156

THE NEXT AGM
I don’t want to overegg the truckshunter pudding here but just in case you haven’t read Emergency Blogposting 155, the date of the next AGM has been altered to this upcoming Friday 31 July at The Sage Gateshead, to be followed by a riotous tour of the latest tat masquerading as Modern Art down at BALTIC.

To assist the terminally confused and feeble, I have helpfully posted a picture of one of the venues taken from inside the other. How co-operative can a blogger get?

The mention of a metaphorical truckshunter pudding just now has sparked yet another of Ian Robinson’s ludicrous ideas. Why don’t we invent a real Truckshunter Pudding? In order to be worth the name, and to satisfy my regrettably oversweet tooth, it would need to contain at least some of the following: bilberries, blackberries, almonds, apples, honey, sultanas, cinnamon, peches plats (naturally), chocolate, tapioca, clotted cream. I could go on.

I’m a lousy cook - but somebody out there should be able to concoct a confection along those lines. Please?

LITERALLY
With my background, you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m the sort of geyser who goes on and on about the misuse of the English language. Apostrophe's in all the wrong places - video’s, potatoe’s, pizza’s; overuse of awesome and great; inventions like prequel; euphemisms like collateral damage; unhappy abbreviations like vid and uni; regrettable Americanisms like semester instead of term.

Mostly, however, I tend to be equivocal about such things. It seems to me that no amount of lecturing or haranguing is going to change the fact that the ‘new’ plural of pizza is pizza’s or that decimate now means ‘almost obliterate’.

There is, however, one word which is changing its meaning radically before our very ears - largely thanks to the BBC’s sports (and other) reporters.

‘The Man U players are literally building a wall in front of the goalmouth...’ No, they aren’t. They are building a metaphorical wall there.

‘Tom Daley is literally the flying fish of British diving’. No, he isn’t.

Not only is the inclusion of literally gratuitous - omitting it would make the comments correctly-stated metaphors - it is also linguistically perverse. In the examples above (and dozens of others) it is used to mean its exact opposite.

Even the sainted Charlie Charlton, on BBC Radio Newcastle, has fallen prey to its misuse. This morning she was discussing the relative merits of women darts players and told us, in all seriousness, that Dutch players literally wiped the floor with ours. That I’d like to see.

Literally, like decimate, seems to be doomed. From now on, literally literally means its exact opposite: metaphorically. Thankyou, BBC.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com