169. Plagiarism

I’m a member of the Queen’s English Society.  (QES) 

For £20 a year I get a very interesting quarterly magazine called ‘Quest’ and the satisfaction that I am supporting a worthwhile organisation.  

It is not evangelical.  It doesn’t try to preserve the English language the way that the Académie Francais does for French.  Its objective is “to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language as used both in speech and writing”.  

Every edition of Quest has a number of articles on the English language, most of which I find interesting.  In the current magazine there is a piece on the correct and the unnecessary use of the hyphen.  How about this for an interesting assertion in a recent article?

“English grammar is an algebra that uses fuzzy logic based on norms, conventions and, most important of all, euphony.”

(I never read an article in Quest without a dictionary to hand.)

It also has the occasional joke.  The first joke I remember in it from some years ago was:

Dale, a Yorkshire farmer’s favourite sheepdog, died.  The farmer was distraught and he took photos of the dog to a goldsmith in Leeds and asked if he could make a statue of Dale out of gold.

“Do you want him 18 carats?”

“Nay lad.  Eatin’ bone.”

Occasionally it asks searching, philosophical questions such as:

If father is Pop, how come mother’s not Mop?

The Spring 2013 issue of the Quest magazine arrived in the middle of April.  I started reading an article on page 17 titled, “Attending to the Language”.

What do you call people who go on a course? Are they attenders?  No, they are not.  Apparently, they are attendees.  

“This is something I once wrote about on my blog,” I thought.  (Click here)

I have just seen that the spell check on my Mac has underlined ‘attenders’ as being a spelling mistake but ‘attendees’ remains unblemished and clear.

“Hang on.  This is my post.  I remember using that phrase "unblemished and clear".  Someone’s been to my blog, read my post and lifted it.  The plagiaristic bastard!”

I jumped up and went to find Caroline.  “Look at this!  Look at this!  Some bugger’s stolen my post.”

“Let me see.”

I handed her the magazine and she started to read.  She turned the page and a little later, looked up at me.  She was smiling. 

“What are you laughing at?  It’s not funny.”

“Do you know who wrote it,” she asked.

“Is it someone I know?”

“Not as well as me,” she said.

I looked to the bottom of the page she passed to me and there was the bastard’s name:

             Terry Wilton

I went to my Hotmail “sent” folder.  I had sent that contribution to QES in June 2010, nearly three years ago.  I had completely forgotten about it.

Some day, Playboy Magazine may publish the letter I sent to them in October 1968.  I can’t remember exactly what it was about now but I do remember it was carefully written in my very best and neatest handwriting.

168. I am a Dreadfully Bad Salesman

Yesterday, I sold my car.  For the first time since September 3rd 1969, I do not own a car.  I am carless.  After 49 years and 10 months, I am free of all worries concerning the cost of fuel; knocks and squeaks; smoke, rattles and shakes.  No longer will I care how stupidly and badly everyone else drives (and that includes you).

I sold it because for the time being, I don’t need a car.  Since March 8th, I’ve been out in my car only five times and I’ve driven just 42 miles.  

Caroline is working from home and as her future work practices are certain to be very different from the way they were, we don’t need two cars for the foreseeable future.  So, not only am I losing weight because of Lockdown  (Click to see), we are saving money as well.

The first car I ever bought was a 1959 Austin Healy Sprite.  It was 10-years-old and cost me £195.  I paid for it with just three weeks’ wages from my last ever summer job at Birds Eye Frozen Foods factory in Lowestoft.  It would be nearly 10 years before my salary as a teacher matched the pay I received at Birds Eye as a student.

The Sprite was described as a sports car and as it was a two-seater with a soft top, I suppose it was.  However, the pitiful lack of power generated by its tiny 948cc engine meant that I had difficulty out-accelerating even a double-decker bus.  

It was claimed to have a top speed of about 80 mph but the heavy slab of concrete I kept in the boot to prevent the rear end from sliding about meant the recently introduced 70 mile an hour speed limit didn’t ever cause me any real concerns.

The Sprite was followed two years later by a second-hand Sunbeam Alpine; another sports car but an altogether classier motor with a walnut dashboard and leather seats that cost more than a thousand pounds when new.  I paid £495.

The last car I ever bought - the one I sold this week - was an electric, BMW i3.  Between the Sprite and the i3, I think that there have been 15 others.  None of them was a lemon and they all performed and behaved as they should have done.

Selling the BMW was an interesting experience.  I wrote in a post some years ago that I don’t like it when I’m mistakenly called Terry Dawes (Click to see) because that sounds like the name of a second-hand car salesman but if I were a second-hand car salesman, I’d be useless.

I knew that the worst deal I could get for my car would be by going to a website that gave a guaranteed valuation.  I also knew, from a friend who had been to “We Buy Any Car” to sell his 2014 Audi, that the price they initially offered online was nothing like the amount they would finally tender once they had actually seen the car. 

To begin, he looked at Audi dealers to find out how much a car similar to his would cost from a dealer.  He found it was from £11,500 to £13,000.  

When he looked online, We Buy Any Car offered £8,845 for his Audi.  He took it to be looked at and stood, watching in disbelief while the “salesman” found enough problems to reduce the offer to £7,245: a reduction of £1,600.

I found out recently that these salesmen are on a commission of 10% for the amount by which they can reduce the offer.  That one tried to earn £160 in 15 minutes.  He failed!

I knew that to achieve the highest price, I should sell my car privately.  I was warned off using eBay as their fees are very high for car sales and so I put an advertisement on Gumtree as well as mentioning it on the BMW i3 Facebook page.

The response was immediate and overwhelming.  17 phone calls in the first hour but only one of those callers actually asked about the car.  The others, all very polite and insistent Indian gentlemen, wanted to ask me about the accident they heard I’ve had in the past 3 years that wasn’t my fault.  

I was surprised that even though they spoke with pronounced Indian accents, they all had names like Kevin, Michael and Roger.  I’m still getting those calls more than a week later. 

One woman caller was very enthusiastic and asked me to consider it sold.  All she had to do was see it and if it was as described, she would certainly buy it.  Unfortunately, she lived 80 miles away in Lyneham in Wiltshire and she expected me to take the car to her.  When I told her that it was conventional for her to come to me, she explained very calmly and patiently, as if she were speaking to a very small child, that would be impossible.  “Obviously, I can’t,” she sighed in exasperation, “I don’t have a car.”

One person saw the advertisement and rang to ask what colour it was.  As there was a photograph with the ad, I was a little surprised.  It seemed to me that many people just rang for a chat.

Are all the people who reply to Gumtree advertisements dishonest, stupid or lonely?  

The first question most of them asked is whether they can pay using PayPal.  As it’s impossible to have a PayPal account without having a bank account too, I said they couldn’t.  

I had searched online and found that there are many ways that fraudsters use PayPal.  After I told them I would only accept payment in cash or by bank transfer, I never heard from them any of them again.  None of them but Jeff, that is.

A man calling himself Jeff, was the most persistent crook of them all.  He told me he wanted to buy my car as a surprise present for his “lovely, beautiful, disabled wife.”  He told me that he couldn’t use bank transfer because they have a joint account.  She would see the transaction and the surprise would be spoilt.

He kept stressing how much it would mean to her but as he pointed out many times, I have a heart of stone.  I wouldn’t relent.  

In the end, worn down by many fruitless exchanges with members of the Great British Public, I admitted defeat.  I took the car to the BMW dealer that sold it to me nearly four years ago.  

The price they offered was more than We Buy Any Car but some £3000 less than that which their representative cheerfully admitted they would be seeking to achieve for it in a week or so on their forecourt.  “We have overheads, you realise.”

Perhaps, I should ring Jeff and tell him where to find the car he was so desperate to have.  His wife will be overjoyed.