An interesting discussion of recent examples of questionable linguistic practices by two of our ministers is going on here. Further comments and other contributions are more than welcome there (or, as always, here, at the foot of this post under 'comments').
Brian
Old friends are publishing impressive and addictive books at a shaming rate (I have nothing on the stocks longer than a blog post, myself). The latest is a magisterial, encyclopaedic Guide to English Language Usage by Peter Harvey, who teaches English in Barcelona to Spanish and other students whose first language is other than English, and his Guide is aimed primarily at "non-native speakers", as its cover proclaims. But there are many "native speakers", including myself, who would, or do, also find it a goldmine, packed with examples of both acceptable and questionable usage and dealing with many more basic issues than those covered in such classic volumes as Robert Burchfield's third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage : indeed, Harvey and Burchfield/Fowler complement each other perfectly.
Harvey's Guide, containing 460 articles and 187,000 words, has at least one significant advantage over Burchfield's Fowler: it exists in downloadable and searchable electronic form as a PDF file (view a sample here), although not currently available commercially as such, and also as an ordinary (or extraordinary) 442-page soft-cover book, costing less than €35 — the exact price depends on where you are buying it from and your VAT status, all explained here; anyway, a snip at the price. But it's remarkably difficult to consult it quickly and briefly: whatever you're looking up, the eye catches an adjoining entry which leads on to another, and before you know it, it's dinner time. If you're interested in buying a copy, send an e-mail to service@lavengro.eu. (No, I don't get a cut: my recommendation is entirely disinterested, qv [under interest].)
I have already spotted one entry in Harvey's Guide which raised my eyebrows, although when taxed with my doubts, Peter resolutely stuck to his ruling. It relates to the negative of the term "used to" in the sense of "was at one time in the habit of". There's no problem with the positive form: "I used to dip my madeleine in my tea"; but which of these negative formulations would you favour, orally or in writing: (a) "I didn't use to dip my madeleine in my tea", or (b) "I used not to dip my madeleine in my tea"? (I trust we can all agree to reject (c) "I didn't used to dip my madeleine in my tea".) Cast your vote, for either (a) or (b), in Comments, below, and may the better formulation win.
Another newly published but otherwise very different book by an old friend is appetisingly entitled Diplomacy with a Difference: the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, a study of the little known title, history and role of the high commissioner in diplomacy, amounting in effect to a history and analysis of Commonwealth diplomacy. It's by a good friend, Lorna Lloyd, who teaches international relations at Keele. The topic will I think appeal especially, or should, to current and (especially) retired practitioners of my former dubious trade, and to others with an interest in international affairs, not only for its intrinsic interest but also because the book is liberally spiced — or should we say nowadays 'sexed up'? — with wonderful (and sometimes wonderfully indiscreet) quotations from the many ex-diplomats and others whom Lorna has interviewed for the book, from several diplomatic oral history interviews with retired diplomats (now increasingly being made available online by Churchill College), from various diplomatic memoirs, and from a mass of official records in several countries which have yielded some titillating insights. If you can't afford the €129 cover price (not excessive for an academic work of this kind), press your local librarian to get it for you (and others). Available, naturally, from Amazon UK.
Yet another recent publication by an old friend, Frank (Sir Francis) Kennedy, is Dust Suspended, his memoir of a scintillating career in the Colonial Service in Nigeria, and subsequently in the Diplomatic Service in a variety of posts: full of vivid and enlightening anecdotes and stirring incidents, a must-read for current and former practitioners of these two arcane trades. 264pp, The Memoir Club, 2006, ISBN 1841041092, hardback, £19.50 from the Africa Book Centre or from the Memoir Club, or from Amazon.
Tailpiece: I ought to be, but am not, embarrassed by one thing which all three of these splendid books have in common, indeed all four of them if you include the most distinguished of them all, Burchfield's third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage: I am among the many humble supporters mentioned in the acknowledgements of all four books, in each case in undeservedly generous terms. (An earlier work of research by my wife also gets an honourable mention in Lorna Lloyd's book.) Of course none of the four authors needed my encouragement or suggestions for the success of their end products, but I was happy, anyway, to provide them, and I salute the enormously readable results.
Brian
Alert readers of this blog will have seen from a recent post about my rather positive experience earlier this
month of an NHS hospital that I have had a problem with a badly infected leg. According to the book, it should have responded by now to the Shock and Awe of an intensive antibiotic assault, first intravenously and lately by tablets, but unfortunately it hasn't. So I'm back on the foul-smelling pills, with leg elevated ceiling-wards, and unless the infection surrenders unconditionally within 48 hours, I shall probably be back shortly on the dreaded IV (intravenous, not Roman four) in a hospital unlikely to be of my choice, and — worst penalty of all — without internet access.
Meanwhile anyone desperate to know my views on Gordon's beginnings, Alastair's scribblings, Boy David's punishment of the Russians for refusing to breach their own constitution, further imminent blunders in deciding the future of Kosovo, and whether the future of the Special Relationship with George W. Bush is being decided by Lord Malloch Brown or by plain Mister Brown (the one in No. 10) — or even by that nice young Mr Douglas Alexander? — will just have to wait with such patience as he or she can muster. Back soon, I hope. No flowers, by request. (Yet.)
Update (18 July): I have a reprieve, graciously granted by my beautiful GP, who judges that I may continue to manage the leg at home with oral antibiotics, subject to continued progress and good behaviour — more of the latter than hitherto. My release on licence is to be reviewed on Monday (23rd) so I'm superstitiously keeping my incarceration bag packed for the time being. Meanwhile I'm to keep the leg elevated, calf higher than heart (surprisingly difficult posture to maintain while simultaneously using a laptop — try it!), minimum walking about or sitting, climbing stairs, etc. But any price for staying out of reach of the dreaded cannula and hypodermics is worth paying. So it remains much appreciated if friends will continue to keep e-mails to me to the minimum and please always copy them to my assiduous and long-suffering spouse. Watch this space for any further late, late news.
Brian
At least six cheers for the National Health Service! That's my rather unexpected verdict on a week as the guest of Mr Alan Johnson (Secretary of State for Health) and his predecessors, even including Ms Hewitt; a consultant endocrinologist and his sizeable medical team; countless nurses and health assistants and cleaners, and not least a personage called the Ward Hostess who delivers meals at bizarre times – some hospital traditions die hard – and offers tea and coffee throughout the day with unfailing cheerfulness. She was in no way to blame for the lamentable quality of most of the food, another old hospital tradition that refuses to die. My treatment, for a very severe leg infection, was impeccable from admission to discharge, with intravenous antibiotics in elephantine doses pumped into fugitive veins every couple of hours and exhaustive monitoring of every bodily function capable of being measured. With very rare exceptions, the nursing staff were splendid: friendly, efficient, sympathetic, often funny. Along with many of the younger doctors and technicians, they were a collective United Nations, from just about every continent and racial group. Now that a few NHS doctors and other NHS medics from foreign parts have taken up murderous terrorism as a hobby for their spare time, any attempt to cut back on non-indigenous NHS staff would effectively mean closing down the NHS.
* * * * *
One old hospital tradition that does seem to have died is the restriction of visiting hours to a couple of hours a day, generally when most ordinary people are at work. Nowadays there's effectively unrestricted visiting, despite menacing signs in the corridors forbidding visiting at particular times (I suppose these signs are displayed to remind everyone of the bad old days). As a result many patients' morale is boosted by frequent visits of relatives, often seemingly of entire extended families, creating something like a party atmosphere in the ward. The downside to this new-found freedom is that the unrestricted flow of visitors must sharply increase the risk of introducing infections by one or other of the potentially lethal superbugs, such as MRSA and C Difficile, which plague almost every NHS hospital and often convert even the most trivial medical conditions into life-threatening (and too often life-destroying) crises.
* * * * *
Happily, it's been a good many years (until last week) since either my spouse or I have been an NHS in-patient, but a comparison between J's experience eight or nine years ago and mine last week in the same hospital is instructive and extremely positive. She was condemned to days and nights of filthy sheets, no available pillows, impossibility of attracting the attention of a nurse even in moments of crisis (most of the nurses then were indifferent agency staff with no commitment to a particular hospital or ward), often missing meals because the food and tea trolley had run out before it reached her, indescribably dirty wards and unspeakable loos, nurses refusing to undertake any cleaning task on the grounds that it was for the cleaners (mostly off duty) and not for them, and virtual inability to communicate with the outside world because of the ban on using a mobile telephone (ban justified by the mendacious assertion that mobiles interfered with electronic medical machinery). Now, if my experience last week is anything to go by, every one of those gruesome manifestations has been removed and reversed, with huge gains for patient morale and indeed patient health. Those who grumble that the tripling of expenditure on the NHS has produced no proportionate benefits for patients, only for consultants, must be very healthy people indeed, with no recent first-hand experience of treatment in an NHS hospital.
* * * * *
One tiresome long-standing feature of hospital life is the impossibility of watching television (or of maintaining telephone contact with family and friends if the patient has no mobile telephone of his own) without paying the exorbitant charges imposed by the ubiquitous and iniquitous 'Patientline' system. The advertisements for this plastered all over the wards proclaim that the fee for use of the television set comes with "free" radio, telephone and internet facilities, although the small print reveals that the cost of making or even receiving a telephone call on this system is horrendous, and getting a refund of unused credit makes rocket science seem like a game of tiddlywinks. Fortunately the lifting of the ban on mobile telephones, and the ready availability of small pocket radios with a headset or ear-pieces, enables all but the most seriously addicted television-watcher to raise two fingers to Patientline. One tip, though, to anyone planning a spell as guest of an NHS hospital: take in a good quality pair of headphones for the pocket radio (Sennheiser recommended, although not cheap). It's possible to use the earphones provided by Patientline without having to subscribe to that system, but the Patientline earphones are almost completely useless – even worse than the ones you get on aeroplanes. My iPod, too, hitherto used mainly during gym workouts to relieve the tedium of the treadmill and the exercise bike with Brahms, Shostakovich, Miles Davis, Mahler and Billie Holiday, really came into its own (but don't forget to take in the charger).
* * * * *
It's a truism that a patient typically gets admitted to hospital suffering from one disagreeable medical condition and later comes out with three. In my case the two new conditions were not infections caught from other patients or their visitors, but new problems revealed by various routine tests automatically undergone by in-patients. Both concerned organs far removed from the infected leg and probably unrelated to it, although further tests were naturally required to eliminate that possible connection. Those done, yet more tests were ordered to establish the exact nature and causes of the two new problems. So the monotony of lying on the bed in the ward, waiting for the next pump-in of concentrated antibiotics through the needle permanently lodged in a vein in the back of my hand, was mercifully relieved by batteries of X-rays, ultrasound and other scans, and echocardiographs, all involving hair-raising expeditions in the wheel-chair up and down in the enormous lifts and hurtling along miles of crowded corridors, with metaphorical sirens blasting a way through. Modern technology has developed a raft of machinery capable of penetrating the darkest recesses of the human body and its organs, immortalising the resultant Technicolor videos and statistics as data in the hospital servers; and since it's possible to use it, there's obviously no reason not to. As a result the hospital computers now know more about me than I either know or want to know about myself, and the coming months will be fully occupied by appointments at clinics to assess the many test results and to debate the pros and cons of available treatments. None of the new problems seems to be life-threatening or even particularly exciting, but following them up will help to pass the time freed by retirement, and at least it gets me away from the computer.
Brian
