Archive for December 2007
To desire some good friends. . .
As I look forward to 2008, and consider what resolutions I should perhaps make, I realise that Samuel Johnson said it all before, and that I can do no better than follow him:
Not to marry a young Woman.
Not to keep young company, unless they really desire it.
Not to be peevish, or morose, or suspicious.
Not to scorn present Ways, or Wits, or Fashions, or Men, or War, &c.
Not to be fond of children.
Not to tell the same Story over and over to the same People.
Not to be covetous.
Not to neglect decency, or cleanliness, for fear of falling into Nastiness.
Not to be oversevere with young People, but give allowances for their youthful follys and weaknesses.
Not to be influenced by or give ear to knavish tattling servants, or others.
Not to be too free of advice, nor trouble any but those that desire it.
To desire some good Friends to inform me which of these Resolutions I break, or neglect, & wherein; and reform accordingly.
Why choose Eversheds?
Lovely mention in Lucy Kellaway’s not-to-be-missed column in the FT today, awarding Eversheds the Martin Lukes Creovation gold award for using some quite astonishingly awful copy when looking for trainee lawyers. Apparently Eversheds want people who are knowlivators (knowledgeable motivators), proactilopers (proactive developers) and five other clumping concepts that sound more like dinosaurs than legal eagles. I rushed off to the Eversheds website, to see if this was really true, but got no further than the “Why choose Eversheds” page. Apparently they hire people who have personality and a sense of humour. I can only assume that whoever wrote the advertisement for trainees (if that is what it was) had been exercising the latter; and if he or she hadn’t, that the Eversheds board does!
Say you don’t know
Read The Economist’s article on The Future of Futurology (December 30, 2007), and in particular note the advice, “Think small, think short – and listen”. Some things don’t change: you will still (global warming notwithstanding) find Golden Plover on Dartmoor at this time of year. Other things you know will (more lap tops are sold now than desk top PCs). The difficulty is predicting what. The Economist’s third piece of advice, (the title to this post) is the one I use, even if it sounds somewhat negative when everyone else says they do! But as the Economist says, uncertainty looks smarter than ever before.
Historical error
Poor old David Starkey. Attributing a quotation to Goebbels, he has attracted a rash of letters in The Sunday Telegraph, castigating him both for his apparent criticism of the Sovereign (did Starkey really say, “I don’t think she’s at all comfortable with anybody intellectual. I think she’s got elements a bit like Goebbels in her attitude – you remember, he said: ‘Every time I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver’.”) and, worse for a historian, getting it wrong. It was said, apparently, either by Goering (I have always been told this) or by the German playwright Hanns Johst (who merely reached for the safety catch of his Browning). I have always rather liked the apparent retort, by whom I know not, “Everytime I hear the word gun, I reach for my culture”.
Opinion, not knowledge
Apparently, if experts are to be believed, coley tastes like cod (or so the Daily Telegraph reports today, ‘Cod diners to get a taste for Coley’). Quite how these experts arrived at this conclusion, and why we should take their word for it, I am not sure. Coley was a regular feature of school dinners when I was a child. That may have been quite a long time ago, but I can assure you that coley did not taste like cod then, and nothing will persuade me that it does now.
