The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

34 Saturday May 28 2022 | the times

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Common sense, is the short

answer, and metric for mountains.

Hold your tongue

A

s a retired farmer, John Harris

from Clevedon, north

Somerset, writes that he was

glad to see Alice Thomson’s article in

support of sustainable, regenerative

agriculture. “But cows don’t fart

methane. They belch it. If farting is

seen as a contributor to climate

change, Ms Thomson should be

reminded that the average human

farts 15 times a day — apparently.

Not sure that she can ban that.”

She wouldn’t dream of it, I’m sure.

Stephanie Calman detected shades

of Les Dawson in our gardening

section. “I thought ‘mother-in-law’s

tongue’ had been consigned to the

compost heap. Please call it Dracaena

trifasciata, or the name now used in

garden centres, snake plant.”

But with all due respect to

mothers-in-law, would anyone know

what we were talking about?

John Lane was moved to write by

our brief report on the closure of the

186-year-old family tailors, Penguin

Suits, formerly Newcombs, who cut

cloth for Edward VII. “I still wear my

fine houndstooth suit made for me

by Newcombs in 1960 (yes, 62 years

ago) when serving on the Staff of

Commander in Chief, the Nore, at

Chatham. I am now in touch with

Mr Newcomb (seventh generation)

and as he sadly observes, times

change. Thank you for the memory.”

And it still fits, amazingly. “All

credit to the tailoring,” he says.

quite different activities. He actually

starts with ‘bird spotter’, which is

what you do to gain your I-Spy

badge.”

Oddie apparently invited his

readers to place in order of

importance food, world peace and a

lanceolated warbler if they wanted to

find out whether they were birders,

twitchers or “dudes”.

I think I’ll stick with being a

birdwatcher (occasional).

Decimal points

S

tephen Salt was struck by an

article in Weekend which gave

tips on how to reduce one’s waist

measurement. “Apparently keeping

to a ten-hour eating window resulted

in people losing up to 6.72cm from

their waistlines after 12 weeks. When

I measure my waist I can change it

by at least an inch by pulling on the

tape. I would love to know how waist

measurements are accurate to two

decimal places in centimetres.”

Nice to know that someone else

does that trick. I’m surprised the

article failed to mention it.

Mike Norman wrote from

Nottingham to say he was bemused

by our report about climbers trying

to bag all 14 Himalayan peaks above

26,247ft.

“This seemed rather an arbitrary

height. I’d expect to see a round

number in this context. Then I

whipped out my calculator and

found that 26,247ft is 8,000m. A tad

imperialistic on the editorial front

perhaps? I’m curious what the style

guide recommends in such cases.”

in a fury about umpires letting rain

stop play, and the superwag Rebekah

Vardy was in a fury about something

else, no doubt important. And so on.

The style guide has more on this.

“We are lucky to have intelligent and

sophisticated readers. They buy

The Times to avoid the hype and the

stale words and phrases peddled by

some other papers. Words such as

shock, bombshell, crisis, scandal,

sensational, controversial, desperate,

dramatic, fury, panic, chaos, etc, are

too often ways of telling the readers

what to think. Let them decide for

themselves.”

Feathered friends

W

hen I passed on a reader’s

query as to when the word

“birding” had taken over

from “birdwatching” I wasn’t really

expecting to find there was chapter

and verse on the subject. Silly me.

Malcolm Ogilvie wrote, “This is an

Americanism that crossed the

Atlantic many years ago. The

American magazine Birding was first

published in 1970. Yes, it is bemoaned

by some, but it is now very widely

used among the birding fraternity.

Isn’t it better to use a shorter word,

provided the meaning is still clear?”

Up to a point, I suppose. Richard

Ellis, a retired nature reserve warden

from Tenby, and a self-described

birder, pointed to another source.

“1980 was when Bill Oddie published

his Little Black Bird Book in which he

explains the differences between

birdwatcher, birder, twitcher,

ornithologist, etc. They all refer to

T

hursday’s leading article on

Sue Gray’s report felt that

she had underestimated

public feeling about the

scale of Downing Street

partying. “Dismayed” — her word —

was surely an understatement, the

leader writer said. “Outraged” would

have been more to the point.

Perhaps the writer even considered

“furious” but would that have been

going too far? Peter Williams wrote

— before publication of the report —

to ask, “Why is it that so many

people these days ‘react with fury’ to

developments? I have rarely seen a

furious person and while I accept

that people seem more volatile these

All this fury is

enough to make

anyone annoye d

days I just don’t believe so many are

reacting with ‘fury’.”

Mr Williams’s objection is fair

enough. My Shorter Oxford defines

“fury” as “Fierce passion, disorder or

tumult of mind approaching

madness”. He is also supported by

our style guide, which says we should

avoid the temptation to overuse this

hyperbolic word. “Real ‘fury’ is rarely

expressed or intended; anger,

irritation or even mild

disappointment are more likely

responses to most of the things that

are written about in this way.”

A glance at this week’s papers,

however, reveals that this stricture

has been falling on deaf ears lately.

On Monday we said that rail unions

had “reacted with fury” to

government plans, and that athletes

ditto to proposed changes to the

Olympic pentathlon. Donald Trump,

we noted, was in a fury with Mike

Pence, and the prime minister was in

a fury about a Times report. The

chief executive of Sussex cricket was

Ros e

Wild

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