Here’s a question for the oldies. What was Jagger/Richards first song to reach the U K top ten?
This week’s pub is only 7/8 minutes walk from home but I have only been in it a couple of times and that was back in the 80s. Check out it’s golfing history here.
http://www.scottishgolfhistory.org/oldest-golf-sites/1711-bruntsfield-links/x
Tonight the boss and I strolled over to check it out. It has a lot going for it. Location. Lots of wood. Comfy seating. Clientele with wide age range. Pleasant staff. Good pub menu with 3 veggie options- that is unusual. Botanist gin!
Not so great: Uninspiring draught beers selection. I had a couple of nice pints of Innis Gunn lager but at 5p short of a fiver that’s top end pricing. The pub promotes itself -as so many do now- as a Sports bar and the boss counted 5 screens. There is an absolutely ginormous one on one of the walls. For many years I made my living through sport and loved playing but I now have a more jaundiced view. I’ll come back to that topic another time as the Editor has just tapped my shoulder!
If you visit which one of the above are you!
Thought you might like to come with me as we have a wee look at how the English language has changed over the last 50 years or so. I love how words can be put together in differing ways and how they can be moulded with so much invention. Sort of like notes on a stave. Outside of my personal relationships language and music are two of the things I most like. Why might that be? The ability to inspire and uplift certainly. Both have an oral tradition but the vast majority of each is annotated in some way – not necessarily “written” – as I was at first going to put it.
Both are vocal. Yes we give even the written word a voice as we lift it off the page and say it, albeit silently, in our head. So here we have stumbled on one change already even before we get to the theme! People have little need for a pen or pencil nowadays. Having used a computer to help me run my business for many years I now find my writing is shocking! This would not have surprised my primary school teacher who on inspecting one of my efforts commented that “It looks like a hen has just run all over your page!” A friend of mine recently told me that in a few years time, children in Finland are not to be taught to write. Probably catch on big time if it hasn’t already done so.
Right, the theme. It’s Gog time!
In a nutshell. It’s the use of verbs as nouns. And vice versa and other corruptions! The first time it jarred with me was ” the commute” Not many others came along for a while ( was there a strike? Ed.) but then the floodgates lost the battle. I am getting a migraine even thinking about it so just let a couple come to me. Ok, here in Edinburgh a wall collapses in a recently built school, and we now have 17 schools built by the same contractor under PPP closed, whilst safety checks are carried out. PPPs are essentially a contract between public authorities ( who don’t have enough disposable income – you decide why ) and private finance ( who can spot a dripping roast a mile away) to provide new infrastructure. In this particular instance a fund registered in a Guernsey tax haven has a 20% stake in the schools under survey, in which ” similar issues” have been identified. Panama papers anyone!!
The main problem often seems to stem from the fact that the maintenance contracts bleed the public purse dry for 20/25 years. Now I don’t know if this is because the public authorities don’t have enough civil servants to say to the decision makers, “hey wait a minute we are being screwed if we sign off on this” or if the politicians don’t give a flying duck if they put future generations into hock.
Anyway this is happening throughout the world and it is costing Citizen Kane and Citizen Smith a fortune. There is a phrase ” a small fortune ” but the adjective is inappropriate in this instance.
We ( you and I ) really need to sort out our “spend” on this. Because we are paying through the nose for it.
On the front page of Scotland’s National Ragpaper today, 13th April ( as a follow up to the school story above) a part of the headline is ” school build projects” I just hope that once they are in fact made safe that the English lessons that are delivered there are on strong foundations.
But I know it is too big an “ask”
Ok, the Jagger Richards question. It was a song entitled “That girl belongs to yesterday ” by Gene Pitney which charted -HEH!!!!!!- at number 7 in 1964.
More trivia: Pitney never made it to number one in the US singles charts. His “Only love can break a heart” at number two was kept from the top spot by The Crystals version of “He’s a rebel” Guess who wrote that!
Join me soon at the next watering hole.
Peripatetic pub person. (A better take on PPP ?)
tam bruce 
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