Some you loose

Forgive me, friends, for I have sinned. It has been way too long since my last blog and in the meantime I have been plucking the wings off butterflies.

It all started with a football game. That’s “sawker” for those of you in red, white and blue still staring disbelieving at the television screen.

Recently England played a football (sawker) match against Scotland. Or to put it into the relative vernacular of the two respective sides, Ingerrlund played against Scurtlund.

At one point, the excitable television commentator exclaimed: “they are guilty of indecision-making.”

It was a lovely phrase that doesn’t quite mean anything. “Indecision” is a word. “Decision-making” is a thing. But you can’t stick them together in a hotel room to make a little baby called “indecision-making”. It doesn’t work like that.

You can make decisions, but you can’t make indecisions.

Of course, the fans didn’t bat an eyelid at this. They were well into their thirteenth chorus of that stadium classic “you’re not singing any more.” It’s a lovely tune which has the catchy chorus of “you’re not singing any more” followed by the second verse of “you’re not singing any more.”

And repeat.

While we were enjoying that one, the other commentator decided that he had to join in with the fun. He offered us this pearl: “He’s a sitting duck standing there.”

So what is it, my friend? Is the canard sitting or standing? We really need to know. I now have this weird Schrodinger’s cat image in my head, where the duck is both sitting and standing at the same time.

Quantum physics on the soccer field. Whoever would have thought it?

Of course, football (sawker) is the gift that keeps on giving. After you have watched a match you get to relive it in the highlights, the discussion in the pub and the online news comment forums.

And it was on the next morning’s Guardian comments section that one pundit uncorked this: “You loose some you win some”

You loose some? Purlease!

Now that puts me into a lose-lose situation. Or maybe that should be a loose-loose situation? I can’t just let it stand there like a sitting duck. I’ve got to say something. But if I say something, it will look churlish. I will sound like one of the spelling Nazis.

So I did the only thing I could. I reached out to this anonymous football supporter and offered him the hand of friendship. I imagined him … it was almost certainly a him … as a fairly moderate sort of chap. Phlegmatic. He’s balancing the fates on either hand and concluding … meh. Some you win, some you loose.

I told him that when I was Prime Minister I would change the meanings of “loose” and “lose” so that they both mean exactly the same as each other. That way everybody wins.

My other favourite is when someone types on the internet “Here here!” meaning “Hear hear!” Of course, we very rarely write down the phrase “hear hear”, so it’s perhaps understandable that we know how it is pronounced by not how to spell it.

Forgive me, friends, but when I see “here here” I can’t resist replying “Where? Where?” I know, I know, it doesn’t help. But it gives me a chortle.

But all of these pale into nothingness compared with the most magnificent mis-spelling of them all. More than I once I have seen this classic: “He’s acting like a right Pre-Madonna.”

Pre-Madonna! Just let that wash over you.

Glorious, isn’t it?