he could, frequently writing ca'n't and sha'n't.

No doubt he'd be a Hear'Say fan if he were alive today, whereas Shaw would prefer Dexys Midnight Runners (sic).

a cat indicates his support for the apostrophe

It's arguable that most apostrophes could be culled without affecting meaning, as it's usually pretty obvious from the context. But Professor Steven Pinker gives some interesting examples of apostrophes affecting meaning in The Language Instinct -

My sister's friend's investments
(the investments belonging to a friend of my sister)

My sister's friends' investments
(the investments belonging to several friends of my sister)

My sisters' friend's investments
(the investments belonging to a friend of several of my sisters)

and

My sisters' friends' investments
(the investments belonging to several friends of several of my sisters)

I also like Kingsley Amis's (Amis' ???) clever distinction -

Those things over there are my husband's
(Those things over there belong to my husband)

Those things over there are my husbands
(I'm married to those men over there)

No doubt Those things over there are my husbands would be completely acceptable in Birmingham, where the council's catastrophic apostrophic deliberations seemingly haven't caused much of a storm. It would be unfair to quote Jane Austen's One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound. But I've never thought of Rummidge as the sort of place where people get sentimental or passionate about punctuation, or language, or anything – come to think of it.

Turning to the Birmingham Mail, I was agreeably surprised to find a generally well-written piece about Apostrophegate. That's if you ignore the second sentence -

The council’s plans to no longer to use the apostrophe on road signs and place names throughout the city, revealed in the Birmingham Mail yesterday, was received with horror by campaigners for the preservation of grammar.

The council's plans ... was received?

I cant cope. I sha'n't be visting Birmingham any more. Take me to the the bo's'n's fo'c's'le ...

Does Rabbit know about this?

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon - do not fear them.
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy,
you will enter ports seen for the first time.
Stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise -
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can.
Visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years,
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P Cavafy 1911

One of the Hertford Seven - almost a swan

It's good to see the Hertford cygnets doing so well. It just seems a few days since they made it into The Mercury, when they decided to stage a sit-in on Bull Plain near the town centre. Now, they're almost swans.

But they've never, ever been ugly. Never. Ever. I won't have it.

I've always taken extreme exception to the cygnetist propaganda and defamatory ducklingism in Hans Christian Anderson's Ugly Duckling (Grimme Ælling).

But there's more to the tale than meets the eye - or beak, or whatever.

According to a recent biography, Anderson looked frighteningly like a duck when he was a child - big hands and feet and a beak-like nose.

Like the duckling, he was an outsider.

And there's now speculation that Andersen was in fact the illegitimate son of the Crown Prince of Denmark. He discovered this just before he wrote the story. So, the inner swan metaphor stood not just for inner beauty, but for secret royal lineage.

Could this be why the Hertford cygnets tried to storm the town centre in July? Are they related in some way to the Knights Templar? Do they know something we don't?

an unequivocally cute duckling

a less classically cute duckling, but ugly???

a duckling ostracised by its siblings - it later became a bit screwed up and joined the BNP

Hans Christian Anderson's nose - did he see it as a beak?

an ugly bird, but cute in its own way

a cygnet, clearly unimpressed by the whole ugly bird debate

Once upon a time, we used to say 'no'. But no - 'no' is no longer good enough for the young. I've become increasingly aware recently of the tendency among the young to say not 'no' but 'Noah' or 'no-wahhh', when emphasing the word. I've heard it in the street (heaven knows - the young are loud enough) and I've even heard it on Hollyoaks.

This must stop. The word is 'no' - not 'Noah'. Noah had nothing to do with teenagers who can't speak properly. He was the last of the antediluvian Patriarchs who saved the beasts from the Great Flood and repopulated the earth.

I (and my friend Franklin, 86) are seething about the overuse of the utterly meaningless phrase 'Back in the day' by the young.

Back in which day?

The phrase 'Back in the day' makes me unspeakably angry and is quite simply wrong.

I'm normally a sucker for Cillit Bang and like nothing better than going berserk with it in the bathroom. But I've recently discovered Tesco Bathroom Cleaner and realised it has a mystic property.

Every time I use it, I'm instantly transported back to Heilbronn in Germany, on a school exchange visit in 1977. Saturday Night Fever is the latest hip movie. Plastic Bertrand is in the charts. My friend Johannes is still at school and isn't yet a famous doctor.

It's quite simply the perfume they use in the cleaning fluid. I've no idea what it is, but it smells exactly the same as the detergent Johannes's family used 31 years ago. And it takes my brain straight back.

It's always weird how smells can transport you so rapidly and vividly back to the past. But there is a scientific explanation. The smell part of the brain is right next to one of the main memory retrieval parts. They both live just a few synapses away from each other in the limbic system. They can virtually hear each other through the wall, like neighbours in a semi. That's why smells fire off memories so effectively.

I'm making a programme about this for Radio 4 (going out some time in 2009) and will keep you posted.

I was standing outside the house last night with some London friends and showing off about the fact we can actually see stars in Hertford. And, probably thanks to the Cabernet Sauvignon, we got all philosophical and realised some of the stars we could see had possibly died years ago. We were seeing stars in the past, looking up into the past itself.

If you're feeling confused, here's how it works.

If a star is a million light years away, the light we're seeing was created one million years ago. So the star we're seeing is actually how the star looked a million years ago, not how it looks today.

In the same way, the sun is eight light minutes away. So - if the sun were to suddenly explode right now, we wouldn't know about it for eight minutes. That's how long it would take for the light of the explosion to get here.

So – there might just be an alien (sitting on its porch on a planet about 40 light years away with a telescope) currently watching me when I was five, playing in the garden with pets and relatives who are long dead.

I've always liked the poems of Elizabeth Jennings – especially Delay which is inspired by this spooky phenomenon.

The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

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I've just come across yet more silly names. Real legal practices called - Payne and Fear, Bicker and Bicker and ..... Ruff and Manly.

Following my recent witterings about Finnish and Latvian names, thank you to Laurence for sending me some Danish surnames.

They include Mrs Pipe Pond, Mr Blotch Castle and Mr North Twig.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, they didn't really bother with surnames until 1811, when Napoleon made them a legal requirement. The Dutch thought this was just a short-term thing, so they gave themselves comedy names such as Mr Naked, Mr of the Pants (van de Broek) and Mrs Seldom at Home (Zeldenthuis).

The English seem particularly prone to silly combinations. At university, I personally knew someone called Annette Curtain. And I've also uncovered the following (real) names – Gaye Barr, Rich Bustard, Al Fresco, April Schauer, Hazel Nutt, Daisy Dog, Pebble Heaven, Dwaine Pipe, Paige Turner, Halloweena Coffin, Crystal Ware, Donald Duck and Debbie May-Dye.

I do like a good double- or triple-barrelled name. Prince Charles has a friend called Tiggy Leggge-Bourke, whose sister married a Captain Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. Prince William has a friend called Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Let's hope she doesn't marry a Vane-Tempest-Stuart or a Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby.

As you know, I'm single-barrelled myself, but I'm actually vaguely related to the Montague-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzies (via the de roos Normans on Mum's side of the family).

However, as far as I know, I'm not one of the Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusises or Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenvilles.

As for Mr Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet, well – good luck to him.

Me with some of my de roos Norman relatives

Mr Lion Tamer and Miss House Dust Particle

Following my witterings about eccentric Finnish surnames, thank you to Lea from Lincoln for informing me that Latvian surnames are equally colourful.

The photograph above features her Latvian partner, whose surname translates as Mr Lion Tamer, and a relative whose maiden name translates as Miss House Dust Particle. Mr Lion Tamer's father was a Mr Holly Bush.

They also know a Mr Lightbulb, a Mr Woodland Scenery and a Mr Long Table.

I've just got back from Aberdeen, where I was running a course at the BBC for a few days. It was driech. Very driech indeed.

'Driech', or 'dreich' - pronounced 'dreek' (with a soft 'chhhh' sound rather than a hard k) is one of those wonderful words which aren't onomatopoeic as such, but somehow perfectly embody the thing they describe.

It means 'dreary, dull, bleak, wet and dismal'. On a driech day, the clouds loom low and you're drenched by an all-permeating drizzle.

It was pretty driech when we landed at Luton, but it's looking less driech now thank goodness.

For years, I've hated June 17th. Without exception, it's my worst day for hayfever - ruined by endless sneezing, wheezing, asthma and itchy eyes. I even had to take an extra tablet this morning which made me drowsy and absent-minded all day.

Why June 17th? I've no idea. But June 17th it is, and it's become legendary in the Peacock family. My Mum even wished me 'good luck on 17th' when we were chatting at the weekend.

But tonight, I discovered a possible cause. For some odd reason, I felt drawn to my folklore calendar when I walked into the house. To be honest, I've not looked at it for a week or so and I hadn't turned it to today's page. But when I did, I wheezed in shock. June 17th is the feast day of Saint Hervé - patron saint of allergy sufferers.

Saint Hervé is the most popular saint in Brittany, where Hervé is the most common boys' name. He was blind, lived with his pet wolf and went around curing and calming animals. I've no idea why he's the patron saint of allergies, but he was obviously a very nice chap. Happy Saint Hervé's Day.

I popped into the wondrous Van Hage garden centre in Ware today and discovered the Baobab Jungle shop in an African hut near the cafe. Among other things, they sell West African brass hooks and I bought one featuring a peacock turning round to groom its back.

Apparently, it's an Adrinka symbol called Sankofa. This means 'return and fetch it' (se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi). The philosophy represented by Sankofa is that it's fine to return and fetch something when you forget. In other words, you should always learn from your mistakes and from history.

I also like the Keerapa symbol for good fortune because it makes me think of Bolly. The philosophy it represents is 'cleanliness is next to godliness' or, more specifically, 'sanctity, like a cat, abhors filth' (kerapa te se okera - kyiri fi)

The Epa symbol is a self-help book in itself. It means 'you are the slave of him whose handcuffs you wear' (onii a n epa da wo nsa no, ne akowa ne wo).

The Fofoo symbolises envy and appears to be inspired by a jealous plant. 'What the fofoo plant wants is that the gyinantwi seeds should turn black' (se die fofoo pe ne se gyinantwi abo bedie). That's the last time I plant a fofoo in my rockery.

I've just heard a TV reporter describing something as 'very unique'. No. It's either 'unique' or not. 'Unique' is an absolute adjective, like 'dead'. You can't say - 'I'm sorry - he's slightly dead'.

But I must applaud a friend who massively overdid it with 'unique' the other day. He was describing how distinctive and eccentric an acquaintance was and getting quite carried away.

'She's the most uniquest creature you could ever meet,' he said. Fantastic use of English. But not if you're doing a report on BBC News.

I had to email a student (a uni student) the other day. His reply - soz m8- ASL?

This apparently means I'm terribly sorry but I've totally forgotten who you are. I had to go on Google to translate.

Soz m8 = sorry mate

ASL = age? sex? location?

Clearly 20 is the new 2. Uni is an infantilised world - an 18-30 holiday with one or two bookiewooks to read and little tests at the end. Grown-up words are strictly for essays.

You don't have a boyfriend. You have a boyf. You don't eat kebabs. You munch on babs. You don't get drunk. You get trollied, muntered, clangered, bazzeracked or wombled.

Degree classes have childish nicknames too.

A First is a Damien (Hirst)
A 2.1 is an Attilla (the Hun)
A 2.2 is, of course a Desmond (Tutu)
A Third is a Richard (III), Thora (Hird) or Vorderman (after Carol, who got one) and
A Fail is a Dan (Quayle)

I'm aware of the linguistic argument that this is all very healthy and that students are excellent at code-switching (between slang and formal English). But clearly Mr ASL didn't possess this skill.

Of course we used childish slang too. A disco was always a bop for instance. I openly used acronyms like narg (not a real gentleman). And one boy in my college frequently appeared in public with a teddybear under his arm. Brideshead was on TV at the time.

But the point is that we did do grown-up things as well. My tutor called me Mr Peacock. We had to wear gowns for formal hall. We had to sign an exeat book if we went home for a weekend. And we read lots of books and talked about them - sometimes till dawn.

In some ways, that world was a fantasy too. Just a different one. A Merchant Ivory version of youth, as opposed to the Hollyoaks/Friends/Big Brother one they have now.

But at least we didn't say uni. Soz m8, but you're a narg.

a magpie, trying to look cute

I was woken up today, yet again, by the nasty metallic chattering of magpies. The Roman poet Martial said that if you just heard a magpie and didn't see it, you wouldn't think it was a bird. I agree. You'd think it was a pneumatic drill. Or the wind-up mechanism of a sinister machine. I'm pretty sure the 'wind-up bird' in Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a magpie. The book starts with the main character listening to the overture to The Thieving Magpie.

The thieving stereotype is true by the way. They're renowned for picking up bright objects and hoarding them, a bit like like chavs in Argos. And they build rounded nests which they fill with the assorted objects they've nicked. This is probably where we get the word 'pie' from (as in tart).

This time last year, a mob of them attacked the blackbird nest in the garden. I was driven to despair by their grim cackling and the piteous distress calls of their poor little victims, which I had to bury once they'd murdered them for no apparent reason.

In some cultures, Magpies are considered good omens. The blue magpie is the national symbol of Taiwan. The Chinese call them 'happy magpies'. Yes - and the people of Tibet are happy too. And the word magpie has positive connotations in Newcastle, being the nickname of the greatest football team ever.

They've never been popular in Europe. In English folklore, it's believed they were the only bird not to go on the ark with Noah, preferring to sit outside 'jabbering at the drowning world.' And they allegedly refused to mourn at the crucifixion.

They were considered to be the devil's birds. People used to chant 'devil, devil, I defy thee' if they encountered a magpie. Or they'd turn around three times and say, 'Hello Mr Magpie, how are you today? Where's your wife, your child and your family?' Alternatively, they'd pinch the person they were with. This all went on well into the late nineteenth century.

Magpies were originally just called 'pies'. Shakespeare famously saw pies as harbingers of doom -

Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempest shook down trees;
The raven rook’d her on the chimney’s top,
And chattering pies in dismal discords sung.

'Pie' was probably derived from their Latin name – pica pica. But, for some odd reason, the name Margaret or Maggie was attached to 'pie' in the late seventeenth century. This may have just been a nickname, as in 'Jenny Wren' or 'Tom Tit'. Whatever the reason, it stuck, and Maggie Pie soon became shortened to 'Magpie'.

Magpie superstitions continue to this day, including the rhyme which was the signature tune of the ITV children's programme Magpie -

One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret never to be told.

In other words, if you see one magpie, you'll experience sorrow and so on.

Magpie was ITV's answer to the BBC's Blue Peter and, as you may know, was considered dangerously subversive by middle class parents, because the presenters wore jeans and trainers and had long hair. One even had an afro hair-do.

They're also cunning mimics and can accurately imitate human voices. The author Gerald Durrell had two tame magpies which used to impersonate his mother and cause havoc by calling their pet dogs in her voice.

Magpies are wrong. They must be stopped.

a Taiwanese Blue Magpie - it's pretty, but don't be fooled by its blandishments

a magpie nest

a sinister-looking magpie in a medieval bestiary

Magpie on ITV

a magpie playing football

I met a strange Finn the other day. In St Albans. I've never, to be honest, met a Finn who wasn't strange.

This prompted me to explore Finnish culture. I started with the language and stumbled on a list of Finnish surnames.

Here are a few. They're real as far as I can tell. I cross-checked them in a dictionary because they just seemed to weird to be true.

Aatos - Mr Thought

Alkio - Mrs Embryo

Arvio - Mrs Estimate

Erikoinen - Mr Peculiar

Haimola - Mr Pancreas

Hikipää - Mrs Sweat Head

Hiukkanen - Mrs Particle

Ilmiä - Mr Phenomenon

Ilmiäkorpi - Mr Forest Phenomenon

Häkämien - Mr Carbon Monoxide Gas

Rantakulkkila - Mr Beach Interpreter

Tomula - Mrs Dusty Household

Ylilherne - Mr Superpea

If, like me, you were introduced to German by the frighteningly aryan Hans Schaudi, his sinister schnitzel-obsessed family, his disturbed beagle Lumpi and his spooky sidekick Lieselotte, you'll shout 'Toll! Das ist aber schön!' and possibly even 'Mein Bein tut weh!' when you learn that the 70s Vorwärts German course has now become an internet cult.

There are even some amusing parodies (in French and Vorwärts-type German) on www.schaudi.com Super!

Vorwärts was partly devised by my German teacher Mr (Herr) Brendan. Revisting the Schaudis, I find this somewhat worrying.

The Schaudi Family

Hans and Lumpi. NB Lumpi was a Beagle and not a Dachshund, as claimed by the conspiracy theorists who view Vorwärts as a Nazi allegory

Hans, Lieselotte and Lumpi search for mushrooms

Lumpi gets lost in the wood

Hans Schaudi. What's that thing on his head? An insect? I don't recall any references to it during my German lessons.

Mr Brendan

I've been ridiculously absent-minded and tired this week, and I think it's because of the wind. When I was teaching children, they were always at their most unruly and fidgety when it was windy, and teachers generally report more fights and bad behaviour on windy days.

'Ill Winds' are a well-known phenomenon in some cultures. Weird, warm winds - such as the Föhn (Alps), Mistral (France), Chinook (USA) and Sharav (Middle East) - are always accompanied by a rise in accidents, crime and suicide. And some criminologists have suggested that judges should take windy weather into account as a mitigating factor.

Meteorologists say it's probably to do with changes in electrical charges and pressure in the atmosphere. Whatever it is, it's making me very scatty and sorely ruffling my feathers.

The Hertford General Synod of 673

It's almost Easter, but it's only the middle of March. What's that all about?

Easter Day falls on 23rd March this year. The last time this happened was in 1913. The next time will be in 152 years.

It's not the earliest Easter can be. That's 22nd March. The latest is 25th April.

It was at the first General Synod in Hertford (673 AD) that we officially adopted the current method of calculating the date. So it's Hertford's fault.

Basically – the rule is that Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

The Vernal or Spring Equinox happens on March 20th (occasionally 21st) and signifies the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

The equinoxes (when the Sun is directly over the Equator, favouring neither the Northern nor Southern Hemispheres) happen in spring and autumn and are the half-way points between the Solstices. A Solstice is when the sun is at its strongest over the Northern or Southern Hemisphere. It's at its strongest on the Summer Solstice and weakest on the Winter Solstice.

Solstices and Equinoxes are on set dates. But the first full moon after the Equinox doesn't happen on a set date (or day of the week) at all. That's why Easter is such a moveable feast.

This year, the Vernal Equinox is on Thursday March 20th. The first full moon after that is, by chance, the next day - Friday March 21st. So Easter's two days later, on Sunday March 23.

You may care to work it all out for yourself, using this fun algorithm -

a = Year mod 19
b = Year \ 100
c = Year mod 100
d = b \ 4
e = b mod 4
f = c \ 4
g = c mod 4
h = (b + 8)\25
i = (b - h + 1)\3
j = (19*a + b - d - i + 15) mod 30
k = (32 + 2*e + 2*f - j - g) mod 7
m = (a + 11*j + 22*k) \ 451
n = j + k - 7*m + 114
Month = n\31
Day = (n mod 31) + 1

I've been playing a lot of Scrabble recently and have, for obvious reasons, become fascinated by two-letter words. Here are my top five.

My favourite two-letter word is 'od'. The 'od' was a mysterious hypothetical force, postulated by Baron von Reichenbach in the nineteenth century.

In Ancient Egypt, the soul was called the 'ba' and took the form of a strange bird.

Here is a 'xu', together with a few dongs. A 'xu' is a small unit if currency in Vietnam. Not as big as a dong, or even a hao, but better than nothing.

An 'oe' could very well be blowing in this photo of the Faroe Islands. An 'oe' is a Faroean wind. Very onomatopoeic. Just try saying it in a sort of Scottish/Scandinavian accent.

The 'ai' is a three-toed sloth. They look very friendly to me. I might just buy one.

St Raphael is the patron saint of single people. Raphael was a bit of a matchmaker - famously responsible for introducing Tobias to Sarah. Sarah didn't have a very good track record with men though. Her first seven husbands died on their wedding night. St Raphael's day is October 24th.

The patron saint of single men is St Benedict. As you can see, he wasn't much of a looker. His day is 11th July.

St Agatha is the patron saint of single women. Her day is February 5th. Poor Agatha had a hard time of it. She was sent to a brothel, but refused to do any work.

I'm reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins at the moment, and it's good to see that he credits Hertford's Alfred Russel Wallace as well as Darwin when he's writing about evolution.

Wallace (1823 – 1913) lived in Hertford from the age of 5 to 14. His mother's family – the Greenells – were Hertford people and his great grandfather was the town's mayor.

He lived at No 11 St Andrew Street in what's now called 'The Wallace House' and he was a pupil at Hertford Grammar.

We went to school in the winter at seven in the morning, and three days a week remained till five in the afternoon; some artificial light was necessary, and this was effected by the primitive method of every boy bringing his own candle or candle-ends with any kind of candle-stick he liked. An empty ink bottle was often used, or the candle was even stuck on to the desk with a little of its own grease. So that it enabled us to learn our lessons or to do our sums, no one seemed to trouble about how we provided the light.

Hertford Grammar when Wallace was a pupil

His first great expedition was to the Amazon, where he made copious notes and collected examples of many extraordinary species. But the ship back to England caught fire and sank, drowning most of his research.

Thankfully, he survived and went on another expedition to Indonesia. Here, he discovered many new species, including the Wallace's Flying Frog. He also postulated the existence of a line dividing Asian from Australasian species (The Wallace Line). Then he contracted Malaria. But this gave him the space he needed to dream up a theory of natural selection.

I was suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, and every day during the cold and succeeding hot fits had to lie down for several hours, during which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly interesting me.

Over the next two days, he wrote 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type.' He then sent the paper off to the man most likely to appreciate it – Charles Darwin.

By sheer coincidence, Darwin had just started writing up his theory of evolution. 'I never saw a more striking coincidence,' wrote Darwin on receiving Wallace's work. 'Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters...so all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.'

In other words the Hertford naturalist discovered evolution at exactly the same time as – if not before – Darwin.

After 'On the Origin of Species' was published, Darwin wrote to Wallace, 'Most persons would in your position have felt bitter envy and jealousy. How nobly free you seem to be of this common failing of mankind.' He even suggested that Wallace would have written his own definitive book on the subject just as well or better 'if you had had my leisure.'

Wallace was a generous chap and appears to have been perfectly happy for Darwin to get most of the credit for evolution. He was, after all, the kind of man who bottle-fed a baby orangutan for three months after he’d rescued it from a swamp. A true animal lover. Back in England, he had pet cats called Flunkie and Crumpet.

He also became a socialist after observing life in the rainforest. Whereas Darwin was appalled by the gap between the 'savages' he encountered and the people of Europe, Wallace was struck by the similarities, and felt a real connection with them.

He also differed from Darwin scientifically – believing that humans transcended evolution because of their spirituality. He even became a Spiritualist and attended séances, but, being a scientist, he insisted on searching the room first. Fascinated by extra-terrestrial life, he wrote a paper called 'Is Mars Habitable?'

Wallace remained modest throughout his life, trying to turn down an honorary degree from Oxford, membership in the Royal Society, and the Order of Merit. And he remained incredibly active until his death, even building a new house when he was 89.

He could have been buried in Westminster Abbey, next to Darwin. But, knowing his wishes, his family turned down the offer. Instead, they buried him in the local graveyard, which had a better view.

After his death, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle allegedly based an entomologist character on him. Conan Doyle - also a Spiritualist – was a great admirer of Wallace and claimed to be guided at points by his ghost – 'an invisible and friendly presence.'

The Wallace House in Hertford is now occupied by a GP. But there is a memorial to Wallace in the town – a roundel in the pavement outside Waitrose, where you can see several of Wallace's creatures, including his fabulous flying frog.

'The' is endangered. Please use it. A lot. Today.

It's a sinister conspiracy. This morning, a BBC reporter completely ditched it on TV. He was talking about children. And - instead of saying 'at the age of 12' or 'by the age of 7' - he said 'at age 12' and 'by age 7'. I almost choked on my Deluxe Dorset Muesli with Nuts.

Peacockshock says - Save the the!

Now - where did I put my brain?

A couple of days ago, as you probably know, the Archbishop of Canterbury said it was 'unavoidable' that some aspects of Sharia (Islamic) law would be adopted in the UK. He didn't call for the public beheading of murderers or the chopping off of burglars' hands or the stoning of adultresses. And - yes - he did just say 'aspects'. And - yes - most of Sharia law seems quite sensible if you bother looking at the details. And - yes - I'm absolutely sure he meant well.

But the man is clearly away with the fairies and stuck on Planet Theologian if he thinks you can make statements like that and not cause a massive row. What on earth were his media advisors thinking of?

My company talk advises people on handling the media (from High Court judges to CEOs to teenagers to - um - theologians) and one thing we tell all of them is to (1) think about what you say, but also (2) think very carefully about what people will hear (or want to hear).

It's like libel law which is about what average people are likely make of your statement rather than the statement itself.

So, unless he's naive beyond all stupidity, he must have known, or at least been warned, that - regardless of his intentions or nuances - it would inevitably cause a very unholy war of words - and endless wailing and gnashing of keyboards.

He could have easily delivered his point in the form of questions and hypothetical scenarios ('Who knows? One day, some aspects of Sharia law - such as blah, blah, blah - might be incorporated here...')

Instead, he used the crass and inflammatory word 'unavoidable' (subtext - we want/need to avoid it).

Then he said 'aspects' without saying which aspects.

And now he's reportedly shocked at the backlash.

Archbishops are not, I sincerely hope, enthroned because they're good at handling the media. And they shouldn't censor everything they say out of fear of the tabloids. But surely they have media teams. And surely he could have been a teeny bit more careful about his language.

It's occurred to me that yet another 'the' has gone missing. The 'the' in dates - as in 'The 14th of March.' Now, it's just known as '14th March'. This is an abomination.

Yorkshire people are allowed to omit the 'the' or reduce it to 't' or 'tut' but no-one else is and I won't have it.

Geordies have kept the 'the'. But they sometimes use it in odd, quaint ways, as in 'see you the morrow' (a bit like Old English) or 'have you seen the Lympics?' (a well-known international sporting contest, held every four years).

And 'a' is having a hard time of it too. Whatever happened to 'a quarter to nine' or 'a quarter past ten'? Dropping the 'a' was a bad thing and symptomatic of a decline in Britain's moral fibre.

Thanks to Frank for alerting me to the existence of Vivian Comma Close in Islington. For years, Frank has walked past, wondering why there was a comma called Vivian, and now he's found out.

Vivian was a composer and jazz and calypso singer.

But I'm having terrible trouble finding out anything else about Mr/Mrs/Ms/Dr/Prof Comma and I'm not even sure if Vivian was male or female. Perhaps Vivian was 'Lord Comma'. Calypso people used to knight themselves at the drop of a hat.

I think Vivian was connected somehow to Lord Christo and to the Golden Cockerel. But it's possible that Vivian was the Golden Cockerel. In which case, it's likely that she was a man.

S/he also appears to have written a song called 'Oh - You Nasty Woman' and the music for a 1957 film called 'Fire Down Under'.

I like pilcrows. They're the ghosts of punctuation. They signify nothingness.

I've learnt something new this weekend. 'Hippopotomonstrosesquipedeliaophobia' is now considered to be the longest word in English. It means 'the fear of long words'.

Rupert - a bear

There was a letter in The Times (or The Telegraph - can't remember) this week, bemoaning the widespread use of 'Rupert the Bear'. Rupert is, of course, just 'Rupert Bear'. Why dub him 'Rupert the Bear', fulminated the disgruntled correspondent, when we don't refer to Rupert's Peruvian cousin as 'Paddington the Bear'. What next? 'Mickey the Mouse'? 'Donald the Duck'?

The Rupert issue is, of course, a thorny one. Why, for example, is Felix always 'Felix the Cat' rather than plain old 'Felix Cat'. Why, for that matter, isn't he just 'Felix - a Cat'? I guess he's Felix the Cat in order to distinguish him from Felix the Gerbil or Felix the Termite. And 'Felix the Cat' scans better in the song.

I like a nice 'the'. 'The' adds a touch of Edwardian grandeur to a name. Imagine dining at 'Ivy' (or even 'Ivy's') rather than 'The Ivy'. It just wouldn’t be cricket. And, for me, it will always be 'The Lebanon', 'The Gambia', 'The Ivory Coast' and 'The West Country'.

But some jumped-up metropolitan popinjays have recently got it into their heads that 'the' is a bit up-tight and dropping it is cool - the verbal equivalent of not doing up the laces on your trainers.

On the tube the other day, the voice announced, 'Alight here for Houses of Parliament'. No 'the' whatsoever. As a protest, I refused to get off and stayed on ... all the way to The Canary Wharf.

In the perverse and slouchy world of art, it's also considered a bit old-school to bother with 'the'. So we end up with the article-free 'Tate Modern' in London and 'Baltic' in Newcastle. But it's a human right to be preceded by a 'the' in my view, so I jolly well add one, as in: 'I went to The Baltic the other day and saw lots of random objects which made no sense.'

Without 'the', we'd all be cast adrift in a sea full of indefinite articles, bobbing around like driftwood. 'The Queen' is clearly not the same as 'a queen'. Being invited to 'a queen’s garden party' is a different thing altogether. And 'The Queen' is not 'Queen'. To my knowledge, Elizabeth II has never had a hit with Bohemian Rhapsody and doesn't sport a camp moustache.

Talking of bands, it doesn't do to get your definite articles in a twist. Some have a compulsory 'the' - 'The Stones', 'The Who', 'The Fall'. People would think you were a bit odd, or an entomologist perhaps, if you dropped the compulsory 'the' and said: 'I'm a big fan of Beatles. I've got lots of Beatles in my iPod.'

But 'The Fleetwood Mac', 'The Wham', 'The Take That'? No. I think not.

Other bands are more borderline. It gives me a cheeky fillip to add a 'the' to 'Kaiser Chiefs' for example. But I'm quite hardline about 'Arctic Monkeys' who are emphatically not 'The Arctic Monkeys'. Saying 'The Arctic Monkeys' is a sure sign that your CD collection qualifies for Saga insurance. 'The' is still hanging on, but seems to be reserved for the more perky bands such as 'The Wombats'.

Which brings us to the eighties band 'The The'. If they were launching now, they'd probably be required to drop the initial 'the' and just call themselves 'The'.

On the other hand - they could privately think of themselves as ‘The The The’, drop the first ’The’, remain ‘The The’ and just about manage to save face.

Or should that be 'save the face'? No. My face is my face. Not the face or a face. In English, we say, 'I’ve broken my nose.' But in many other languages, your nose is simply 'the nose', as in: 'I've broken the nose'. I guess the assumption is that 'the nose' is quite obviously your own one and not one which happened to be randomly passing by.

It is acceptable to drop the 'the' in everyday phrases such as 'I'm going to bed' - unless you're Scottish, in which case you say 'I'm going to my bed', presumably to make it unequivocally clear that you're not heading for someone else's.

'The' is becoming an endangered species in English and must be preserved at all costs. In other European languages such as German, they fling it in willy nilly wherever they can. Friends are referred to as 'The Siegfied' or 'The Brunhilde’. You attend 'the school', you get admitted to 'the hospital' and you fear 'the death'.

I hope you’ve found this article definite. And - by the way - I am the Ian Peacock and not the other one.

The the is dead. Long live the the.

I spent yesterday at the Southbank Centre and found myself feeling oddly nostalgic as I strolled around in the shadow of all that brutalist architecture. It was a bit like being in the Cotswolds. It proper warmed my cockles.

I feel the same about Centrepoint, the BT Tower, the Pompidou Centre and the Byker Wall. I think it's because 50s/60s/70s architecture reminds me of my childhood and optimism about a space-age future, which of course never arrived.

Or perhaps it's because the Southbank has become a trendy new setting for romantic moments in movies. Couples in British films used to routinely have such moments walking ridiculously slowly along gravel beaches. Now it's obligatory to have them in front of the National Theatre.

I look forward to the day when they shoot a Hovis ad at the Southbank, with Dvorak in the background and shots of a yoof on a skateboard delivering a modernist loaf to the Hayward.

I bought a baking tray the other day and was delighted that it was described as 'oblong' on the label. The oblong is a wondrous creature and I'm sure I wasn't alone in feeling ruffled when it was usurped by the evil 'rectangle' in the seventies. Oblongs are the cute red squirrels of geometry. Rectangles are the nasty grey ones.

This year's Ig Nobel Awards have been announced.

The 2007 winning projects included -

a study into jet lag cures for hamsters

a scientific paper revealing that swallowing swords is bad for you

and

US Army research into a 'gay bomb' to make same-sex enemy troops irresistable to each other, thereby distracting them from their duties

I think they should drop one on the Mid West and the Bible Belt for fun.

A boy from York has suddenly developed a posh southern accent after recovering from a brain op. William McCartney Moore, 10, now uses long 'a' sounds ('carstle' instead of 'castle'). And he’s not alone. I used to work in the same office as Annie Bristow - a BBC producer and presenter who had a standard BBC English accent but then sounded distinctly Scottish after she had a stroke. And Geordie Linda Walker - from my home village near Newcastle - woke up after a stroke last year with a Jamaican accent.

When I first heard about Foreign Accent Syndrome or FAS, I assumed it was some kind of mysterious throwback to previous generations. But it turns out there’s a slightly more rational explanation.

FAS accents aren’t authentically local and sometimes fall between two totally different geographical areas. Mrs Walker, for instance, is sometimes perceived as sounding a bit Slovakian. So neurologists and linguists have concluded that the accents are actually ‘perceptual epiphenomena’ - not real, but in the ear of the beholder.

They’re actually caused by damage to the motor areas of the brain - affecting movements in the mouth and tongue. This changes the formation of sounds, causing a new accent which can correspond accidentally with a local accent from another geographical area.

And the changes can be reversed with the help of speech therapy, so William should be able to get his Yorkshire accent back. I hope he won’t suffer the same fate as Astrid L from Norway. In 1941, she suffered a head injury from shrapnel during an air-raid and was left with what sounded like a strong German accent. This didn’t go down too well and she was shunned for the rest of the war.

Watch an interview with fabulous 'Jamaican Geordie' Linda Walker

rabbit warren illustration from The Medieval Cookbook

I bought a medieval recipe book at the weekend, so don't be surprised if I serve up a mess of potage followed by frumenty the next time you come for dinner.

The Medieval Cookbook also includes herbal remedies. If you need to 'staunch blood at the nose' for instance, you should 'anoint the nose with the juice of leeks within. Also, dandelion will staunch blood at the nose, if thou wilt break it, and hold it to the nose and the savour may go into it.'

Jain monk

I had to kill a fly yesterday after it crash-landed in some gloss paint when I was doing a bit of DIY. I've felt bad about this ever since. I've also felt angry with the fly for messing up my paintwork, but also guilty about feeling angry.

I've always had a soft spot for insects and I'd only kill one if it was directly threatening a person or a pet. I once killed a wasp that seemed to be attacking Mo my pet rabbit. OK – I've also murdered the odd mosquito in Africa, but I do regret it.

When I was a child, I used to pick up insects and take them for walks – fascinated by the fact that they were travelling relatively vast distances in seconds, like humans crossing the globe or going into space.

And I once became obsessed by the BBC's insect sound effects discs. I recall one which was labelled: Housefly, Prague, 1967. I like the fact that someone was pedantic (and underworked) enough to record this detail. And I like the fact that this fly was immortalised without being remotely aware of the fact, and has probably starred posthumously in loads of BBC dramas.

The Indian Jain religion has a fascinating, if controversial, take on insects and forbids harming them. Jain monks walk slowly with brooms to sweep insects away and avoid treading on them. They also brush chairs with whisks to avoid sitting on them. And they wear masks to avoid breathing them in.

Some Jains even refuse to take antibiotics as they don't want to harm microbes. I draw the line at that, having been almost killed by microbes two years ago. If it's between me and a microbe, I win. I feel I possibly have more to contribute to the universe, but I may be wrong.

I once attended an entomologists' conference and enjoyed it immensely. Many of the insectologists fitted the stereotype perfectly. They had beards, wore tweeds and were rotund and jolly.

Ten random insect facts -

(1) Fleas can jump 200 times their body length. That's like you or me jumping onto the top of Canary Wharf.

(2) Fleas have caused more human deaths than all wars put together. George W – if you read this, please don't declare a War on Fleas.

(3) Aphids can produce 50 aphid babies a week. No wonder aphid maternity wards are so big.

(4) Dragonflies only live for 24 hours. But Spendour Beetles live till they're about 47.

(5) Ants can carry things 50 times their own weight. This is like you or me lifting an elephant.

(6) Crickets hear through their knees. How silly is that?

(7) The greatest number of pairs of legs ever seen on a milllipede was 375.

(8) Insects outweigh humans by a factor of 50 and there are more insects in a square mile of countryside than there are humans on the entire earth.

(9) Bot flies lay their eggs on mosquitoes' noses.

(10) A cockroach can live for a week without its head and cockroaches can hold their breath for 40 minutes. Well, whoopie doo.

Thanks many to the Peacockshock visitor who kindly emailed me night last regarding the cat and guinea pig photo.

His comment: 'cute, very'.

When I was trained to write news at the BBC, we were always taught never to write backwards as it can lead to comical ambiguity.

Indeed, to comical ambiguity it can lead, as in:

After eating my lunch, the waiter engaged me in conversation.

And while I'm on, the answer to 'How are you?' is: 'Well, thank you'.

It is not: 'Good'.

When I ask you how you are, I'm not enquiring about your opinion on your ethical status. I simply want you to say 'well', even if you're ill.

Now go away and stop annoying me.

Away. Go.

'Someone who, alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn't try it on.' (that counts me out then)

'Someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger.'

'Someone whose mind watches itself.' (Albert Camus)

'Someone who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.' (Dwight D Eisenhower)

'Someone who has found one thing more interesting than sex.' (Aldous Huxley)

'An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.' (Charles Bukowski)

'Being an intellectual is wearing your glasses half way down your nose then having to tilt your head back to see people.'

'Someone who hears the phrase 'Big Brother' and thinks of George Orwell first.'

What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between five or more different languages? You can now find out, thanks to an online Babeliser. I tried out some phrases and quotations and got some pretty weird results.

The fat cat sat on the mat –
The great cat was firm

I wandered lonely as a cloud –
Vento vento only communicates like the cloud

Kiss me quick -
bacillus fastly

A Big Mac and fries with strawberry milk shake please -
With that ã. ã. "they are he and ã. IMPER and oil of the asterisk of the inginocchiamento of him ' ã ' "ã. 6á. he is great

It's raining cats and dogs -
The cat and the rectangles of the rain of the dog

I love to go a wandering along the mountain track -
Esteem the movement that goes the length of the ways of the movement of the mountain i love to go

A noisy noise annoys an oyster -
the ascent of her disturba obstructs one ostra

I love to love you baby -
The boy assesses the situation, that one that he appreciates

Liar liar pants on fire -
Asthma of the mentiroso of the mentiroso of the fogos

I shave with foam and a razor -
I am completely burned by the bubble and scherblock of the rasatura

I have a hangover and require a coffee and an aspirin -
I have the part of the rest, have the necessity of the series of silicone of desperations of the coffee and the Arab league

The hills are alive with the sound of music -
Assembly and healthful lodging of music

Do not feed the lion -
The lion would not have that to modify itself for particular requirements

I've just discovered an extraordinary fact.

There are 84 thousand Ians in the USA. Ian is the 579th most popular US name. And 99.9% of USA Ians are male. If my terrible maths serves me right, that means there are 84 female Ians.

There are also 24 thousand American Peacocks, but a mere seven Ian Peacocks.

I discovered this on the brilliant How Many of Me? Why not try your own name and discover how common you are?

I've invented a new displacement activity - googlewhacking names on How Many of Me?

I tried Bert Snodgrass first and discovered there are two of them.

Then I tried my mum's cousin in New York whose real name is Ranulph de roos Norman, and was told he didn't exist and that there are no Ranulphs at all in America. Wrong.

Then I hit lucky with Dick Dick. A mere one. Hurrah.

But my absolute favourite was Kitty Bollinger. Yes. There's someone (only one) in the USA with that name. Bolly and I were most amused and intend to track her down. I have an inkling that she's a grand old lady living in New England, but who knows?

Just Jack

For the last month, the song 'Starz in their Eyes' by Just Jack has haunted my brain, running in a constant loop.

This is despite the fact that I listen to loads of music all the time. Today, it's been Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass. But it's always the naff pop songs that get stuck. I once had Kylie Minogue in my brain for a year. It was hell. I even had Marlene Dietrich singing constantly in my head for a month in 1992. And I almost failed an O-Level thanks to the song 'You Can Ring My Bell' which possessed my teenage brain like a terrible disco poltergeist.

Apparently, catchy tunes share qualities with histamines and cause so-called cognitive itches or 'ear worms'.

But knowing that doesn't solve my problem. Just Jack - please jack it in. Please. I like your rhyme schemes. I admire your use of Sprechgesang, but please leave my head. Now.

Now why do you wanna go and put starz in their eyes?
It's the same old story but they just didn't realise.
And it's a long way to come from the Dog and Duck karaoke machine,
And Saturday night's drunken dreams.

Avaunt ye, foul lyrics!

I now have 43 files on my desktop: 31 (numbered 01-31) to cover the days of the month, and then 12 more to cover the months themselves. Each folder has a list of things to do, which I have to do in that day or month. It's a system used in the GTD or 'Getting Things Done' movement, which inspired the 43folders website. Should be interesting to see whether it makes life easier.

The Pope

It's World Aids Day and it's uplifting to learn that a quarter of a century after the first diagnosis (and after 25 million deaths) the Catholic Church has decided to discuss allowing the use of condoms. Nice one.

This month's mammal is a Christmas Cat (looking suspiciously like The Pope in his red hat).

A new dictionary of cockney rhyming slang - Shame About the Boatrace - lists some new terms invented by the celeb-obsessed Heat generation.

My favourites:

Ayrton Senna - tenner

Britney Spears - beers

Paul Weller - Stella

Basil Fawlty - Balti

Tony Blairs - flares

Billie Pipers - windscreen wipers

and

Brad Pitt - fit

I won't bother explaining a Melvyn Bragg or a James Blunt.

I'd love to be immortalised by rhyming slang, but I can't think of anything that rhymes with Peacock - apart from a small chicken which would be a wee cock.

There's scope for my cat Bolly, as her name rhymes with wally and so on. But I'm at a loss when it comes to friends and acquaintances, who include: Alyal, Paczek, Tversted, Srinivasan and Darukhanawala.

My favourite all-time rhyming slang is 'bobble', as in: 'You're 'avin' a bobble, mate!'

Bobble = bobble hat and scarf = larf

I'd like to suggest a new celeb one, which - rather like the Brad Pitt example - has a nice synergy between the person and the concept:

Jade Goody - hoodie

Well done to the Cornish Archives people for compiling a deeply silly list of ludicrous names which I stumbled on when I was thinking about rhyming slang. And you thought the names in Dickens were made up??? Here are some of my favourites:

Admonition Abbott (Admonition was once a very popular first name)

Bastien Badcock

Gentle Bant

Fozzitt Bond (the name's Bond - Fozzit Bond)

Obedience Budge

Truth Bullock

Fanny Cock

Fanny Cobbledick

Moody Cugley

Charity Dingle (as in Emmerdale!)

Edward Evil

Olympia Lark

Epiphany Lullaby

Christmas Peacocke

Ostrich Pockinhorn

Hambly Foote Scantlebury

Dorothy Silly

Henrietta Whetter Tickell

Thomas Trampleasure

and

Clobery Silly Woolcock

No. It's a photograph - of Henley in 1897. It was taken by Elias Burton Holmes who pioneered colour photography. At one point in his life, he was doing six travel lectures a week, showing his photos and films. From a rich American family, he was first inspired to travel when his granny took him on a tour of Europe. You can see his evocative colour photos of exotic locations and wonders in a new book called Burton Holmes Travelogues.

But he did capture England too. I like his photo of Castle Combe in Wiltshire, taken in 1914 before the First World War (which also looks like a painting). There's a melancholy magic about its very English mood. I wonder what the boy sitting on the bridge was thinking.

This is a quetzal. I discovered it while looking up high-scoring Scrabble words, such as squeezy, quartzy, quixotic, pretzels, besique and quisling.

This month's mammal is the golden-rumped elephant shrew.

Apparently, the History Matters project was inundated with blog entries on 17th October. I don't normally do diary-type entries, but I decided to record all my movements on that particular day for posterity. No matter how mundane. Here they are -

03:33
Woken up by Boll howling and scratching outside the door. Boll is banned from my room at night as she fidgets and runs around and I need my beauty sleep. Read Who Moved My Blackberry for half an hour. Silly but funny and very 21st century.

06:30
Woken up by Nicky Campbell on Five Live, reading out listeners' comments about annoying things in supermarkets. Jenny, a supermarket assistant from Hertford, says customers irritate her more than anything. Decide to look out for Jenny in Waitrose, M&S or Tesco and give her a hard time.

06:37
To kitchen, accompanied by Boll. Boll has Science Diet cat food for breakfast. Put heating on. Make full caffetiere of coffee and drink it all.

06:45
To office (upstairs in house). Send emails to solicitor and to friends Fran and Henrietta.

06:50
Emergency ironing session.

07:00
Bath, with Classic FM on. Jane Jones has a fine basso profundo in the morning. Used to be quite squeaky at lunchtime.

07:25
Breakfast. Special K with Red Berries. Boll demands a second breakfast. Give in.

07:43
Put new playlist on iPod. Lots of Jet, Killers, Feeder. Fast stuff to make me feel anarchic while commuting with boring city people in suits. Spend hours doing it.

09:32
Train - Hertford North to London. According to The Times, cod fishing is to be banned. I've stopped eating cod and had haddock mornay for dinner last night, which Boll shared.

10:30
Carrot Muffin and latte at Coffee Republic near Broadcasting House.

10:53
Bump into Melvin Bragg whose hairdo has undergone another inexplicable tectonic shift.

11:00
Interview Radio 4 presenter Peter White - very nice chap - about website accessibility, for forthcoming radio programme. New BH open-plan offices are horrid. Just like all offices everywhere. Devoid of character. Not very BBC at all. The BBC used to have a peculiar Reithian/Orwellian/Bohemian chic. I miss it.

11:17
Central Line to Chancery Lane.

11:35
Latte at Caffè Nero. Full of lawyers. Decide I must see the new David Hockney, Holbein and Velasquez, but no chance this week.

11:54
Arrive at Disability Rights Commission to do another internet accessibility interview. South African receptionist. Why are all receptionists South African?

12:20
Tortuous tube trip to Hoxton, via Bank and Old Street.

12:57
Meet friend Wilhelm and interview him about website accessibility. Go for drink in a frighteningly trendy Brazilian café called Favela Chic.

14:30
Train from Old Street to Hertford.

15:50
Hertford. Walk past what used to be a Travel Agents near my house. There's a notice saying it's about to be occupied by an undertaker. I reflect on this and decide undertakers are just travel agents who don't do return tickets.

15:55
Diversion to Waitrose to buy comfort crumpets, a Thai Green Curry readymeal and a sachet of Organic Chicken Whiskas.

16:05
Home. Eat large pot of natural yoghurt. How can it be fat-free when it's so creamy?

16:10
Begin five hours of editing, with occasional breaks to have tea and crumpets and to play with Boll.

19:11
Doorbell. A woman who looks like a pixie is standing there, brandishing a portfolio. She explains that she's a Polish artist selling paintings. Hertford seems to be full of Eastern Europeans at the moment. I politely tell her I'm too busy. She seems like a nice person, but I'm not in the mood for buying art.

20:55
Balance exercises. The vestibular system in my cerebellum decided to go berserk during my mini-stroke last year, so I have no real sense of balance. I just rely on my eyes to stop me falling over. I look drunk when I'm tired and try to walk. And I fall over within seconds if I stand up and close my eyes. So ... I sit down, close my eyes, stand up, turn clockwise, sit down, close my eyes, stand up, turn anticlockwise, sit down etc etc etc. Balance physiotherapy is a new thing and I'm a sort of guinea-pig.

21:00
Have a TV dinner. Thai Green Curry Chicken with noodles. Glass of Hardys Cabernet. Watch Bratcamp on Channel 4. Not very good. No characters.

22:00
Watch the top of the Ten Oclock News ('The Ten' as we media types call it).

22:25
Go to bed. Read book. Lock Bolly out.

22:31 ish
Fall asleep.

This is a fab new book by Adam Jacot de Boinod, published by Penguin. It's a fascinating list of single words from around the world, embodying concepts which we English speakers have to express via long phrases.

bakkushan (Japanese) - someone who looks cute from behind but ugly from the front

Drachenfutter (German) - peace offering made by guilty husband to wife (literally - dragon fodder)

Backpfeifengesicht (German) - a face that cries out for a fist in it

fyrassistent (Danish) - assistant lighthouse keeper

mamihlapinatapei (Fuengian language spoken in Chile) - shared look of longing between parties who are both interested, yet neither is willing to make the first move

koro (Japanese) - hysterical belief that your penis is shrinking into your body

fucha (Portuguese) - to use company time and resources for your own purposes

Latah (Indonesian) - uncontrollable habit of saying embarrassing things

Yuyin (Chinese) - remnants of sound that stay in the ears of the hearer

and

tingo (Pascuense language spoken on Easter Island) - to borrow objects from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left

Adam Jacot de Boinod's website

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Yes. You've probably seen this before, as it's done the rounds on the internet. But is it true? Here's what one Cambridge language expert has to say about it.

You can also scramble words using an internet word jumbler.

Here's something I jumbled using it -

Hawets blriilg, and the sihlty toevs did grye and gbilme in the wbae. All mmisy wree the bvoogores, And the mmoe rhats obtaurge.

Cornflowers - my favourites

It occurred to me today that nearly everything in this room is blue. I'm wearing blue. My diary's blue. My PC wallpaper's blue. My desk files are blue. Even my scissor handles are blue for goodness sake.

Blue's always been my favourite colour (I was nicknamed Little Boy Blue as a child). But it's not just me. Looking out into the street, I can see endless blue. What's going on?

Well, according to research by the Pantone Color Institute, blue is the most popular colour in the world, getting 35% of votes. Green comes in second at 16%.

The least popular colour in the world is apparently white (is white a colour?), except in China, Mexico and Brazil.

Blue's also the world's favourite colour for toothbrushes by the way. And blue cars are extremely popular and reasonably safe. The most dangerous colours for cars are black and green. Silver cars have the fewest crashes.

Most languages recognise blue in the same sense as English and have a word for it. But Vietnamese doesn't. In Vietnam, the word 'xanh' covers both blue and green. And Russian and Italian have two separate words for light blue and dark blue, suggesting that they see them as separate colours like red and pink.

All About Blue

This month's mammal is the tree kangaroo.

This month's mammal is the manatee. Manatees are plump, slow moving, non-aggressive, herbivorous and curious creatures - rather like most of my friends.

Thank you to Brendan and Liz in New Zealand, who alerted me to the sale of an apostrophe on trademe (a New Zealand auction site). The current bid is $100.00

One apostrophe. Black. 12pt. (Times New Roman). The apostrophe is hardly used and still in near-mint condition. It's great for contractions or cases of possession. It comes with a full set of instructions for use (English language version only).

One of a bulk lot of surplus apostrophes scored from the local fruit shop ("apple's banana's and pear's").

This apostrophe is a conventional one. It's one with a circular part on the top and a tapering tail towards its bottom end.

Not suitable for pluralisation.

Distribution of surname Peacock in 1881 and 1998 respectively

Spatial Literacy is a fascinating new website where you can view the distribution of your surname in the UK and around the world. The UCL researchers behind it also discovered lots of name-changing over the last century. One trend was to add an 'e' at the end to make your name seem posher (Peacocke - yes, they do exist). And some names have totally disappeared - notably Cock, Handcock, Hickinbottom, Haggard and Daft.

An Octodon Degu

I was in a bad mood for most of last week and decided it might have something to do with lack of sleep. So I started sleeping in beyond my usual 6 am most mornings. I ignored Bollinger's howlings and scratchings (there's no snooze button on a cat) and blocked out the light by wearing an eye mask I'd been given on a plane. And it worked. I'm feeling much better.

We get two hours less sleep on average than we did a century ago. In 1910, the average was 9 hours. In 1975, it was 7.5 hours. By 2002, it was 6.9.

The negative effects of sleep deprivation are well known. The KGB used it as a form of torture. And getting up too early can harm your health. Dr Peter Axt argued in a recent study that late sleepers live longer than earlybirds.

Circadian rhythms are still a bit of a mystery. We certainly don't have a single body clock. We have countless watches in different cells, all ticking at slightly different rates, taking cues from our genes, hormones (melatonin etc) and environmental cues such as light.

And they all work on a cycle that's slightly longer than 24 hours (much longer in the case of adolescents - hence their odd sleeping habits).

Circadian rhythms may be regulated by an area called the SCN (superchiasmatic nucleus), but sleep research has yet to solve all the mysteries of Morpheus.

Sleepologists use humans in their experiments, but also diurnal rodents such as the octodon degu - a sort of Chilean gerbil on steroids. My favourite degu study is: Crepuscular Rhythms of EEG sleep-wake in the Hystricomorph Rodent Octodon Degus. A gripping read.

Octodon degus are just like us. Some of them are natural owls. Others are larks. Others are a bit of both - referred to by sleep experts as 'hummingbirds'.

I suspect I've been fooling myself for years that I'm a lark, when in fact I'm an owl who likes to go to bed early. Perhaps this category could be named a peacock.

I was reading about Alaskan laws today. Apparently, in Alaska, a moose may not be viewed from an aeroplane. It's also considered an offence to push a live moose out of a moving plane.

According to the Times letters page, a Gloucestershire college is currently advertising: 'study opportunities, including National Diploma's, Degree's and Master's Programmes'.

Clearly, our university's, college's and student town's are losing it when it come's to apostrophe's.

I was in Cambridge the other day and ended up going clubbing at a place called 22. It was fun, but I was deeply shocked by the random apostrophe's and typo's on their plasma screen's.

A further inspection of their website uncovered the following horror's:

'Friday nights have evolving- Reinassance - The Re-Birth. Friday nights have changing with a new Dj line up and a whole new feel about the night come down and join the revolution.'

'Its never to early to book your tickets.'

'Closing times may vary due to trading pattens.'

In Cambridge, of all place's.

This month's mammal is the sloth.

I've finally given in to Global Warming. It was 30°C yesterday and the office/study was just tooooo hot for thinking. So I moved my desk to the other side of the house - which only gets sun in the morning - and bought a nice oscillating desk fan. I'm now typing this in my new office. I wonder whether this will affect my writing. Will it become cooler and less ranty?

Following a popular series of monthly microbes, Peacockshock is proud to introduce a new feature - Mammal Of The Month. July's mammal is the Aye-Aye from Madagascar - a nocturnal lemur which resembles Ozzy Osbourne.

The Sakalava people believe that the Aye-Aye enters houses during the night through thatched roofs and murders the sleeping occupants. It supposedly uses its elongated middle finger to cut the aortic vein of its victims.

In fact, it uses its protruberant finger to tap trees and entice insects out. It can hear insects pootling around at a great distance, thanks to its large ears.

There's an Aye-Aye in Bristol Zoo. I find them rather cute, but I wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alleyway.

Hell - freezing over

It's 6/6/6 today. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: For it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.

Opponents of Ronald Reagan used to claim he was the Antichrist, as his three names (including middle name 'Wilson') had six letters in them. And when Ron and Nancy moved to Bel Air, they bought number 666 St Cloud Road, but changed it to 668 (668 is known to theologians as 'the Neighbour of the Beast').

The emperors Nero and Domitian were also said to have connections with the number.

Meanwhile, Brighton pensioner June Dumas is 66 today. She was born at 6am, weighing 6 pounds and 6 ounces. Mrs Dumas apparently intends to spend the day quietly in Hove.

And hospitals have reported more requests than usual for induced births, to avoid the dreaded date.

In a clever PR move, the new Omen movie is released today, having allegedly been beset by spooky explosions and odd happenings on set. The actor who played Damien in the original film has been pursued by the number ever since he was a child. The bill for his 19th birthday party at the Hilton came to £666. Pretty cheap for the Hilton in my view.

And the producer of the Iron Maiden album 'Number of the Beast' crashed his car when they were recording it. The mechanic's bill - $666.

Today, the self-proclaimed mayor of Hell Michigan is throwing a huge party. The inhabitants of Hell are selling souvenir mugs and t-shirts, for $6.66 - together with letters of authenticity, verifying that you celebrated 6/6/6 in Hell.

I have a neurology appointment this morning. I'm hoping they won't find '666' etched on my brain, but I'm not particularly hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic myself.

666 in The Independent

The good people of Hell Michigan celebrate 6th June 2006

This month's microbe was once very close to my heart. In my heart to be precise. It's a year since a bunch of streptococcus viridans microbes decided to move house into my aortic valve ('deceptively spacious, in a sought-after location') and nearly killed me. But I survived, which I'm very pleased about.

Do microbes have an image problem?

It probably hasn't escaped your notice, even if you're a broadsheet reader and Radio 3 listener, that this year's Big Brother cast includes a boy with Tourette Syndrome. And of course the press have claimed it's exploitation and focussed on the fact that he swears a lot.

In fact, fewer than 15% of people with Tourettes have coprolalia (compulsive use of taboo words or phrases). But what about the ones within this 15% who live sheltered lives and have never encountered swear words?

I've yet to find out exactly what they do, but I did see a programme about Tourettes in which a compulsive swearer adapted his words and phrases to the culture he was in. So, on a visit to the USA, he kept shouting 'Twin Towers!' at bemused passers by. And I did find one entry on a Tourettes site which backed up the idea of 'contextual swearing':

I choose the ones that would be most offensive to whoever is nearby. And no matter how sheltered your life is you will pick up some doozies. I've even found that I will make up new swear words if none of the ones I know are 'appropriate'. Then of course, when I've relaxed a bit, the memory of what I've said haunts me for ages.

This then led me to some international swearing phrasebooks. Did you know, for instance, that 'pumpkins!' is a swear word in Macedonia? 'Stubby legs!' is also highly offensive in Japan.

And here are some phrases guaranteed to offend people in the Netherlands:

Je hebt het niveau van een poffertje!
(you're equipped with the intellect of a small pancake)

Je moeder heeft een snor en een baard!
(your mother has a moustache and a beard)

and

Eet pinguin poep!
(I won't bother translating this)

As for Tourette Syndrome, it's a neurological disorder, possibly caused by irregular levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. It was first described by Dr Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette.

I get a daily word or phrase delivered from the Urban Dictionary. Today's phrase is 'porch dog.'

A porch dog is:

A person who frequently attacks others in speech or writing, but who poses no intellectual threat whatsoever. The motivation of this type of person can usually be accurately construed as a desire to be obnoxious and offensive. The phrase 'porch dog' is used to refer to dogs that sit on front porches and bark at passers by, but pose no physical threat.

This month's microbe is Pfiesteria Piscicida which has acute multiple personality disorder. It can choose from 24 different identities (4 are illustrated here), sometimes behaving like a plant, sometimes like an animal. Pfiesteria Piscicida usually exists as a non-toxic amoeba. But when fish are around, it morphs into a weird poisonous form and sucks them to death.

'The purpose of our lives is to be happy.'

The Dalai Lama

This month's microbe is a particular favourite of mine - the plankton Dinobryn which is a member of the Chrysophyceae family. It likes nothing more than to swim around ponds using its flagella.

BMJ graph correlating ear size and age

Thanks for pointing out that scientists have been studying old persons with big ears since 1993. I was fascinated by the BMJ's coverage of this and by all the articles and scholarly discussions regarding elderly ears. Here are the theories:

(1) People with big ears live longer. People with small ears die younger. It's an odd genetic indicator of longevity. So - logically - there are more old people around with relatively big ears.

(2) Our ears do appear to grow faster than the rest of us, expanding by 0.22 mm a year.

(3) It might just be a result of cognitive bias. In other words, we traditionally, stereotypically, expect old men to have big ears, so we notice big-eared old men rather than small-eared ones.

(4) Old ladies have equally big ears, but these are normally obscured by their hairdos.

(5) Rabbits, basset hounds and various other creatures such as Bollinger the cat, Prince Charles, Andrew Marr and Dumbo have large ears throughout their lives.

Bollinger showing off her big ears when she was a kitten

Thank you to Hazel from Ely (originally from Carlisle) for alerting me to the fact that Bea Campbell and Hunter Davies are not from Newcastle but from Carlisle.

I agree. They are. Hazel is utterly correct.

But, in fairness, I did hint in my Famous Geordies entry that Hunter D was only a Geordie very indirectly, having attended Durham University.

And Bea C does live in Newcastle.

But I stand corrected and apologise for offending Cumbria, or Cumberland as I prefer to call the northern bit.

Other Carlisle stars include:

Novelist Margaret Forster (Hunter D's wife)

Eddie Stobart the lorry person

Lee from the boyband 911

Richard Madelely from Richard and Judy (a newsreader on BBC Radio Carlisle when he was 19)

The mother of President Woodrow Wilson

and

My friend Paul's grandad, whose name was William Shakespeare. His middle name was Milton.

Famous Cumbrians include William Wordsworth, Stan Laurel, Beatrix Potter (from London, but lived there), Melvyn Bragg, TV presenter Eric Robson, Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs Tiggywinkle, Mrs Tittlemouse, Jemima Puddleduck, Timmy Tiptoes and, of course, The Flopsy Bunnies.

By the way - I once met Belinda Carlisle, but she's not from Carlisle.

Today, I remembered that I'd forgotten something, but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was that I'd forgotten. All I remembered was that I said to someone recently: "I'm sure we'll remember it, as it's March 15th - the Ides of March." I also can't remember who I said it to.

So I hereby apologise to you, whoever you are, if I didn't turn up for it, whatever "it" was.

Ides are odd things. There are Ides on 15th March, May, July and October. But the Ides of the other months are on the 13th for some stupid reason. It's the same with Nones, which fall on the 7th in the aforementioned four months, but on the 5th in all the others. I find this infuriating. But at least the Kalends are always on the 1st.

That, of course, doesn't help me remember what it was that I forgot.

"Nowadays, children are obsessed by luxury, have bad manners and show contempt for authority. They disrespect adults and love talking loudly in public. Modern children are tyrants and are disobedient at home. They no longer rise when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter in company, gobble up snacks at the table and tyrannise their teachers."

Socrates (469-399 BC)

About once a week, I get an email from a student, asking for advice on the media or writing or creativity or rabbits or whatever. And I always try to reply. All of my replies are polite and friendly and usually end with one request, on the lines of: "Please send me a bit more information about your project, so I can be more specific with my thoughts."

This is because their queries are nearly always preposterously vague and lazy (not to mention badly spelt and written in a sort of textspeak stream-of-consciousness).

"cud u giv me sum advice about getting Into da meDia?" they ask. Or "Do u hav any thinkings on creativity for my theesis?" Or "im riting a disertasion about various fings - can u help."

What happens when I ask for a bit more info? They don't reply. Sometimes, I take pity and send them a whole load of thoughts and notes on attachment. What happens? They don't thank me.

Once upon a time, you had to be literate, numerate, clever and have some degree of social nous and cultural hinterland to get into university in the UK. That's apparently not the case any more. (I deleted "Sadly" from the top of the last sentence - interesting).

Am I an elitist? No. I'm sure the shambolic students who write to me have a right to a good education. But I do find myself rather nonplussed by these emails and by what they say about the 21st century undergraduate.

I dined at the Inner Temple Hall in the Inns of Court last night, with my friend Daire and some very entertaining barristers and judges. We were on High Table with various lawlords and bigwigs, but it was perfectly relaxed. It was very much like an Oxbridge formal hall, with gowns and so on, and the same grace - Benedictus Benedicat - that they used at my college.

Before dinner, everyone just left their bags in an unattended cloakroom, which completely freaked me out. "Is it safe to leave valuables?" I ventured nervously, fretting about my iPod.

Then it dawned on me that this was the inner sanctum of the judiciary and probably the least likely place in the UK to have something pinched.

Dinner was very jolly. Afterwards, some of the student barristers went off to do a 'moot' - a mock trial. But we went to Daire's flat instead, behind the Temple Church on a cobbled lane she calls 'Diagon Alley'.

Inner Temple Hall

This month's microbe is the amoeba, which only has one cell. It moves around using temporary limbs called pseudopods. In Brazil, the term 'amoeba' is used for slow, obtuse people, as in the well-known song 'The Amoeba from Ipanema'.

I had fishfingers for dinner the other night. They'd been bought for a child who preferred Spinach and Ricotta Tortellini (that's Hertfordshire for you) so they were in the freezer, beckoning me, as were some oven chips and frozen peas.

On reading the box, I was shocked at how camp Captain Birdseye has become.

I was also interested to read that they weren't cod or haddock, but were made from Alaskan Pollocks.

Intrigued, I rushed straight to Google and discovered that an Alaskan Pollock is a small cod-like fish which lives in Arctic waters. I also found, listed under 'Alaskan Pollock', a bespectacled lady. Perhaps she's Mrs Pollock from Alaska. I don't know. But I felt that she deserved to be included too.

Four things never come back:

The spent arrow

The spoken word

The past and

The neglected opportunity

Omar Idn Al Halif

According to Mens Health...

1 in 10 Brits haven't seen a cow in the last 10 months

22% of Londoners haven't experienced silence for over 6 months

Londoners are as likely to have seen a rat as a sheep in the last month

"It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth," said the scientists who stumbled on a 'Lost World' in the mist-shrouded rainforests of New Guinea's Foja Mountains.

They apparently discovered loads of new species and several creatures which were thought to be extinct. And the extraordinary thing is that they were totally unafraid of humans, having never encountered them before.

My favourites are the red-faced wattled honeyeater, an egg-laying hedgehog (so docile that the scientists had to carry it around), and the golden-mantled tree kangaroo, which loves being cuddled.

This is the best news story I've heard for ages. It's made me feel as excited as I used to feel when I was a child and realise how extraordinary and beautiful the world is - or should be.

Sorry - I'm sounding like a vicar. But it really is mind-blowing if you think about it - a snapshot of Eden.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb. And the leopard shall lie down with the kid. And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. And a little child shall lead them.

This month's microbe is the charming Methanopyrus. It's an 'extremophile', living in temperatures above boiling point. Its hobbies include making methane.

Bonkers Bush said 'nucular' again in the State of the Union Address.

As Mia Farrow's character in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanours said - never date anyone who mispronounces 'nuclear'.

Professor Geoffrey Nunberg has written a brilliant feature on why he says it, along with Eisenhower and Homer Simpson.

Here are some of my favourite Bushisms:

My education message will resignate among all parents.

A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness.

It will take time to restore chaos and order.

I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.

We will stand up for terror. We will stand up for freedom.

Saddam would still be in power if he were president of the United States, and we’d be a lot better off.

Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.

Education belongs to everybody. High standards belongs to everybody.

What is your ambitions?

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

Justice ought to be fair.

We're going to have a White House forum here in Washington DC. Obviously. That's where the White House is.

I should have clarified it by my statement. I just clarified it by my...not should have...I just.

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
David Frost

On Mozart's 250th birthday, I feel that it's important to remember his best friend and cherished companion from 1784 to 1787 - a pet starling.

He loved his starling and even transcribed its song, adding "that was lovely". His compositions K453 and K522 are thought to have been influenced by the starling's songs. And the starling also imitated Mozart's music, but was thought to sing slightly sharp.

I once met and recorded a talking starling for Radio 4's Home Truths. It even had the same accent as its owner - an ex opera singer from D'Oyly Carte. It was frightened of the microphone though, so I had to hide it under its perch.

The naturalist Pliny wrote about starlings that imitated ancient Greek, "practiced diligently and spoke new phrases every day." And Shakespeare's Hotspur proposed teaching a starling to repeat the name 'Mortimer' (an earl distrusted by Henry IV) to disturb the king's sleep.

Mozart's starling died when it was three and he buried it amid great ceremony. Heavily veiled mourners marched in a procession, sang hymns, and listened to a graveside recitation of a poem Mozart had composed for the occasion:

A little fool lies here
Whom I held dear -
A starling in the prime
Of his brief time.

Thinking of this, my heart
Is riven apart.

He was not naughty, quite,
But sweet and very bright,
And under all his brag
He was a foolish wag.

He is now on high,
And from the sky,
Praises me without pay
In his friendly way,

Quite unaware that death
Has choked his starling breath,
And thoughtless of the one
Whose rhyme is thus well done.

Political correctness damages society, according to a report published today. I'm far too afraid to write much about it in case I get savaged by Yasmin Alibhai Brown. But here are a few quick thoughts about how it affects me. And I'm white, male and middle-class, so I must be right.

(1) I was told off recently for writing that "I suffer from a problem with my sense of balance" (which I do, by the way). Apparently, it's not PC to suffer from something. But it does make me suffer. Surely I have a right to say that, as the sufferer, and non-sufferers are surely oppressing me by not allowing me to say that. Tricky one. The problem is that, by writing 'suffer', I may be making other disabled people / people with disabilities / challenged persons feel bad about themselves, and I wouldn't want to do that.

(2) I was also told off for running a course called 'Brainstorming'. Apparently this is offensive to people with brain problems. Well - I have a damaged cerebellum myself (see balance problem) and it doesn't bother me. But that's by the by. So I phoned a friend who suffers from - sorry - HAS epilepsy, and he said it was ridiculous and he had no problem with it. Then I phoned several brain charities, including the epilepsy ones, and they all said "Am I bothered? Do I look bothered?" So I refused to call my brainstormings 'thought showers' which you're supposed to. The other interesting thing is that the actual brainstorming process itself works much much better if the group declares a temporary suspension of PC language - but that's a controversial one.

(3) I was also ticked off recently for writing 'elderly.' Apparently, elderly people are now 'older' people. I absolutely see where this is coming from. 'The Elderly' is certainly dodgy, as it hints at a homogenous group, and 'elderly' does suggest frailness. But the problem with 'older' is that it means everything and nothing. Perhaps we need to just invent a new adjective entirely, such as 'cuffley' or 'frippulant'. My Dad is 82 today, but is in no way 'elderly'. On the other hand, it's ludicrous to say he's 'older'. Older than who? Me? My cat?

I do worry that political correctness makes people over-cautious about debate and language, even nervous about thinking. But I also enjoy the PC debate itself. And I do quite like some of the more preposterous ideas, such as reframing 'failure' as 'deferred success'. Obviously, it would be farcical to actually call it that, but I like the idea. And, on a serious didactic note, it is important to question the re-branding of violence with anything-goes chav-slang (as in 'Happy Slapping').

If you want to read more about linguistic determinism, you might care to explore the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

It's all so confusing. I'm now suffering from a headache. Sorry. I'm having a headache. What I mean is: I have issues around my head which are challenging me and.....

I like Mozart. And I'm looking forward to the Mozart 250 events.

But, like Salieri, I'd happily poison him as I write, and tell him in no uncertain terms where to shove his horn concerto. This is thanks to the onset of acute Mozart fatigue caused by seven hours listening to non-stop Amadeus on Classic FM.

I don't know how to put this, but Mozart's music is just TOO GOOD - in the same way that, sometimes, Austria's just TOO PRETTY. All those geraniums and things.

I'm now 100% behind Radio 3's controller Roger Wright (see Times article) who's refusing to play all of Mozart's works back-to-back (as he did with Bach in December 2005).

His argument is that the effect would be too 'chocolate-boxy'. And I now totally agree. I feel like I've been eating Mozart Balls all day and I'm desperate for a nice bit of Bratwursty Beethoven.

The Water Bear or Moss Piglet

Following the highly-successful 'Marsupial of the Month' feature, Peacockshock proudly announces a new phenomenon for 2006 - the Microbe of the Month.

This month's microbe is the water bear - also known as the 'moss piglet'. It was discovered in 1773 thanks to the invention of the microscope. And it's a member of the much-loved tardigrade family.

It was named the water bear as it slightly resembles and moves like a bear. But, unlike a bear, it's less than 1mm long.

Water bears are virtually indestructible and can survive in:

absolute zero temperatures of -272.8°C

temperatures as high as 151°C

pressures six times higher than those at the bottom of the deepest oceans

poisonous chemicals

x-rays

vacuums

They can survive in such conditions for over 100 years by suspending their metabolism - effectively dying - then resurrecting themselves with water when the drama's over.

This extreme suspended animation, known as 'cryptobiosis', involves reducing their metabolism to 0.01% its normal level and reducing their water content to 1%.

Astrobiologists believe they could survive in space and it's even been suggested that they're extra-terrestrial in origin.

Article on Tardigrades

Water Bear Magazine

January - Bandicoot

February - Long-Nosed Potoroo

March - Possum

May - Hairy-Nosed Wombat

June - Wallaby

July - Southdown Sheep (honorary)

August - Honey Possum

September - Koala

November - Skippy

December - Wallaby in Snow

I just saw a woman with a bad perm on television, saying she was 'literally shell-shocked.' No. She wasn't.

'Literally shell-shocked' means 'suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after being attacked by numerous shells'.

She was just shocked.

Her perm was possibly literally shell-shocked, but she was not.

Such abuses of the word 'literal' and inaccurate metaphorical references to medical conditions MUST STOP NOW.

It makes me so angry - I'm literally spitting feathers and having kittens as I write.

My favourite book at the moment is English As She Is Spoke - a Portugese-English phrasebook written in 1883 by Pedro Carolino.

The only problem was that Pedro didn't know any English. So he used a Portugese-French phrasebook, then a French-English dictionary. It was actually used as a textbook for a while in the Portugese colony of Macao.

Here are some excerpts:

Preface

We expect then who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation of the studious persons, and especially of the youth, at which we dedicate him particularly.

Familiar Phrases

Dress your hairs.

Do you cut the hairs?

This hat go well.

What oclock is it?

I have mind to vomit.

Horse Dialogue

Here is a horse who have bad looks. Give me another. I will not that. He not sall know to march, he is pursy, he is foundered. Don't you are ashamed to give me a jade as like? He is undshoed, he is with nails up.

Dialogue To Inform Oneself Of A Person

How is that gentilman who you did speak by and by? Is a German.

I did think him Englishman. He is of the Saxony side.

He speak the French very well. Tough he is German, he speak so much well Italyan, French, Spanish and English, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, he speak the Frenche as the Frenches himselves. The Spanishesmen believe him Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman. It is difficult to enjoy well so much several languages.

Familiar Idiotisms (Idioms)

Few few the bird make her nest.

A bad arrangement is better than a process.

Take the occasion for the hairs.

He is beggar as a church rat.

After the paunch comes the dance.

To make paps for the cats.

To craunch the marmoset.

(No marmosets were craunched during the making of this entry)

Poetry in Translation uses Google to translate English into German, then German into French, then French back into English.

Here are a few lines I put in, with translations of translations of translations:

"A rose is a rose is a rose" becomes
"The pink is a pink is increased"

"Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly" becomes
"Some share on the elbow of rain to steal bluebirds"

I wandered lonely as a cloud" becomes
"Me wandered solitairement like cloud"

"How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood" becomes
"How much wood, became a collar of marble animal of forest, if a marble animal of forest could fix wood"

and

"My dog ate my homework" becomes
"My dog ate my domestic industry"

It's been announced that we'll all be getting an extra second's sleep on January 1st 2006, thanks to the Earth slowing down. Hurrah. I'm thoroughly looking forward to it.

What next? It now appears that mice like singing. They've been recorded by scientists at Washington Uni.

And mouse singing really is singing rather than random squeaking. It possesses "syllabic diversity" and "temporal regularity".

I look forward to a mouse appearing on the next series of the X-Factor ("What time is it? It's Squeako Time!") and announcing "this means the world to me."

You can read more and actually hear a mouse singing here.

i fink its a very tasty tune - wheres my dinna?
bOllinga

wen me n chandon lived in Oxford, dis mouse moved in wiv us in da hutch n we liked it and i like mouses singing 2. cUl8r
MC Mo

wicked - can i hav a carrot plees?
Florance DA bunni

I was reading some medieval bestiaries at the weekend and was shocked at the positively libelous descriptions of peacocks.

Apparently:

(1) peacock meat is too hard to be cooked (no comment)

(2) the voice of the peacock is "terrible, causing fear in the listener" (no comment)

and

(3) peacocks howl so loudly because they fall asleep, then wake up and think they've lost their beauty (know the feeling)

However:

(1) the peacock's hard, uncookable meat represents the mind of a teacher, unaffected by the flames of lust (teachers were different in those days)

(2) the peacock's harsh call resembles the voice of a preacher, warning us that sinners end up in hell

and

(3) the 'eyes' in the peacock's tail represent vision and foresight

Some more peacock facts from antiquity:

King Solomon sent people on expeditions to collect peacocks

St Augustine was astonished by what he called the 'antiseptic' qualities of peacock meat

Pliny The Elder said peacocks are proud of their beauty, but lose it after the age of three

Peacocks in Bestiaries

Bestiary peacock

Pleasing green peacock

Disgruntled peacock, feeling
grumpy because it has a small tail

This month's marsupial - voted for by you - is Skippy The Bush Kangaroo. Skippy starred in 91 episodes, filmed from 1966-68 and was in fact played by three different kangaroos. The series was filmed in colour (while Australian TV was still in black-and-white) so it could be sold abroad. In the 90s, the BBC TV show Goodness Gracious Me introduced a spin-off character: Skipinder -The Punjabi Kangaroo, but Skipinder was sadly just a one-hit wonder.

Skippy, Skippy
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
Skippy, Skippy
Skippy, our friend ever true.

Skippy - my pet guineapig

Skippy liked jumping, hence her name. She was born on 1st February 1972 and lived with her mum Tog.

Until Skippy and her three brothers were born, it was generally thought that Tog was plump and male.

Tog

The Judges - Simon, Sharon, Louis and a Possum

The Marsupial of the Month has been such a huge hit that Peacockshock is launching a 'Marsupial Factor' contest to find November's marsupial. Please vote by contacting ian@peacockshock.com

You have a choice of three celebrity marsupials. The winner will be announced on 1st November.

Celebrity Marsupial No 1 - Skippy The Bush Kangaroo

Celebrity Marsupial No 2 - Professor Germaine Greer

Celebrity Marsupial No 3 - Crash Bandicoot

I'm not complaining. I like getting emails with quirky facts in them. But, as a sound person, I've always been very suspicious of the "Duck's quacks don't echo" one. I was listening to some ducks the other day on the river and I could have sworn I heard a bit of reverb. So - I checked the facts. And it's a fact that QUACKS DO ECHO. The Acoustics team at Salford University teamed up with Daisy the duck to explore the myth. They put her in an anechoic chamber (room devoid of echo) and established that, surprise surprise, her quack didn't echo there. This also gave them a 'control' quack. But Daisy DID echo in a more natural environment. It wasn't a very obvious echo though. Ducks' quacks often appear not to echo because (1) they're relatively quiet and (2) ducks rarely quack near reflective surfaces. You can listen to Daisy echoing ('reverberant duck in wav format') on:

Salford Uni Quack Report and

BBC Daisy Duck Story

Daisy being recorded in natural environment

Daisy in an anechoic chamber

A wild marsupial has been found in...Southampton. He's called Oz and he's a possum.

BBC Story

A Bee

Well done to The Sun for demanding an end to animal cruelty. And well done to Ben Bradshaw for the new, long-overdue Animal Welfare Bill.

My feathers were distinctly ruffled by Caitlin Moran's Times piece about Schadenblogging. This involves reading the blog of someone you dislike and laughing at it - possibly even reading out the worst bits to friends over a few drinks.

The thing about blogging is that it's not meant to be read aloud in public. Its very strength is that it's simply a bunch of private witterings, to be read alone, like peeping at someone's diary hidden in a drawer. That's why I was mildly upset when Ricky Gervais read out banal bits from blogs in public in a recent stand-up show. It felt like bullying.

Blogs are easy targets. That's the whole point of them. At their best, they're about being honest, truly vulnerable and less-than-perfect. Unlike the faux-confessional twaddle in many newspaper columns. As an occasional column writer myself, I reckon that columnists generate so much negative stuff about blogs because they (1) can't think of anything else to write about and (2) feel slightly threatened by the blogosphere.

OK. Enough blogging about blogging. And beware. If you refer or link to this entry, you'll be blogging about blogging about blogging.

The 'totally rad' urbandictionary.com emails me a word per day. I particularly like today's 'word': Conversational Puma. Here's their definition:

A Conversational Puma is a loud and opportunistic member of a conversation. The "puma" part comes from the person's tendency to "pounce" on you when you are trying to tell a story with loud interjections like "NO WAY" or "I KNOW". It's debateable whether the conversational puma is interested in what you are saying or if he/she is just patronising you. The story usually ends up being truncated for no other reason than to avoid being loudly interrupted.

Are you a 'crunkster'? (person prone to being crazy and drunk) Or perhaps you're too 'überbuff' (good) to be one. Regardless, I'm sure you'd enjoy Fanboys and Overdogs by the OED's Susie Dent. It's a totally up-to-date guide to new words, and it includes all the 'words of the year' since 1905, such as 'Reaganomics' (1980), 'Dotcom' (1994), 'Speed-dating' (1998) and 'Podcasting' (2004). This year's word is 'Sudoku'.

There's also lots of evidence of 'bigging-up' and 'supersizing' (hyping the importance of things). This often takes the form of 'uptitling' - giving employees pompous titles to keep them happy, such as 'stock replenishment executives' instead of 'shelf stackers'.

And, in restaurants, food is no longer fried, grilled or baked. It's 'crisped', 'seared', 'glazed', 'lacquered' and 'truffled'.

As for the phrase of 2005, it's 'the only gay in the village'.

And what about the title? Well - 'fanboys' are geeks and 'overdogs' are hugely successful people.

I was an overdog when I tried a BBC Word Quiz based on the book. I got 10 out of 10. Ova-wicked!

My pal Dr Aric Sigman is a fabulously entertaining and stimulating writer. And his forthcoming book Remotely Controlled (This Thursday - October 6th) is a controversial, hard-hitting and brilliantly researched critique of television. TV is a major health risk, he argues. We watch it, on average, for four hours a day (ie. 24 hours a week). It's responsible for half the rapes and murders in the western world. And it's single-handedly responsible for the global obesity crisis. But the book isn't all gloom and doom. Aric does offer some fascinating tips on how to cure yourself and escape the cult. It'll be in all good bookshops from 6th October. And presumably Aric will be promoting it, um, on TV.

This month's marsupial is The Bilby.

A Rosy-Lipped Batfish (real photo)

For more odd pix of eccentric creatures, click here

Moet and Florence burrow
through the Spacetime Continuum

The English seem to love commenting on the fact that "the nights are drawing in". And there's always a slight hint that it's getting worse and they're drawing in earlier than they used to for some sinister reason. This is of course total poppycock. But it's a mistake to think that time makes any sense anyway.

I'm writing this in my present, but in your past (Saturday 10th September 2005 @ 08.22 BST). And you're reading it in my future.

Last night went quickly (as I was asleep). But this morning's dragging a bit. And this year's gone pleasantly slowly for me, but quickly for my parents. Why? Because they've got less dopamine in their substantia nigra - possibly. Or because, as you get older, each time segment is an increasingly smaller percentage of your total experience. No idea.

"What is time?" asked St Augustine. "If nobody asks me, I know. But if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not." When physicist Richard Feynman was asked to define it, he replied: "Don't ask me. It's just too hard to think about." Even Einstein tried to evade a definition. He said it was "what a clock measures" and that "the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn illusion." And Lacan and Derrida didn't exactly help by saying time's just a word - a product of language.

Talking of language, we go on about "perceiving" time. But we don't perceive it. We perceive things "within" it, like seeing autumn leaves being blown by the wind. We don't see the wind itself.

And of course eastern mysticism, modern philosophy, hallucinogens and quantum theory have thrown huge doubt on our cosy little concept of linear, 'Newtonian' time - an irrevocable, asymmetric arrow that automatically goes 'forwards' from the past to the present to the future.

It was much easier in the eighteenth century. They loved time and believed in it. Gulliver consulted his watch non-stop. And we all know about the opening scene of Tristram Shandy. Marie Antoinette was given 51 watches as engagement presents.

But, in 1749, Rousseau threw his watch out. And we've been a bit suspicious of time ever since.

In any case, time ended in 1993, with Francis Fukayama's 'End Of History'. So where, and when, are we now? We're certainly post-post-modern, if you can be, but that doesn't help much. And the more physicists know, the less they know. But at least they're still inventing units to measure it. My favourite is a "shake" (ten nanoseconds), derived from "shakes of a lamb's tail." And I quite like the picosecond, as it sounds a bit like 'Peacosecond'. It is, by the way, one trillionth of a second, or one millionth of a microsecond.

Then there's the London Underground Minute (as in 'Next Train: 2 Minutes') which can last anything from one minute to about fifteen.

While I'm on, my Dad used to work with a chap who constantly said: "Just a second. I'll only be a minute."

Finally (if finality exists), I dare you to say, aloud: "I'm in the present." And notice that, as soon as you've said "I'm", it's in the past. Then, as soon as you've uttered the phrase "I'm in the present," it's in the past too and you said it in the past. So what is the present, if anything?

There's no sense in it. So I suggest you ditch your watch for the day and try to imagine time going backwards or sideways or whatever.

After all, as the old German proverb says:

'No clock strikes for the happy one.'

Time And Its Discontents

Internet Time Ticker

PS. I once did a voxpop where I asked the public where they'd travel to if they had a time machine (which could go forwards or backwards). They nearly all said: "Saturday night, for the lottery results, then I'd come back to the present and fill in the winning numbers".

I've just learnt a new word which perfectly describes one of my biggest pet hates. 'Ultracrepidarianism' is the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside one's knowledge.

This month's marsupial is the Koala. I apologise for its slightly late arrival - koalas have very slow metabolisms (they sleep 20 hours a day). 'Koala' means 'Doesn't Drink' in Aboriginal. And it's true - they don't. They get their water from eucalyptus leaves (which are poisonous to many other animals). They're also partial to a bit of mistletoe. And, by the way, Koalas aren't bears - they just have a cute teddybear look about them.

I've just presented a series for Radio 4 called Creative Genius. Click here if you want to listen to the programmes.

I'm presenting a programme about fonts on BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 7th September, at 1130 pm. Listen online

Here's a guide to your font personality which I wrote for The Times...

If your favourite font is...

Arial: you are a default person and can't be bothered to explore life's drop-down menu.

Bodoni: you are a good-looking Italian with a Vespa, probably living in a nice part of Milan.

Comic Sans: you desperately want to be loved and considered nice, funny and possibly even wacky, but cry a lot when alone.

Copperplate Gothic: you are a lawyer or business-person, wear a suit at home, and live in or near Milton Keynes.

Courier: you smoke, use a typewriter, and are probably either an elderly secretary or embittered old journalist.

Curlz: you are probably called Lee or Kylie. You are a hairdresser.

Futura: you live in a Bauhaus building and are currently sitting on a Mies van der Rohe chair fondling your Filofax.

Georgia: you are probably female and like Kettle Chips, Pinot Grigiot, girly nights in, George Clooney and pink things from Monsoon.

Gill Sans: you are tasteful, design-conscious, probably gay or bi-curious, and you have lots of brushed stainless steel in your kitchen.

Helvetica: you may be Swiss or German, or you could be a sixties Conran type or wannabe hippy. Prince Charles allegedly likes this font.

Rockwell Extra Bold: you live in East Anglia, wear a stetson, speak in a fake Wild West accent and may be dangerous.

Verdana: you design websites, spend a lot of time on your blog, and have never knowingly read a book.

Read full article here

I just interviewed PD James. She's soooooo nice. And charming. And clever. And articulate. It should be compulsory for all people to write crime novels involving gruesome murders in scary locations.

Me, when I liked hot weather

It's too darn hot. I hate it. It's wrong - especially in England, which has a moral duty to be be cold. I used to love it, and I've lived and worked in hot countries, but now I've seen sense. Hippocrates recognised the debilitating effects of heat as long ago as the 5th century BC. The philosopher Montesquieu even argued that hot weather should be taken into account in legal judgements (most riots in the USA and UK occur when the temperature's between 27C and 32C). And the Pentagon has predicted worldwide chaos, rioting and conflict in the year 2020 due to Global Warming. Peacockshock says: This Heat Must Stop.

I've discovered an excellent online art gallery containing everything from Holbein to Hockney. Well worth a visit.

I mislaid my stopwatch today. But I was rescued by an online stopwatch which was rather fabulous.

This month's marsupial is the Honey Possum. It's two inches long and only eats nectar and pollen. In aboriginal, it's known as a Noolbenger .

I have a vague recollection that Rambling Syd Rumpo had a Noolbenger in his gander bag at one point. Here's an Australian (therefore marsupial-related) song by Rambling Syd, from Round The Horne in 1967.

Song Of The Australian Outlaw

Once Long Ago in the shade of a goolie bush,
Toasting his splod by the faggot's gleam,
Rested a gander man nobbling with his woggle iron
And stuffing a sheep in the Old Mill Stream.
Then up came the troupers and hung him by the billabong,
They twisted his woggle irons one two three.
Now his ghost sits and moans
As it grunges in his gander can:
Who'll come a woggling his jumbuck with me...

Please tell me which marsupial you'd like for September. I'm toying with a quoll, but tempted by a wambenger. On the other hand, I might just choose a fluffy glider or sooty kangaroo.

Apologies for the late arrival of this month's marsupial. It's the Southdown Sheep. This particular one lives in Colchester Zoo. It looks stuffed, but I assure you it's alive. They're very small and very sweet, but sadly quite rare. Requests are flooding in for the August marsupial. Sadly, I can't really include the hugely-popular binturong, as it's strictly a viveridae and I feel it's time to return to true marsupials.

A new scientific study has revealed the astonishing fact that...cats don't have a sweet tooth. If you have a cat, you'll have realised this. Cats are utterly indifferent to puddings. The reason for this is a faulty feline gene which means they have no sweetness receptors on their tongues.

Full CNN report

I'm having some balance problems at the moment, thanks to the antibiotics. And I've discovered that the best solution is to keep my head completely still. Tchaikovsky would have approved. When he was conducting, he used to hold his chin constantly, as he was convinced his head would fall off.

I saw an orange ladybird the other day. It was very orange. Possibly more orange than Dale Winton. Not quite as orange as Judith Chalmers. Then I noticed it had white spots. I was worried I'd discovered the world's first white supremacist insect. But then I looked it up and learnt that orange ladybirds, with 16 white spots, do exist. They're pretty rare, but increasing in numbers in England - particularly in the South East. I wish them well.

I'm presenting a new series on BBC Radio 4 next month (93-95 FM)
Creative Genius
11am Tuesday 23 August
11am Tuesday 30 August
11am Tuesday 06 September

The Wallaby

I'm seething. Every time I switch on the radio, there's someone, usually in an advert, pronouncing the word "exclusive" as "excluzif". This is deeply wrong. It must stop. Now.

This month's marsupial is the Hairy-Nosed Wombat. There are three types of Wombat: the Common Wombat (habitat: Stevenage and Swindon, significant markings: hooded top and baseball cap), the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat and the Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat. The Northern one is sadly very rare. There are just over 100 of them in the wild. Hairy-Nosed Wombats - nicknamed 'Bush Bulldozers' - are heavy and squat but can reach speeds of 30mph on a good day. They're very shy and like to live alone. Hairy-Nosed Wombats make burrows by rotating like large furry drills, and sleep in them throughout the day to keep cool. If cross, they make noises like pigs.

Stop reading this now before it's too late. Do something real before your IQ plummets like an overweight chaffinch. Apparently, if you get distracted by computers, emails and texts, your IQ suffers more than it would if you did marijuana. Full story from BBCi

St George's Day (23 April) approaches, and I'll certainly be putting a flag up - but I can't quite decide whether to erect a Georgian, Catalonian or Lithuanian one. After all, he is their patron saint (also patron saint of nasty rashes and STDs). And he was from Turkey. Don't tell Michael Howard. I'm not sure St George had a proper visa when he entered our folklore.

Terrible admission - I don't get really excited by many radio programmes. But the odd one really grabs me and I'll be listening avidly to BBC Radio 4 on Monday 2nd May at 8.30pm

They're broadcasting a highly innovative feature called 84 Book Crossing Road, produced by the excellent Falling Tree Productions.

It was inspired by the book 84 Charing Cross Road, which comprises a charming exchange of letters in the 40s and 50s between outspoken New York writer Helene Hanff and a somewhat more restrained English bookseller Mr Doel. Address: 84 Charing Cross Road.

Last October, they launched the project by releasing 84 copies of the classic book simultaneously onto the streets of London and New York.

"Open the cover of any second hand book and you're likely to find intriguing names, dates, dedications and annotations, not to mention personal bookmarks, pressed flowers, the sand from a holiday beach and more. Each book carries its own history - and clues to its past owners - in every thumbed page and turned corner. The 84 copies of 84 Charing Cross Road have been released in London and New York by friends, family and colleagues of Hanff and Doel. Each is labelled with a telephone number (linked to an answer machine) together with a request asking the finder to share their stage of the book's journey. We're interested to learn how the book has touched their lives. We wish to encourage the finder to pass the book on, once it's been read, to create chains linking readers across the Atlantic and, as already recorded, from places as diverse as Vienna and Namibia. The results of this literary adventure will be heard in a radio feature reflecting upon the relationship that unfolds in the book and on the links formed between those touched by these specially released copies."

To hear excerpts and read more, go to the Falling Tree Productions website.

For loads of information on 84 Charing Cross Road itself and some charming photos of the staff, go to 84charingcrossroad.co.uk

(NB. I know one of the producers, Alan Hall, but I wasn't involved in the project. So, for once, this isn't a plug for one of my programmes)

Please keep the suggestions coming in for next month's featured Marsupial. So far, the Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat is doing very well.

Following my recent thoughts on octopuses/octopodes, here's a fascinating video and article from Berkeley University about an octopus that can walk on two legs. It really is amazing and rather funny too.

According to a survey just published by Reader's Digest, over half the people of Britain haven't a clue why we celebrate Easter. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that's pathetic and an appalling indictment of our education system. Happy Easter, if you know what it is.

Easter

I was delighted that Classic FM issued a correction this morning, stating that an octopus is not a crustacean but a mollusc. I was beside myself after hearing their incorrect crustacean reference yesterday - the first time I've ever been stirred by mollusc rights. At least they didn't say 'octopi' which is an incorrect plural, based on the false assumption that octopus is a Latin word (as you know, it's a Latinisation of the Greek 'octopous'). The correct plural is either 'octopuses' or 'octopodes'. Regardless, if you do a Google, you'll find 70,000 octopi but a mere 855 octopodes. What is the world coming to?

Peacockshock recently established that goldfish have excellent memories. (Have you forgotten that entry? If so, you may be a haddock. Have this checked immediately).

This was a very popular revelation, particularly among goldfish pressure groups in the Watford area.

So, before you start carping, here are some new goldfish facts and fascinating findings from William Hartston's highly-amusing book about preposterous academic research: The Drunken Goldfish...

Goldfish immersed in 3.1% alcohol will overturn within six to eight minutes (ie. fall over when drunk). Paralytic goldfish tend to forget what happened when they were paralytic. But goldfish memories are state-dependent. In other words, if you teach a goldfish something when sober, it will forget it when drunk. If you teach it something when intoxicated, it will forget it when it sobers up again. (The Use of Goldfish as a Model for Alcohol Amnesia 1969)

Goldfish which have small polystyrene floats attached to their chins initially get confused and swim upside down, but then compensate and manage to swim normally (Shasoua 1968)

Goldfish can recall and recognise paintings by Mondrian (Ingle 1985)

One-eyed goldfish swim as fast as two-eyed goldfish, but blind goldfish are slower (Timms 1976)

From The Drunken Goldfish - A Celebration Of Irrelevant Research ISBN 0-04-827158-6

PS. I accidentally entitled this entry "godfish research" in my first version, which prompted me to "think outside the bowl" and decide that we all ought to have a godfish: a fish which we offer to care for, in loco fish parentis, should its mum and dad be, say, savaged by a shark or sauteed by Rick Stein. Low maintenance godfish would obviously include plankton, amoebas and whitebaits, whereas I'd have thought halibuts and the like would prove more of a challenge. You'd obviously need to check your godfish attended a good "school" and didn't behave shellfishly. You'd care for its sole too and make sure it believed in cod.

My hip went wonky again today and I could hardly walk. But it was nice weather anyway. So I sat in the garden with the rabbits, contemplating the etymology of the word "hip" (as in "cool").

There seem to be lots of theories. Clearly, these etymologists like shooting from the hip. The OED declares "origin unknown". But here's a selection of alternatives from other dictionaries:

(1) It comes from the ancient African wolof language, in which the word "hepi" or "hipi" means "with your eyes open" (ie. aware and on-the-ball)

(2) English opium addicts in the eighteenth century "got hip to" the drug by resting their long pipes on their hips. Asking someone: "are you hip?" was a naughty code for: "do you smoke opium?"

(3) It's derived from Joe Hep who ran a low-life bar in Chicago and thought he was in on all the latest gangster gossip, but wasn't. So it was first used sarcastically.

(4) It comes from "Hep, Two Three, Four!" in the army. If you marched on the beat, in step, you were "hip."

(5) It's a 1930s jazz term. Benny Goodman et al were often described as "hep." Jazz fans were called "hep-cats." But, by the 1940s, it was replaced by "hip." A 40s bandleader once said: "Hep ain't hip, Man! Hep is square - really the squarest. Hep's been out for the longest time!"

(6) It's an anti-semitic acronym based on the Latin phrase Hierusolyma Est Perdita (Jerusalem is lost). Anti-semitic rioters apparently used to shout "Hep! Hep!" while attacking Jews. Some people believe this is the origin of "Hip Hip Hooray!"

(7) It comes from the herder's cry "Hep! Hep!" urging animals to be on their toes and alert, like a hip person.

What's certain is - the word "hip" pre-dates the 1960s by a long way. It actually became hip just after 1900, when it meant "wise to" or "aware of" something. The OED cites a 1904 quotation: "At this rate it'll take about 629 shows to get us to Jersey City. Are you hip?" It then quotes a 1908 newspaper article: "What puzzles me is how you can find anybody left in the world who isn't hep."

"Hippy" (spelt "Hippie") first popped up in 1953. It was a disparaging variant of "Hipster" which first appeared in 1941, meaning someone who's very aware of the new and stylish.

And Hipster trousers were first referred to as long ago as 1962. My hip also first emerged in 1962, which is probably why it's now playing up so much and is neither groovy nor far out.

I just accused Bollinger the cat of having the "attention span of a small goldfish," thereby reinforcing the notion that goldfish have memories of just three seconds and possibly engendering goldfishist tendencies in my normally-pc pussy. So fretting that I'd just committed piscine slander, I had a frantic google and discovered that your typical arassius auratus auratus can actually remember things for up to six months. Researchers at Plymouth University introduced some goldfish to an underwater maze, then, six months later, put them in it again. And they knew exactly how to get round. They'd remembered it. Goldfish can also remember feeding times and learn to press a lever for food at a particular time of day. Like humans, though, their memories are selective. They only remember useful things, like goldfish PIN numbers and passwords to access goldfish emails.

The Goldfish Sanctuary

A couple of days ago, I wrote down a few thoughts about coincidences (see below). My friend Frank read it and commented on it. Last night, Frank kindly sent me a link to the Library of Congress site (totally unconnected to any coincidence conversations). I clicked on it and tried it out by searching 'peacock'. The first image I clicked on was the one above. And, as you can see, it relates to John Wilkes Booth - whose assassination of Lincoln features in my Coincidences entry. Weird. Or maybe not. What do you think? (NB. I suspect it came up under 'peacock' because of the peacock feather in the pic which represents the evil eye in western mythology).

By the way, peacock eyes are iridescent. And that word came up as an answer on Monday's University Challenge. That got me thinking how much I liked it as a word. Then, last night, I was watching a documentary on secondary modern schools, which included archive of an English lesson - where they were learning the word 'iridescent'.

Several people have commented on my dad's seemingly amazing coincidences, mentioned in my earlier entry. And another one happened to him a few days ago. I had a bizarre conversation with dad about the correct American English word for 'toilet paper'. Dad's spent more time in the USA than me and was convinced they do actually say 'toilet'. But I argued for 'bathroom tissue'. Dad then started reading an American detective novel. And, when he opened it at the page he was on, there were several references to...you've guessed it...toilet paper.

Would a mathematician please rescue me and properly account for all this? Are my painkillers making me disproportionately aware of coincidences? Or is there something odd going on?

This month's marsupial is Leadbeater's Possum, requested by Fran, who has a soft-spot for it. It's a tiny squirrel-like possum, named after the chief taxidermist to the National Museum in Melbourne. First observed by western scientists in 1867, it was declared extinct in 1909. But then a colony was sighted in 1961. It's now an endangered species. Leadbeaters Possum is nocturnal, matriarchal, and lives in trees. It's the official animal of Victoria State.

Hey...how are you? I've recently had loads of emails beginning "Hey Ian" and I quite like it. "Hi" used to be the new "Hello". Now, "Hey" is the new "Hi".

I was writing my will the other day, as you do, while listening to tunes on my iPod (random shuffle setting). And just as I started bequeathing my worldly goods, on came Nimrod by Elgar - a piece most people associate with funerals.

I had no idea it was on my iPod. I've never liked it. I certainly wasn't aware of ever having put it into iTunes.

So was this synchronicity (a significant coincidence, a "pun of destiny" to quote Arthur Koestler)?

Or was it just happenstance (a totally probable, therefore meaningless, coincidence)?

I don't know. I'm not a mathematician or parapsychologist. But it certainly felt weird. It felt 'meant'. I deleted it promptly and hope it never comes back.

I have 1387 tunes on my iPod, four days' worth of music, so I guess there was a 1-in-1387 (less than 0.1%) chance of it popping up - which looks pretty low to me. Then again, I noticed it precisely because it seemed odd. I suppose there are countless times when a totally irrelevant tune comes on when I'm doing or writing something.

According to Professor John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, we're prone to believe in coincidences because we want life (and ourselves) to appear important, and because we're ignorant of basic probability theory.

“In reality, the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable," he writes, "would be the complete absence of all coincidence. Believing in the significance of oddities is self-aggrandizing."

OK. But what about this, Prof Paulos? I was on the tube the other day, thinking about writing this entry, and trying to remember the title of your book, whereupon the guy standing next to me nudged me accidentally (?) with his elbow. I cast him a commuter's glare (or Paddington Stare as I call it) and noticed he was reading - reading your book...the very book I was trying to recall. Yes...I know it was probably meaningless and predictable according to your theories, but it didn't feel like that.

That's probably just me though. I like connections. I like stories. I like to think that there's more to heaven and earth.....

But I suspect mathematicians don't like wishful thinkers. In a room with 23 people in it, they tell us, there's a very good chance that two of them have the same birthday. There's nothing peculiar about coincidences whatsoever.

One of my favourite 'coincidences' is the series of seemingly mystical connections between Lincoln and Kennedy:

Both were elected into office exactly 100 years apart (1860 and 1960)

Both had seven letters in their surnames

Both were assassinated on Fridays in the presence of their wives

Both assassins had three names, with 15 letters in each complete name (John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald)

Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre
Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a warehouse

Both succeeding vice-presidents were called Johnson, with 13 letters in their names, and born 100 years apart (1808 and 1908)

But, the probabilty theorists tell us, there are countless other facts that don't fit. We're being highly selective.

I'm sure you could argue that Anthony Clancy was being a bit selective about the number seven. But his story, quoted by Koestler, is somewhat dominated by this number...

He was born on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the century, which happened to be the seventh day of the week. He was also the seventh child of a seventh child and had seven brothers. On his twenty-seventh birthday, he went to the races. Horse number seven in the seventh race was named Seventh Heaven. The odds against Seventh Heaven were seven-to-one, but Clancy bet seven shillings anyway. And Seventh Heaven finished seventh.

It's interesting he was 27 when this happened. My mum was born on 27th. And my parents, and a good 70% of my friends' parents, live in house number 27. But that's probably just me being fanciful again.

I like literary coincidences too. There's the famous one of the Titanic disaster being prefigured in a book about a ship called the Titan. But my favourite is the story of Norman Mailer. When he started his novel Barbary Shore, there was no plan to include a Russian spy. But he introduced a Russian spy as a minor character, and the spy gradually developed a life of his own and became a pretty dominant figure. Just after he completed the book, the police raided the flat of a man who lived just one floor above Mailer in the same apartment block. A man he'd never met. He was Colonel Rudolf Abel, alleged to be the top Russian spy working in the USA at the time.

My Dad's never written a spy novel, but he did use to be a bit of a jet-setter when he ran the marketing department of a mining engineering company. One day, he was down a pit in Sydney and chatting to an English miner who said he'd lost touch with his little brother, but believed he may also be working down a mine somewhere in America. Two days later, Dad was down a mine in Utah and got chatting to another English miner. "I lost touch with my brother ages ago," he said, "but I heard he was maybe working down a mine in.....Sydney."

If you think that's spooky, here's another one. My Dad (name: Tom) was walking through the village one day when a complete stranger stopped dead in her tracks as if she'd seen a ghost, and apologised for behaving oddly.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "It's just that you're the double of my uncle who died recently." Knowing a lot of local people, Dad asked who he was.

"Oh," she replied. "Uncle Tom...Tom Peacock."

An odd thing happened the other day. It was perfectly warm in the house. Then suddenly very cold. Rather like the chill that's supposed to grip a room before you see a ghost.

I then realised it had just started snowing. It's strange how the atmosphere seems to do this whenever the first flakes fall. And it got me thinking, in a melancholy wintry sort of way, that, unlike the onset of snow, most changes of state are impossible to recognise or pinpoint. They just happen.

We never recognise or record the moments when we, say, stop being children, or when our parents become old, or when we fall in or out of love or friendship. They're only obvious after the event.

You never write in your diary: "today was the day that so-and-so became my friend" or "so-and-so became old today and will never be young again."

Peacockshock is pleased to announce that a German zoo has just ditched plans to test out the sexuality of its penguins.

Bremerhaven Zoo ruffled feathers by announcing it was "introducing" its six gay penguin boyz to lady penguins from Sweden. But this sparked outrage among gay groups, who feared zookeepers might try to make the three gay couples turn straight.

Activists wrote to the mayor of Bremerhaven, attacking the experiment as "forced harassment by Swedes."

However, a zoo spokesperson defended the decision, saying: "The central question is: are our penguins really gay, or is it simply a lack of opportunity?"

But now they've dropped the project and the Scandinavians will not be allowed any attempts to p-p-p pick up a penguin boyfriend.

The same-sex penguin couples in Bremerhaven are certainly very close, spending much of their time engaged in, um, 'bumsen', then sitting on pebbles in an attempt to hatch them.

And they're not alone. There are countless cases of gay emus (I always thought Rod Hull's one was a touch bi-curious), homosexual dolphins, and lesbian seagulls (according to the highly-respected and scholarly book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity). And I can exclusively reveal that my rabbit Moet had a definite 'Portillo' phase in his youth.

There are also gay penguin couples in:

Edinburgh Zoo (Eric and Dora, often seen dancing to Kylie down at CC Blooms)

Zoos all over Japan (at least 20 couples, according to penguin scientists at Rikkyo University)

Central Park Zoo, Manhattan - where else? (Roy and Silo, who even brought up a baby chick together)

and

New York Aquarium (Wendell and Cass, 15, famous for their long-term relationship and ultra-tidy penthouse nest)

Brilliant CNN TV report about Wendell and Cass

Dancing Superpenguin which looks a bit gay

I apologise to anyone who took me seriously in Saturday's Times when I wrote that Comic Sans users "desperately want to be loved and cry a lot when alone." I was only being silly. So please don't cry again. Just take more diazepam and stroke your pet rat. Actually, I'm grateful to a dyslexia expert who pointed out that Comic Sans is helpful for people with this condition.

If you like Comic Sans, you might like to know that its inventor Vincent Connare has his own site www.connare.com.

But, if you're a fontgeek with a violent aversion to it, just visit Ban Comic Sans. The case continues.

This week's monotreme is not, as you might think, a person from East Anglia. It's a duck-billed platypus. Platypuses are a couple of feet long and are furry (like people from Norfolk). They growl (like dogs), lay eggs (like hens), burrow (like rabbits), have bills (like ducks) and can poison you (like snakes). Surprisingly, there's a very low incidence of multiple personality disorder in the platypus community. Early European settlers thought they were a hoax, but then realised they were real and dubbed them 'water moles'. They swim underwater a lot, but close their eyes and rely instead on their noses which can sense small electrical impulses. Sadly, there won't be a monotreme next week, unless a new one evolves between now and then.

During dinner last night, my friend Henrietta referred to people who "pingle" their food around the plate...meaning 'vaguely prod and push it hither and thither.' No-one else knew the word, but it perfectly fits its meaning in my view. It's certainly in the OED and I also found it on a Norfolk dialect website while pingling around the internet.

By popular demand, this month's marsupial is the Long-Nosed Potoroo.

Thanks to Sasha for observing that Peacockshock suffers from a sad lack of monotremes. To redress the balance, here, for a limited run, is a new feature: the Monotreme of the Week. This week's monotreme is an echidna. Monotremes are, by the way, mammals which lay eggs. Following the huge response to the January bandicoot, there'll be another Marsupial of the Month on February 1st. If you'd like to request a marsupial, just email Peacockshock via the contacts page.

When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Shakespeare

I felt like hibernating all day today. Tonight, I can't even be asked to go to the gym, or even to Tescos. And now I know why. January 24th is officially the most depressing day of the year. That's according to the oddly-named Cliff Arnalls of Cardiff University. His formula reads: 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA - where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January's pay day, and T is the time since Christmas. Thank you Cliff. I bet you're a laugh at parties.

I Don't Like Monday 24th January.

According to today's Sun:

"A sex bomb to make enemy soldiers turn gay and romp with each other was planned by US Government scientists.

Experts plotted the bizarre chemical weapon as an alternative to deadly nuclear devices, newly declassified documents reveal.

They hoped the tactic, proposed in 1994 when Bill Clinton was President, would distract the enemy from military duties so their troops could attack."

They obviously tested it on Brighton, Soho, Manchester and large swathes of Westminster, the Media and the Priesthood. That goes without saying.

Perhaps they ought to try it out on the Mid West and, say, Tunbridge Wells. That would be fun.

But would the bomb actually make soldiers less effective in combat?

Homosexuality was positively encouraged in the armies of the ancient world, as it was thought to engender fierce loyalty. Remember Achilles and Patroclus? Alexander and Hephaestion?

Achilles and his boyfriend Patroclus

I was utterly disgusted by the lack of swearing on last night's Jerry Springer The Opera on BBC2, which I watched with my friend Dwayne, a transexual dwarf from Alabama. According to that fine upstanding organ The Daily Mail, we were due for 8000 expletives (one every 0.9 seconds), but the Mail got this figure by multiplying the profanities by the number of singers singing them. So, in the end, we counted fewer than 700 f**ks. It might just as well have been Puccini.

cute wallabies

The new Marsupial Of The Month feature has caused great excitement. It's even attracted a message from an enterprising bandicoot who hacked into Fran's computer to use her email address.

This month's featured marsupial is the bandicoot

Bandicoot Cats

Valley of the Bandicoots

Tips On Living With A Bandicoot

Bandicoots and Catholicism

Am I alone in being shocked to the core by the fact that ITV have renamed Miss Marple "Marple"? This is admittedly better than "Ms Marple". But, in my opinion, it's simply not cricket and ought to be nipped in the bud before it gets nasty. What next? "Muffet" sitting on a tuffet? I think not. I am, however, warming to Geraldine McEwan. I suffered severe Marple trauma when Joan Hickson took over from Margaret Rutherford. But I soon took to her. And now I'm starting to see Miss Marple as a continuously regenerating Dr Who figure. Apparently, ITV considered Prunella Scales, Julie Walters and Dame Maggie for the part. Angela Lansbury also played Miss Marple in a film. And the first ever screen version was played by...Gracie Fields. But Joan Hickson remains the quintessential Marple. And Agatha Christie herself thought so. When they met on a film-set (in 1962, years before the BBC series) Christie said she'd be perfect for the role. Ian Peacock, ITV News, St Mary Mead.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed Harry Parker for observing that George Formby (Ukulele entry) is in fact playing a banjolele. Please note that, in the photograph, Kermit is playing a banjolele - also confusingly known as a ukele-banjo and wrongly referred to as a ukulele by George Formby. A banjo is a different thing entirely. I think. Whereas the guitar-like instrument in the Hawaiian jungle is a ukulele. Probably.

Me, brandishing my Ukulele

I've long been a devotee of grunge music performed on ukuleles. And so I was delighted to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain playing a Nirvana hit on TV the other night. This charming little instrument originally comes from Hawaii, but it has ancestors in Portugal and Brazil. "Ukulele" (please note the correct spelling) means "jumping flea" and is correctly pronounced "OO-koo-LAY-lay".

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

I've just transferred some jazz CDs into iTunes, which automatically updates track information from the internet. This is a splendid idea. Or it would be if the database people could spell. Thanks to them, my computer playlist now refers to the blues legend Bessie Smith as Bossy Smith. And my PC has given a well-known rag tune the charming new title of Buggle Call Rug.

The Secret Life of Telephone Numbers produced by Alan Daulby

BBC Radio 4 (92-95FM)

Repeated: Monday 27 December 2004 (Day after Boxing Day) 8.02pm

'Choice' in Radio Times

Here's what the Radio Times critic says:

There was once a man who was so enamoured by the "girl with the golden voice" that he tried to persuade the speaking clock to go out with him. This is but one of the many strange-but-true stories that come up in a surprisingly compelling journey through the untold history of telephones in Britain. The comfortingly familiar sounds of old telephones and dialling tones make for an evocative picture of our not too distant past.

If you like writing and are either male or female, you should visit Gender Genie. Just go to the site and write something (or paste in something you've written) and it will tell you what gender you are (or should be).

When Captain Cook first saw one these odd marsupials, he asked a nearby aboriginal Australian: "What's that animal called?" The aboriginal replied "Gangurroo." And that became its name in English.

What Cook didn't know was that, in aboriginal Australian, the word "Gangurroo" was the equivalent of "Dunno mate."

The word "llama" has a similar derivation. When a bunch of European settlers first saw one, they asked "como se llama?" meaning "what's its name?" The confused locals hadn't a clue what they were talking about, so they just repeated the final word "llama" over and over again.

I looked up the etymology of “hurricane” the other day and discovered that it’s an old Carib word meaning “evil spirit”. Who were the Caribs? Well, they lived in Guadeloupe and were portrayed by Columbus as cannibals. But they were in fact a friendly bunch and used to place pineapples outside their villages as a sign of welcome. They’re also responsible for the words “Caribbean” (obviously), “hammock” and “iguana”.

Wikipedia is a great online encyclopedia. To research anything on earth, ignore the rather busy front page and type your keyword into the search box half-way down the left-hand column.

If you're a Googler and you're after UK stuff, don't go to the main Google. Go instead to Google UK and click on 'Pages from the UK' under the search box.

BBCi is always good, especially for news and weather.

Thinkexist is an excellent source for quotations. And

Picsearch is great for celebrity pix. Though the Google images search is very good too.

Hurricane Ivan has finally hit the USA. I'm surprised Bush hasn't invaded it.

Ivan's an odd name for a hurricane.

For several hundred years, hurricanes were named after the saints days on which they occurred. For example Hurricane San Felipe in 1876.

But now they've gone all secular and a shortlist of 21 potential names for future hurricanes is compiled every year by the World Meteorological Organisation. It's done several years in advance. So we already know what hurricanes might be called in 2008.

Names can be repeated. But, if they're attached to particularly fierce hurricanes, they're 'retired' and never used again . Ivan will probably be retired after this year. Recently Keith was retired and replaced by Kirk. Michelle was supplanted by Melissa. And Lenny was sacked, giving way to Lee.

In 2005, we face the prospect of hurricanes called Dennis and Stan. Gordon may sweep across the Caribbean in 2007, along with Florence (the name of one of my rabbits). Dean and Sebastian, who sound like a gay couple from Islington, are potential names for 2007. And old biddies Bertha and Arthur are shortlisted for 2008, along with the flamboyant Hurricane Hortense.

I just went for a walk around genteel Hertford and overheard about 30 F***s. F*** is no longer a swear word in the UK.

But it certainly was in the 17th century in puritanical Jamestown. If you said it once, or twice, you had a bodkin shoved through your tongue. If you said it three times, you were put to death. That's a f***ing serious punishment.

And F*** was still taboo n 1882 when The Times got into terrible trouble for using F*** in a parliamentary report: "The speaker said he felt inclined for a bit of f***ing."

As recently as the sixties, the critic Ken Tynan was lambasted for saying it on the BBC, resulting in several parliamentary motions and official apologies.

But when Bono of U2 recently said "f***ing brilliant" in front of millions of viewers on live American TV, there were just 200 complaints (which is tiny in US media terms).

Now the Federal Communication Commission has declared that "f***ing" is OK, if used 'properly'. By 'properly', they mean 'casually', as an intensifier of meaning rather than about, um, "activities or functions."

F*** is now a stlye-statement rather than a taboo word. French Connection UK know that only too well. In 1997, they were just muddling along. So they decided to have fun (and shock the nation's dyslexics) with their naughty acronym FCUK. The risk paid off. Their profits soared from £6 million to £19 million.

And it seems c*** is heading in the same direction. When John Lydon said it live on peak-time ITV recently, there were fewer than 100 complaints from over 10 million viewers.

Some facts about F*** :

It's not AngloSaxon, as popularly supposed, but originates in Sanskrit and the Norse word "Fokkar".

For centuries, it was replaced in England by the word "swive."

It wasn't mentioned in English Literature till the late 16th Century.

It was a criminal offence to publish the word till 1960.

Philip Larkin's use of F is the most frequently-quoted occurence.

F*** is the title of a popular Finnish magazine.

F*** once appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Archers (in 1995) but...in French.

OK. Now f*** off and read another bit of Peacockshock.

Interesting Profanity Site

He that has and a little tiny wit,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Shakespeare

Bollinger regularly sends emails by sitting on my laptop keyboard or prodding "enter" with her paw. She frequently sends my emails before I've finished writing them. Boll has a thing about office equipment and used to sit on my fax machine (before faxes became quaint things for elderly people and I gave it away).