by
Frank Hatton

It must sometimes be a little strange to you on your side of the water, when you read stuff like this, which has been written by someone British. You get words like ‘honour’, ‘centre’, ‘programme’, ‘colour’, ‘neighbour’, and many others. Now, whilst we do spell some words differently, it does not cause much of a problem because the changes are so slight as to be unimportant. However, I read in a newspaper recently that the a chap by the name of John Simpson, who is chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, has said that due to the influence of the world wide web, more and more folk around the world are substituting the American English spelling of words, because of the number of times they see them spelt this way on the Internet. Now to my mind, this is a good thing, in that a language is a living thing, and should never lie dormant. It should always be adapting and changing to keep it abreast of modern requirements, and when one looks at the more phonetic, (why do they spell that with a ‘ph’, and not an ‘f’ ???) style of the American English, it makes a lot more sense to do it your way. You will of course always get a number of people who will moan and groan about the way the world is altering the language that the English invented, but, in truth the so called English language is, and always has been, a mixture of languages that have come into our country over the centuries, by a series of invasions from other nations who brought their own mother tongue with them, and overlaid many of their words onto our existing language. Hence, the English tongue is not, and never has been pure. In fact I read somewhere that the Welsh language is the nearest thing to the speech of the ancient Britons. Talking of the Welsh,.... how many of you have ever heard of Desmond Llewelyn? I’ll bet not many. yet, I would also bet that a lot of you knew him. He played the role of ‘Q’, or Major Geoffrey Boothroyd, in the James Bond films, right thro’ the Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and others who have played the part of James Bond, up to the current Pierce Brosnan. He was killed in a car crash recently at the age of 87, but, his screen character will long be remembered by the Bond aficionados. A couple of days ago, we passed the winter solstice, so from now on our days will be getting longer instead of shorter. This is always a good time of year for me, in that as the winter days get progressively shorter, so I get more and more frustrated at not being able to get out so much, and as we get nearer and nearer to that shortest day, so my temper gets shorter. Now, to my good lady’s immense relief, I will get progressively better tempered, and with any luck, she might even get a smile from me around about next January or February. Seriously though, I do enjoy the months of summer, when we can take a bottle of wine out onto the back patio, (don’t know what you folk call the paved area at the rear of the house, but, that’s what we call it), and just sit talking with friends and watching the day draw to a close. Talking of good fortune, I read recently that this country of ours has saved around £600m, ($966m) by not joining the common market standard monetary unit, (the Euro). This again delights my heart, as I and many, many others were bitterly opposed to joining the thing anyway. I am long enough in the tooth to remember the times when our £ sterling was the world’s strongest currency, and whilst it has slipped back in the monetary ratings, it’s still far too good to throw into the trash can, and be replaced by that wretched Euro thing. We had an item of news on T.V. the other day, about the supply of fireworks to the world. Now, I didn’t know this, but, I understand that China and other countries in the far east are the major manufacturers of fireworks, and normally, there is no major problem in keeping up with demand, as the biggest peak times are the American 4th of July, and the British Guy Fawkes night on November 5th. However, the advent of the Millennium has brought a surge of orders from everyone at the same time, and it would seem that we may be in for a drastic shortage of fireworks for the New Year celebrations. Personally, I have never seen fireworks used in this country to welcome in the New Year, but, like the man said when his donkey died, “I suppose there is a first time for everything”. Just a little snippet I read recently; About the new mother of twins, who asked an uncle to suggest a name for the boy and girl. For the girl he suggested ‘Denise’, which the mother thought was a good name,... then when it came to the boy, he blew it all by suggesting, ‘Denephew’. Don’t know about your part of the world, but, I think this millennium thing has been over hyped, and with the outrageous prices that are being asked for things like restaurant meals, taxi cabs, hotel functions, and almost anything that will be in demand, a lot of folk are just having private family parties at home...... I’ve even heard of cases where the good old British pub is charging for admission on New Year’s night. I suppose that as this sort of thing only comes once every 1000 years, the business community are ‘maximising profits’. However, our family had a very pleasant surprise on Christmas day!! My daughter and son-in-law have been spending Christmas with my wife and I for as far back as I can remember, and this year, as a sort of ‘thank you’ for the years past, they invited us out to Christmas lunch at a local hotel. The meal consisted of seven courses, starting with soup, a fish course, sorbet, the main turkey dish with all the trimmings, the traditional Christmas pudding, followed by the cheese board, then mince pies and coffee. When my son-in-law went to settle the bill (check), the total cost, (four adults and grandson Jack), came to £110, ($177), and this included two bottle of wine. Now this hotel was not a new business, where they were possibly under charging by mistake. It has been around for some two hundred years or more, and I put it to you, if they can make a satisfactory profit at those prices, one can see how much of a rip-off the public get from the bandit restaurants. Of course, by the time you read this, you will have already had your celebrations, so I’ll close by wishing you a happy and prosperous new year, and hope that everything you wish for comes true. 'til next time, Frank Hatton

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