Motor Bus - a poem

Clearly written by an Oxford don, a classical scholar, but I don't know who.
If you did Latin at school, you should find this delicious. If not, you poor soul, you never knew the delights of Kennedy's Eating Primer and the mysteries of fero ferre tuli latum.

What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes that smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet wheresoe'er they ply
Terror me Motoris Bi :
Bo Motore clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo
-Dative be or Ablative
So tho only let us live:
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, Spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang ; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum .
How shall wretches live like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus ?
Domine , defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos !

Rockabye my baby with a Bootle melody

In a surge of patriotism, brought on by the blessed disappearance of the English team from the World Cup (what a bunch of primadonnas!), I want to write songs to celebrate my country. I am no Sammy Kahn, but, inspired by the hits belted out by Al Jolson, the Chocolate-colored Coon (can't say that nowadays, but wotthehell, Archie), et al, I offer a few classics to polish the jewels of our island's sceptre.

"Nothing could be finer than to be in Leighton Buzzard in the mo-o-orning...."

"Bognor Regis, here I come, right back where I started from..."

Pardon me boy, is that the Wolverhampton choochoo..."

"The stars at night, are big and bright - da da da da da - deep in the heart of Nantwich."

"Devizes, Devizes, that toddling town..."

"Is it true what they say about Cardiff? Does the sun really shine all the time?...."

To tell you the truth, my heart's not really in it. I think I'll stick to Vera Lynn singing about bluebirds over the white cliffs of Denver.

Fancy a fag?

Have a:
Passing Cloud, expensive oval cigarettes in a pink packet, suitable for lounge lizards, femmes fatales and uphill gardeners.
Three Castles, a green packet and definitely macho. Related to the pipe tobacco, described as "the tobacco with the curious cut". Curious, and reassuringly expensive.
Players, logo a bearded sailor, suitable for those of us who were about to circumnavigate the world. In two versions: Mild and Full Strength.
Capstan, blue packet; or, if you wanted "full strength", brown: larynx-destroyers.
Balkan Sobranie, posh fags in a top opening box, various colours: needing a cigarette holder to give you that Noel Coward image. And look a prat.
Senior Service, another naval theme, virgin white packet, became my preferred puff.
Craven A: that rarity, a filter tipped ciggy, suitable for women and wimps. Craven A were sometimes sold in tins (until the war effort required every scrap of metal to be collected and dropped on Adolf Hitler). A Craven A tin, with its hinged lid, was a great prize: you could keep THINGS in it!
And then there were the poor man's drags:
Woodbines, green packet with a woodbine curled round the name (you could buy them singly).
de Reske Minors, specialist taste among the discerning poor.
Player's Weights, thin, cheap and liable to fall to pieces between your lips. Also available singly.
And the new brands designed to seduce us away from our regular weed:
Dunhill, with the white dot on brown - I think they just wanted us to buy their lighters.
Strand, might have been a success till they came up with the advertising slogan "You are never alone with a Strand". Being alone and lonely was already part of our adolescent angst, we didn't need a cigarette to underline our isolation. It bombed.

Be honest, you have no idea what I am talking about. But I can assure you that when I was a beardless youth, there was a tobacco culture as elaborate as any adolescent ritual today. By their fags shall ye know them. We not only smoked them, we collected the packets, as well as matchboxes, and became phillumenists. My prize fag packet was a Turf, a dreadful weed produced, it was rumoured, from camel dung during the war and only redeemed by having "fag cards" in each packet, small pics of footballers, cricketers, birds, flowers, national flags and so on - all of which fetch serious prices at Collectors Swapmeets these days.

My life was determined by Uncle Ernie. He owned the village newsagent and tobacconist's shop. I delivered papers for him. I also worked in the shop on weekends, specially Saturday evening when the all the men of the village congregated to buy a copy of the Pink'un, giving the sporting results and confirming that this was yet another Saturday when they had won nothing on the geegees or the pools. Uncle Ernie's niece, Alicia, also worked in the shop, and it was natural that I should fall in love with her, despite the siren attractions of a plump and frustrated lady called Hilda whose delight was to rub her enormous bum against me whenever she passed me. Remember those plump bottomed fisherwomen on their bikes in Fellini's "Amarcord" that provided a week's fantasies for the boys of the town? That was my Hilda. With contact. Staying with Amarcord, the tabacchaia finally offers our adolescent hero an "Esportazione", having nearly suffocated him mammarily. On my first year in Italy, I tried and failed Esportazioni. Thankfully I found a black market source of Lucky Strike. A subsequent sojourn working in Paris and smoking Gitanes was just what I needed to give up smoking altogether, thank god.
But I still have an enormous nostalgia for the days when cigarette-smoking was innocent and an art form and the packets were works of art. Look at a Passing Cloud packet - or even a Woodbine packet - and you will see what I mean.

It's a .., no, hang on, it's a ..., er, no, I was right the first time, it's a ...

And then some obliging knowall arrives and turns your Arctic Tern (or whatever) back into a Common Tern (or whatever), which is what you were secretly afraid it was in the first place, erm, no, the second place....
My philosophy about identifying wildlife is "It's not where you start, it's where you finish that matters." The corollary of this is that you should never be afraid to CALL, even if you then have to change your mind - or in my case, have my mind changed for me.
One of the most important lessons you can learn is that different people depend on (plump for) different characteristics when trying to id or separate similar species. In the case of Arctic vs Common Tern, for instance, you might be looking for the bill colour (assuming it's an adult in the breeding season). Personally, I can't get that blood-red versus orange-red distinction, and black tips get mixed up with the floaters in my rheumy eyes. Or you might be looking at the pattern of the remiges to see if there is a translucent window (That's the one I usually try for). Or you might not be looking at plumage at all, but instead judging the bird on behaviour or movement: depth of wingbeat, how it feeds, buoyancy of flight. Or you might be one of those lucky people who can separate them on call. Or if it's resting, leg length, extension of primaries, well, you get the idea......
What you should do is this: try out all the various criteria that are available, find the one that suits you best, and use it to make your first call, then use others to confirm or contradict your first call. If there are others with you, listen to what they say, but always make up your own mind.
Put another way: you cannot claim to have seen the bird on the basis of someone else telling you that's what it is, but only after you have satisfied yourself. Put yet another way, you can identify the bird only when you are sure you could identify another of the same species at another time and in another place. I have a (mercifully short) list of birds that I am told I have seen, but which I have not really seen. An example: I went to Minsmere to join some friends who were watching a Semipalmated Sandpiper. It was on a distant mudflat with other peepy waders. After searching for a while, I asked "Which one is it?" and got the reply "It's the one that's limping." Thank you, but no thank you.
Only yesterday, my friend Peter called a Hobby. It was high and soaring. I got on to it with my current opera glasses (My god, Zeiss take a long time to repair binoculars) and simply couldn't make a Hobby of it. Peter, with his amazing Swarowskis, had seen the face pattern even at that distance. I continued to follow the bird still not able to call Hobby. It wasn't that I doubted my friend's identification, it was just that I couldn't call it a Hobby: it still wasn't MY Hobby. . Thankfully, it "jinked" suddenly and offered me a perfect Hobby profile, so Peter and I could part company still good friends.

Grandpa, I think birding is stupid.
I'm not a birder, dear, I'm a birdwatcher.
Oh? What's the difference?
About 30 years, sweetheart.
Grandpa, I think it's time for your afternoon nap.

Liffery T-V

The Petrus [pron `pi:trus
A fabled sarcophagus where they should inter Tony Robinson.

thistley green
A weak ingratiating smile adopted in order to counter a pedwardine (qv), made weaker by the fact that all explanations fall on deaf ears.

thriplow
Tiny malevolent insects that bite horses in the bum, causing them to cavort, snort, stampede and kick down barns in an amorous frenzy. A distillation of thriplows is available without prescription for those who do not qualify for Viagra.

thornage
The right, on certain feast days, to rid youself of annoying pricks providing you dispatch them without Schadenfreude.

thorney, adj
Descriptive of the gloom that descends on you when you realise that nobody really loves you. Wittgenstein famously wrote “Tonight I was the life and soul of the party. I came home and wept.” Poor thorney bastard..

thornhaugh (pron: thaw)
The disdainful reaction of posh people to those of us who call the knave the jack.

thurlow
A measure of the distance between eager anticipation and disillusioned reality, exemplified by the difference between the exotic aroma of roasting coffee and the tasteless sludge that ends up in your cup. Hence, the difference between Blair 1997 and Blair 2006.

thurning
Strictly speaking, trying more than a reasonable number of times to accomplish a failed task. Seeing
that you didn't succeed on the first three (or more) occasions, you could well be stubborn and try yet again. Hence Hitler's "Viertes Reich", Hollywood's "Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse" and, of
course, "The Magnificent Eight".

tipp's end
A paradox in Quantum Mechanics. Hans-Dieter Schroedinger-Tipp (1923-59) could not accept that once he was cremated he might still be both alive and dead, despite the lack of evidence to the contrary, as it were He was ignored by the best minds of the day.

toft adj
Intimidated by a wine waiter. "I was totally toft by the way he looked at me. I struggled to think of something to do with the cork that he had placed on the table before me. Finally I picked it up, sucked on it and pronounced it quintessentially Algerian, probably from the cork-oak woods above Annaba.." (Scott Fitzgerald)

toprow (pron. 'toprof)
A term in ballet for a dangerous manoeuvre, the double backflip arabesque and twist, named after its inventor, Anton Toprov (1840-1855).

tydd gote
An inadequate present, eg, the small box of Ferrero Rochet chocolates. You don't know it is a tydd gote till you have handed it to your loved one and seen the expression on her/his face. Shopkeepers understand this and have magnanimously taken to stocking only the large boxes of Ferrero Rochet.

upwell
An ecstatic state which you hope will go on forever. Until you think it might, at which point, you start to seriously consider an outwell (qv)

upware
An accusation of adultery in medieval times . Given the difficulty of proof, most transcripts of trials read:
"Did you?"
"No."
"Case dismissed. Don't do it again."

vipans
An embarrassing condition, known in Spanish as "meteorismo", in which the recommended 200gm stool actually emerges as a series of tiny rabbit-like pellets. The condition is said to have inspired pointillisme, but that could be a load of old cobblers.

Beam me up, Scottie!

The usual way to inspect Barn Owl nestboxes is to go up a ladder, but sometimes they are so high or inaccessible (eg across a drain) that you need to be teleported. What happens is the obliging farmer puts a sort of cage on the front of his teleporter, you climb in and he hoists you up on his hydraulic arm. I love it so much I don't really care what I find in the box: I just love the ride. Mostly my colleague Peter is the one to be teleported but I have my chances too, as, for instance, yestereve when I was hoisted to a Tawny Owl nestbox to retrieve a clutch of failed eggs (I AM licensed to do this). It is exhilarating, and I now have a special respect for all those denizens of the Starship Enterprise*** who couldn't wait to be beamed up and down, Scottie.
Better than escalators, believe me.

***I am an UrTrekkie, can't be doing with this second generation stuff, especially since Lieutenant Uhura's thighs are no longer part of the bridge.

Liffery R-S

ramsey adj
Descriptive of a frisky feeling induced by the first daffodils of Spring, the fluting notes of an early blackbird's song, or a shot of thriplow distillate (qv). Feeling ramsey is no substitute for the real thing, but for most of us, that's as good as it gets.

reach
Claimed by Sir Ernest Gower (Fowler's Modern English Usage, rev ed) to be potentially the most useful verb in the English language, if only it were given a chance.

rougham
Distressing new shoes by the addition of scuffmarks to make them look antique.

saddle bow
The nodding acknowledgement of a horserider that a passing motorist has slowed down. Hence, any ostensibly friendly gesture concealing a V sign.

saffron walden
The garish colours favoured by showbiz people. Saffron walden trousers are worn by golfers to help them remain visible in poor light.

sall (slang)
A grunt signifying “There isn’t any more”

sandy adj
Convenient, useful. Gertrude Stein's famous bon mot "Sandy and Alice, sandy and dandy" made the word popular in certain quarters, although there is still some dispute as to what she was referring to.

scarning
Scraping the excess margarine off a piece of bread in the belief that it contributes to your calorie-controlled diet.

scrane end
A cheap cut of meat that makes a tasty stew, and which is full of bits of bone that enable you to break your teeth without the aid of hammers.

seething
Trying to establish where the blood is coming from after an energetic session with an electric toothbrush.

shelfanger
A sell-by date cunningly devised to ensure that the product will be out of date before the customer gets it home.

shelford
The bitter realisation on trying to peel a hardboiled egg in one go that it is just one more thing the French do better than we do.

shepreth
An irrational but deeply satisfying urge to make fun of sheep.

shimping
Scraping the burnt bits off . King Alfred resolutely refused to shimp, realising that burnt cakes could well be his passport to immortality.

shimpling
The futile act of pulling down the hem of a very short skirt.

shingay cum wendy
Re-roofing properties to make them look like twee doll's houses. Now a popular TV series.

shippey, adj
Descriptive of the jaunty posture adopted by a foreign visitor to Cambridge the first time he or she tries to steer a punt. Often leads to a downham market, qv

shouldham, n
Any attempt to explain paranormal phenomena by discrediting those who reported them. Lately, shouldhams have been used to explain away such bizarre social aberrations as believing that the characters in a soap opera are just actors.

six-mile bottom
An homoerotic fantasy.

soham (pron 'so-um)
A version of the English language used only by toffs, characterised by the tendency to add an -m sound to the ends of words, eg, "Well, actuallym I really couldn't saym."

spalding
[1] Sinking into an inconsolable depression after failing to cope with machinery.

[2] Blind rage induced by the failure to crush an empty crisp packet.

spong drove
The immensely satisfying activity of removing dead skin and other detritus from bodily crevices.

spooner row
The controversy over whether transposing letters within a word constitutes a legitimate spoonerism. Most people just don't give a fcuk.

stansted
A rustic airport. Related closely to the word "standstill" but without the latter’s sense of urgency.

staple leys [pron steipl li:s]
A slimming diet popularised by Sir Stafford Cripps based on selective grazing. His early death as a result of eating all that cellulose triggered the search for an alternative called muesli.

stibbard (obs)
A medieval leather condom with many uses, such as the storing of grapeshot.

stiffkey
When you get the correct solution to a crossword clue but you have no idea why it is right, you have found a stiffkey.

stody, adj
Descriptive of the bold, legs-apart stance adopted by movie cowboys to suggest that even if you kicked them in the goolies they wouldn't flinch.

stow bardolph
Where butlers hide things.

stow longa
A prolonged act of lovemaking during which both participants actually fall asleep. Generally leads to a desperate farcet (qv).

stukely adj,
Unable to make a rational decision between reasonable alternatives. Often applied to Liberal Democrats.

stuntney
A phenomenon of very cold mornings.

swaffham prior
A swaffham bulbeck (qv) administered by a husband. Designed to establish territorial rights rather than to give pleasure.

swaffham bulbeck
A playful smack on the buttocks.

Swanton Novers
A writer of trashy novels who makes millions. Hence, any author who is more successful than you are.

swavesey adj
Uncertain. People get swavesey trying to decide whether to watch the news on Sky, BBC, ITV, CNN or Fox. As all the news is either bad or mere speculation, there is little point in getting swavesey about it.