Play With Words

猜猜看，说的是那一家？

From Guardian’s Diary column:

When we hear so much from politicians about antisocial behaviour, it is good to have real testimonies from real people. Readers like Ray Mitcham. People who’ve suffered. “We have a huge council house in our street,” he says. “The extended family is run by a grumpy old woman with a pack of fierce dogs. Her car isn’t taxed or insured, but the police still do nothing. Her bad-tempered old man is famous for upsetting foreigners with racist comments. A shopkeeper blames him for ordering the murder of his son and his son’s girlfriend, but nothing has been proved yet. All their kids have broken marriages except the youngest. Two grandsons are meant to be in the army but are always seen out in nightclubs. The family’s odd antics are always in the papers. They are out of control. Honestly – who’d live near Windsor Castle?” Who indeed.

Guardian’s Hadley Freeman answers the question “Why do fashion models look so grumpy” from a male reader. (I must confess I have the same question but not sure whom to ask.)

Well, try being a model: you can’t eat, you barely get to sleep and you often have to wear really stupid clothes yet keep a straight face while the photographer shouts about how you should shag the camera, or something.

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.

《卫报》(The Guardian)的报纸版面设计我认为是英国报纸中最好的，然而，错字也不少。出版时间紧迫，也许出错难免，但是如果评论版头版的题头位置出现明显的错误，实在有点说不过去了。

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

Kathryn Hughes explains Jane Austen’s philosophy is more about pragmatism than romance.

Everyone in Austen’s world comes with a price tag that announces, in terms as clear as a livestock auction, just how much money is on offer and how much is expected in return. Thus a stonking great income of £5,000 a year is quite enough to wipe out body odour and the fact that no one in three counties can stand your screechy laugh. But with only a paltry £100 a year, you’d better have the kind of cleavage Andrew Davies dreams about.

Never mind the cleavage

Andrew Davies: writer of Sense and Sensibility (2007 TV series), Bridget Jones 2, Bridget Jones’s Diary

Mark Lawson 发表在今天 (2007-01-26) 《卫报》上的 Hollywood in the mirror 的开场白：

Since Elizabeth II’s advisers started working to make her seem more in tune with the public mood, it has become customary for her to send congratulations to Britain’s Academy Award nominees. But this harmless gesture of modernity will have had the flunkeys in a kerfuffle this year because the UK’s nominations for a movie about the attempts by Elizabeth’s advisers to make her seem more in tune with the public mood.

Hollywood in the mirror
flunkeys: servants
kerfuffle: commotion or disturbance