Language hobbyhorses

Because I was an English teacher, people often assume that I am a staunch defender of 'correct' English, although the denotation of that adjective varies with each person's understanding, or misunderstanding, of what 'correctness' means. No doubt what I say, write or comment on confirms one person's view that I am a reliable linguistic ally, another's that I am an arch-pedant, and yet another's that I am far too lax and permissive. At various times I probably justify all these opinions, which neither surprises nor bothers me, for as a nation we are very good at being linguistically judg(e)mental. Almost eight years into retirement, and with both my children approaching middle age, I no longer spend much time with teenagers, and so am less aware of linguistic changes among young people than I was, although my three grandsons are a new and increasingly interesting source of language use. I suppose I have a range of responses to the language I hear or read. They may be merely interesting (the use of random to mean unusual or bizarre), slightly surprising (the use of toxic to cover anything that is harmful or dangerous), mildly amusing (the use of rising intonation at the end of a statement that then sounds like a question), irritating (the thing is, is that I never ever want to go there again), or incorrect, such as the failure to make subject and verb agree, although Arsenal are at home is perfectly all right, I would argue. I still find it odd to see or hear they used instead of he or she when the gender is not specified, but I know there is sound historic precedent for this, and it does not bother me, although I prefer to avoid it myself. It must be difficult to write dialogue for a play or film set in a previous age, and obviously compromises have to be made if the period is, say, the late sixteenth century, but I sometimes think that in BBC costume dramas the period detail of clothing and decor is given more careful thought than the language. In a recent production set in the late Victorian era one character told another Get over yourself, another said that No way would she do something or other, and a third asked Aren't you just doing that to feel good about yourself? It must be difficult to get the balance right, admittedly. In case any putative reader has received the impression by this stage that my default linguistic mode is pedantic - perish the thought! (subjunctive) - , perhaps I should end this post by making it clear that I welcome and enjoy many of the developments in language use. I do not fear for the language when texts include forms such as CUL8R. The use of the form texed as the past tense of to text is interesting, though, possibly because we often don't pronounce final consonants, inni' ? The fuss about 'verbing', using nouns as verbs, as in medalled,

ignores a practice centuries old, whether we like it or not. Finally, those who talk of a golden age when the English language was used properly, with correct grammar and aptly chosen vocabulary, are deluded. If I look at early editions (1920s) of my old school magazine, The Penwithian, it is obvious that we need not be despondent about the state of our language, about which it would be unwise to generalise too harshly.

The Joy of Books

Today I'm shattered. Observant readers (the implication that I have any is a tired joke) will have noticed that this is the first post not to have been written during a weekend, and that is because Sue and I, with the help of many others, have been busy organising and running our church's annual book sale, and we have then had our three grandsons to stay while our daughter and her partner spent some time in London. Add the nervous exhaustion induced by Arsenal's late winner at Hull and there's probably every good reason for me to feel I could do with an easier day or two, not that there's much hope of that. But this short, belated post is just a little thank-you to Gutenburg, one of Strasburg's two greatest sons (Wenger, durr!), for the portable packages of pleasure, information and opinion that he made possible. Strictly speaking, it was a Book and Media Sale, the media bit reflecting an extension of our previously tome-based fund-raiser to include CDs, DVDs, audiocassettes, videocassettes and records, but which some chose to believe covered bric-a-brac and entire years' worth of magazine tat. Apart from the obvious aim of fund-raising (our takings were well over £200 up on last year's), the event was a success in terms of outreach, co-operation and social interaction. It was also an enjoyable way of redistributing books at low prices. The beneficiaries, apart from the church, include those who wanted to get rid of books, those who wanted 'new' ones - and some seemed never to have been read - , book dealers who could buy cheap and sell at a big profit, and charities, who received leftover books in their shops and can sell them at prices a little higher than ours. All in all it was a

good thing, and although I'm relieved that the next one is a year away I shan't be sorry when it comes.

St Who?

Yesterday, 5th March, was St Piran's Day, not that anyone I met here in Buckinghamshire, or anything I read or saw during the day, gave any indication of the fact. When I was growing up in West Cornwall I hardly ever heard his name mentioned, but over the last fifty or sixty years he has become a symbol of varying degrees of Cornish identity, from the minority who would like to see 'Kernow' regain its independence after centuries of English oppression and neglect to those who, like me, see the cross of St Piran (a white cross on a black background) as a cheerful statement that 'we do belong'. The flag is waved at county rugby matches, flies defiantly on Cornish vessels of all sizes, and appears on many Cornish products, including the wrappers of a well-known Cornish pasty company (which, perhaps incongruously, sponsors Plymouth Argyle) . Google marks days deemed important by modifying its logo, but ignores St Piran. Perhaps this is not surprising, for the importance of a Celtic saint of whose contribution to world history not much hard evidence remains is disputable. Fanciful tales of his Irish (others say Welsh) origins survive. One version has it that he was thrown into the sea, tied to a millstone, at the command of an Irish king because he would not renounce his Christian faith, but that the millstone floated and bore him across the sea to Cornwall, where he converted the locals. The remains of a shrine are buried in the sand, and a few place-names (Perranarworthal, Perranporth) commemorate him. He became the patron saint of miners, his cross suggesting white metal in dark rock. Nowadays there is not just a single day of remembrance in Cornwall but a county-wide sequence of events lasting over several days of 'Pirantide'.

But yesterday, when I wore my small lapel badge with its cross of St Piran, only Sue knew what it signified. My mind went back to the day in 1991 when Cornwall met Yorkshire at Twickenham in the final of the now emasculated County Championship, a game which, despite its relatively provincial title, was regarded as a match of virtually international significance by the spectators from two of Britain's proudest and most distinctively independent-minded areas. It was a game that made the tame encounters of several of this year's Six Nations games look like a different sport. There were St Piran's flags all over the stadium, the overwhelming Cornish support overturning the huge population imbalance, and when we won, having come back to draw level and go into extra time, it was the finest example of the joyful, unaggressive side of the Cornish identity that I have seen.

It's not yet time to write us off

We Arsenal fans haven't been having the best of times in recent seasons, for despite playing some superb football we haven't won anything for a long time. Defeats by Man. U. and Chelsea have helped to establish the widely held view that we may be a top four club but aren't good enough to entertain serious hopes of a trophy. They may well be right. After all, our lack of serious interest in the Carling Cup and our unusually early exit from the F.A. Cup blocked two of the four available routes to silverware, and we shall have to make up for a 1-2 defeat in the first leg of the knock-out round of the Champions League (debatably, there's never an apostrophe after that final s) away to Porto to get any further. Some of the keenest fans have even been airing the often-heard opinion that it's time for Arsene Wenger to go. But now, with ten matches (just over 25% of the Premier League season) to go and thirty points to play for, we lie third, just three points behind Chelsea, who were beaten at home yesterday, and we have the Champions in our sights. When Eduardo sustained a horrific injury almost exactly two years ago, our season fell apart. Yesterday, when Ramsey suffered a fracture so awful that the incident at Stoke was not shown again on television, his team-mates' facial expressions reminded me of those I had seen in the away match at Birmingham in 2008. This time, however, we converted a draw into a 3-1 win. Admittedly, we were playing against ten men for the rest of the match, but we seemed to show the 'mental strength' Wenger regularly mentions but is not always seen. I have a fantasy that as we raise the trophy in May before flying to Madrid to win the Champions League (hey, steady on!) we shall look back on yesterday as the time when we decided that we could do it, not just 'for Aaron', poor lad, but for all of us.

Cloud cuckoo land ? Maybe. We have an allegedly 'easy run in', which includes a visit to a certain rival north London club with the ambitions of playing European football next season and beating us for once. We are more than capable of falling on our faces, and have done it before, but now we have the chance to show that the most entertaining football in Britain can also, over a season, be the most successful too.

'By memory's chain we linked remain'

I've only recently joined Facebook, and then only because a fiend (lovely typo there - he's actually an ordained minister), or rather a friend, asked me to become a 'Friend'. A few days later I had a similar request from someone who remembered me from our days in the same year at Penzance Grammar School, or Humphry Davy Grammar School, as it became in about 1960. The line in the school song about being linked by 'memory's chain', a metaphor which has opposing connotations, certainly applies here, and for positive reasons in this case.

On a wider scale, although I haven't lived in Cornwall for getting on for 50 years, I find, perhaps unsurprisingly, that much of what I think and write is strongly affected by Kernow. This is not the picture-postcard cliche of miles of golden sand and rugged cliffs beloved of holiday companies, although the image is borne out by part of the reality, but a much more varied and contradictory place.

This week I have a new poem which, although not strictly autobiographical, does reflect one part of my experience. I realise that there are so many others in this category.

AT PADDINGTON

Forty minutes late

After a week in the west,

And fancying a snack

Before he took the tube,

He approached the gaudy kiosk

With its garish, corny pastiche

Of harbours and boats he knew,

Placed his order, paid,

Asked the Polish girl,

Pointing over her shoulder,

If she'd ever been down there

(Tired, she just shook her head),

Took his food and drink

And sat at an unsteady table,

Ignoring the pushy pigeons.

He sipped, then took a bite

And tasted salt on his tongue

As Brunel's echoing metal roof

Slid back, to reveal the sun

In a sky of wind-tossed gulls.

picking and walking

My son's description of a strawberry-picking session in Japan and his quotation, from one of my father's books, of a passage about blackberrying in West Cornwall in the early 20th century prompted me to dig out a poem I wrote a year or two ago about picking blackberries with my wife near our home in Buckinghamshire.

BLACKBERRIES

A hundredweight of fruit they picked one year,

My mum and dad. That's, say, a dozen trips

Over a season of about six weeks,

So they must have brought home nine or ten pounds

Of blackberries between them every time,

Enough for bramble jelly, pies and tarts

For family and friends, a bowl or two

For Harvest Festival, and plenty more

To keep and eat themselves. No freezers then,

And soon they were all gone.

Once Dad came home

After a solo trip up on the moors,

Where he knew all the finest cuddies were. places to pick

His hands were purple and his fingers scrawed. scratched

He did not speak, but just put down his pail

Full of great sooters topped by cool green leaves. the largest, blackest berries

Mum handed him a two-pint milk jug, full

Of shandy made from lemonade and beer

Which had been waiting in the fridge all day.

He lifted it in both hands, and he drank

And drank, quenching his eight-hour thirst

In mighty gulps, then wiped a wounded hand

Across his mouth, put down the jug, and smiled,

Murmured a 'Thank you' and admired his fruit,

A full day's berry-harvest, which, though free,

Had been won by discomfort and mild pain.

All these years later, many miles away

From where he picked, my wife and I go out

With plastic bags, hoping, each summer's end,

To find and pick and eat, and so to join

In secular communion with the dead.

The finest poem about blackberry-picking I know is by Seamus Heaney, while the best one about picking apples is After Apple-picking, by Robert Frost. Both of them are about so much else.

To change the subject completely, I end by referring to the walk I intend to do tomorrow, unless the weather has it in for me. As Sue has chronic leukaemia, I'm planning to walk from our home to Wycombe Hospital on 5th April, Easter Monday, to raise money for Leukaemia Research. As the distance is about 13 miles or so, I'll be in walking a half-marathon in effect, and as I'm no athlete, although I'm used to waliking reasonably long distances, I need to practise. Hence tomorrow's effort. I'll just go for as long as I feel reasonably OK and get a bus back, using my senior bus pass, when I feel I've had enough. There will be ample time for other practice walks as the weather, I hope, improves.

forty years on

One of the continuing joys of having been a teacher is renewing contact with former pupils. I must have taught thousands of boys in my 33 years at Challoner's alone. Most, I trust, will remember me, if at all, with at least a degree of gratitude. The very small number with whom I didn't get on at all probably wouldn't want to speak to me if they saw me in the street, although that is not necessarily true for my part, while a rather larger number (I hope) seem to enjoy a chat. I've had people come up to me on trains, in bus queues or in distant places, introduce themselves and remind me that I taught them some text or other, or that I did or said something they remember, although I usually don't, many years ago. Generally I can't recall much about these people, and more often than not I don't even recognise them at first. After all, everyone probably has fewer than fifty or so teachers in a lifetime, and they are all already adult, and so not too different from their future crumbly selves, whereas a teacher has generations of pupils in varying degrees of maturation, little resembling the people they will become.

This week I had an email from somebody who was in my form, 4D, when I arrived at Challoner's in 1969. Rob knows someone on the staff, googled me and sought me out. It doesn't always happen, but I remember him well, and with considerable affection. He played a small part in my first production at the school, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in 1971, and Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun the following year. I recall his quick-witted ad-lib in one performance when a soldier dropped his sword, and I also remember his Streets of London duet with another pupil at an Evening of Music and Poetry. We had lost contact for years, and it was good to read about what he had done with his life (a great deal, although he was not parading his achievements).

At my school, Penzance Grammar School, or Humphry Davy G.S., as it became (alas, no more) we sang, at the end of every term and on Speech Day, what I thought at the time was a rather florid Celtic Twilight school song linking the school with King Arthur, a fanciful connection in view of the school's foundation in the 1920s. I sang it smiling then but I think of it wistfully now, and although I have never been able to attend any of the Old Penwithians' annual dinners in late December, I am told that the song is sung with both gusto and reverence, and even a tear in the eye, not all of which need be attributed to the consumption of alcohol. One phrase often comes to mind, and it is true of all the schools I have attended or taught at (Tolcarne Primary, Newlyn; P.G.S./H.D.G.S.; Nottingham High School, and Dr Challoner's G.S.):

By memory's chain we linked remain,

Whatever may befall.

I think that is true in many cases, and many teachers, including perhaps my son (for teaching seems to be a benign inherited disease in my family), will agree.