pumpkinstrokemarrow

This while we continue to poke around matters taxonomic, which gave rise to a demonstration of the dangers of obtaining books unseen. On the basis of a title in the Surrey library catalogue, found by keyword search, get a book called 'an introduction to plant taxonomy', one of rather a small number of books on taxonomy. But just the ticket. A short monograph introducing the topic to botanists. Not part of its purpose to actually exhibit a tree, but it goes far enough for my purpose. I then pull 'the animal kingdom: a guide to vertebrate classification and biodiversity'. While about the same volume as the first book, this second book turns out to be a childrens' picture book. Probably suitable for a junior school. I do think the title is a bit misleading, although perhaps the biodiversity bit of the title should have triggered a warning signal.

Having got tired of that one, moved onto French vocabulary. Now I had known for some time that some idoms translate word for word, so 'honey moon' is 'lune de miel'. But others do not. So 'deadend' is 'impasse'. One gets the gist but it is not a word for word translation. Moving on, I learn yesterday that 'crane' works like honeymoon. That is to say the French word for 'crane' means both the bird (which I guess are a good deal more common in France than they are in England - which makes our usage a bit odd) and the thing you have on building sites for humping stuff about. There is also a vulgar meaning of a common prostitute, slag or slut. They also have a water crane which appears to mean the things you used to have on railways to get water into steam engines and a water castle which appears to mean a fancy fountain. A model of Mont St Michel in a pond or perhaps the Trevi fountain.

Perhaps this was all triggered by the excitement of finding a temporary waste water by-pass at St Paul's church the other day on the way to the baker. Two large holes in the ground, maybe twenty yards apart. Large supply of heavy duty plastic pipe. Maybe a foot in diameter, white with narrow yellow stripes running along it. Presumably a colour coding for something or other. Various people standing about in high visibility jackets to make sure you knew that the council was on the case. A long stretch of said pipe with a pump on wheels in the middle. I assume the idea was that you poke one end of the pipe down one hole, the other down the other, turn the pump on and isolate the underground stretch of sewer inbetween the two holes. Not sure whether one would need to prime the pump, or if one did, how one would do it. It would take a lot of buckets of water to fill the thing up. In all events, the whole contraption was being taken to peices the following day, so a quick job, whatever it was they were up to.