The sneering detractors

[Anonymous]

Posted by Bill Phinn on 24/05/2020 13:05:27:

Surprised to hear you say that that when your English is unusually competent.

Thank you for the compliment. It's the result of hard work. When I create a post I read through at least twice to ensure that the flow is logical. I often check facts or recalculate numbers before posting. I also aim to catch most spelling mistakes. Before hitting the post button I usually ask myself a number of questions:

Have I done what I'm describing, or if an opinion is it based on experience?

Is the post technically accurate?

Have I read the complete thread? Not always needed but it helps avoid putting one's foot in it.

Am I adding anything to the thread? No point in just repeating what others have already said.

If I'm challenging a previous poster, or pointing out an error, is it fair and am I confident that I'm correct?

I don't claim to get it right all the time. And I'm well aware that I don't know everything. There are some categories of thread that I rarely post in as I either have no interest, no knowledge or they're sterile subjects that repeat time and again. It's not unknown for me to delete my typing upon reflection and not post at all.

I passed English language and literature at O-level, albeit with mediocre grades. But I failed O-level French with the lowest grade possible.

Andrew

[Ketan SwaliParticipant @ketanswali79440]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 25/05/2020 10:56:14:

If I'm challenging a previous poster, or pointing out an error, is it fair and am I confident that I'm correct?

Andrew

Now the only thing we need to work on Andrew is 'the delivery', or perhaps a bit of diplomacy without sticking the challenges back up and I wasn't referring to me.

Meant as a joke. Sorry I couldn't resist

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 25/05/2020 11:22:04

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Well Andrew, just to give you a boost:

I am the (not so) proud holder of:

Latin – started off poor, and got worse so dropped after 2 years

French – started off very good, but deteriorated until I gained an resounding failure at 'O' level

English – never very good, couldn't be bothered about the past participle or whatever so another resounding failure

English Literature – Shakespeare held no interest, neither did Thomas Hardy so this time it was an even worse resounding failure.

I suppose I should finish with :"There's always someone worse than you!"

Peter G. Shaw

Edited By Peter G. Shaw on 25/05/2020 11:59:51

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Bill Phinn on 24/05/2020 13:05:27:

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 23/05/2020 07:01:00:

…

…

On the other hand, foreign languages were famously a closed book to Philip Larkin too, and yet what can we say about his use of English, except that it was masterly?

Larkin, wonderful. But am I alone in remembering only one line from any famous poem, whatever it's about?

• Naughty Larkin example censored
• At Flores in the Azores, Sir Richard Grenville lay
• I wandered lonely as a cloud
• Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, into the valley of death rode the 600
• Come into the garden Maud
• Drake is in his hammock until the great Armadas come
• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
• The best laid plans of mice and men

Thereafter the cream of British literacy is a blur, except for rude limericks, which I recall perfectly.

Dave

[Bill PhinnParticipant @billphinn90025]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 25/05/2020 10:56:14:

Thank you for the compliment. It's the result of hard work.

I think being prepared to do that kind of hard work before posting a comment is in itself a kind of compliment to the audience you're writing for.

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 25/05/2020 13:42:31:

| But am I alone in remembering only one line from any famous poem, whatever it's about?

| Dave

You've done it now, Dave. You've actually started to talk about poetry, the mere mention of which can "disperse a crowd more quickly than a fire-hose" (Arnold Bennett). Only you, me and a bunch of tumbleweed want to haunt this thread from now on.

You're not alone; fragments of poetry are all I carry round with me too these days.

But that's fine. I met an American once who had spent his retirement memorizing the whole of Homer's Iliad in Greek. I think the effort may have been too much for him as he died not long after he'd got the final book off by heart.

To be frank, sitting in an audience one evening politely listening to him recite long passages of Homer in his metronome way nearly finished me off before him.

I suppose that makes me one of the crowd that can be dispersed by poetry as quickly as by a fire-hose – sometimes, at least.

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

To be fair, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's missive concerning the Light brigade during the battle of Balaclava was more than a bit of doggerel, it was the only acceptable way for him to report the monumental clusterf*ck that had occurred.

 

In the meantime, in English Literature (grade 5 O level 1974), I read the part of Caliban, a savage and deformed Slave. when we studied the Tempest.

Edited By Mark Rand on 26/05/2020 02:46:48

[Anonymous]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 25/05/2020 13:42:31:

But am I alone in remembering only one line from any famous poem, whatever it's about?

I'm worse than that. At school we were supposed to learn poems off by heart for recital in class. Our English teacher said we'd remember them for the rest of our lives. Not me, I can't even remember which poems we were supposed to learn. Not that I learnt them. I find it difficult to remember word sequences, but pictures are no problem. When I'm working on a circuit design I can keep the whole schematic, including component values, in my head with no problem.

Andrew

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 25/05/2020 13:42:31:

Larkin, wonderful. But am I alone in remembering only one line from any famous poem, whatever it's about?

• Naughty Larkin example censored

And human nature being what it is, guess what was the first thing I clicked on?

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Bill Phinn on 26/05/2020 00:41:23:

…

To be frank, sitting in an audience one evening politely listening to him recite long passages of Homer in his metronome way nearly finished me off before him.

I suppose that makes me one of the crowd that can be dispersed by poetry as quickly as by a fire-hose – sometimes, at least.

Homer in Classical Greek would defeat most of us, as would Beowulf in Old English, but verse doesn't have to be like that. I can do The Shooting Of Dan McGrew by Robert Service, quite a few of Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads and a number of the Stanley Holloway monologues – and I've not noticed audiences (when I get 'em ) thinning out. Maybe they're just polite, or maybe it helps to do stuff that's in accessible vernacular language.

Edited By Mick B1 on 26/05/2020 10:16:04

[Paul RhodesParticipant @paulrhodes20292]

Second vote for Kipling, and a vote for Burns ,(although strip him of the faux Burns Society tat please).

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

I grow old… I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair from behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

For I have heard the mermaids calling, each to each.

 

TS Eliot for me. (From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.)

 

Edited By Hopper on 26/05/2020 11:14:14

[Mike JosephParticipant @mikejoseph75242]

This is why I love this site! From carpers, through Latin to poetry – what a great bunch you are!

I like to brows now and again, but would end up filling all my mangling time if I followed it all.

Mike

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

or She sits in the Cabbages and Leeks

by Nanny Ogg.

;o)

Martin

[GeorgineerParticipant @georgineer]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 25/05/2020 13:42:31:

Posted by Bill Phinn on 24/05/2020 13:05:27:

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 23/05/2020 07:01:00:

…

…

On the other hand, foreign languages were famously a closed book to Philip Larkin too, and yet what can we say about his use of English, except that it was masterly?

Larkin, wonderful. But am I alone in remembering only one line from any famous poem, whatever it's about?

• Naughty Larkin example censored
• At Flores in the Azores, Sir Richard Grenville lay
• I wandered lonely as a cloud
• Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, into the valley of death rode the 600
• Come into the garden Maud
• Drake is in his hammock until the great Armadas come
• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
• The best laid plans of mice and men

Thereafter the cream of British literacy is a blur, except for rude limericks, which I recall perfectly.

Dave

Ho yus! I can do some of these:

"Drake is in his hammock and a thousand miles away" – I learned that for a singing exam. No idea who wrote the words or the music, but I got Grade 6 with Merit…

"Come into the garden, Maud, for the black bat, night, is flown" – a parlour song I learned for one of our amateur Music Hall evenings. I was shocked later to find that Balfe had only set four verses of Tennyson's poem, which runs to 24 pages of 8-point print, largely in double columns. I've really no idea why he didn't set the verse which starts "When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee…"

And my favourite, which I can quote in its entirety:

I wandered lonely as a cloud down our No-Entry street,

When all at once, from up above, appeared a pair of feet.

And from the skies an angel came, and shouted from the roof:

"I wish to God that I could have just one good cloven hoof!"

I don't know who wrote it, but it was published in our school magazine in about 1963.

George B.

[Author]

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