Showing posts with label Cyprus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cyprus. Show all posts

Saturday 15 July 2023

Saturday Mope


It's a long time since I have been down at Poole Harbour, which is just visible as a dim hump in the far distance.   I dreamt of buying a wee house with a view such as this over the harbour, but decided the several millions required could be better used elsewhere.  I used to walk near here with a friend and we often contemplated a flat with a higher view, just up the way from here.  We both decided that a million pound for a flat was too much.  There again, having 47pence between us, this was an easy decision.  Dreams are cheap, but the more I look at rich folks throwing their money away on expensive items, mostly for show, I wonder if they are as happy as you and I are in our struggles?  How many are divorced, unstable, depressed, and looking for meaning by gaining more useless items?  I have done similar but at a cheaper level, it does not work.  Obtaining a property such as this may be good fun but you would end up mixing with the type of high flying greedy guts that you prefer to avoid.  Those who can cheerfully afford a £10 million house are not the people I want to live next to.  Obviously some would be decent, but those desperate to be among the higher orders would proliferate, and what a bore they would be.  


It is five years since I took this picture of Corfe Castle.  That seems like a generation ago.  Those living in Corfe, in houses made from castle stones, must be among the rich of Dorset.  A house near to the castle costs around £800,000, but it does come with a couple of thousand tourists outside your door, cameras clicking as much as their tongues, kids screaming, and traffic a couple of feet from your window.  I'm not sure I could enjoy that.  
The thing of course is to be where 'your people,' are found.
Not far from me, the main road north from historic times, dives down the hill.  Traffic flows day and night, yet people pay vast sums, similar to Corfe, to live amongst 'their people.'  In one way this is understandable, in another, I wonder if 'their people,' could be found in a better area?  We like to be with 'our kind,' and object when incomers to the country behave in the same manner.  An example I read of the other day was 'Green Lanes,' in London.  Many are Cypriots who came here in times past.  At one end Turkish Cypriots gather in coffee clubs as they did back home.  Up the road, sharing many of the same shops, Greek Cypriots live similar lives as lived back in the sunshine.  The distinction is clear, but they need to be near one another to live lives as they always have.  Together, but separate.
Humans are funny...


Tuesday 30 September 2008

Spelling Nazis



Can I just point out that while we all can make use of the spellchecker found on Blogger, and indeed on most browsers, the correct spelling of some words remains in dispute. This applies also to names and none more so than from names from antiquity. By antiquity I do not mean your granny and her doing in the junk shop, I mean the ancient 'classical' world of long ago.

(At this point I must point out for our younger readers that the term 'Classical' has nothing to do with the music you so detest and which intellectuals like I and the entire Radio 3 audience happen to appreciate - barring those screeching women singers of course.)


We must take into account that ancient words had a habit of being written in Greek or Latin or Aramaic or Akkadian. Thus when translated the correct spelling is less to do with the actualpronunciation of the word in its setting but relates to the one doing the translating. The wide variety of accents available today indicate a similar situation existing in the ancient world. So for instance 'You say potato and I say potato, you say tomato and I say tomato,' does not reveal that the one gives the word correctly and the other does not. And we all know who is right! I happen to know that the ancient people of Cyprus spoke in a Scots like accent, they were hardy, highly intelligent, and I must add humbly, nice, which proves this to be the case. Therefore I must point out to the spelling Nazis who are among us that the name 'Barnabus' is correctly spelt, and the use of 'Barnabas,' is mere middle class Tory, 'Daily Mail' reading snobbery.

I rest my case.


p.s., I have discovered I spelt spellchecker wrong!