UGLY DUCKLINGS

Ugly Ducklings

A pair of swans on the Canal have produced a brood of cygnets, six of them, and at present they have succeeded in keeping them all alive for a fortnight. I imagine they are taking them onto the island in the Pool overnight, which is at least safe from foxes. Usually they get picked off while still small by foxes or dogs. A pair of Canada geese had a couple of goslings about a month ago, but considering how many of them are on the Canal we see very few goslings. A first for me last Saturday was seeing a baby Egyptian goose in Hyde Park, a delicate thing covered in black and white fluff (unlike the Canada geese, whose goslings rejoice in lemon and grey fluff). I have a soft spot for the rather charming Egyptian geese, who always go round in pairs rather than gaggles, and don’t try to bully you, like Canada geese; we sometimes have a pair on the Canal, but they don’t seem to be permanent, so perhaps they fly up from the Serpentine (following the course of the Westbourne River, maybe?)

Alright for Fighting

Yesterday evening I came to the Parish Office at a quarter to seven and was transfixed by an enormously loud row going on outside the pub opposite (The Squirrel, formerly The Skiddaw). A youngish woman was screaming abuse at the top of her voice at a woman seated at one of the tables outside the pub with a companion, who were responding. I was on my bike, so not really in a position to give my full attention to proceedings, but people waiting outside St.Peter’s for the self-help group meeting had been watching for some time and reckoned that the standing woman was drunk. Remarkably, it hadn’t progressed to actual violence, but the fury was of such a level that you feared that it could escalate at any moment. The landlord seemed to be trying to stop it, but without much success, though I presume he must have succeeded eventually. It was the volume that was so striking, together with the (presumably alcohol-fuelled) disinhibition in a public place in broad daylight. A reminder of the fragility of social stability.

Pining for the Fjords

One of my Churchwardens was called to the public lavatories in Maida Hill Market a few weeks ago, because “There’s someone dead down there.” She was understandably anxious, and so went down with caution. She ascertained that the woman in question (lying on the floor) was not in fact dead, but drunk or high, so she gave her a slap to wake her up, which was effective. Getting the woman out of the loos and set on her way home was a bit less easy, but some help turned up after a while. You’d think people would be able to distinguish between dead and dead drunk, but apparently not. Sometimes, in an environment like this where chaotic things do occur, people leap to the most melodramatic conclusions.

Franglais

I’ve noticed that the English have a tendency to pronounce any apparently foreign word as though it were French (I guess it’s because French is the default foreign language for us). For instance, my mother used to pronounce bergamot (the oil which flavours Earl Grey tea) as “bair-zha-moe” (which ironically wouldn’t even be correct in French). Another example is Farage, a name that appears French and so gets pronounced “Fur-arzh”, but why? It’s not quite the same as the genteel pronunciation of garage which seems to have won out over “garridge” (which was quite normal when I was a boy) but that’s not natural English either. Surely it’s the same syllable as at the end of manage, salvage or porage? It’s very odd; why is he not Mr “Farridge”?

The BBC gets itself into terrible confusion over some French names, with a desire to be correct, but not be too pretentious (and actually pronounce things in a French way). A recent test case was the rugby team Racing 92, who the BBC scrupulously called “Rasseeng Ninety-Two”. Could they not spot the illogicality? “Rasseeng Quatre-vingt-douze” would have been okay, but not “Rasseeng Ninety-Two”. Just saying Racing 92 in English would probably have been better. They seem to have abandoned their insistence on pronouncing the first S in Catalans Dragons which they persisted with for some time, but that one is a total mix-up, because if it’s French you wouldn’t pronounce the S, but if it’s Catalan you would, but either way “Catalans” is an adjective which ought to come after the noun it qualifies. Their website proclaims them to be Dragons Catalans, which makes sense, and surely that (pronounced in a French way) ought to be their name.