A spot of elections, and some poetry
May. 5th, 2007 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tree_and_leafI'm rather shaking my head over the Affair of the Spoiled Ballots in the Scottish elections. Actually, I would have thought most people would be able to cope with two voting methods in the same poll - but I suppose much depends on how clear the instructions were. Personally, as a postal voter, I was too busy being confused by the question of where to stuff which envelope... Which, of course, brings up the other apparent source of spoiled papers: people folding them. I honestly can't see why that should constitute spoiling, but if it must be so: Dear Electoral Returning Officer, please make sure that the ballot fits the bloody envelope in the first place.
Suspect I have, in fact, spoiled my paper in that way, and that I am thus partly responsible for the count being held up in my constituency, but frankly, I blame the stationery....
On to something completely different: I've just been reading David Crystal's new book, "By Hook or By Crook: a Journey in Search of English". Thouroughly recommended, although it's hard to discribe: it's either stream-of-consciousness-linguistics, or a linguistic travel log, or, perhaps more accurately still, like listening to a well informed and aimiable philologist ramble on of an evening. One of the things he wrote about was the poet John Bradburne, who I'd never heard of (largely because he's virtually unpublished). After becoming a Catholic in the late sixties, he went off to Africa to live in a cave, tend lepers... and to write highly accomplished, rather old fashioned poetry, about... well, apparently about the first thing tha popped into his head (he even wrote his letters in couplets). Actually, the poet he reminds me most is Byron, with perhaps a dash of Wordsworth and a little Chesterbelloc. I can see why Crystal likes him, as he's obviously fascinated by words. I don't think the academy is likely to know what to make of him - but I'm fascinated, anyway. Minor, but I'm rather a fan of interesting minor poetry.
There's an internet edition of the poems here: http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/index.php , where in addition to reading the poems (alas, the site is not easy to browse), you can marvel at Bradburne's odd resemblance to Gary Oldman's Sirius Black. It must be all that living in caves....
Suspect I have, in fact, spoiled my paper in that way, and that I am thus partly responsible for the count being held up in my constituency, but frankly, I blame the stationery....
On to something completely different: I've just been reading David Crystal's new book, "By Hook or By Crook: a Journey in Search of English". Thouroughly recommended, although it's hard to discribe: it's either stream-of-consciousness-linguistics, or a linguistic travel log, or, perhaps more accurately still, like listening to a well informed and aimiable philologist ramble on of an evening. One of the things he wrote about was the poet John Bradburne, who I'd never heard of (largely because he's virtually unpublished). After becoming a Catholic in the late sixties, he went off to Africa to live in a cave, tend lepers... and to write highly accomplished, rather old fashioned poetry, about... well, apparently about the first thing tha popped into his head (he even wrote his letters in couplets). Actually, the poet he reminds me most is Byron, with perhaps a dash of Wordsworth and a little Chesterbelloc. I can see why Crystal likes him, as he's obviously fascinated by words. I don't think the academy is likely to know what to make of him - but I'm fascinated, anyway. Minor, but I'm rather a fan of interesting minor poetry.
There's an internet edition of the poems here: http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/index.php , where in addition to reading the poems (alas, the site is not easy to browse), you can marvel at Bradburne's odd resemblance to Gary Oldman's Sirius Black. It must be all that living in caves....