Dawn

Dawn

Monday, April 25, 2011

To Hillsborough today with my old friend Geoff Pucci, to see Sheffield Wednesday play and beat Swindon Town. As some will recall, this ground was the scene of a terrible tragedy in 1989, when 96 people were crushed to death. I'm guessing this happened at 4.05pm, as this is the time at which the ground's large clock remains fixed.

According to Geoff, there are no sat navs in Germany which use a female voice as this is unacceptable to males there. But can this really be true?

If you've clicked on the link above, you may already have reached the conclusion that Geoff's an unusual chap. If I hadn't known this for more than forty years, I think I would have realised it the third time he told me that he'd love the job of club mascot – a challenge which demands you dress up in an owl costume and whip up the enthusiasm of the crowd. Which, incidentally, was less than half of the ground's capacity of 40,000. But, then, Wednesday don't play in the top league these days. Nor, in truth, in the second league. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Apart for the fox, the other strange sighting yesterday was of two Mormons – or perhaps they were Jehovah Witnesses – going from door to door in the next street. My immediate thought was that Easter Sunday was either the best or the worst day in the entire year to try to get people to change their religion. Or at least their Christian affiliation. I wonder which.

This video is the most viewed in history. As of earlier today, more than 300 million people had seen in. Which probably says something about humanity.

One of the shirts I bought on Saturday was an M&S offering which boasted that it was not only two inches (5cm) longer in the body but also in the sleeves. I put it on today and quickly decided it'd originally been designed for gorillas.

Finally . . . 

An extract from Bill Bryson's “Mother Tongue”

English is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. Most speakers of other languages are not aware such books exist.

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