Play With Words

Guardian’s Hadley Freeman answers the question “Why do women carry such bloody great handbag?“

You want to know why we need such big bags? I’ll tell you why. Because we are the responsible gender. Oh sure, you guys think you are ever so nonchalant and spontaneous, stuffing your keys, wallet and phone into your back pocket and being good to go. Silly women, who can’t even pop to the local shop without stuffing the flipping kitchen sink into their handbags, right? But who do you turn to when you need a tissue? Or a compact for an emergency post-lunch teeth check? Or a pen, or a diary to check one’s availality for the next month? That’s right, to your good lady friend, standing there with her bloody great handbag, like a faithful courtier anticipating her prince regent’s every bloody great need.

Which does not exactly answer the question. Besides, there is ‘man bag’ which is growing its popularity. But I like her writing.

Jane Godley is quoted on The Scotsman saying:

This terror attack (at Glasgow Airport) has confused Glaswegians. They’re asking if the attackers were Protestant Muslims or Catholic Muslims.

英国首相交接的正式公告－－来自白金汉宫

Wednesday, 27th June 2007

BUCKINGHAM PALACE: Mr. Justice Griffith Williams was received by The Queen this morning upon his appointment as a Justice of the High Court when Her Majesty conferred upon him the honour of Knighthood and invested him with the Insignia of a Knight Bachelor.

Mr. Richard Stagg was received in audience by The Queen upon his appointment as British High Commissioner to the Republic of India.

Mrs. Stagg was also received by Her Majesty.

The Rt. Hon Tony Blair MP had an audience of The Queen this afternoon and tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury which Her Majesty was graciously pleased to accept.

Mrs. Blair was also received by The Queen.

Her Majesty received in audience the Rt. Hon Gordon Brown MP and requested him to form a new Administration. The Rt. Hon Gordon Brown MP accepted The Queen’s offer and kissed hands upon his appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.

Mrs. Brown was also received by Her Majesty.

看过 The Queen (2006) 都知道皇室礼仪(protocol)的重要性，还有一个谜团，到底有没有 kissed hands 呢？

Rt. Hon: Right honourable
MP: Member of Paliarment

在星期二布莱尔最后一次记者招待会上，布莱尔被问道对他的继任者有没有什么建议？我们来看记者们是如何话外听音的：

Simon Hoggart on the Guardian:

Someone asked if he had any advice for his successor. “No”, he snapped. “He is perfectly capable of doing the job on his own.” The word “Not!” hovered unspoken in the air.

Andrew Gimson on the Daily Telegraph:

“Do you have any advice for your successor?” another correspondent ventured, to which Mr Blair replied with a brevity almost worthy of Clement Attlee: “No. He’s perfectly capable of doing the job on his own, thank you.”

Some of us took this to mean that Mr Blair will leave Gordon Brown to make a terrible mess of being Prime Minister and will then have a jolly good laugh at his expense.

Lucy Mangan of the Guardian describes the voice of Margaret Thatcher:

As the child of parents who worked in the NHS and the National Theatre, I was brought up to think of her as a one-woman hell on earth, but I popped a few pills and did my best to follow Marr’s examination of the Thatcherite years despite the fact that her voice - that self-aggrandising, cloying, patronised and patronising voice oozing out of that vicious, dead-eyed face - still paralyses me with fear and loathing.

I’m always amazed to see Thatcher is hated so much by some people.

Nick Roddick described the reaction of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days winning Palme d’Or in Guardian:

The film world’s collective jaw may have dropped on Sunday night when 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days - a Romanian film about abortion with no stars and costing under half a million pounds - walked off with the Palme d’Or in Cannes.

如果翻译成中文：大约是“全世界的电影人都在满地找眼镜”。

BBC Newsnight Review 的三位嘉宾的预测也错了，但还不算太离谱。《潜水钟与蝴蝶》得了最佳导演奖。

Guardian’s Simon Hoggart described the crowd who support woman MP Harriet Harman’s contest to be Gordon Brown’s deputy.

She had backing from 61 MPs. Of these, 31 are women. They, with a handful of men, marched into a committee room at the Commons like Japanese tourists who has lost the lady with the flag. They knew it was important, but they weren’t quite clear why they were there.

Joke in expense of Harriet Harman’s gender…or the ladies who support her perhaps?

专栏作家Bernard Levin在1994年布莱尔成为工党领导人之后在《泰晤士报》上的文章，向我们演示知识分子是如何骂人的：

Labour at last has a modern leader ready to sweep to power and end this sorry era.

The longer and more frequently I contemplate Mr Blair, the more I like the cut of his jib. This has nothing to do with the alternative; I long ago concluded that the present Government was worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent, lazy, mendacious, ignorant, rotten, false, disreputable, deceitful, unsavoury, squalid, abominable, soiled, piratical, shifty, discreditable, infamous, improper, obscene, hateful, impure, degraded, dilapidated, shabby, grovelling, discredited, renownless, tarnished, disgraced, shameless, creeping, abject, two-faced, unscrupulous, villainous, treacherous, untrustworthy, prevaricating, sinister, crawling, insincere, fishy, spurious, unclean, felonious, infamous, venal, base, vile, bribable, rancid, disloyal, scheming, unsavoury, sickening, fetid, nauseating, putrid, defaulting, mouldering, evil, vicious, damnable, maleficent, wrong, ineffectual, mean, inferior, contemptible, superficial, irrelevant, expendable, powerless, pathetic, nugatory, impotent, jumped-up, cheap, insalubrious, flea-ridden, unsound, nasty, baneful, foul-tonged, cursed, unwarranted, execrable, damned, abnormal, unreasonable, virtueless, peccant, sinful, unworthy, hopeless, incorrigible, tergiversating, brutalised, nefarious, culpable, scandalous, worthless, flagitious, gross, indefensible and unpardonable to say the least. But Blair, as far as I can see, is to be found on his own feet, not measuring by the scabrous (I missed that one) Lilliputians now arrayed against him.

不过如果你仔细看，他还是重复使用了 infamous 和 insavoury 两次。

After the loss of election in England, Scotland and Wales of various degress, the retiring Tony Blair was seen being interviewed in some nondescriptive office, with a mug of tea in hand. The Times’s Ann Treneman wrote:

Mr Blair, who denies he is in denial, denied things were so bad. Then, casually, he dropped his soundbite cluster bomb. “It’s been a dreadful set of results for the Liberal Democrats,” he said chattily. “And the Tories have not broken through, particularly in the northern cities.” Within seconds, this was being flashed up as BREAKING NEWS. The mug had struck again.

Soundbite is a weapon a politican must master.

Stephen Bates wrote in The Guardian:

The courtship is being conducted with all the formality of a Jane Austen novel. Effie is being introduced to the others one at a time and for strictly limited hour-long meetings each day to avoid unpleasantness on either side. Informally, the keepers call it speed-mating.

What is this all about? Obviously there is certain ‘Kate Moss of gorillas’ who is about to be introduced into the ‘Gorillas Kingdom’ in London Zoo.

How the Kate Moss of gorillas gave Ziggy the hump at London Zoo’s new enclosure