Thursday, March 20, 2008

Street Fightin' Man

Myself: Help me pull back the furniture. I've got stuff to strut and lyrics to holler in the studiously loutish affected sarf London drawl of His Satanic Majesty, the Glimmer twin, old no-arse himself, Lord Mick of Jagger.

I think the time is right for a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's no place for a street fighting man
No

Prodnose: This is one of these secret message things I suppose, intelligible to a select coterie, possibly resonant for you when revisited in some tranquil future, yet opaque to the great unwashed, and breaching no confidentiality agreements?

Myself (settling into armchair and lighting pipe): Correct! You know my methods Watson, apply them. You will have observed that the "igh" sound in "street fightin' man" is a curious piece of spelling?

Prodnose: What on earth are you on about now?

Myself: Some of Caxton's typesetters were from Holland, and they introduced Dutch spelling conventions into their work. That is where the ‘gh’ in words like ‘ghost’ comes from as well.

Prodnose: That is of very little interest to me.

HotforWords: No, no it's fascinating.

Myself (peeling raw onion and batting eyelashes furiously): Yes it is Marina, yes it is. How little the world understands us. I think it was Swift who said: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

HotforWords: My poor lamb, how you suffer!

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