Looking over at his fellow Q&A participants — the Dominican/ Puerto Rican Saldana and Western Australian Worthington — the Canadian-born Cameron said that the Na’vis’ blue skin also allowed him to comment on race. “[I was thinking], ‘What are the differences that we can deal with, without it becoming a barrier?’ Skin color is great, and it’s also great thematically, because skin color is obviously such a big issue on our planet,” he explained with a grin, looking at his actors and teasing Worthington. “All the warm tones — from pallid Canadian pink, to beautiful warm browns and, well, pallid Australian pink — were all taken.

“So, we were down to blue and green basically — and green had been taken by all those Martian movies with the little green men,” he remembered of his reasoning. “So, we have big blue women, not little green men.”

(From the MTV website)

Anonymous singing teacher, on the cadences of a Bach fugue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urqK5X6RatQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mFDXNODNyc

Then again, there’s

always Chopin..

Scherzo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9MvizSf78&NR=1

..and with geometry

Nocturne, Opus 27, No.2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1QM6YZC45g&annotation_id=annotation_587547&feature=iv

Shocked

News of last night’s Iberian earthquake took Purple back a couple of years to a tremor in England. In a dramatic BBC report, a journalist interviewed a witness and her pet:

Witness: I felt the earthquake. My parakeet was shocked.

Fearful

Journalist: How shocked was your parakeet?

Witness: Quite shocked.

… thinks libraries are still for reading books in.

An alien from the planet OFLA (Over Fifty, Living Abroad) landed in Essex recently to study the natives. His mission: to pose as a normal human being and to report back to his planet on current Essex behaviour, including use of public facilities, modes of transport, apostrophes, etc.

When I came out of my music lesson it was only three o’clock, and I was going to go to a Buddhist meeting at seven.  There was no point in going home, so I decided to go to the local library and study.

Shenfield library is a dozy middle-class place, as you’d expect of a small Essex country town where Trevor Brooking (the comfortable, pullover-wearing TV pundit and ex-West Ham and England footballer) lives (“That was a bit ‘ard. That’s right ref, it’s aht with the yeller card.”)

I booked (by computer!) a computer, with some help from a friendly lady librarian, and took my seat in the annexe, shared just then by about a dozen surfing citizens. My plan was to gather some material for my Law and Society lesson at the local university the following week.

After a few minutes a girl of about nineteen came in and sat down at the next machine.  As she was logging in, her mobile phone beeped, the volume crescendo-ing like an importunate canary as she took it from her bag.

“Oooh ‘allo.  Aw right?”  pause.  “I’M IN THE LIBRARY.”

Now, I told myself, it’s OK.  She won’t be long, and there’s no point in getting into a spat.  Along with everyone else, I continued to quietly surf.

The conversation went on though. There was stuff about somewhere they were yesterday, somewhere she’d be tomorrow, and about something she was buying that day. She’d give the caller her bank details.

When this had been going on for about ten minutes and I’d done no work at all, I decided to talk to the librarian. “Are mobile phones allowed here,” I asked, redundantly I thought. The answer surprised me.

“Yes,” she said.

“So there’s no limit on noise.”

“Well, not as long as it’s reasonable.”

Reasonable. A term much used in law.

I returned to my computer. The conversation had moved onto something that was “a laugh”. Then another five minutes chit chat and then, yes, she would give him/her those bank details.

“Aw right?  Gotta pen?”

I could stand it no more. “Yes, I said, fire away. I’m sure everyone else here would like to know them too.”

“Yaaah, there’s nuffink in the account anyway,” she said, and then into the phone “Iss alright, there’s some bloke ‘ere ‘aving an art attack.”

My ire was now in full flow.  “I don’t know why you bother to book a computer,” I said, “if you’re not going to use it.”

She was conversing again. “What?… yeah, just a sec.”  She stood up, phone in one hand, bag in the other.  Mimicking a cut glass accent (surely not mine – this alien is posing as having been raised in Romford, so his accent is half way to Trevor Brooking’s)* she said “I’m terribly sorry for disturbing you.”

“No you’re not,” I said, “you’re not sorry at all.”

She went to the door, from where, as the automatic doors slid open, she delivered a parting shot.

“Wankah!”

I looked around the room for any sign of reaction from the assembled multitude. No one looked up from their screen.

I went back to the librarian for clarification. What was the rationale of the new rule? “It’s to make the library more accessible for people who aren’t keen on silence. More people-friendly,”  offered the nice lady.

“Friendly to which people?” “Well, there’s a need to get more of the sort of people in who normally feel intimidated by libraries.”

“But surely as you attract people who wouldn’t normally come in, you lose people who used to come in… like me for example.”

“Yes I suppose so. But that’s what we’re told by the higher-ups.  They think they know what they’re doing.”

(It was clear what the nice librarian lady thought. She’d have made a good diplomat; personally, I think women should run everything.)

“By the way,” I said.  If there’s no quiet, how can people read books?”

“Well, we’re moving away from books. Nowadays a lot of people just come in for the computers.”

“So in the end, if I want to read or study, I’ll have to do it at home?”

“Well, yes. Of course, this is a small library. Larger ones may have study rooms.”

Where do you go if you want a bit of peace and quiet? You used to be able to go to a church, but now they’re all locked. Libraries are now internet cafes without the coffee (though it must be coming soon, along with a small McDonald’s franchise where Modern Fiction used to be.

"..a library, Captain, but not as we know it"

I went to catch the train.  A man in his sixties was walking in front of me, a mobile phone clamped to one ear.  He suddenly turned round and walked straight into me, bouncing off me without stopping the conversation he was having.  “Yes, I’m just going to catch the train…”  He didn’t apologise, and I don’t believe he was even aware of my presence.

On the train I sat across the aisle from a well-dressed girl who had both Nike shod feet on the seat opposite her.  Her face was half hidden by a floppy hat from which ran a walkman lead.  Beyond her sat another young woman with a baby on her lap.  The baby was round-faced and blond and looking at me.  I smiled and the baby immediately smiled back.  The mother picked up the baby and turned her towards her.  Whether she’d seem me smile I don’t know, though one is always mindful of the suspicion of paedophilia now when smiling at or talking to children in the UK.  I got a book out.

After a while the baby started crying. I looked up. The mother picked her up and turned her to the side. When the crying started up again, she turned her to the other side. All this in silence.

I went back to my book. After a while the crying started again. The mother put her in the expensive coracle-shaped baby carrier.  Another moan. She started to rock it.

It was my station. As I waited for the door I could contain myself no longer. I leant over and said “Excuse me. Please don’t be offended, but she wants you to talk to her”. The mother’s lip curled into a sneer.  “Thank you,” she said with more than mild irritation, and then stared hard out of the opposite window.

The door closed behind me as the baby whimpered again. I headed for Pratford.

On coming out of the station I turned to a young black woman with whom I was momentarily in step. “Do you live here?” I asked her.  Is there somewhere nice to eat nearby?”

She had a think. “There’s not much at this time,” she said, “but if you go through the shopping centre and round the corner there’s a place.  Kentucky Fried.”

“Oh no, I was looking for something healthy.” (And ethnic – that’s why I’d asked her.)

“Oh, right.” She directed me to a West Indian place a bit further away. I quickly found it. It was a tiny place called, oddly, Murphy’s, with a sort of shelf by the window for eating at. There were two women behind the counter, a large Jamaican lady in an apron and Rasta pompom hat and a petite coffee-coloured girl in a white trouser suit. I took the first lady to be the owner and asked her to recommend me something. “I mean, what do you like?” I wanted to know.

“Well, I don’t like food…”

This took me aback for a moment (something flashing into my mind about not buying hair restorer from a bald man) but she continued “…I like sweet things”.  Oh, so food was savoury things.  Usage.

I tried the girl in the trouser suit.  “What do you recommend?” I enquired.

“Well, you could try pork jerk.”

I’d wondered what jerk was before.

“It’s peppery.”

“You mean kind of hot, but not in a curried sort of way?”

“Yeah.”

I settled on chicken curry, which was cheap but turned out to be some very hot rice full in chilli peppers with a single barbecued chicken drumstick sitting on top.

*

Still hungry, I thought I’d pop into a shop and get a Mars bar and a lottery ticket. As I stood waiting in the queue my eye fell upon a large packet of crisps grandly marked “Crisp’s – £1″.  Since I’ve been in Essex I’ve seen Christmas tree’s, bought sprout’s and onion’s, and even enjoyed a Blue’s Night. My personal favourite among examples of apostrophe abuse is a large sign near my road announcing “Tim’s Tyres – Wer’e the tops” (I didn’t make this up – and after getting “Tim’s” right as well).

It took the two lads behind the counter a long time to serve the lady in front of me and by the time my turn came I had to comment. “A lucky dip for tonight,” I said to the nearest lad, and while he turned to the lottery machine I asked the other “Crisp’s what?”

“Pardon?” he said.

“Crisp’s what?  Crisp’s tastiness?  Crisp’s crinkliness?[1]“  The lad gazed at the packet.

The manager, who was nearby stacking boxes, came over and joined in examining the miscreant nibbles.  “You what?” he enquired.

“The crisps.  Why the apostrophe?  Now the man was gazing perplexedly at me.  “Why? he said.  Why is the sky blue?”

Actually I knew that because I’d read it in a children’s science book called, I think, Ask Albert, just the day before; but I didn’t want to show off.[2]

The three of them, plus the lady who’d just been served, looked at me.  Who was this man from Mars, they seemed to be asking; this idiot savant, this poser of questions.  We all shared a zen moment.  In the mind’s ear one heard the sound of one hand clapping.

“Why indeed?” was all I could reply. And there I left them, standing uncomprehendingly contemplating that errant apostrophe.

[1] “ Crisp’s ” here should read “ crisps’ ”, but let’s not be too pedantic

[2] Of course the sky isn’t blue, it’s an illusion; but that’s another subject…

Cartoon courtesy of Private Eye Magazine

I want to stay in the eighteenth century. The nineteenth is a time of artificial freedom and that doesn’t interest me.

Reinhard Goebbel on not wanting to conduct Beethoven

After an unhurried lunch at the breezy Hare Krishna restaurant off Oxford Street (it was pleasant to change my religious surroundings), where I was served my lentil soup and poppadoms by a lady all dressed in blue who had the most delightful smile, it was time to go to my English lesson out in the wilds of wildest Essex. So I took the tube to Tower Hill and walked to the C2C. This is a train I’d recently discovered, which can whisk you from the Metropolis to the steamy vistas of Rainham marshes in the time it takes to swallow a super-Americana coffee from Starbucks.

The train was comfortable and quiet, though completely full, it being already the rush hour. Across the aisle from me, at the opposite window, sat a very pretty blonde girl of about twenty, with long slim legs. In her lap was an expensive looking bag, from which she produced a small silver mobile phone which emitted spacy purple gleams. ” ‘Allo?” An Essex girl.

“Sonia? Hi. It’s Leah. Awright?” Sonia seemed to be all right. “Look, it’s abaht Joanne. I’ve thought abaht it, and really… I don’t think she’s interested enough. What? Yeah. You girls, listen, you girls are GREAT.  What you’re doing is GOOD, I think we can really go somewhere with this. Eh? Yeah, you’ve got the right looks, you’ve got good voices – Ron’s sure he can make you sound great, ‘e agrees with me. You’ve GOT IT. But… Joanne. Honestly Sonia, you know what I think? I think she’s too young. She’s got her parents, she wants to do a course… What? Economics, I think… she wants to ‘ave something behind her and that’s right… yeah… of course it’s sensible. But look, she’s got all that, and she’s got ‘er boyfriend, that seems quite serious… What? Yeah, ‘e seems all right. But it’s no good, is it?  I mean, you ‘ave to make up your mind what you want out of life. I mean, I don’t mind supporting you, I’m willing to put in time to make this band happen, but , I mean, I was up at five this morning, and last night, blimey! The thing is, I’ve got a lot on too…”

I couldn’t agree with this. She really didn’t have that much on. A rather stylish pale yellow low cut top and…

“…and I’m not prepared to make the sacrifice unless everybody is TOTALLY UP FOR IT. There’s no point. What? That’s right, the modelling. Look, I’m not criticising. She’s a lovely girl. No, really, she’s very pretty… the modelling… she’s done a bit and she wants to do some more… That’s what I mean, she’s just got too much going on…

“Well, I think she’s right. She ought to just get down to this course she wants to do. The music business is just too demanding, it takes everything you’ve got. What? Yeah, that’s what I told Andy. This new girl? Well, I think she can replace Joanne. What’s she like? She’s like… she’s really beautiful, she’s like coffee-coloured – ‘er dad’s Jamaican – but with blue eyes.”

Careful, I thought, they could be contact lenses. Like that girl I was in love with, Claudia.…

“I think she’d fit in great. No I haven’t ‘eard ‘er sing yet, but she’s with a band… so there you are. You do see what I mean, don’t you?  There’s just no point in me shagging myself out if Joanne isn’t totally committed. I’m totally f****d after all these late nights, if you’ll excuse the Greek. Good, that’s sorted then. You talk to ‘er, and I’ll talk to this girl. ‘Er name? Claudine. Yeah, nice name.”

That was a near miss. Lawd lawd lawdie Miss Claudine.

The doors hissed. I looked up. A sign said Rainham. I made for the door. There wasn’t time to pause. In my mind’s eye, though, I lean over on the way out and tell her, “You’re absolutely right about Joanne.  She needs to get her life sorted first.”  And in my mind’s ear I hear her say: “Piss off”.

Dave Allen on being raised a Catholic

First day at convent school. A lesson on God:

Sister Breda: He’s your father.

Child: (Looks around, puzzled)

Sister: He’s invisible.

Child: Oh?!

Sister: He loves you. He wants you to love him. If you don’t love him he’s going to be very very angry and punish you eternally. Do you love him?

Child:  Er..Yeah!!!!!!!!! You bet, He’s great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxo81Ok9Urk

Which of the following dialogues really took place?

A  Teacher (writing the word on the board): Now, what is an“heir”?

Essex pupil:   A large rabbit, Sir.

This dialogue was really heard in an Essex school.

B  Medic (to injured Essex woman following an accident):

Where are you bleeding from?

Woman: I’m from Romford

This is a joke about people from Romford who allegedly speak very badly. The only joke about the suburban town where Purple grew up; well, the only one known by Purple. If Purplebloggers know any more jokes about Romford, please report them.

C Essex blonde: Some fish and chips, please!

Librarian: But madam, this is a library.

Essex blonde: Oh, I’m sorry. (Whispers) Some fish and chips please.

A blonde joke, completely socially unacceptable now, shamelessly converted into an Essex joke.

Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon

www.salon.com/bc/1998/11/cov_10bc.html

Ronettes – Baby I love you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbbRkHazUIg