Most of April's scribble has been spent preparing Journey to the Start Line - How I got to run my first Half Marathon at 69. But there a few items below.
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So it is fine to periodically start a sentence with 'so'. But if an interviewee starts every response with 'so', then that can be, well.............so annoying.
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OMG - the split infinitive above. It used to be a grammatical no no. No longer. Usage changes, and (I have tested this) rarely does anyone under the age of 40 register 'To boldly go where no man has gone before'. In any event, you can't replay that phrase today without emphasising the gender datedness. Perhaps one day it will be stylistically inappropriate to start any interview question response with something other than 'So".
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The Chancellor of The Exchequer's wife will now pay UK tax on world-wide income. She has 'now realised' that it is incompatible with her husband's position for her to do otherwise.
Is that a late-learned sense of integrity? The latter has been defined in home-spun way as doing the right thing even when no one else is looking. On that test she has not passed, and what she has done can be argued as performative (a term that appears to have been stretched in meaning to determining your actions by reference to how they will look to others). To go further could take me into party politics, which I have vowed not to do on this revival of 'Late Life Crisis'.
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Looking forward to seeing the Louise Borgeois exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, but distressed by a photo in which she strongly resembles Spike Milligan.
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Where do TV and radio journalists go to when they feel that they are not being valued enough (aka not paid enough)? Answer: to new outlets such as Times Radio or GB News, where they can 'be themselves'. The latest: 'Piers is back', on Talk TV. 'Straight Talking Starts Here', the advert originally bellows. So original.
Luckily I have no idea where to find these outlets. And the benefit for bodies such as the BBC is that you get fresh voices. I was taught a long time ago that a certain degree of turnover for an organisation is healthy.
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I am occasionally cruel about football supporters. But you must credit the tasteless wit of the West Ham cadre. By all accounts the Club's Ukrainian forward Andriy Yarmulenko had had an indifferent season until Ukraine was attacked by Russia, but on this event happening he upped his game and started scoring goals. The word from the terraces was that if Russia had invaded earlier in the season, West Ham would now be top of the Premiership.
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My word of the month: catastrophise. A simple definition is to 'present a situation as considerably worse than it is', but I like the continuation of this into a death spiral where the negative thinking does not end until the worst possible ultimate consequences have been imagined. I find myself guilty at times of catastrophising
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Emma Raducanu in a radio interview said 'atmos'.The 'phere' has gone. We could all learn from what she and other young people are doing. Embrace text speak; shorten words when talking; reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. Ooh - that power of three that was so messaging right during the pandemic.
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The journalist Mary Wakefield has written of a friend who explained to his seven-year old not only that Vladimir Putin is a bad man but also of how much of London would be destroyed in a nuclear war. Maybe that is somewhere towards catastrophising.
I am no paragon of virtue on this but I recall the day of 9/11. Sitting at home with the children late afternoon (I was WFH), one of them asked me whether we would be safe. I looked nervously out of the window and replied 'yes'. They were happy with my response. I had no idea.
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At Easter time Justin Welby (sorry, The Most Revd. Justin Welby) gets plenty air time. In an Easter message I read, he picked out the question of why, if God exists, he doesn't 'do something' about suffering. I read on excitedly for his answer. Here it is:
'He fulfils the final paradox: in service to God, giving away our lives for the lives of others, is ultimately how we can live life in all its fullness'.
A Delphic paradox, that one. It needed a firm interviewer response: 'Thank you Archbishop, but please can you answer the question'. Or perhaps Shakespeare put it better: 'Words, words, words'. (Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2), and for homework: 'Justin Welby's character can be likened to that of Polonius. Discuss.'
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In advance of the planned Caribbean visit by the Duke and Duchess of Wessex, the Chairman of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Support Commission dismissed Royal Family laments the 'appalling atrocity' of slavery as 'phoney sanctimony'. That must have made uncomfortable breakfast reading over the devilled kidneys.
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In the light of events towards the end of the month, I was worried to see TV listings showing that we were going to encounter "David Attenborough's Big Birds'. Luckily a World Championship Snooker Semi-Final overran and we were denied the moment.
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As April is the month of Easter, it seems appropriate to finish with another item from the world of Welby. On a visit to Canterbury Cathedral I encountered a plaque in memory of Major Simon Williams (1604-1676), described as a '...Kentish Soldier and an Early Pioneer in the Settlement of the British Colony of New England, America, 1634'. The plaque celebrated Major Williams' role as Commander-in-Chief of the British forces against the (I quote exactly) 'hostile Indian tribes'.
The telling piece of information is that the plaque was erected in 1902, in the (excuse the pun) Indian summer of the British empire. Remove? Retain and explain?. Perhaps on his next procession, the Arch could take a detour by the plaque and invite the congregation to join in a moment of quiet reflection.
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The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.