Won!

And England won the Ashes!! Again! That's three times at least in my lifetime!!
I need a rest. Or tea at my Mum's.

Lapworth Stroll

Marylebone train from Snow Hill or Moor St [not all of them though]. Lapworth after Dorridge. Lovely countryside, nice pub with posh food and beer called the Boot Inn.
Stile-free walk with purple sign-arrows.
Try it!
No pics, didn't have my camera.

London or Bust?

2 great prom concerts at the Albert Hall - Labeque sisters on piano, Mozart, Saint Saens: National Youth Orchestra with Stephen Hough on piano for Tchaikovsky's first concerto for said keyboard instrument. See BBC Website. :)
British Library for the Henry VIII exhibition - see BL website. :)
Too much rush for the trains :( got it though. Virgin v. comfortable, cheap and on time! :)
Harrods isn't Fortnum & Mason though ... getting lost in London :(

Pic: Coffee by the King's Library stacks in the BL Cafe. A must!

Maddened by phone companies?

Currently maddened by a certain mobile phone/media company (run by a hairy guy from the 60s/70s, does something in trains and planes too): taking ages to get a replacement for a faulty phone.

Crazy systems. Turned out they'd given the delivery company an address I was last at in December 2005 ... but was still left on the computer...

And they still won't let me exchange at the shop: I only reported the fault more than 28 days after I bought the phone.

At one stage, phoning Customer Services, I had to find the shop details myself and give them to the hapless Virgin guy at the end of the phone, who couldn't apparently find it on his company's own website!!

Anyway, this is a much nicer scene, a wonderful apple pie baked by our kind friends Katherine and Dave. Thanks to both for a nice evening with them and Becky recently!

Burma Action Saturday

From Central Birmingham Amnesty group blog: [link at left of this blog].

"The Central Birmingham and Bournville Amnesty Groups have joined forces to hold a Burma action this coming Saturday (15th August) between 10am and 4pm.

The action will be held in Birmingham City Centre at Victoria Square, where we will be asking members of the public to have their photograph taken with a life size representation of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Please come along and say hello and show your support for the campaign."

Speak German! Jawohl!?

Octogenarian linguist Wolf Schneiders guide to the contemporary German language glutted by English loan words that aren't words or phrases but artificial constructs of the advertising industry and Deutsche Bahn, largely. Not as one-sided as I thought it'd be: and does respect many constructions adopted over the years from French and English. A kind of manifesto for thinking out natural German terms for Brainstorming, anti-ageing cream, 'Service Point' (customer service or information desk at the train station) and other such imports. Argument partly is that contemporary Germany denigrates its own linguistic culture, through a confused sense of identity and lack of pride in cultural achievements, stemming in part from obvious disasters of twentieth century history (interesting that he uses a loan word, Desaster, to describe the Nazi period).

A bit right wing (solid CDU/CSU feel to the work) for me at times - too much perhaps on Leitkultur and the dangers of multiculturalism. A treatment of bilingual Turkish Germans and their linguistic contributions would have been interesting.

On the whole, witty and some points well made and with almost English humour (sorry!:)). Ja, er hat Recht: man sollte mehr German speaken, soforth!

"Speak German - warum Deutsch manchmal besser ist" by Wolf Schneider, Rowohlt Taschenbuch.