Putin on the fritz

 

The recent gabfest at Glasgow has occasioned a number of "cop"-based puns (a cornuCOPia [bou-boum-tsh-I-thangyou]), but chief among them good cop (Paris) bad cop (Copenhagen). But for some reason I haven't heard the rather world-weary "not much cop". 

There has been a welter of podcasts, that I am slowly working through, and in one of the many (I've no idea which) there was an interview with a  poacher turned ga... actually, logger turned conservationist in Brazil. As is often the case with non-English-speaking interviews, there was a split second of foreign language answer before a translation cut in.

He (the reformed logger) was talking about a reform that was going to come "really quite soon" (that's my translation). What he said was logo-logo which struck me for two reasons:

• a silly pun, based on the very approximate equivalence of logo and "logger"
• the fact that the programme's translation made do with a simple "soon"

This is reminiscent of a case I mentioned a few years ago, here, with reference to the French finalement finalement:

<quote_and_thoughts> 

"The woman being interviewed was recounting a separation caused by war, but, thanks to some agency, 'Finalement, finalement' she was reunited with her family. The translator said 'Finally, finally', which just about did the job, but it sounded a bit off – not exactly a FAUX ami, but one whom your mother wouldn't invite for tea.

'Finalement finalement' reminded me of Jaques Brel's Chanson des Vieux Amants:

Finalement, finalement
Il nous fallut bien du talent
Pour être vieux sans être adultes

And the vieux amants had been together, off-and-on, for a good few years."

So the repeating of the adverb of time adds to the emotional impact of the event it modifies. I'm not suggesting that there's some kind of linguistic universal here; I just have the feeling that these two Romance languages (French and Portuguese) behave similarly in this respect – that when you repeat an adverb of time you mean more than just (e.g.) "finally" or "soon".

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I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on Brazilian Portuguese, but I suspect that the translation of logo-logo as just "soon" leaves something to be desired.

But what's this got to do with Putin?

In 2003, commenting on Russia's refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (obliging developed and developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels), Russian President Vladimir Putin jokingly remarked that global warming is not so bad for a northern country like Russia, since “We could spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would increase,” but a year later, he signed the law on ratification of the Kyoto Protocol .
Source [That's a Russian-language site, but there's an English button.]

So he did finally sign the Kyoto Protocol, and by 2009 the writing was well and truly on the wall (though it may have been a bit hard to read, given the state of the wall):

Detail from 2009 photo, Guardian 2016

Cracking and collapsing structures are a growing problem in cities like Norilsk – a nickel-producing centre of 177,000 people located 180 miles above the Arctic Circle – as climate change thaws the perennially frozen soil and increases precipitation. Valery Tereshkov, deputy head of the emergencies ministry in the Krasnoyarsk region, wrote in an article this year that almost 60% of all buildings in Norilsk have been deformed as a result of climate change shrinking the permafrost zone. Local engineers said more than 100 residential buildings, or one-tenth of the housing fund, have been vacated here due to damage from thawing permafrost.
Source

In the run-up to COP a Moscow Times article chronicled Putin's switchback ride:

Skepticism to Acceptance: How Putin's Views on Climate Change Evolved Over the Years

During his two decades in power, Putin has gone from joking about the climate crisis to gradually accepting responsibility for responding to climate change as its effects have become more pronounced in Russia, the world’s fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter which is warming faster than the rest of the planet. 

"Accepting responsibility" to a limited extent. He sent a delegation to Glasgow, but he didn't face the music in person. Poor Vladimir. The most powerful pychopath in the world has his work cut out. As someone once said Uneasy lies the head that wears the throne (or something like that).

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Knight-Commander of the Honourable Institute for the National Good

 

In view of the recent Sunday Times report, which quoted an ex-party chairman saying

The truth is the entire political establishment knows this happens and they do nothing about it… The most telling line is, once you pay your £3m, you get your peerage."

and in the spirit of one Lord Fisher, commonly cited (wrongly  and/or trivially, I would argue)...

<prescript intro="And here's why">
...As I write I have the BBC‘s Julius Caesar in the background; and the line Who is it in the press that calls on me leapt out at me with its two anachronistic puns: press and call on. And this reminded me of a recurrent annoyance, apparently irrelevant but similarly depending on an anachronistic pun sadly repeated ever and anon (is that Shakespeare?) by people who should know better: the roots of OMG:

This one’s for all you amateur internet archaeologists out there: The first recorded use of the ubiquitous texting abbreviation OMG wasn’t uttered by a precocious tween in the 1990s, but by one Lord Fisher in a letter to none other than Winston Churchill.

          Time report

Well well; silly us! There‘s everyone thinking that abbreviation's a child of the late 20th Century. How wrong we were! Umm,  no. Lord Fisher‘s "OMG" was a joke based on the names of honours such as "OBE" and "CMG". Here's the context:

To cite it as the etymological basis of the SMS-based abbreviation "OMG" is to indulge in an anachronistic pun – the sort of textual "discovery" that is increasingly common in these days of easily accessed electronic text  databases. In the words of that prescient ophthalmologist Friar Lawrence [HD 2021: in Romeo and Juliet]

What a pair of spectacles is this?

Old post

<HD_2021_Addendum>
Lord Fisher's is not "The first recorded use of the ubiquitous texting abbreviation OMG"; it's the first recorded use of those initials in that order, with a not dissimilar approximate meaning, but in a totally different context and a totally different intention. You might just as well argue that Shakespeare was a hi-tech whizz-kid because he coined the word "unfriend".
<HD_2021_Addendum>

</prescript>

...as the "source" for the abbreviation OMG, I would like to suggest the introduction of a new honour, Knight-Commander of the Honourable Institute for the National Good,  specifically for Tory donors: that's a bit of a mouthful, so you may want to abbreviate it in some way.  KCHING, perhaps.

 

Noticed in passing 

In the first episode of the BBC TV drama Show Trial, the spoilt brat at the centre of the story wiles (sic)...

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See this (the footnote in the red note). "Whiles" isn't wrong, but my omission of the h is both deliberate (I've thought about it) and intentional (I mean it).
</and_heres_why>

... her time in custody by singing a French nursery rhyme (which is curiously appropriate in a macabre way – possibly intentionally or possibly accidentally (the actor having been told to sing something to herself, foreign if possible, to underline her insouciance and sophistication). We'll see.

What makes it macabre is that it relates the story of a little sailor-boy who on his maiden voyage (un petit navire qui n'avait ja- ja- jamais navigué) is ship-wrecked. He and his fellows take to the life-boat, and  here's where it gets really dark.  After s few weeks the victuals start to run out...

<autobiographical_note>
This line (Les vivres vin- vin- vinrent à manquer) was my first exposure to the passé historique (in a hideously irregular form  – which my teacher at the time was wise enough to gloss over); what stuck with me was the expression tirer à la courte paille (which the little sailor boy does, of course ("draws the short straw")
</autobiographical_note>

... and they decide to draw lots to see who would be the first one to be eaten.

There are four things that make this story appropriate (five, if you include the fact that it's a French nursery rhyme –  with all that that implies about the culture and education of the singer):

• Its watery background, echoing the place where (spoiler alert  –   whoops, too late) the body is found
• Its matter-of-factness, underlining the nonchalance of the suspect
• The fact that it deals with death, with a hint of greater or lesser illegality
• The fact that the death is of a young innocent

So well done, or Chapeau!, to either the writer or the actress.

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After seeing the final episode it's clear that it was intentional on the part of the writer: the song and the singing formed a crucial part of the back-story (no spoilers though :-) )
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But I must get on, preparing for my first live concert in nearly two years:

No tickets on the door, and only 160-odd to buy in advance (Covid restrictions). So get them while they're hot (I've got a spare –  first come, first served!)

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And here's a review:

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b

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Arms and the man

At the weekend I attended my daughter's post-nuptial shindig (the nuptials themselves having taken place a year ago at Reading Town Hall, with a cast of 6 including the bride and groom) at a quirkily decorated pub. May she and her Unworthy Swain (a title I originally coined for my little sister's husband, but now pass down to my son-in-law – "something borrowed",   perhaps – have a long and fruitful life together.

And now, the coincidence. First, a bit of background: early in the twentieth century (if not earlier – Wikipedia  says ...

As London developed, the area became predominantly market gardens which required a greater proportion of workers as it was more labour-intensive. In the 1850s, with improved travel (the Great Western Railway and two branches of the Grand Union Canal), villages began to grow into towns and merged into unbroken residential areas. At this time Ealing began to be called the "Queen of the Suburbs".

...) the name Queen of the Suburbs  became current,  and Nikolaus Pevsner repeated this accolade in his 1951 Middlesex volume in his  "The buildings of England" series – coinciding with the year of my birth...

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(and also, as it happens with the inauguration of my choir, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary in the current season)
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....I can't pretend that this gave me a predilection for the sobriquet, as I only noticed this coincidence today, but I have long been known to use the expression when referring to my native...

<autobiographical_note>
(not quite native; we moved there in 1953, for  reasons explained here. My little sister was a native, and it was the family home for about twenty years.)
</autobiographical_note>

...town. In fact, at a college reunion party I was once greeted as "Knowles, King of the Queen of the Suburbs".

Ealing's 1902 coat of arms

And for much of its twentieth-century life Ealing had this coat of arms:

(Stay with me; there's a point to all this, honest.)

In the mid-sixties, however, the burghers of Ealing had to get rid of the Middlesex reference (the three swords), and (no doubt at some expense, silly burghers) they changed the motto as well – getting rid of that so-last-year Latin stuff ...

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(Respice? ["Look back"] Where's that at?  Besides, doesn't it suggest "Load up again with turmeric"?)
<parenthesis>

...but kept the pro- of prospice ["Look forward"]: "Progress with Unity"; pretty inspiring, don't you think.

Home-lit (ie not lit) photo of the shield

At last, the point: 

On the wall of the main reception room there was this coat of arms (with the motto Respiciens Prospiciens – the same two verbs ("Look back" and "Look forward"), but in the present participle (or "ing- form" as I learnt to call it during my CELTA training) rather than the imperative. I wondered if there could be a link between Ealing and  the original owners of these arms, whoever they may have been

They were awarded to the poet Tennyson when he was ennobled. The Tennyson family home was Farringford House, which stayed in the family until 1945, when it was acquired by an hotel chain. They presumably kept the escutcheon as part of their hotel décor:  

Farringford is a Grade 1 Listed Building and was the main residence of the Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson from 1853 until his death in 1892. It continued in the possession of the Tennyson family until 1945, when it was sold to British Holiday Estates Ltd, who converted the house into a hotel. 

Source

Here's where The Bell (est. 2011) comes in. That Farringford House history continues:

Farringford remained a hotel until 2010, when work began to restore the building to its original condition as a historic home.

It's a fairly safe bet that  the newly-refurbishing pub took advantage of the sale (including the shield, mentioned in the 2008 ARCHITECTURAL AUDIT (INTERNAL)):

In the west wall, there is a fireplace with ornate wooden surround [80]. A wide, built-up moulded mantle-piece is supported by five main corbels containing human and lion faces in relief above a moulded leaf. ... The cast iron fireplace has two tall, thin decorated side panels, while along the top are seven quatrefoils containing a rosette motif except for the centre one, which holds a shield with Tennyson’s embossed initials, ALT. 

The photo I took wasn't well enough lit for a really  meticulous/pathological? search for these initials, though in the interests of academic rigour it seems to me that such a search is worth doing (in an arguable sense of worth).

Enough standing and staring though; there are leaves to be swept up.

b

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