90. Indubitably!

Do you like apples? I do.

I also like idioms and think that they can be fascinating.  An idiom is a combination of words that, because of its common usage, has a figurative meaning that is different from what you would think from the individual words that are used. 

Apparently, they exist in all languages. It has been calculated that there are at least 25000 in the English language and this number grows every year.

The English language has many idioms that originated in our agricultural heritage. They are common and in everyday use:

sorting the wheat from the chaff

until the cows come home

fell upon stony ground

plough a lonely furrow

A study of the language of a civilisation discovered by western anthropologists some 50 years ago in New Guinea proves that they are true hunter-gatherers and practise no form of farming whatsoever.  Although their language contains idioms, there are none that derive from any kind of farming, either arable or keeping livestock.  

Last week, while I was having breakfast, I heard someone on the radio say, 

“… as sure as eggs is eggs”. 

That got me thinking.  It’s a commonly used expression to convey certainty about something but why isn’t the grammatically correct, “as sure as eggs ARE eggs” ever used and does it come from some aspect of the practice of keeping chickens?

Thanks to Google, I found out why very quickly.  You may be aware that in May 2010, in Hesperody, I told of my intention to use the Internet to become an expert on a different subject every day before lunch and ever since I have been doing just that. 

Go on - test me.  Ask me whether there are more seats in the Bundestag than there are in the House of Commons or why do fools fall in love or what was George Harrison's sister's name or who let the dogs out?  I know all that now and a lot more too.   

Then, that evening on Newsnight, I heard a cabinet minister say very emphatically, “As sure as hell, that won’t happen.”

What?  Have I missed something?  When did Hell become a certainty?  I’m going to have to re-evaluate my whole life and then make many necessary adjustments.  If a leading member of the Conservative party is certain of it, then it must be true and hell must be real. 

Could he have been in touch with Margaret Thatcher?

He would, I think, have been on much more solid ground saying, “as sure as eggs is eggs,” because even although it is grammatically incorrect, there is a tangential element of truth in that phrase.

After only 10 seconds research I found that “As sure as eggs is eggs” is a corruption of the original,

“As sure as x is x”.  

That has an algebraic, mathematical certainty to it.  

There is no question about it that once x is assigned a value, xis always the same as x and therefore x is x.  In fact, it’s so true that you could say that it’s as certain as eggs is eggs. 

Now, how do you like them apples?

Half an hour after I posted this I got an email from the Professor Willy Aspinall BSc, PhD, CSci, CGeol, the Cabot Professor in Natural Hazards and Risk Science at Bristol University.  Willy was taught 'A' level physics by my father.

He writes:

Pedantically and in memory of your late father who, were he still with us, would surely aver that, almost invariably, x denotes a random variable which can take on any of a number of values.  If the value is fixed and known, algebraic notation is not needed.

So "eggs" may not be x.

I shall offer no counter to that.  I expect he's right.

85. Who? - I give up.

At one o’clock on Monday afternoon I turned on the TV news and heard that Margaret Thatcher had died.  My first reaction was the same as when I heard that the Queen Mother had died:

Bugger it, that’s tonight’s television ruined!

Even though I had met her (See Name Dropping), I felt no emotion.  The day continued as a normal Monday does until five o’clock that afternoon, when Caroline’s sister, Joanna, arrived with her two boys who were to stay the night with us.

“Tonight’s telly is going to be ruined,” was the first thing I said to her. 

“Anything good on BBC1 will be replaced with boring archive film and there’ll be one grey haired old man after another reminiscing about his dealings with her.  If I still drank I’d go to the pub.”

“Why?  Has someone died?”

“Haven’t you heard?”  I was surprised but then, upon reflection, I realised that with two small boys in the car she’d have been unlikely to be listening to a news station on her way up the M1 from London.

“No I haven’t,” she said.  “Who?  Someone famous?”

“Yes, very famous,” I said.  “One of the most famous women in the world.”

“Not the Queen?” she asked, in a hushed voice.

“No, not her.  I tell you what.  We’ll play Twenty Questions and you’ve had three already because you know that it is a woman, she’s very famous and it’s not the Queen.”

“OK.  Is she British?”

“Yes.  Four”

“Would Oscar have heard of her?”  (Oscar is Joanna’s seven-year-old son.)

“Possibly and that’s five”

When we had reached question nine, Joanna had started to become impatient and, I suspect, a little irritated because I had started to giggle.

“I can’t believe you haven’t got it yet,” I smirked.

“Madhur Jaffrey!” she abruptly shouted out with the kind of certainty that can only come with sudden inspirational revelation.

My giggles turned into raucous laughter.  I couldn’t speak for several seconds because I was struggling to breathe and I was in danger of falling off my kitchen stool.

“Madhur Jaffrey!!!  Madhur Jaffrey???  She’s a bleedin’ cook!  Do you really think that the BBC would cancel EastEnders and replace it with a two-hour programme on the subtleties of lentil-based curries from Rajesthan?  Do you?

Can you imagine that they will replace Panorama with Michael Heseltine and Tony Blair talking about the best Curry Houses they’ve ever been to?  This person is seriously famous.”

This is the point, after an outburst like that from me, at which Caroline would have just walked off but her sister is altogether calmer and more forgiving.  She carried on.

“Was she at the Olympics?”

“No.  Eleven.”

By question eighteen Joanna knew that this dead woman was in the House of Lords and was over eighty but she was becoming increasingly frustrated and desperate.

“Has she ever done anything for children.”

Well yes, I thought.  She had been the Minister for Education in the seventies and had earned the soubriquet, “Milk Snatcher” after she removed the right of schoolchildren over seven years old to receive a third of a pint of milk every day so,

“Yes and that’s eighteen.”

“Floella Benjamin.”

“Who?”  I lost it.  When I spoke next I was almost incoherent with giggling.

“No.  Floella Whatsername can only be in her sixties.  And anyway she’s hardly world famous.  You don’t become an international figure for presenting Play School and Play Away for toddlers, do you?

That’s nineteen questions.  You’ve got one more and so far, you know that the person who has died was a woman, aged over eighty and was a Baroness.”

“Baroness Young.”

“No and you’ve had twenty questions.  It’s Margaret Thatcher who’s died.”

“Oh,” said Joanna.  She turned to her boys who were playing on the floor. 

“Oscar, have you brought your bag in from the car?”

I hope that Madhur Jaffrey and Floella Benjamin realise what great international figures they have become with a younger generation but I suppose that for some people they possibly did more to change lives than Mrs Thatcher ever did.

After all, I cooked a wonderful ginger, lamb curry last Sunday and my three children all used to look forward to their daily date with Ms Benjamin far more than they did to anything else during their pre school days.

As for Baroness Young, I don’t know very much about her I’m afraid.  I’ll have to ask Joanna next time we meet.

36. Not Funny

I’m sitting in the passenger seat travelling south down the M6 toll road while Caroline drives.  It’s 9:15 on Saturday morning and as it costs £4.50 to use this bit of motorway, the road is fairly empty.  The speedometer needle is hovering on 120 mph. and the engine is purring quietly.  There is no tyre noise and I am listening to Capriccio Italien by Tchaikovsky, on Classic FM.  I can see for more than a mile ahead and there is only one vehicle in sight.  Despite the speed, I feel perfectly safe.

“According to the book, the top speed of this car is a hundred and fifty five,” I say.

“Don’t be silly,” says Caroline, “Even though it’s a toll road, there’s still a seventy miles an hour speed limit.” 

Then she glanced down at the speedometer.

********

On January 24^th in ‘Life’s Ironies’ I told you about a fabulous put-down I received from Sandra, the cashier in the Cayman bank I used.  Yesterday I received another, much better one.  It was superb and especially so because it was spontaneous.  It was not calculated to offend or upset me but it did and I’m still brooding on it.  

If there is such a thing as a ‘Put-Down Hall of Fame,’ then this should go straight in.  What makes it so brilliant is that my own wife said it and although it was deeply hurtful, it was said with sincerity and was not meant to upset me.  Indeed, remove two little words, just five letters, and it would have been a wonderful compliment.

We have been staying at Caroline’s parents’ house in Wilmslow, Cheshire.  Five years ago, just before we left for the Cayman Islands, we put three boxes of personal items into their loft for safe keeping.  Yesterday we were going through them and came across photographs taken during our holiday in Cyprus in 2002.

As you do, we were commenting on every photo - comments like, “Why did you wear that hat?” and “Do you remember how hot it was there?”

We came to one of me on the beach.  Caroline stared at it for several seconds.

“My God,” she said wistfully, “No wonder I used to fancy you.”

Take away, “used to,” and I’d have been flying down the M6!

********

We’ve been having dreadful problems with our Internet and telephone ever since we moved back into our house here in Winchmore Hill.  We decided to go with the package offered by Virgin but we have never been able to get a proper wireless connection.  We have been very lucky that our neighbours at number 27 have allowed us access via their wireless router.

Yesterday, we realised that we were not receiving incoming phone calls either.  Sandy rang me on my cell phone and told me that she had given up trying to reach us on our landline.  I phoned Virgin.

“Who have you been unable to receive calls from?” a nice young man from the call centre in Mumbai asked.

I thought for a moment.  “Well, David Cameron hasn’t rung today,” I said,  “but he’s probably been very busy with his new baby.  Neither has Naomi Campbell or Gandhi but he’s been dead for 60 years and so that probably explains why he hasn’t rung.”

Smart-arse remarks like that got me into trouble once in Cayman.

The “Strata” administer Prospect Reef, the complex of about 20 dwellings where we lived in Cayman.  Every homeowner pays a monthly Strata fee of $500 and this money is used to pay for the buildings’ insurance, the maintenance of the grounds and the upkeep of the swimming pool and the tennis court.  

Our Strata fee was one of the lowest on the island.  Most other Strata on the island employ a professional administrator.  We didn’t.  We did everything ourselves and my duty was to take the 25 cent coins from the washing machines in the communal laundry to the bank. 

The last time that I visited the bank was to deposit exactly $500 into the Strata account.  On the same visit I also put $5800 in cash into my personal account which I had received as payment for a car I sold. 

I had the kind of experience that just couldn’t happen in England.  I rather brought it upon myself I suppose and so I probably deserved the aggravation I received.

I had to stand in line for nearly 20 minutes until a clerk became available.  When I arrived in the bank I counted and saw that I was fourteenth in the line to be served.  There were no chairs.  I had to stand while I waited.  

There were eight booths to deal with customers but four were closed.  I suppose that as it was 12:45 the clerks were out for lunch!  

At last I approached the counter and lifted the extremely heavy bag on to the top and took the bags out, one at a time, counting them as I did.  “Five hundred dollars,” I said to the girl.  In the past, that would have been the end of the transaction.  She would have written out a receipt and off I’d go.  Not that day.

She took one bag containing 100, 25c pieces ($25), emptied them, spread them out, studied each one and then, counting them one at a time, put them back into the plastic bag that they had come from.  Then she took a second bag and repeated the process.  When she had investigated three bags I asked her what she was doing.  

“I’m checking the amount and looking for American quarters,” she said.  

“Why, are they valuable?“ I asked.  “The amounts have already been checked,” I said. “Why don’t you just weigh them?”

She ignored me and reached for the fourth bag.  I had already been standing for over 30 minutes by now, my knee was very painful and there were still 17 bags to go.

I’d had enough.  Time to bluff!

“I’m a mathematician,” I said, “and I can tell you that a 20% sample gives a result statistically significant to four decimal places.”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Well, if four bags taken at random from the sample show no differential variation in the Gaussian context and content, you can be certain, to one part in ten thousand, that none of the others will either and if it does, it’s very easy to put right, simply by reversing the polarity of the terminal condenser.”

She looked at me blankly.

“That is if you accept the validity of Fermat’s last theorem, which I am sure you do,” I added helpfully.

She looked doubtful.  Then she gave me a look that was almost of pity and reached for the next bag.  Half an hour later she had finished and she handed me a receipt for CI$500.

All the time this had been going on I had been holding an envelope containing my $5800.  I put that on to the counter top.  The cashier was staring at her computer screen.  I took the money out of the envelope and it sat there - a beautiful thick pile of banknotes.

“I haven’t finished,” I said.  She looked up.  “I would like to deposit this please.”

“From where that come?” she asked.

“That envelope,” I answered, pointing at it.

“No.  Where from it come?”

“From my pocket,” I said, smiling brightly, trying to be helpful.

“Where you get the money from?” she said again, beginning to lose patience with me.

“Nowhere.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s just my money,” I said.

She just sat there and glared at me, stony faced.

“All right,” I said, “I robbed a bank a couple of months ago and this is what I haven’t managed to spend yet.”

Her glare became more intense and her face became even stonier.

“OK, sorry,” I said, realising that I might have gone a little too far, “I sold a car yesterday and this is the money I got for it.”

She picked up the pile of notes and walked to the back of the room where a man in a suit was sitting at a desk.  They entered into earnest conversation and every few seconds he looked over at me.  After a couple of minutes he got up and ushered me into a side room.

“From where this money is? He demanded.

“From the sale of a car,” I muttered meekly.

“Huh!  You say that now but earlier you say you rob a bank.  Which it is?”

I was getting pissed off.  “Guess,” I said.

“We not here for fun, you know.  We have work to do.”

“Do you want my money or not?” I asked him.

“What bank you rob?  You know we have you on CCTV here.”

“I am not a bank robber!”  I sighed.  “Look at me.  I can hardly walk.  I’ve got an arthritic knee and an artificial hip.  I was trying to be funny.  I’m sorry that it wasn’t funny but I was getting very fed up standing for an hour watching your clerk counting out five hundred dollars, twenty-five cents at a time.  I won’t do it again.  Promise.” 

“Hmmph,” he said.  “You not funny, man.”

Two days later that branch was held up and robbed.  

It wasn’t me!

35. Name Dropping

I was in the dry cleaners the other day and I heard the woman next to me tell the woman standing next to her that she used the same hairdresser as Melanie Sykes.  That meant nothing to me but it seemed to really impress the man behind the counter and the other woman.

When I got home, I looked up Ms Sykes on Google and discovered that she appears on television occasionally but is best known for appearing in an advertisement for beer.

I am not a name-dropper.  There are two reasons for this.  Firstly, I think that mentioning someone famous and trying to infer that he or she is, or was, somehow intimately connected to you is fairly pathetic and reflects poorly on your own self-worth.  
In fact, I was having a conversation on this very subject with Colin Firth only the other day.

Secondly, I never meet anyone well known.  My friend Ian, whom I mentioned in “Knock Knock” last week, once told me of a function that he attended at which he and Robin Day were the two least famous people present.   That is pretty sophisticated name-dropping.

I’ve seen two famous people in off licences.  In 1968, I stood next to Liberace at the counter of a Threshers store in The Kings Road, Chelsea and once, I had to wait for a long time to be served because Kingsley Amis took so long finding his chequebook in Unwins in High Barnet.

In 1964, when I was 17, I was on a train travelling from London to Oxford.  I was on my own in a compartment when the door opened and John Lennon came in.  He stood for a second or two, ignoring me, staring blankly at the seat opposite me and then, turned around and walked off without saying a word.

Aeroplanes seem to be good places to meet famous people.  David, with whom I was at school and have mentioned several times before, once sat next to Jackie Stewart on a flight from Geneva to Heathrow.  David tells me that, once he found out that David was a school teacher, education was the only topic of conversation throughout the flight.

Ten years ago, Willy, another old school friend, sat next to Claudia Schiffer for seven hours, on a flight from Barbados to Heathrow.  He found her charming and delightful but it was only as they walked out of the airport together and the photographers started shooting, that Willy found out who she was.

Caroline and I stood next to Michael Caine at the luggage carousel at Miami airport in May this year.  We had come from London on the same flight but his seat had probably cost several thousand pounds more than mine.  He picked up a suitcase and said,” No, that’s not mine,” and put it back down.  Not much of an anecdote, is it?

One Wednesday morning in March twenty years ago, Nigel, a friend from the cricket club, rang and asked me what I was doing that day.

“Going to work,” of course,” I said.  “Come to Ascot races instead,” he suggested.  “There’s a horse I'm following that's running.”

I didn’t need to think about it.  I hadn’t had any time off for more than ten years and in that time, I had covered the classes of numerous teachers who had phoned in “sick”.  To top it all, the government had recently introduced ‘Training Days’ that had replaced five holiday days.  I was really angry with that and felt quite resentful.  There had been no consultation.  Those days had just been taken.

“OK,” I said.  “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”

We had a good day at Ascot but at around midday, before the meeting started and while we were having lunch in a pub, in walked Rod Stewart with his entourage.

“Didn’t you used to teach him?” asked Nige.  “Go and say hello.”

I explained that I hadn’t taught him although he had attended the school where I taught.  He had left some five years before I arrived there.

At nine o’clock that evening on our way back to North London after a successful day at the races, we stopped at The Holly Bush pub in Hampstead.  I was standing at the bar when I heard a voice behind me.

“Hello, Terry.  Feeling better?”

It was the deputy headteacher from my school - the man whom I had phoned thirteen hours earlier to explain that severe flu-like symptoms would, regrettably, prevent me from coming in.

“Yes thanks,” I said picking up two pints from the bar top, “Just a cold, I think.  Not flu.”

Thinking that I’d carried that off rather well, I carried the drinks over to where Nige was sitting at a table.  I told him how well I had dealt with a potentially embarrassing and awkward situation.

“What did he say about that?” Nigel asked, looking at my chest.

“What?” I said.

“That,” he said, pointing at the bright purple Ascot “Grandstand Badge” hanging from the lapel of my overcoat.

There is, however, one name I can drop.  Not only did I meet this “Name” but I was with him and his almost equally famous wife for about eight hours and the day ended when he and I spent ten minutes or so together in the communal shower.

The “Name” has a brother, Chris, and Chris was a member of Finchley Cricket Club, the club that I played for.  I was Team Secretary at the time and my function was to make sure that everyone selected to play knew where and at what time he was playing.  I phoned Chris on Tuesday and told him that he was playing away at Ashford, Middlesex on the following Sunday afternoon.

At around eleven o'clock on Saturday evening before the game, Chris phoned me.  My heart sank.  We were already one short at Ashford and I assumed that he was crying off.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Are you serious?” I asked him. "Your brother wants to play?"

“Yeah, he fancies a game.”

“Well, we are one short but will he definitely turn up?”

“Course he’ll turn up.”

“I’m not sure," I said.  "Suppose he has to go to New York or somewhere?”

“Hang on, Terry.  I’ll check.”

“He’s worried you won’t turn up,” I heard him say.

I heard a very distinctive and immediately recognisable voice coming from some distance from the phone.  “I’ll be there.  Definite.”

“OK,” I said, thinking that I had been put in a very difficult position and it would all probably go horribly wrong, “Make sure that he realises what a mess we’ll be in if he lets us down.”

I arrived at Ashford Cricket Club’s car park at 1:25 pm.  Following me in was a silver-grey Ford Granada estate car that parked next to mine.  From out of the car came Chris’s parents, as well as his brother and sister-in-law with two small children.  I introduced myself and shook hands with them all.  Shortly afterwards, Chris and the rest of the team turned up.

Chris’s sister-in-law and the two children went to a quiet corner of the ground where she laid out a blanket and where they sat for the rest of the afternoon.  

Her blonde hair was plaited and she wore no makeup.  She didn’t look very much like the woman I had seen many times on television and in magazines.  She read a book, ignoring the cricket, while the children ran around doing what small kids do.

News of the celebrity player spread and by three o’clock there must have been more than three hundred spectators.  At around 7:20, the game ended.  Neither brother had distinguished himself but they had both seemed to enjoy it very much.

As is the custom, as soon as the game ended we all went straight to the bar.  Chris’s brother bought a jug of beer and generally joined in the post-match spirit.  I thought that paying his £3 match fee with a £20 note was a bit flash but nothing about his behaviour was in any way different from anyone else’s.  
His wife sat in a corner of the bar with the children sipping lemonade and reading them stories.

I went for a shower at about 9:30 pm and five minutes later, Chris’s brother joined me.  We chatted for ten minutes or so.

At 10:30 pm, it was time to leave.  I said goodbye to Mick, his wife Jerry, his friend Charlie who had turned up in a beautiful silver Lagonda during the afternoon and Mick’s brother, the Finchley member, Chris Jagger.

It’s a funny thing but nobody I have ever told this story to has ever asked me about Mick Jagger’s cricket.  All they ever ask about is the shower - and they never ask me what we talked about either!

Now, my meeting with Margaret Thatcher.

In the summer of 1987, there was a general election in Britain.  The MP for Finchley in North London was Margaret Thatcher and she was standing for re-election.  I suppose that she considered that she hadn't quite finished her life's work of destroying the trade unions and dismantling society.

As part of her campaign, her people decided that it would be a good idea if she visited her local cricket club one Saturday afternoon for a photo opportunity.

We were told that she was arriving at 2:30 p.m.  It rained on and off all morning and at 2:00 when the game was due to start, there was a constant and fairly heavy drizzle.  It was very overcast and cars driving along East End Road next to the ground had their headlights on.  We all sat in the bar waiting to see if the game was to be called off.  No one had changed into their cricket kit.

At 2.28 the lights of several TV crews illuminated the area outside the bar.  At 2:29 those crews came in, ignored us and trained their cameras on the door.  At 2:30 on the dot, the door swung open and in she came, smiling at us all.  She was greeted by the Club President who then introduced her to some of the Club dignitaries - not to me!

Dennis, her husband, had a half pint of bitter.  Mrs T had a cup of tea.  It was still raining.  I sat in a corner and glared at her.  She didn’t notice.  After five minutes, she put her cup down and announced, “Come on everyone.  Outside!”

And that’s what they did.  Out they all went into the pouring rain.  They stood on the sodden turf where she was given a cricket bat which she swung while smiling at the cameras.  Behind her, the Finchley members including several wives stood, simpering and smiling too.

All the Finchley members, except one: I stayed in the bar, shaking my head, watching the antics through the big, plate glass windows.  

After a minute or so, it got too wet, even for Mrs T.  I watched her walking briskly towards the door and I was mentally preparing myself for the perturbing sight of her security men striding back into the bar.

But no!  They held the door open for her and she came into the bar.  She entered a room with only one person in it and that person was me.  

As soon as she saw me, she put on her well-rehearsed, synthetic, artificial smile and began to walk across the twenty feet or so that separated us.  I continued to glare and stare. 

"That was fun," she said. 

I’d like to think that she was disconcerted by my lack of response and scowl but I don’t suppose that she was.  Nonetheless, for two or three seconds, I was alone in a room with Margaret Thatcher.

This is the ITV news report of Mrs Thatcher's visit to Finchley Cricket Club: