Apoa came back from Wales on Friday evening. She had a great time and it turned out that she had tried to phone once to leave me a happy father's day message, even though we didn't hear a peep from her all week.

Ohna came back from Cannes yesterday, tired and glad to be back. Cannes was a mixed experience, it seems. The bit that sounded best to me was the groovy parties with Jarvis Cocker DJing and the Nouvelle Vague people playing. The bit that sounded worst was the unbelievably rude restaurant.

Anyway, it's great to have the whole family back. We celebrated yesterday by going to Apoa's school's summer fair and having one of those days where no matter how many buses you get on you never seem to get any nearer home. The highlight of the day was when we were all sitting eating tapas and saw a balloon floating down the street with a note attached. The kids rushed out and grabbed it. It seems there was a summer fair with a balloon race in Beaconsfield yesterday. You might not be impressed by that but I've sent off many balloons in my time and never had one found nor known anyone who found one. And we got to play with the helium when we got home.

B-)

I know some of you are interested in language developments in London. Around a year ago, I noticed Apoa using the word random more often than I would have expected, and then noticed lots of kids were doing the same. They weren't using it in a new way, just more often than you would expect. Typical utterances might be:

It was just a random thing to do.

There were just a few random people there.

So I was pleased to hear an actual innovation from Charlotte Church on Jonathan Ross last week. She'd been talking about her adventures in 'Chip Alley' (an environ I myself frequented on Cup Final day) and other bits of Cardiff and told him about one time when she was having a meal in a restaurant. She said,

I was sitting there with a few randomers-

Jonathan said,

Hold on a minute. What did you say? 'Randomers'?

And she said,

Yeh, you know, just a few random people.

One interesting thing about it is there isn't any obvius motivation for using this word more frequently. It just seems to have been picked on at random.

B-)

[Also posted (slightly adapted) on London Language]

Well, at 11.30 last night Ohna and I finally decided that she would be the one who had to cancel important work commitments this morning and take Apoa to hospital for an x-ray. She had a big fall from a rope swing in the woods on Tuesday evening and her hip has been really painful ever since. We couldn't wait any longer as she's off on a school trip to Wales for a week tomorrow morning.

The news is that she doesn't seem to have broken anything so she just needs to take it easy and keep an eye on it.

Ohna's sacrifice meant that I was free to get up and leave home at 6.30 to take part in two job interview conference calls. The bright side of this was that I was cycling in the woods at 7am on the way to the campus.

B-)

BBC - Radio 4 - The Riot That Never Was

This was a great listen. Also interesting for linguistic people who are interested in things like cohesion. Here's a typical extract:

The crowd in Trafalgar Square is now assuming threatening dimensions. Threatening dimensions are now being assumed by the crowd that is gathering in Trafalgar Square.

B-)

I signed up to inttranews a few days ago. It's a good way to hear about languagey news. Only a bit of it will be relevant to any individual but still quite useful.

B-)

[Also posted on London Language]

Looks like I might be going on summer camp with the woodcraft folk again this year. I particularly enjoyed this bit of the information letter which I'm still trying to understand:

We understand that some people are concerned about the toilet arrangements. We will put up a shower tent and we might even get our 'solar water heater' working for it. For lavatories we shall get the farmer to dig a slit trench. The alternative would be to use chemical lats but over many years we have found that using slit trenches is more hygienic and pleasanter. If you have never used them it may sound unlikely, but let us assure you it's true. It's like cooking on wood being more efficient than cooking on gas. Certainly we hope that it won't put people off.

B-}

Academics often get ill on the first day after term ends. The theory is that you keep yourself at full throttle as long as term's on and then something subconscious allows the illness to kick in as soon as you don't have a class/meeting/deadline for tomorrow. Some academics think it's a good idea to catch a cold a week or two before the end of term just to avoid being in bed for the first week of the break.

Another generalisation about academia is that workloads shoot up at the end of summer teaching as marking coincides with all those meetings that couldn't be scheduled in teaching time and with all those deadlines that got pushed back during the term. This year it's been madder than ever for me, which you'll already know if you've noticed the gap on the blog.

For several weeks now, I've had 22nd June pencilled in as the day when things will get a bit more manageable. So we'll see whether illness awaits (and yes, I do already have two meetings booked in for that day).

Anyway, I think I'm going to sneak the odd minute for a bit of blogging again now. This one is being posted between phone calls on a day of interviewing for a position that attracted such an international set of applicants that we're only seeing two of them in person.

B-)