Pre- War semis with high, pointy gables of dirty stucco, pansies out front, hedges of ragged privet, washing on rotating hoists. Green Man Lane in Hatton, a couple of hundred yards east of the end of Heathrow’s southern runway It’s amazing: people live here. The FA have been good enough to give me a four- year contract and it is worth looking at that and bringing things through.”The opportunity has come even quicker than I ever thought it would. Some people get them, some don’t and I’ve had the courage to say ‘yes’ and I’m very positive. But it’s very important that Terry gets on with having a successful summer and that will make my job easier.”n Jean-Marc Bosman, whose legal fight against Uefa changed the face of European football, is to sue the sport’s world governing body, Fifa, for not sanctioning a benefit match for him. Eric Cantona and Diego Maradona are believed to have agreed to play in the match, due to take place in Paris on 14 May.. The notion, widespread yesterday morning, that the Rugby Football Union was about to reach a settlement of its dispute with England’s leading clubs turned to dust last night when the RFU committee balked at moving against the chairman of its executive, Cliff Brittle.
Some members had been considering seeking Brittle’s removal as chairman of the RFU’s negotiators after his refusal to meet representatives of English Professional Rugby Union Clubs on Wednesday. It was obvious that, at least in their social lives, the inane ditzes in the wine bar never, ever, met anyone who talked even slightly differently from themselves. Of course, these noodle-heads all spoke perfect cut-glass English, or “received pronunciation” in the lingo of the linguistics biz. Nevertheless, I think it should be a top priority for Generalissimo McDonald to dispatch a crack battalion from the Better English Campaign down to the faubourgs of SW4. Well, I’ll go to t’ foot of our stairs.”At this, my chum realised he was on to a complete loser and scarpered for the welcome anonymity of central London. I didn’t realise…” And then she dashed off.Though my friend spent his early life in the north, he has lived in London for the past quarter-century. In the normal run of things, no one remarks on his accent from one year to the next.
Thinking that his first communicant had perhaps overdone the valpolicella, my pal had a few more solitary slurps, peered at the dado rail, examined an interesting crack in the wall, that sort of thing, before summoning up the courage to address a party of four young women with an innocuous plaisanterie The same thing happened as before “Eh opp, there’s trouble at t’ mill” the girls tittered “Bah the ‘eck. That’s reet gradely lad,” he was astonished to hear her reply, in a weird pastiche of a Yorkshire accent.”Why are you talking in that extraordinary way?” he inquired.”Oh, I’m so sorry,” she replied, “I thought you were pretending to come from Yorkshire. After a lonely drink or two, he essayed a remark about the decor of the wine bar to a pleasant-looking woman also standing alone “Oh, eeh bah goom Put wood in t’ ole. This view was reinforced by the experience of a friend when attending the 40th birthday party of an ex-girlfriend in a Southwark wine bar the other day.Since their relationship was concluded well over a decade ago, he knew none of the other guests, who were mainly nobby types from the posher enclaves of Clapham and Wandsworth. Round about 5pm, they would have a light lunch in backwards order and then dress in pyjamas and dressing gown for the evening.
Guess what was their last meal of the day?When recently announcing initiatives by the Better English Campaign, its chairman, Trevor McDonald, cited John F Kennedy as a great defender of language. The late president seems a peculiar choice as a linguistic hero, since he was a notorious gabbler. On one occasion in December 1961, he achieved a record for the highest speed of public speaking by burbling away at an incomprehensible 327 words per minute.I suppose Trev and his cronies at the Better English Campaign mean well, but I’ve always been inclined to the opinion that what is being said is more important than how it is said. Then they would scoff cheese, trifle, roast beef and soup, in that order and accompanied by the appropriate wines, before having a bracing G and T. Aimed at the young, it suggested that they should try the oh-so-zany experiment of consuming cornflakes for supper How radical. But the concept has already been tried out and, indeed, taken to its ultimate conclusion. In the Thirties, there was an undergraduate society at Oxford which was devoted to reversing the customary daily gastronomic sequence.
On certain days, its members would put on evening dress immediately on rising and consume a large brandy with a whopping cigar. And Pevsner’s Buildings of England, which customarily defends modernism, calls it “stodgy” and “disappointingly dull” But it does have one advantage. On days when the metropolis is shrouded in mist, and passengers are denied the distant, glorious vision of Luton, the wheel’s 26-storey neighbour will be plainly visible.Staying up a bit later than my customary bedtime, I caught a TV advertisement for breakfast cereal. In fact, the spectacle that passengers will have the greatest opportunity of viewing is the monolithic tower of Shell Centre, virtually adjacent to the proposed site of the Millennium Wheel.Since the block is 338 feet high, students of mid-century architectural aesthetics will be able to feast their eyes on every detail – except that there are no details. When the structure was erected in 1963, Kenneth Tynan described it as “a cenotaph with bullet holes”. Still, even with each rotation lasting for 20 minutes, the time spent at the top will be comparatively limited.
