East London justification of the greengrocer’s apostrophe

Walking home through Hackney this evening, I met a charity shop with a sign that read, “Donation’s welcome.” “Are you sure about that?” I asked the proprietor. “Donation is welcome,” he explained. So “Apple’s £2 / kilo” means “Apple is two pounds a kilo,” there’s obviously a dialect singular / plural thing going on, and…

Clergyman > clerimang

This encourages my suspicion that dyslexic but often anagrammatic barbarisms are part of a defensive strategy, conscious or not: we must needs take from the foreign devil, but we will transform our takings to frustrate his evil intent or disguise our weakness. There is a parallel, of course, in the way we northern devil-worshippers use…

Barcelona priests’ sartorial Anglophilia?

En la entrevista previa a mi ordenación diaconal, el cardenal Ricard Mª me preguntó: ¿Tienes pensado vestir clergyman? Ante mi respuesta afirmativa me espetó: Eso es lo que yo quiero: Que cuando vean a un sacerdote vestido de cura, la gente diga:” ¡Ahí va un sacerdote de Barcelona!” Or is it a reference to Irish…

Correlation/causation

Pass the biscuits, Mirandy. But how about some serious scientific advice re the surfeits most likely to maximise lifespan?

Damn coincidences

Excellent loonies Anglogalician Cup (“their prize, six feet of English soil”) & not so excellent ones, featuring Jimmy’s final swim. In the latter category, an amiable Cataloony the other day: the Albigensian Crusade was guiri genocide against the Occitans, ebola and Malaysian MH-17 are connected, Rajoy introduced ebola into Spain to kill off Podemos supporters,…