Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

It is the Feast of St Magloire of Dol, a 6th C Breton who became Abbot of Sark. He struggled so terribly with abstinence that an angel visited and gave him permission to have wine and beer. He is patron of those who abandon diets. pic.twitter.com/TJOAXlcTOr

— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) October 24, 2020

pic.twitter.com/RNMlBMD3UE

— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) October 24, 2020

Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a wooden puppet whose limbs jerk at the whim of the puppet master and, by extension, a politician whose strings of action are pulled by somebody else.

First five episodes in articular were up there with the amazing Shadow Line great snappy and witty writing by Joe Barton great performances from all the cast but especially Rodney

Will Sharpe

Rodney

I did not know him before his rush to power, but
what I saw in him then was a man overhorsed by the glory
fate had handed him, riding by sheer force of will, knowing
he must be thrown sometime, and that it would hurt.

In my experience, men who find themselves in receipt of
unasked-for luck become either benign, believing themselves
unworthy, or dangerous, believing everyone else sees them as
unfit.

An excerpt from

Days of Kindness

Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favour, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude

Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a slap

L’esprit de l’escalier (French): usually translated as "staircase wit" is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it. UPDATE: the english equivalent is ‘tintiddle’.

Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions

Taarradhin (Arabic): implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for "compromise" in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement

In 1997, when I tutored on the Constitutional Law course at Liverpool Uni and was only ever a chapter of the book ahead of my students, the chapter on “Conventions” floored me. Coming from Germany, this way of securing democracy seemed positively insane.

Sing cuckóu, nou! Sing cuckóu!

Sing cuckóu! Sing cuckóu nou!

Somer is y-comen in,

Loudë sing, cuckóu!

Growëth sed and blowëth med

And springth the wodë nou

Sing cuckóu!

Ewë bletëth after lamb,

Lowth after cálve cóu;

Bullok stertëth, bukkë vertëth,

Merye sing, cuckóu!

Cuckóu, cuckóu,

Wél singést thou, cuckóu,

Ne swik thou never nou!