True story. Honest.
George Lucas was being interviewed on the tube over here, simultaneous translator and all, and at some stage (I guess you can take bets on this turning up at some stage, actually) said
"May the force be with you".
Translated as
"Am 4. Mai werden wir bei Euch sein"
which translates back as
"We'll be with you on May the fourth"
Try lisping....
24 May 2005
If you really want to meet some interesting people..........
... read the obituaries in the Daily Telegraph.
Now, you might question the value in all this, but I had not the slightest clue that Joyce Lambert was a "botanist whose research revealed that the Norfolk Broads were created not by nature but by man" nor that Major-General the Rev Ian Durie was "Britain's artillery commander in the Gulf who rose to become a curate at Battersea". (I especially liked the "rose to become a curate" bit....).
Or that Lieutenant-Commander John Russell "denied that he had amputated his own leg using his commando dagger, instead claiming to have used "a couple of sizeable bits of tibia or femur that I seemed to have spare" to attract the attention of some scurrying Americans" at Anzio.
Pretty habit-forming, mind you, and it could be construed as morbid curiosity, but some of this stuff is going to turn up on Trivial Pursuit one day, which in itself is a valued-added, as we say in the business.
But then there's the seriously good stuff.
Ian Durie's thesis for his PhD, for example.
Could I have lived happily without reading it.
Probably.
Did it enrich my life?
Definitely.
Valued-added doesn't begin to describe it.
Now, you might question the value in all this, but I had not the slightest clue that Joyce Lambert was a "botanist whose research revealed that the Norfolk Broads were created not by nature but by man" nor that Major-General the Rev Ian Durie was "Britain's artillery commander in the Gulf who rose to become a curate at Battersea". (I especially liked the "rose to become a curate" bit....).
Or that Lieutenant-Commander John Russell "denied that he had amputated his own leg using his commando dagger, instead claiming to have used "a couple of sizeable bits of tibia or femur that I seemed to have spare" to attract the attention of some scurrying Americans" at Anzio.
Pretty habit-forming, mind you, and it could be construed as morbid curiosity, but some of this stuff is going to turn up on Trivial Pursuit one day, which in itself is a valued-added, as we say in the business.
But then there's the seriously good stuff.
Ian Durie's thesis for his PhD, for example.
Could I have lived happily without reading it.
Probably.
Did it enrich my life?
Definitely.
Valued-added doesn't begin to describe it.
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