Death Proof (2007)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Quentin Tarantino’s latest offering was his half of the ‘Grindhouse’ collaboration with Roberto Rodriguez, revised and released separately. A homicidal stuntman uses his souped-up, ‘death proof’ car to stage murderous attacks on two groups of women, with a different outcome in each case.

Over the last few weeks I have wallowed in the glories of old cinema classics like Brief Encounter and The Roaring Twenties and seen what might come to be regarded as their equal, Atonement. I have enjoyed well-made movies like Fracture and The Prestige. I have been disappointed but nonetheless entertained by Die Hard 4.0 and 3.10 to Yuma.

And now I can add Death Proof to the list. A movie of the utmost banality. Not only is it rubbish, it is boring rubbish. And if Tarantino’s reply is that it’s a homage to the grindhouse movies of the past, complete with scratches, then it is self-indulgent boring rubbish, a film with its excuses built in.

All right, I’ll grant you a gruesome car crash, a vaguely erotic lap dance, an extended car chase and some impressive stunts. But the talk, the talk, the interminable talk!

Dialogue has always been one of Tarantino’s trademarks and he was rightly praised for it in his breakthrough films like Reservoir Dogs. It was witty, snappy and hilariously profane. It was also delivered by good, charismatic actors. It blended into the action, illuminated character and did nothing to hinder the narrative.

But in Death Proof it is idle, inane chatter between nonentities. A puffy Kurt Russell is no substitute for Travolta or Jackson or Keitel. And instead of Pam Grier or Uma Thurman we are presented with a gaggle of twittering starlets with cellulite.

Another of Tarantino’s traits has been his taste for playfulness with narrative. Flashbacks, putting the end at the beginning, or in the middle. Here he progresses in traditional fashion from A to B, then from A1 to C. If you don’t understand that, don’t worry. It’s not important. Nothing about this film is important.

We are treated to the usual QT camera angles, shots from inside a car engine, women's feet and other symptoms of adolescent film-making. There's the camera circling round the tableful of gabbling girls. Well, it worked in Reservoir Dogs, didn't it? And, ooh, what a long take. Seven minutes, I’m told. How easy to be a master director! Just strap on a steadicam and wander round a table after telling your actresses to chatter inanely. (Surely that stuff wasn't written).

Incidentally it proves why long takes should never be undertaken for their own sake. They work, in the sense that they match style and content, in, for example, Goodfellas and Atonement. Here it merely draws attention to itself and irritates. It’s like listening to the pub bore telling you how great a director Tarantino is.

QT isn't happy unless he's showing off his knowledge of forgotten films or pandering to the movie buffs in the audience. Did you know that Kurt Russell was in The Virginian a couple of times? There’s the rubber duck from Convoy on the bonnet (is that to remind us that even Peckinpah made bad films too?). Russell does a John Wayne impression – what an actor! I expect there were allusions to Japanese children’s TV, but they went over my head. And it was perhaps a mistake to keep mentioning Vanishing Point, with which Death Proof suffers badly in the comparison.

Has it any good points? There was one point when, following a sequence made for no apparent reason in black and white, we suddenly switch to colour, and glorious colour it is too. Yellow and orange leap out at you. A good moment.

And then there’s the stunt woman to whom he gives a speaking part, partly as a reward for her work on Kill Bill, partly because we can recognise that in the final car chase it is indeed her doing the heroics. She can’t act, but that is no problem in this movie. And there’s no doubt it’s an exciting sequence.

And there's the music, which helps pass to pass the time.

So how do I sum up: it’s a horror movie without being scary; it’s an action movie full of talk; it’s a black comedy which is not funny; and it’s a revenge story with little feeling of satisfaction, let alone catharsis.

Will Tarantino ever grow up? Will he ever put his undoubted talent with camera, actors and pen to produce anything other than self-regarding concept movies? Many of us thought Jackie Brown marked a new maturity but with Kill Bill and now this, I fear he will never emerge from the movie nursery.

Trials of a smoker

I have noticed that the smoking ban in ‘enclosed public spaces’ has unleashed a rather priggish attitude in many non-smokers.

On July 1st, the very first day of the ban, a middle-aged woman at the bar of my pub turned to a man waiting to be served and made the comment, ‘Isn’t it nice now there’s no smoking?’

‘**** off,’ was the reply.

Appropriate, I thought, if a little discourteous.

But it’s not only disgruntled smokers who can be rude. I myself was standing outside the pub a week later, enjoying a cigarette and watching the summery girls walk by, when a man passed me. A rather anonymous, unprepossessing character, whom I could imagine washing his car on a Sunday morning while listening to Richard Kledermans. As he walked past me he flapped his hand in front of his face to waft away imaginary smoke.

‘Yes, it is hot today,’ I remarked, but what I thought is unprintable, probably unspellable.

Sometimes I get very angry about this business. In fact, I often get angry about it. I hate to sound pompous, but it IS a denial of my personal freedom. More than that, it is a denial of choice and an interference in the working of the market economy.

When you get angry you sometimes cease to bother about consequences. The other evening I got up out of my seat in the pub to go outside for a smoke. As a tiny gesture of rebellion I lit up before leaving. I heard a muttered complaint from somewhere but ignored it, but determined to repeat the gesture later.

When I did, I heard the same shocked protest, and so I turned to enquire if my action was of any real consequence to this individual. Except I put my query more succinctly. I must admit I had a slight twinge when I realised that the protester appeared to what is known as ‘handy’. What the hell? He was obviously a man with great respect for the law.

What irritated me was that, although I was in the wrong, I doubt I’d have been rebuked so automatically if I had been dropping litter on the floor, swearing, telling racist jokes, making lewd remarks to the barmaids, slurring my speech or being sick on the carpet. No, I was smoking. And that gives a green light to every smug, self-righteous, sanctimonious prig to feel superior for once in their pitifully useless lives.

And now the bastards have got one of my friends - angrier, braver than I - barred.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

The Simpsons may not make a great movie but it makes for great fun.

The TV show is such a phenomenon that while millions of fans were eagerly anticipating enjoying the movie, the critics were sharpening their quills and drooling at the thought of savaging it.

They’ve had to settle for damning it with faint praise. They say it’s just an extended episode of the series. Well, yes. That it’s flat and old-fashioned. Agreed. It’s no Pixar or Aardman animation. That the cultural references will date it. Possibly, although the fact that we all recognise the homage to 50-year-old Disney films rather belies that. That it retains the look of a TV show rather than a movie. To a certain extent.

What the hell. I loved it.

Even though I wanted more Mr Burns and less of the guest villain, more Principal Skinner and less Ned Flanders. And another thing. What happened to the pig?

My favourite visual gag, involves the church and Moe’s Bar next door. When the news is out that everyone is due to die in five minutes, the regulars in each place scurry to change places. (OK, you have to see it).

If you want to feel pleased with yourself, go and see Bergmann and Antonioni. If you want to please yourself, go and see The Simpsons Movie.

Hetty and Pixie

Leafing through an old issue of Computer Active, the only computer magazine that I have a hope of understanding, I came across an article recommending 50 useful websites. The article might still be there, although I can’t find it easily myself.

A lot of them I’d already found for myself. Cinema sites such as IMDb; a pub guide; cricket; Google Earth; Delia Smith on food; etc, etc.

* * *

But one site I would never have thought to seek out is Cat of the Day.

It’s twee, it’s cute, it’s what it says on the tin: a daily picture of someone’s moggy. But cats are not cute. They are the tiger in your living room.

Over the last twenty years two of the creatures have added my home to their territory.

HETTY was the first. Hetty, because we didn’t realise at first that he was a tom. We never had him neutered, or castrated as I prefer to call it. There were various reasons for this anti-social omission.

First, he was a fine cat and deserved to have his genes preserved. Second, the tabby cat in general is in danger, with people wanting to show off their wealth with pedigrees and other designer cats. In any case, it’s the female’s job to worry about contraception, isn’t it? (Only joking). Third, as a fellow male, I felt a kinship with him and couldn’t bear the thought of mutilating him in that horrendous way. I did consider a vasectomy for him, after he’d had a busy year or two impregnating the local queens, but that brought me up against the fourth reason: sheer bloody stinginess.

I did have to take him to the vet once. Playing cricket with one of my children in the back garden, I tossed the ball towards the bat, and as the child swung to hit it, Hetty appeared out of nowhere to try and catch the ball.

He was laid out cold and remained so for an hour or two.

The vet hummed and haahed, prescribed some tablets and suggested tests. By the time of the test results, three days later, by which time Hetty was bounding around like a kitten, the vet informed us there was nothing wrong and presented a large bill.

Hetty would be away for days on end, and we learned not to worry, but then came the time when we knew he would never return. Perhaps he had hopped onto a lorry that was often parked nearby and ended up in Grimsby. Perhaps that neighbour had carried out his threat to shoot him if he trespassed on his garden again. Perhaps he found a better place to stay.

For he never belonged to us. And that’s why I loved him.

* * *

PIXIE, who replaced Hetty, was a female. Like Hetty she was black and white, and beautiful. (The pictured cat is very like her).

I always assumed it was a sexual thing that Hetty took to my wife more than me, but with Pixie mine was her lap of preference. Every day, when I returned home from work, she would be waiting for me and as I pulled the car into the drive she would trot towards it in greeting. But when I got out of the car and walked towards her she would turn her back and ignore me. At all costs she must remain cool and keep her distance. Our relationship was strictly on her terms.

Two things I found she had difficulty in resisting. Being groomed with a comb. I envied the sensual pleasure she seemed to derive from the stroke of the comb under her chin. The other was marmite. I discovered that the greatest treat for her was licking a dollop of the spread from the tip of my finger. So rough was her tongue that my finger was left totally unsticky. A genuinely shared pleasure.

Desmond Morris once called a domestic cat ‘the tiger in your living room’, and he was quite right. The last time I saw a tiger, in a zoo, I was struck by the way it walked or rather slunk along, head down but wary, ears flicking, hind quarters low-slung and ready to pounce.

Pixie always hunted. I used to watch her in the back garden, sitting under a buddleia eyeing the butterflies and occasionally grabbing one out of the air. I’ve seen her stalking through flowers and emerging with something furry in her teeth, a tail dangling from her mouth. Once she took this victim and placed in what I would swear was the geometric centre of the lawn and lay it down. Then she moved several yards away and watched. The prey – vole, shrew – scuttled towards the safety of the bushes. But in vain, because Pixie would wait until it was inches from shelter before bounding over and catching it. The process began again. Eventually, either through boredom or as a reward for passing her own test, she ate it.

Let’s not apply anthropomorphic sentimentality to a wild animal. Let’s admire the perfection of its predatory instincts and skill.


PIXIE’S KITTENS were born in the middle of the night on my daughter’s bed. One fell to the floor and it was its scream for help – a scream so shrill and piercing that it was difficult to believe so tiny a creature could utter it – that woke me. I picked it up and placed it with the others, which were already suckling.

I believe I saved that little cat’s life. So much for not interfering with nature!

While the four kittens were chasing balls of rolled up newspaper, fighting with each other and flattening the flowerbeds, Pixie was driven to a hunting frenzy. At least once a day we would hear her summoning yowl at the kitchen window and she leapt in with some dead creature. There followed a scramble for the prize, and I noticed that the kitten I prided myself for saving usually missed out. He remained the runt, even in a small litter of four.

I’d found homes for them all, but heard that I should wait twelve weeks before parting them from their mother. I needn’t have been told, because Pixie knew. For at that time, to the day, she rejected them. She was lying on the floor, and when the kittens approached to nuzzle at her belly she snarled and spat and clawed them away. They sat back, expressions of shock on their faces – or was that me transferring my own reaction to them? But if cats can shrug their shoulders that’s what they did next.

A few days later they departed for their new homes.

Pixie is old now, bad-tempered and weak, but she still enjoys being groomed and still has her own personal jar of Marmite. She may have grown old but she retains the desire for certain pleasures. I know how she feels.

'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins

[1]

Just after finishing Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I happened to watch Elmer Gantry again.

It’s Burt Lancaster’s film, and he plays the role he was born for, but I’ll forbear lyricising about Burt and mention just one scene. This is where Arthur Kennedy, playing once again his cynical, sceptical but decent reporter character, has written an article condemning the hysteria and charlatanism endemic in ‘revivalism’.

In order to get the newspaper to print a retraction and make space available for a rebuttal, Elmer Gantry cross-examines the journalist about his religious beliefs. Kennedy’s character wheedles and prevaricates. He talks about the Bible being ‘beautiful poetry’; he admits how much he would like to believe. To confess to atheism, at that time, in America, was almost unthinkable.

And even today, we are browbeaten into showing respect for religion. On a radio show recently I heard Robert Winston, who professes Judaism, criticising Dawkins for his insulting use of the word ‘delusion’ in the title of this book. As I listened to him, I thought of the line, ‘Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.’

How could this intelligent man, I thought, not just believe, effectively, that there are fairies at the bottom of his garden, but expect other intelligent people to respect that belief? That delusion. That dangerous, dehumanising delusion.

Why is it that we are so careful in this country to understand and placate Muslims? Is it just that we afraid of being murdered? Maybe. But then why are we so concerned with a possibly diseased bullock, considered ‘sacred’ by a bunch of Hindus, who howl with outrage at the sacrilege committed by officials entering a ‘holy shrine’ to cart the damned thing off for slaughter. The man in charge actually took his boots off before entering. Can you believe it?

Can you believe that the case actually got to the Court of Appeal? I doubt if my cat would get the same consideration.

[2]

Dawkins gets the respect thing out of the way early and moves on to ask what people mean when they talk about belief in ‘God’. It’s what I always ask when someone asks me whether I believe in God. Which God? Allah, Jehovah, Pan, Thor? Aphrodite? Maybe I’d get down on my knees for her.

What sort of ‘god’? The clockmaker, the personal interventionist, the omnipresent immanence?

He checks off all the so-called proofs of some sort of god’s existence and easily shows how spurious they all are, before attempting to make some sort of case for the non-existence of God. Proving a negative is not easy at the best of times. So why bother trying, especially when not only is there no evidence for the positive, but we don’t know the nature of that ‘positive’, and it’s of no practical relevance to us anyway?

The answer to that is that the power of theism and its attendant religion is at best a dilution of our greatest talent, namely our reason; and at worst it is a seedbed for fanaticism, obscurantism and murder.

[3]

Dawkins seems to share this view, because not content with making an intellectual case for rejecting theism and embracing atheism, he goes onto the offensive. And he’s quite right to do so. Theists and religionists have had it their own way far too long, with their demands for respect, their indoctrination of children and their all-round bullying.

It’s timely too, when you can’t open a newspaper without seeing the stranglehold of militant Protestants on US politics, murderously militant Islam and the pernicious influence of Catholicism in the Third World.

Dawkins tries to explain the existence of religion in evolutionary terms, as a by-product of some useful mutation, primarily the tendency of children to believe their parents, to whom they are attached for a substantial part of their life. Add to that our inclination to form groups and avoid isolation, and the necessity for some emotional basis for pair-bonding, and it’s not fanciful to see by-products in nationalism, tribalism, religious affiliation (and fanatical support for football teams).

Religion gives us answers, something the human animal yearns for. And it gives us power. Every parent likes to invoke an authority figure to reinforce their own attempts at discipline. For example, ‘Wait till your father gets home,’ or ‘Don’t let that policeman see you.’ God is the best bogeyman you think of.

An issue Dawkins doesn’t address is whether humans have come to a point where evolution is not working any longer, because we are able to interfere with it. Our social morality forbids us, for example, to let the weak die; it also prevents males from distributing their seed as widely as they are programmed to do. At least it tries to.

Moreover, we shouldn’t forget that evolution is a hit-and-miss operation. For every useful mutation or trait-elimination there must be millions of useless or threatening ones. Such as religiosity.

[4]

While Dawkins’ polemic against religion is timely and necessary, he is less than politic in singling out certain moral issues with which to attack it. Abortion, for example. An attack on religion because it often forbids abortion is unlikely to be effective with people like myself who are uneasy about the wholesale termination of pregnancies. My concern has nothing to do with religion. I could argue that we are not giving evolution a chance, when healthy intelligent parents destroy their own genes.

Religion’s frequent prejudice against homosexuality is another of Dawkins’ bêtes noires. While tolerant myself I can easily understand a dislike of the practice in purely non-religious terms. After all, are not homosexuals, like nuns and monks, an evolutionary dead-end?

[5]

I have to say that I found a lot of Dawkins’ scientific explanations difficult to follow. But his final chapter, where he tries to describe the wonder of a mysterious world and the joy of forever discovering more about it without benefit of easy ‘revealed’ explanations, is inspirational.

His book is dedicated to Douglas Adams, with this quotation:

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Recently Read Novels

I heard an interview with Gervaise Finn the other day. Finn is the former teacher and schools inspector who writes cosily humorous anecdotes about his work in the Yorkshire Dales. It’s like All Creatures Great and Small, with kids instead of cows.

In the interview, where Finn was discussing some of his favourite books, he made the point that he tended to read as a writer. He would be aware of the technical devices, the style adopted, the choice of words, the pacing, etc.

I’m no writer, but I find myself doing the same thing. It reminds me of how, many years ago, when reading for a literary degree, I would write ‘literary appreciations’ as an academic exercise, usually on a piece of verse – Subject, Theme, Content, Style was the usual framework. It was all a bit dry. I sometimes think that a poem demands an emotional response and, if you are able to do a good job of conveying that response in writing, there is little point in the poem in the first place.

That’s not entirely true, obviously. After all, a good artist needs a sound knowledge of anatomy. But it irritates me when all a critic can do is point out allusions, interesting rhyme schemes and the like. It’s rather like watching O, Brother, Where Art Thou? with someone who insists on telling you all the parallels with The Odyssey. (That someone, by the way, could easily be me, I have to confess).

I was moved to muse on these matters because I’ve just completed several very different books.

Augustus, by John Williams, a novel which I’ve mentioned before, is the story of the first Emperor of Rome told by means of letters, diary entries, military reports, official proclamations, etc. Thus it provides a multiplicity of points of view, similar to the letter-novels of the novel’s infancy. It does not attempt therefore to pronounce an overall objective judgment on the central character. Such a judgment would merely be that of the author in any case and the multi-viewpoint approach offers greater truth if less certainty.

The Killer Within Me by Jim Thompson is also written in the first person, that person being criminally insane. While Williams' style is impressionistic, Thompson’s, typically of that American genre of ‘roman noir’, is expressionistic. It’s direct, crude and slangy. Sentences are short and punctuation is peppered with dashes, ellipses, capitalisation. Lot’s of dialogue.

Raymond Chandler always praised Jim Thompson as the master. So did Stanley Kubrick, for whom he wrote the screenplays of The Killing and Paths of Glory. Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway was based on a Thompson novel.

It is the custom to say that a movie is not as good as the novel upon which it is based. Not always true, by any means. The Guns of Navarone, for example, which I have just re-read. I know the film well, having seen it at an impressionable age – I still write my ‘e’s’ in the pseudo-Greek way (rather like this: <- ) used in the credits. Alastair MacLean obviously strives to write well, trying hard to describe and depict the storms, the scenery and even a little psychology. But he’s constrained by his formula. Every member of the team is an expert, able to demonstrate superhuman skills and perform uncommon feats of endurance. MacLean’s attempts at ‘literature’, if anything slow the book down, unlike the film, which never lets up the pace in all its two-plus hours. The film also redrew the characters, partly to flesh them out and tailor them to the all-star cast. It also created extra dimensions to provide more internal tension. And a couple of women to add a little sexual interest. A book of MacLean’s that I plan to read is what I think was his first, HMS Ulysses, which some consider to be one of the best books on the naval theatre of World War II, along with The Cruel Sea and The Caine Mutiny.

In the meantime I’m reading The Good Shepherd by C S Forester, whose books I’ve loved since I discovered Hornblower in my teens. Forester also wrote The African Queen, The Gun (which became The Pride and the Passion – now that was one where the film didn’t do justice to the book - and Brown on Resolution, which became Single-handed or Sailor of the King or Born for Glory or Forever England, take your pick. Take your pick of endings too.

The Good Shepherd is the story of a day in the life of the commander of a convoy escort at the height of the War in the Atlantic. In minute, methodical detail we follow the cat-and-mouse struggle between a destroyer and a wolf-pack of U-boats.

A brave book in many ways, for many would find it boring, despite the tension, for it is repetitive and action is minimal. I’m finding it fascinating.

A range of authors, a range of styles. Good or bad I admire them all, because writing is difficult. I know, I try to do it everyday, and am conscious of my inability to measure up to my own expectations, let alone the quality I see in others.

I’ve tried to compose poems and songs; I’ve attempted humour, irony and polemic in essays and letters; I keep a diary, I write my blog and snatches of autobiography; I’ve turned my hand to fiction, short stories worthy of women’s magazines and some fit only for the top shelf. But.

But I miss out on the elegance and insight of John Williams, the unself-consciousness of Thompson, the plotting and personal experience of MacLean, the knowledge of Forester, the warmth of Finn – not to mention other favourite authors. Wilde’s wit, Alastair Cooke’s conversational and discursive style – the list is endless. And intimidating.

But, as Churchill would say – he’s another one – KBO.

Sorry to be so boring

IT IS PETTY and perverse of me, I admit, to look around my local pub and observe with complacent satisfaction the empty chairs, the bored staff, and the increasingly desperate special offers.

I read in the local press that pub trade has reduced by 10 per cent since the smoking ban and backstreet boozers with no opportunity to provide outside facilities are facing a harsh commercial winter.

I got up from my table the other day, where there was a smug conversation going on about the administrative cock-up that is ‘Smoke-on-Trent’ to order another drink. I noticed a sign on the bar offering a steak at half price. ‘Vegetables of your choice,’ it promised. ‘Just ask our friendly staff.’

‘Are you one of the friendly ones?’ I asked Molly, the barmaid. ‘I’m never quite sure?’

‘What?’

‘Well, it says here, ‘’Ask our friendly staff.’’ I don’t want to ask any one unfriendly by mistake.’

She expressed doubts about my grip on reality and advised me to absent myself forthwith. Except she didn’t bother with the circumlocution.

Now that’s the thing about the English language. It’s so gloriously imprecise in some ways. In other ways it’s quite the opposite, because it’s got twice the number of words as, say, German. It’s a great mongrel of a language – and my father always told me to avoid pedigree dogs – unlike French, which even has an Academy to maintain its incestuous decline.

But French can’t be accused of being imprecise. I wouldn’t have been able to make my joking remark about ‘friendly staff’ in that language. Because French allows you to put an adjective before or after a noun, depending on the sense. Take ‘green grass’, for example. If you want to distinguish the green grass from grass of another colour, you would place ‘verte’ after ‘l’herbe’. If on the other hand you were just using green as a standard description of grass – all grass is by default green – it would go in front. This was the purpose of ‘friendly staff’, I presume.

I LEFT MY PINT on the table and strolled along the outside of the pub, to smoke a cigarette. I paused to light it and realised I was by an open window. What, I thought, if my smoke were to waft inside the pub? Would that count as ‘smoking inside a confined public space’? This thought took me back to my Latin lessons. Well, it would, wouldn’t it?

I had to ask myself if ‘confined space’ is in the ablative case or the accusative. If the former, ‘smoking in the pub’ would have the sense of ‘inside the pub’. If, on the other hand, ‘in’ is followed by the accusative case of the noun, it would mean ‘into the pub’. I would therefore be on the wrong side of the law (except in Stoke, that is).

Surprisingly, for such a language as English, flexible if you like, vague if you prefer, people will insist on being pedantic about it. Lynne Truss famously, and very profitably, wrote Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a combination of diatribe against poor punctuation and manual of correct practice.

Interestingly, if the New York Times is typical, the Americans were not impressed. This article not only disagrees with her rules of punctuation, but criticises her prose style, her grammar and her syntax.

I REMEMBER the fuss when the Ministry of Transport had a campaign about the dangers of falling asleep at the wheel of the car. ‘Don’t Drive Tired’ was the slogan.

‘Tired’ is an adjective. A verb must be modified by an adverb, must it not? What kind of message does it send when a government department propagates bad English? Etc . . . etc..

The criticism was misplaced, of course. The slogan may not be very elegant, but it’s more elegant, and certainly more effective, than ‘Don’t Drive Tiredly’, or ‘Don’t Drive While Fatigued’.

If I wanted to get into syntactic analysis, I could prove that the adjective, ‘tired’, is qualifying the understood ‘you’, part of the understood phrase, ‘while you are’. And in any case, if Dylan Thomas could write ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, why can’t we say ‘Don’t drive tired’?

(Should that question mark come before the quotation mark, I wonder? After all, Sir Roger Casement was hanged on a comma.)

The imprecision of English leads to inadvertent humour – ‘I see chickens are going cheap in Asda;’ bawdy humour – ‘I wonder if you’d be so kind as to introduce me to your wife;’ and poetry – ‘Now does he feel his secret murders sticking to his hands.’ Is any other language so prone to punning?

A LITTLE LATER, once again outside indulging the pleasures of the flesh, I stopped to read the notice warning against smoking in the pub. What a contemptible little scrap of card, and what execrable English. What a perfect feast for lawyers, so perfect an example of imprecise English it is.

‘These are no smoking premises. It is an offence to smoke or knowingly to permit smoking in these premises.

‘If you observe someone smoking here, a complaint may be made to the manager.’

‘These are no smoking premises.’ That could mean that ‘these premises don’t smoke.’ And if you’re not going to say ‘NON- smoking premises’, shouldn’t you at least put the hyphen after ‘no’.

‘Knowingly to permit . . .’ Well, at least the writer didn’t split the infinitive. But does this mean that other customers are obliged by law to prevent smoking? Are citizen’s arrests permitted?

‘A complaint may be made.’ Does this mean that there is a possibility of complaint or that you have permission to complain? Or could it mean that a complaint may be made about you observing smoking?

You see what nicotine deprivation does to people.

And if you’ve reached the end of this blog, you’re a sadder man that I am.