Glad to see the French are bemoaning the death of Cockney. There’s a lovely bit in George Borrow’s Romany Rye where he has moved into an inn in which
there was a barber and hair-dresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a cockney accent; the French sounding all the better, as no accent [...]

Holidays amidst grossly obese and peaceful Brits, whose beer doesn’t come with a free hangover, whose Big Macs cost less in nominal terms than those in Barcelona (£1.88 vs €2.89), and whose heavens never cease to tell the exceeding dampness of him upstairs. The firmament proclaims no love, alas, but Messrs Macaulay and Borrow are [...]

Aus, ous i caca, Birds, eggs and shit. The scooter went by too fast for me to enquire further.

Re Mark Liberman’s post, I don’t know of any prior examples–the nearest I can think of are C16th Dutch usages like Poortegaal for the smallest room (but speaking Portuguese isn’t, unfortunately, mean speaking crap) and Scythen/Schijten = Scythians/shitting–and Thomas Watson’s “A perjured person is the devil’s excrement” is attractive but too late.
Saint Augustine doesn’t [...]

Here. They visit Postman’s Park, where I used on occasion to have lunch, and which commemorates among others a DTP slave martyred for using Motter Tektura in Seattle. (Would anyone still try to save someone else from a dangerous attack of weed?) (Off topic: When will we have a monument to the unknown minister?)

Just couldn’t take the spanking.

Xavier (check his crazy blog, Le dicon) in an interesting comment has introduced me to Jean-Pierre Brisset. Brisset is interesting because he anticipates Derrida (différance) by taking a a lexical trick that works only in French and using it as the basis for universal theory, despite most of us not having been blessed with an [...]

From the mid-fifteenth century translation into Spanish of Peter Apian’s Cosmography:
The towns of the Duchy of Saxony.
- Wittemberg, Witenberga. 30.30/51.50.
- Halberstat, Halberstadium, 28.38/52.11.
- Lunenborg, Luneburgum, 27.50/54.0.
- Braunsvick, Brunsuicum, 28.0/52.34.
- Embeck, Embica, In this region they make very good beer. 27.32/52.6.
- Lebenberg, Leoburgum, 28.2/54.10.
- Hal, Hallis Saxoniae, 26.49/51.41.
- Lubeck, Lubecum, 28.20/54.48.
- Meydburg Puerto, Mesvium, 29.38/52.20.
- Hersburgum, [...]

Not as dramatic as this gentleman but probably better company, Steve Vaught (“The fat man walking”) is walking across the States to try to lose weight. Two local guys (“Dos en un burro”) are cheating and have a donkey pulling them. I hope it gets more Three men in a boat-ish, because there’s promise in [...]

I’ve been told to take myself a bit more seriously, so the Baldie FAQs have been updated.

A decent picture is still worth quite a lot, even if you write your words really big.

Mitchel McLaughlin is coming to give succour to the Catalan separatists next week. Too bad the IRA issued its recent statement in Spanish and French but not in Catalan.

There’s a not particularly curious parallelism between Spanish defence minister, José Bono, who believes it better for his soldiers to die than to kill, and who appears to enjoy thoroughly the publicity he obtains when the coffins come home, and Barcelona’s leaders, who, of course, love their police force, but decline to give it the [...]

The Telegraph has found out about Vidstones and serenity panels and stuff, but it seems to me as if the depths still remain to be plunged.

I think Stephen Moss is wrong to suggest that the British have only recently become patriotic–I think they probably always were to a much greater degree than BBC programming suggested. Some kind of shift in perceptions of Britain has, however, taken place. Whereas the Union Jack used to associated with the European far right, now [...]

Says Gabriel Laguna here. Re his essay: I wonder if the sense of godliness induced by romantic love is why an inability to accept the existence of a deity used (sorry, can’t think of a ref) to be identified with an incapacity to love truly.

I have a funny feeling that Juan isn’t going to take up the reins after the holiday.

The weird and wonderful Karim says I’m bizarre, which suggests I’ve made some kind of progress from when the woodwork teacher threatened to break my legs. If I don’t get my keys and mobile back by lunch, I will move to Tunisia and sing 80s music in beach hotels. If you see a blonde walking [...]

Demonstrative ethnic Catalans stick donkeys on their cars, their Spanish-and-proud friends have Osborne bulls, and I saw a Moroccan yesterday with a camel.

Tim’s going to need to eat out slightly more frequently if he wants to build a respectable waistline… (I’d write about my favourite mangeries, but there’s little point: since girlfriends resolutely refuse to enter any of the extraordinarily cheap and incredibly cheerful places I enjoy, classy folk like you are unlikely to be even slightly [...]

It was only after dumping her that he remembered that the tickets for Trent Bridge were on her credit card. (It’s becoming increasingly difficult to buy beer off Pakistani street vendors without getting into Flintoff vs Wasim discussions. Last night a single can cost me €1 and a 10 minute lecture on reverse swing in [...]

Here. I was actually looking for an all-in-one drink fed to the elderly in Germany, something along the lines of Astronautengetränke.

This makes me larf, arf arf arf. I think it’s serious, too.

Fred Hiers in Hernando Today (“Smelly plant continues to reek havoc”) knows what he’s up to. Crazychester (“I can hardly wait to reek havoc (or is it reak?) with my system”) probably doesn’t. Reek Havok is (or was) a sound scientist from the future.

Off to see À bout de souffle at Cines Méliès, where you get to see old rubbish for next to nothing in the company of vaguely camp Barcelona. Last night was–by mistake–Persona by Ingmar Bergman, which is basically slow and boring Lon Chaney for people who are aware they’re too smart for the real thing. [...]

Some guys have asked if I want to buy a shooting licence for a village up in the hills. No way. (Also: I’ve got a rough idea what to do with handguns, but I’d wreak havoc with the kind of weapons these folks use, particularly in a dark forest full of men full of brandy.)

Update here of Myles na Gopaleen’s book-reading and annotation service. It’s basically a premium version of what blog spammers already do.

I was going to post about the Davey Paxman engine in Monzón, but Paul Adkinson beat me to it.

When I went back to live in Ingerland a few years ago, it took a month before I felt I knew what was going on in meetings where people used new expressions like “the dog’s bollocks” and “a load of arse”. This time I’m preparing my trip and today I discovered that England spin bowler [...]

Jesus was the door, but now we all are. (Gizmodo > Tenser, said the Tensor)

Eulàlia has discovered a Gallo-Roman memorial in Lyon to a woman murdered by her husband. I like blogs with photos, but her drawings are wonderful.

Damn shame that all Tony Blair’s moderate Muslims turned out to be cartoon psychos. Here’s another burst of frivolity, available in several locations, which, like Yasser Arafat, I take to be a spoof:
Many of us celebrate what is known as April fool or, if it is translated literally, the “trick of April”. But how much [...]

Kamagurka:

An orism is an aphorism that.
Omelettes are eggs that dream they’re falling.
–How’s the digging in your garden going?
–Not bad, they’ve just hit New York. Manhattan’s already completely uncovered.
–Isn’t it a bit busy having a major city in your garden?
–It’s not that bad really. The time difference means that they’re asleep when I’m sat in it [...]

I was singing this afternoon somewhere and sang “Haikus in Beirut” instead of “Moonlight in Vermont”, completely by mistake. I was thinking about the time in the middle of the night when we drunkenly tried to hijack a plane to go and kidnap an amateur poet’s true love from her family in the Bekaa Valley [...]

José Antonio Martínez Torres, Prisionero de los infieles. Vida y rescate de los cautivos cristianos en el Mediterráneo musulmán (siglos XVI-XVII), says (PDF) that Christians captive in Oran and Algiers could go to the pub and church, as long as they paid.

“The first day of this month will be remembered throughout the centuries because of the earthquakes and fires that have destroyed a large part of this city; fortunately, the safes of the royal exchequer, as well as those of many private citizens, have been recovered from the ruins.” (Taken from an article by André Belo [...]

There’s an interesting thing here by Estibaliz Amorrortu on bilingualism up in the Basque country. I think the following situation also applies with respect to Catalan:
Full immersion Basque learners easily acquire the written, more formal registers associated with the acquisition of literacy. However, unless they are involved in Basque-speaking networks, they hardly learn any register [...]

Missed it. I was into the music before Mr Kusturica started færting around, and it looks a lot more interesting than Glastonbury. Dear Guca, will you invite our gay tea-dance orchestra to play at next year’s festival? (Thankyou, Mr Toenail.)

She’s tabby, about 9 months old and starving up near a spring on Collserola–the drought means there’s very little to eat. From the delicacy of her manners I’d say she is domestic, and my guess is that her owners dumped her when they went on holiday. I can’t take her in, so I’m going to [...]

In This Week this week. I am immensely lazy when it comes to marketing Baldie, Inc, but I’ll get my Beeb series one day.
(A while back I ran a Militant-style campaign to infiltrate and take over a sympathetic Dutch broadcasting organisation, which had a theoretically democratic structure based on ill-attended regional caucuses. It foundered because [...]