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April 24, 2005
whale's tails and princesses
Today I should have helped Ohna and Apoa sort out some of the mess in the spare room and I should have helped our local Woodcraft Folk sort out the camping equipment in the store. But I've done my neck in (probably partly to do with the bus trip to Oxford yesterday) so now I'm damaging my neck doing a pile of marking and listening to itunes shuffling around. The joy of 'shuffle' is of course the stuff you forgot you had. The Cocteau Twins singing Whale's Tails was the highlight so far, but they've just been topped by Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret's 'A Broadcast Message To Children' which they recorded during World War Two and you can hear on the British Library's The Century In Sound. Very spooky to suddenly hear this very posh child's voice from a whole other world.
I recommend the bus as a way of getting to Oxford, btw. A quick cycle down to Baker Street, the bike goes in the boot and you can fall asleep listening to David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in until you arrive, wake up and get cycling.
It was really nice to see Robbie and cycle round the pubs of Oxford with him. He needs to find some mates, though, and some artistic inspiration. Any friendly humans in Oxford?
B-)
PS Seminar task: spot the syntactic ambiguity in this post ;-)
Posted by Billy at April 24, 2005 4:57 PM
Comments
Is it the one in:
"you can fall asleep listening to David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in until you arrive" ?
Posted by: Mai at April 25, 2005 2:35 PM
Well done. For full marks, of course, you have to explain it too (and parpahrase and draw tree diagrams) ;-)
Posted by: billy 
at April 26, 2005 11:24 AM
Well, I can say that it's either:
(you can fall asleep (listening to David Bowie performing live) and (doing your neck in until you arrive))
or
(you can fall asleep (listening to (David Bowie performing live and doing your neck in) until you arrive)
Hope I got the brackets right. As for tree diagrams, I never liked them anyway :)
And although I don't have any encyclopedic entries for 'David Bowie', I am guessing you mean the first one.
Posted by: Mai at April 26, 2005 6:19 PM
Hey, I was only joking. Top marks, though. I did mean the first one but I think I'd bracket it as:
(you can fall asleep ((listening to David Bowie performing live) and (doing your neck in)) until you arrive)
B-)
Posted by: billy at April 27, 2005 10:38 AM
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