Paven er i Edinburgh i dag. Det er ikke alle som er like fornøyde med det. Delvis fordi det er et statsbesøk (i motsetning til et religions-besøk), noe som betyr at det er britene som betaler i millionvis for at han skal kunne kjøre ned Princes' Street og opp Lothian Road i bilen sin, og delvis fordi folk ganske enkelt ikke liker paven. Dette var ikke en demonstrasjon mot kristne eller katolikker, eller den katolske kirke (selv om det sammenfaller litt med paven, siden han er dens overhode og som regel uttaler seg på vegne av den). Dette var en demonstrasjon mot Pave Benedict XVI og hans ofte merkelige (og ofte farlige) standpunkter. Men mest av alt var det en demonstrasjon mot pavens besøk i form av statsleder (ikke overhode for en religion).

Dere vil legge merke til plakaten med "I support the gay agenda". Den er nok rettet mot uttalelser som denne (som har blitt tolket dithen at Vatikanet anser homofili som skyldig i pedofili-problemet sitt), eller denne, hvor han gikk ut mot The Equality Act 2010, som forbyr diskriminasjon mot homofile (blant annet).
Blandingene av rollene som statsoverhode og religiøs leder gjør slike uttalelser spesielt problematiske. Som Stephen Fry uttaler i denne videoen,

It's hard for me to be told that I am evil, because I think of myself as someone who is filled with love, whose only purpose in life is to achieve love, and who feels love for so much of nature and the world ...

I have mentioned before how utterly delightful I find Stephen Fry. It should therefore not be a surprise that I glared at the Blackwell's people when they told me the book might have arrived but it would still be in the cellar because you see they are an academic book shop and I must understand that bringing books to undergraduates is more important than my paltry needs; and also why I bonded with the girl at Waterstones who agreed to sell me the book at half price. She almost bounced as she told me she had bought it as soon as she got to work and she couldn't wait till her shift was over so she could run home and read it. The guy next to her weighed in with the information that he would buy it at the end of the day (bravo for self restraint?).

I suppose that is an indication that Stephen Fry really is a "national treasure", as the various newspapers I read seemed to agree to tell me about a year ago. I suppose that that also means that it is just a matter of time before it becomes fashionable to set oneself apart from the crowd by sneering that ``I know everybody thinks he is great, but I never thought he was all that wonderful, myself''. If you feel the inclination, please go over to the corner there and sit down. I don't want to hear it.

Treasure or not, he ...

Stephen Fry is delightful. In part because Stephen Fry's writing is delightful. An autobiography on Stephen Fry should therefore be ... precisely. And it is. In a weird, sometimes slightly disturbing way.

This book deals with his experiences at school, his criminal tendencies, his sexual awakening and his first love. It starts on the train to boarding school and culminates in prison (which is apparently oddly like boarding school in a number of ways) and then the entrance to Cambridge.

Autobiographies have a habit of becoming either self-glorifying grand narratives inexorably driving the author towards his major achievements, or staid sequences of events of the "and then I did this", however sprinkled with juicy anecdotes and opinions about how everyone else went wrong. Stephen Fry, being delightful, manages to avoid both clichés.

He laughs at linearity and digresses to his heart's content, skipping backwards and forwards with glee. The first time he did it he did not signal it, and it left me confused for a moment; but as the confusion passed I realised how much I love this way of doing autobiography: he holds in his mind at the same time the memory of himself as a boy and the world around him as it was then, and the knowledge of how it all develops. He does not force the one to submit to the other, in a sort of bleak determinism or an equally problematic nostalgia. Instead he is constantly commenting on the construction of the image ...

I've got a deadline on Tuesday. Unlike Douglas Adams I do not love the whooshing sound they make as they fly past. My affliction, procrastination, keeps me reading exciting books on the (vaguely related) history of Spiritualism, however, well into the time when I should have had the chapter half-way (at least) written up and ready for revision.

And so I am stuck here, with about a third of it left to write out and some revision still to do on the remaining, not to mention the tying it all neatly together in the introduction, aided by nothing but strong coffee and willpower (you ask me why I have no will power in daily life? This is why. It is all spent in a couple of evenings).

Now, usually I keep track of my word count in order to prove to myself that I am making progress. It is all an illusion, of course, in that a thousand ill conceived and irrelevant words count as exactly the same amount as a thousand brilliant, witty and insightful words. But any harbour in heavy winds.

That is why it feels very frustrating when my word counts, after countless revisions and rewritings and elaborations over a long day look like this:

9364 (yesterday's final word count)
9621 (oh, yes!)
9801 (I am brilliant!)
9841 (hmm, slowing)
9889 (slowing?)
10083 (no! rocking! so much! a myriad, yeah!)
10002 (oops)
9869 (I've spent three hours! how can it be less?)
9910 (sloowly)
9988 (sloowly)
9985 (dammit.)

It started out so well.

(I needed to spread the pain a little.)

Jeg liker å kunne koder som ikke alle kan. Og det er hele poenget med cockney rhyming slang (og mye av min fascinasjon ved fenomenet oppsto ved at jeg ikke ante hva folk snakket om). Nå vil man kanskje påpeke at om jeg liker at ikke alle kan det burde jeg kanskje ikke skrive en artikkel om det. Og det er et godt poeng. Men med uselviske motiver og tanker om et utvidet dannelsesbegrep (trodde dere kanskje at det bare var realister som kunne snakke om det?) og fordi dere burde skjønne hvorfor dette er morsomt, legger jeg nå mine egne behover til side for det felles beste.

Det er ikke helt klart hvordan denne språkformen oppsto. Jeg har hørt teorier om at gateselgere brukte det for å kunne snakke seg imellom uten at kundene kunne forstå, at tyver brukte det for å ikke bli forstått av politiet, at det hele bare er en lek eller startet som en form for eufemisme (wikipedia antyder at man også kan anse det som en "linguistic accident", hva nå det innebærer). Det stammer i alle fall sånn omtrent fra midten på 1800-tallet og har dermed tatt steget over i Ærverdig Tradisjon.

Hva går det så ut på?

Som navnet antyder er det snakk om en form for slang som baserer seg på rim, men det er hakket mer komplisert (hvis man bare sa "toffee" istedet for "coffee" ville det ikke vært særlig vanskelig å forstå. Istedet baserer det seg på å substituere begynnelsen ...

Tor og jeg er omtrent like gamle og fra omtrent samme sted (vel, han kommer fra fjellet og er tre måneder eldre enn meg). Likevel snakker han av og til veldig rart (jeg vil anta at det kommer av en eller annen slags dyp språkforvirring i og med at han har foreldre fra Sunnmøre og Trøndelag).

Den siste i en lang rekke av "jaha, så det er slik du sier det ordet"-øyeblikk skilte seg imidlertid ut i det at jeg

1. aldri har hørt noen si det på den måten før

og

2. faktisk tror jeg kan forklare hvorfor forskjellen har oppstått

og

3. jeg synes det er ekstra morsomt med tonem og det kan hende vi får lurt Lena til å kommentere.

Ordet er ferist (eller fe-rist) -- en rist i veien som hindrer kyr og sauer og denslags (fe) i å komme over.

Tor sier fe-rist i tonelag 1 (som i løvet)
Jeg sier ferist i tonelag 2 (som i løve)

Sånn jeg forstår det er det vanlig at tonelag 1 brukes i ord som har én stavelse i grunnformen, mens tonelag 2 brukes i ord som i utgangspunktet er flerstavelsesord -- løv (blader fra trær) har én stavelse, løve (stor katt) har to (lingvister må gjerne rette på meg hvis jeg har misforstått).

I den sammenheng har jeg formulert en teori som går ut på at "fe" er et enstavelsesord, og Tors språk har tatt konsekvensen av det selv når det settes sammen med "rist ...

As I have suggested before Cambridge Footlights is one of those great British comedy institutions, and we owe them generous helpings of thanks for having produced such spectacular people as Douglas Adams, Alexander Armstrong, Ben Miller, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Peter Cook, Hugh Dennis, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, John Oliver and Sandi Toksvig (and lots of other people). Well, ``produced'' might be the wrong word. Fostered? Driven to excellence?

At any rate, with such a splendid history and exalted associations comes expectations of truly extraordinary proportions. This makes it easier to stand out (not to mention sell out -- the tickets, I mean) at a place like the Edinburgh Fringe, but it also means that people like me will show up expecting to see the new David Mitchell, the new Emma Thompson or (heaven forbid) the new Stephen Fry. And that is all really quite an unreasonable way of treating a bunch of (mainly) undergraduates. The finesse and perfect timing we (or I, at any rate) associate with the names listed above are probably due in large part to practice and experience and all those other dreary things that doth a professional make.

I meditated on this on my way back home after the show because, to tell the stark horrible truth, I was a little disappointed. And that isn't quite fair. I laughed quite a bit. They entertained me. They definitely felt like Footlights (and that is odd considering I have ...

Last year, as I wandered aimlessly and pennilessly around at the Fringe, there was one show in particular that I was loath to miss. This was Barry and Stuart doing something to do with magic. (If you break with tradition and follow the link and look around I am sure you will find something entertaining and weird.)

I have, at random intervals, been regretting my lack of attendance during the last year, and so one of the things I insisted we do when Tor sat there with all his money and wanted to know what we should spend it all on was that we go see these two strapping, well-dressed, friendly-looking gentlemen and their spirit-conjuring. The excuse I used was that what I am working on at the moment is vaguely related to spiritualism, and so it would almost be like studying on a night out. A blatant lie, of course; but Tor was kind enough to not point it out.

And blatant lies, of course, is the whole point of the exercise. As these two made sure to tell us. 98% séance is rather an overstatement, thankfully. I wouldn't have it any other way. Any real attempt to convince people you are talking to the spirits of the deceased is tacky at best and downright [something bad] most of the time. Being honest about the dishonesty and poking fun at spiritualism is the only way to go. And they did it masterfully. And that is really all I ...

After the roaring success of yesterday's Fringe adventure, today's was a humongous let-down. It sounded oh so promising (just look at the title) -- I had visions of snappy, light old school jazz while enjoying a light meal. Alas.

If we had read the flier's description more carefully (instead of getting carried away with mental images), we might have avoided it:

A unique show featuring the evocative, melodic live music of Ian Millar on saxophone & Dominic Spencer on piano from Scotland. With a video backdrop of beautiful, timeless, stunning Scottish scenery.

This is all down to the Fringe programme, which states that it is a

saxophone and piano duo, playing standards and melodic originals with inspiring video backdrop of Scottish scenery in an intimate jazz club setting. Good food. Good music. Good atmosphere. Have lunch or just listen!

My mind had skirted over the video backdrop (imagining a slightly ironic take with heather and cute cows -- none of which are uncombinable with good jazz) and focused on all the stuff that turned out to be lies, damned lies:

-the intimate jazz club setting was a horrible room in the Raddison hotel. It combined all the worst features of hotel lobbies with a sad attempt at historical connection. If I had not forgotten to include a memory card in my camera you could have revelled in the horror of it. As it is you will have to make due with my feeble attempts at explaining. There were hotel ...

Sommeren skal av en eller annen grunn være en dårlig periode for tv-serier. Alle de store seriene tar pause på denne tiden av året, sannsynligvis fordi det da er fint vær i London (og i Amerika, hvor de andre tv-seriene kommer fra), og man derfor antar at folk helst vil være ute.

Her i Skottland, og vel også i Norge, hvor innevær-prosenten er omtrent like stor om sommeren som om vinteren, er imidlertid denne "regelen" bare til irritasjon. Og det er da en serie som Sherlock (selv om "serie" kanskje er en vel generøs beskrivelse på tre episoder) er så velkommen. Jeg vet ikke hva som skjedde, om en eller annen tulling på BBC trodde at dette var noe dårlig som burde gjemmes bort midt på sommeren; om det er et bevisst forsøk på å endre denne idéen om sommeren som dødtid; om Stephen Moffat (som jo er skotsk) informerte London-folket at dette med sommer bare er løgn og fanteri; eller om det er fotball-VM og Tour de France og denslags som har tatt opp alle tv-timene tidligere på året, og det bare var august som sto igjen.

Uansett hvordan det henger sammen dukket altså denne tre-episoders serien opp ut av det blå (vel, ikke helt) for tre uker siden. Jeg var meget skeptisk. Meget skeptisk. Beskrivelsen,

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson's adventures in 21st Century London. A thrilling, funny, fast-paced contemporary remake of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic.

fikk meg til å ane det verste. Jeg har jo ...