Here is a Picture of a Dog

Before talking about pictures of dogs, it’s time to pay attention to some important points of English grammar, before the responsibility for the whole thing is given to the Americans.

Already my spellchecker corrects my spelling into American English. This has been going on in the office for years, but for it to take hold of my Thalwil laptop is too much. England has become the grammatical and spelling 51^st State of America.

The particular last straw (and point in question) was pointed out by my Norwich next door neighbour, in Rose Valley. He is a solicitor and as such is in “Practice”. It has always been a mystery why solicitors need to practise for so long, but there it is. The spelling point of this statement is that up to twelve weeks ago, I would have written “…need to practice for so long.”

For the slow of sight, like me, this was spelled with a “c”, instead of an “s” and upon such trivia, empires rise and fall.

How many of you knew that? No one, except my neighbour. I didn’t know it. My straw poll of six people showed that no one, including me, realised that the verb is “practise”. It took a Yahoo search (not Google, the wicked immoral devious tax avoider) of an online dictionary to point out that it is that it is Americans again who have changed the spelling to “I practice the piano.”

We’ve been taken over. The cause is hopeless. It is too late to stop the rot, even with my Norwich neighbour, struggling bravely at the linguistic barricades.

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Changing the subject entirely, one of the few plus points of my latest treatment is that in times of extreme tiredness, I can watch junk movies that I have seen at least five times already. “Die Hard” is the favourite, with Harrison Ford and Star Wars not far behind. For something really long, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s people can take up three entire days.

The latest film that I watched was “Armageddon”, accidently lifted by me from my niece’s library and which I failed to return. Anyway, on returning to Thalwil, and trying to watch this on my PC, the DVD decided to play the film in German.

I don’t know whether this is some kind of conspiracy between the DVD, my laptop and local authorities, but I do know that it is very irritating. The wicked immoral devious tax avoider, Google, is always trying to switch me into German or divert my searches to www.google.ch (the Swiss site).

Back to Armageddon, I managed to find the option to have English (or American?) sub-titles without a problem, and I am disappointed to report that after the pressing of only a couple of random keys, I managed to change the language. A small step for man, but a giant step for a Hawker.

Anyway, Bruce Willis saved the Earth and we can all sleep happily ever after. (…and now my iTunes has decided to double up most of my tracks. I think that this is called a feature upgrade or enhancement). As it is Apple, it must be my fault.

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In case you are wondering about the title to this blog, a headline on the BBC news website caught my eye last week for no particular reason. “India dog steals 400,000 rupees”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-21076712  At the time, I didn’t know what particular aspect of this caught my eye. I think my instinct was to ask whether 400,000 rupees is a lot of money, or whether it was a case of a large number of digits, with only enough value to buy a Mars Bar. (Is this product placement? Am I allowed to do this? Can I charge Mars for this mention?).

Anyway, it seems that 400,000 rupees is nearly £4,500, so it was worth something of a fuss.

What caught my eye later was the photograph. I wondered whether there was a connection between the dog in the story and the dogs in the photo. There must have been. Why else would you have the photo? “Here is picture of Fido / Rover - or the Indian equivalent - resting after lifting £4,500”.

The caption is “Stray dogs are a common sight on India’s streets”…..and here is a random photo, which we found in the archives, of a couple of dogs, who could have come from anywhere, even Streatham High Street and will remind you what dogs look like, in case you have forgotten…..and anyway, we always like to put photos in our articles, however irrelevant, as it reduces the amount that we have to write and you have to read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confession Time:

Blogspot, on which this piece of nonsense is published, is operated by Google, the wicked immoral devious tax avoider. Oh no. What am I to do?

Suggestions required. In the meantime, I am self-righteously marching off to Starbucks for a hot chocolate and to read the paper.