Headlines can help you decide whether to read an article. In very few words, a good headline will provide the right amount of detail for the reader to decide whether to read the article it tops or links to. Done well, headlines are sublime, and we should praise their writers for the tough job they sometimes have to do. Headlines can mislead, especially in the clickbait world of revenue generation. But is that really anything new?

My favourite headlines are those which make me think, chuckle, or are just a little too good with the word play. Whilst I do not wish to belittle the current ailment that keeps Prince Philip in hospital, the headline on the BBC website from 23rd February certainly had me thinking of more humorous interpretations.

Hard to believe this ‘Clavin and Hobbes’ comic strip celebrates a 35th birthday today.

More nonsense for your L’s and R’s from Larry:

Larry the lyricist launched a liner
That sailed the seven seas for fruit.A vote on the boat by the crew caused chaosAs the day they freely chose to mutinyThe spice spies chose to board.Larry the lyricist liked subtle flavour:Ground ginger on his melon, divine.But fruit not spice Larry’s liner carriedSo a crew, spies and spice smoothie was whipped up.

When I took you for a Burton, I introduced you to some rhyming slang and provided the following example, which had caused me some angst:

I’m so boracic I can’t go to the rub-a-dub or even pay my Burton.

What do you call a linguist with a PhD in palindromes? Dr. Awkward.

If, like much of the world, you write your dates as day, month then year, then today is palindromic (assuming you add an extra zero in to the mix).

All aboard, ding, ding, we’re going on a trip today: Santa Monica to Chicago; a meander through Andalusia; Amalfi’s coastline; and Clapham High Street. Don’t say I don’t spirit you away to the world’s scenic spots. Much of today’s journey will be with the accompaniment of the passenger on the Clapham Omnibus: The Passenger.

I introduced you to The Passenger when we went for a Burton. The Passenger has been stuck on the Clapham Omnibus since Victorian times. Sure, public transport can be slow, but that really is taking the (Bourbon) biscuit. Who is The Passenger? Why are they significant? Will The Passenger ever reach their destination?

The Passenger is a reasonable person, not subject to outbursts of irrational behaviour. Educated, though not necessarily to a university level. Understanding of the ways of the world, though no expert. If asked to describe The Passenger, grey would immediately spring to mind. As do featureless, no distinguishing marks or mannerisms. Just an ordinary person, going about their ordinary business in their ordinary world. Having been stuck on this omnibus for nearly 150 years, this passenger accepts plenty without complaint, gazing across their windowed city.

Another nonsense verse tongue twister for those in need of exercising their Rs and Ls.

Larry the lyricist liked liver.
Loathe to hire a chef a recipe was purloined.Light a fire the primary instruction.“Well rake a lake,” chortled Larry.“I must walk right along the long river and load up on wood.”Would wood from the river forest light his fire?If Larry gets this wrong then the liver will be raw.

I am uncovering new snippets of knowledge whilst researching for these posts. À propos of which, Taffy is a slang word for a Welsh person. I knew that, but I always assumed that it derived from the River Taff. Apparently, as it’s proving with many of my assumptions, that’s not the case. It could have derived from the lazy English way of trying to pronounce the Welsh version of David, Daffyd. Sure, we are lazy, but if we already had David (which would be the lazy way out) why would we want to think of another word for Daffyd? The new derivation of Taffy for me was that it came from an 18th century poem helpfully entitled ‘Taffy was a Welshman’.

As with many nursery rhymes, it’s not pleasant. That’s why kids love them so much. They get to innocently sing about the plague (), executions conducted by Mary I of England (), executions conducted by Mary I of England () and sexual undertones (). Taffy was a Welshman is very direct though. If it hides a hidden meaning, then it’s well hidden.

Somewhere in the world, a TV channel is showing a re-run of Friends. Not entirely a bad thing, but being old enough to have watched it when the series first aired, I think I have seen more than my fair share of the show’s re-runs. Again, not entirely a bad thing, as with each re-run I try to listen (or watch) out for any interesting language plays. Therefore, I give you some opening dialogue for the last episode of season 3: ‘The One at the Beach’. It was first broadcast on 15th May 1997:

Phoebe: Hey, you guys! Look what I found! Look at this! (She hands Chandler a picture.) That’s my Mom’s writing! Look.: (Reading the back of the picture.) Me and Frank and Phoebe, Graduation 1965.: Y'know what that means?: That you’re actually 50?: No-no, that’s not, that’s not me Phoebe, that’s her pal Phoebe. According to her high school yearbook, they were like BFF. (Ross and Bonnie look at Phoebe quizzically.) Best Friends Forever.: Oh!: That is so cool.: I know! So this woman probably could like have all kinds of stories about my parents, and she might even know like where my Dad is. So I looked her up, and she lives out by the beach. So maybe this weekend we could go to the beach?: Yeah! Yeah, we can!

Previously (on ER) we were counting molecules of water, grains of sand and stars in the galaxy. We counted the small, medium, and large. We counted Counts just as Counts count:

Just before Christmas, we lost the writer John le Carré. Not lost in the sense of being misplaced in a sock drawer, euphemistically lost. The Brits thrive on the euphemism: we have scores of them for those words and subjects which polite company whisper. I could have written that le Carré had kicked the bucket, or had shuffled off this mortal coil, or had been called home. Enough of this brown bread, le Carré was nearly 90, so he had a good innings. For many of those years at bat, he carried with aplomb the spy novel genre. He started his innings playing after the great openers of Joseph Conrad and W. Somerset Maugham. Alongside Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and Len Deighton, he formed a formidable top order and with his passing we are now in the capable middle order hands of Mick Herron and Charles Cumming. Stumped?

Cricket is England (and Wales). Apparently, the Good Lord gave the English test match cricket so that we could experience eternity before we arrived at the Pearly Gates. Le Carré’s spy novels were likewise quintessentially British. That’s about as tenuous as I can get a link between le Carré and cricket to make the opening salvo work. I’ve read many obituaries and his memoir, and could not find out whether Mr. le Carré enjoyed the sound of leather upon willow. So upon appeal, I get to bat on. You can have plenty of fun writing with English (as I hope you have appreciated up to here with my euphemisms and cricketing idioms - count them if you like) and if you are good with your English writing, you may even slip (still there with the cricket terms) a word or two into the common vernacular. Mr. le Carré added a couple of spy terms to our already rich language:

With the passing of time and the deadlines of the film producers a long distant memory, the director gets to release the version of the film that they initially intended the audience to see. The Redux.

I too give you my redux. I failed all four published resolutions - very much a box office bomb. If I re-cut and re-edit them, the box office receipts may well be a little kinder.

- Write every day, either electronically or by hand, however few or many words that may be.

It’s that time of year again where the memory is force-fed good intentions to improve oneself both personally and towards those that are near and dear. To be honest, I’ve never really gone in for the setting (or even sticking to, if set) New Year resolutions. However, as the sands of time seem somewhat pared down in my upper bulb than my lower one, and I have plenty I still want to achieve, now seems as good a time as any to start.

A career in banking furnished me with many things. Most of it throwaway trend-of-the-moment ill conceived management clap-trap. The annual performance review undertaken in order to tick boxes in human resources and force performance to a bell-curved chart, ensuring that good managers can never have good teams as you must always have one team member under-performing. It also, allegedly, ensured fair play for bonus payment and promotions. Viva la meritocracy! I think not. A manager measured achievements during the review period against the goals set at the beginning of the period. So if any achievements that delivered success, were not part of these goals, they did not count. If any achievements delivered failure, then these were of course marked against you, even if you scored highly on every other goal. Got to keep the bell-curve floating. These goals were mostly stagnant, forgotten, and invariably aspirational, even if the human resources folk would insist that they were a moronic mnemonic acronym. Their moronic acronym of choice being SMART. After all these years, I still only remember the first one, but here they are in all their glory:

Welcome to 2021 and wishing you and yours the very best of health, happiness and good fortune throughout the year.

2021 is not a triangle number. 2016 was the last year that was, and you will have to wait until 2080 for the next one. 2021 is also not a square number. The last year that was a square number was 1936. However, you only need to wait until 2025 for the next one.

2021 is not a prime number. The last prime numbered year was 2017, and the next one will be 2027. There are only four factors of 2021 - two if you exclude 1 and 2021. Those two factors are 43 and 47, which are consecutive prime numbers. At last, something mathematically interesting about this year.

2021 will be the year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar. The Chinese New Year kicks off on Friday 12th February. You can find more . I recommend you click it and at least read the first paragraph on how the order of the Chinese zodiacs was determined.

I enjoy cryptic crosswords. They are excellent sources of brain food. As an infrequent participant in attempting to complete them, I am not that good at them though. I enjoyed sitting on the setting side of the fence devising the clues for my adult rated weighty interrogation (Xmas Quiz). Hope it nourishes as much as your celebratory dinner and does not leave any hangover effects.

The First Annual akikana Newsletter Yuletide Third Degree:

This year’s theme is ‘not pronounced as spelled’. I’ve previously written about the preponderance of English words pronounced not as spelled. It’s not that surprising when you understand how English migrated from spoken to written. Those typesetting monks tried their best to match letters to sounds. Mother Time then helped nudge it along through a natural changing of how we Brits speak: we converge to the lazy.

In 2001, Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day said ’Pants to Poverty'. It encouraged the public to ‘sport their pants with pride’, ultimately raising £55 million for worthy causes.

In Blighty, pants are undergarments. It’s not that simple though. The definition of pants in British English not only confirms my understanding of the word, but clouds the issue by also stating they are trousers. Our friends across the Pond say pants for trousers, as do certain regions of England, who then call what I know as pants, underpants. The word pants derives from pantaloons which, as far as I can tell, you wear similar to trousers. How an over-garment became an undergarment is a problem for another day.

In passing, I struggled for a while to recollect many slang words for trousers. The best I could do was strides (in a similar vein you have kicks as slang for shoes). Flicking through a Cockney’s dictionary of slang they gave me Callard and Bowsers (shortened to Callards). Richard Callard and John Bowser were two Scots who established Callard and Bowser as a confectionery business in 1779 Glasgow. Through much merger and acquisition activity beginning in the early 1980s, it now finds itself owned by Wrigley who themselves are owned by Mars. Callards most famous product is . I therefore propose that the slang for trousers is Altoids.

… gone for a Burton. Arcadia, which on 30th November 2020 announced it was to go into administration, is the owner of, amongst other UK high street shops, the gentleman's outfitter, Burton. Its sad demise allows for some ironic word fun. There is an idiom out wild in the English language which means to meet with a disaster: ‘Gone for a Burton’.