Thursday, June 01, 2006

The headline of the year?

Alex Wilcock kindly suggests that I have written "the blogging headline of the year" in A lion has eaten our Oaten.

Funnily enough, I have been increasingly dissatisfied with that headline. Looking at the original "The Lion and Albert" monologue, it is clear that I should have written Yon lion's eaten our Oaten.

"The Lion and Albert" was written by Marriott Edgar, who turns out to have been something of a political philosopher. In his "The Magna Charter" he wrote the immortal final stanza:
And it's through that there Magna Charter,
As were made by the Barons of old,
That in England today we can do what we like,
So long as we do what we're told.

1 comment:

Alex Wilcock said...

I merely assumed you were wisely not attempting to declaim in dialect, even in print, and made allowances.

My earliest memory of public speaking is standing in front of the rest of St Simon’s RC Primary School and delivering The Lion and Albert in probably the worst Lancashire accent known to humanity (Stockport may be surprisingly close to Lancashire, geographically, but even my Stockport accent’s rubbish. I blame an American Mum, a Scottish Dad and a diet of Radio 4).

Excellent Magna Charter, though. I see she didn’t die in vain.