Colin Jackson’s Jacket
Jonathan Edwards had to present the Gold Medal to Phillips Idowu today. He didn’t have a jacket, so he had to borrow one from Colin Jackson.
Even the most professional make mistakes!
Steaming Ahead
It was fascinating to hear that the land speed record for steam powered-cars was set in 1906 at 127 miles an hour. Incidentally, this is just a mile an hour faster than that of the Gresley A4 Pacific, Mallard set in 1936. And Mallard was built for daily service!
They’re having a go at the record soon.
The car was developed by Donald Campbell‘s nephew.
Peterborough Cathedral
On Monday I had to visit Peterborough and went over the cathedral.
Peterborough Cathedral
Peterborough has this reputation as a rather grim overspill town, but it has a beautiful cathedral, which like several in the UK are old Abbey churches. In fact when Henry the VIII dissolved the monasteries it was the sixth richest in England. The cathedral has one of the largest mediaeval painted ceilings in Europe.
But Peterborough is also the birthplace of my paternal grandmother. She was a Spencer and her father was a builder, who according to legend build some of the city. I’ve recently met a distant Spencer cousin, whose ancestor was also a builder, who built part of Armley in Leeds.
The strange thing about Monday’s visit was that I’ve just looked up Whitsed Street, where she was born on Google and I parked the car in the next street.
Missing Apostrophes
There has been a lot of talk lately about missing apostrophes. One guy in Royal Tunbridge Wells has gone as far as painting them in where he lives. It provokes this piece in the Telegraph, from the wonderfully named Harry de Quetteville.
But leaving punctuation out of road signs is not new. Look at this one from Ipswich, which has been there for some years.
St. George’s Street, Ipswich
This sign is actually a lot newer than the one at the other end of the road, which was one of the old-fashioned cast ones.
My father was always hot on punctuation. But then he was a printer and was always having arguments with customers about it. Although not specifically punctuation, the thing that really got his goat was when to use the plural form of verbs.
So which is correct.
The Chairman and the Board of Directors request your pleasure at the opening of their new factory.
Or.
The Chairman and the Board of Directors requests your pleasure at the opening of their new factory.
You can argue that in the first, there are more than one of them, so it’s request, but in the second they are a single entity, so it’s request.
Do we have a pedant out there, who can tell me what is correct?
In addition I am a stickler for layout. Nothing annoys me more than when I get a document or read a web page, which is poorly laid out. My father was the same.
There is no excuse for bad design.
Ipswich 1 – Crystal Palace 3
Not a lot to say about this, but they really are in a pickle this year.
It seems to have got worse since David Norris was injured at Coventry.
The Anonymous Widower 