As I Hear... BAD, UGLY WORDS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32394, 5 September 1970, Page 19

As I Hear... BAD, UGLY WORDS

(Bu

J.H.E.S.)

I do not mean my heading to apply to the words that follow, though (as I’ve said once or twice before) this is a free country and anybody who wants to apply it so is welcome to do it. No. I mean it to apply to those lumbering, often malformed words which multiply in the official and commercial vocabulary and so seep into the press. I have lately added a new one to the list: to “jumboise.” I collected this (with tweezers) from a round letter from the Ampol directorate to its stockowners. A reference to the company’s tankers was completed: “The P. J. Adams was jumboised in Japan.” There I was arrested by this strange, unwieldy word and especially by its tantalisingly French - English ending. Then I read on and found that P. J. Adams’s dead weight tonnage had been increased from 35,000 to 54,000 tons. She had been adapted to a larger capacity. On the analogy of a jumbo cargo aeroplane. But, as A. P. Herbert or somebody said somewhere, “What a word!” # * *

Of course, “containerised” and “containerisation” have now long been with us. Believe me when I say that there is no need, anywhere, at any time, for these monsters. You may say “container loading.” H you refer to a ship equipped for it, you may describe this ship simply as a “container cargo" ship or, even more simply, as a container ship. We are none of us so dumb as not to know what is meant The English language is so resourceful a vehicle that there is no need to jack it up with polysyllabic props of doubtful parentage. We fatheads will get the sense without them. # ♦ «

I have no wish to tease Mr G. F. Gair, the Under-Secre-tary for Education; but he leaves me no option. A few weeks ago I applauded the Council of the University of Canterbury for protesting, loudly, against Mr Gair’s speech in the House, threatening the New Zealand Universities with financial action if they did not bring to order irresponsible demonstrators among their student bodies. Enough to say that Mr Gair had not identified irresponsible demonstrators with stud it bodies and that Canterbury claimed to have and to exercise authority to rusticate or to exclude irresponsible members of its student body. So Mr Gair goes to Christchurch and is interviewed: and he says that, when he spoke in the House, he “didn t have Canterbury in mind at all. It was Canterbury that chose to associate itself with the reaction to my comment” And why on earth not? The general charge touched Can-

terbury; and Canterbury had a full right to reply. It does not become Mr Gair to suggest that Canterbury stepped out of line in appropriating the charge to itself, and in letting him know that it is “not unmindful of the problem” to which he drew attention (in so threateningly pointed a fashion) and has its own regulations to deal with it. It disappoints me to see and hear Mr Gair replying irrationally to a proper protest from a proper—and in-jured-authority. * * #

While 1 am among the politicians, I may as well add that I read on the poster of my unfavourite weekly that Mr Lapwood, the senior Government Whip, had come out strong for flogging to treat some offences and offenders, as this unfavourite weekly was happy to show. 1 do not know what Mr Lapwood in fact said, or was reported to have said by this unfavourite weekly; but 1 can't easily reject the broad purpose of whatever he said. And I say, once more, that it’s a free country; and whoever thinks that violent punishment is the answer to violent crime and will reduce or prevent it is entitled to proclaim his belief. But I hope that whoever so decides will first read Part 4 of George Ryley Scott’s “Flagellation,” a history of corporal punishment. The fourth part is an account of the case for and against judicial corporal punishment. A man who rejects the case against it must have a hasty temper and the hardihood of his conviction.

AU my life I’ve heard and read about Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” and been perfectly sure of its being a delightful book. But every reader has his quirks and it is one of mine to resist the pressure of other readers. So it happened, for example, that I did not introduce myself to Jane Austen until I was well on the way to my thirties, and then only because in a country bach, on a wet day, the only thing I could find to read was “Pride and Prejudice.” That was a happy wet day ... the precursor of many happy days and nights and of a long correspondence with Dr R. W. Chapman, the editor of Jane Austen’s Oxford edition. And so, also, it came about that on another wet day recently, wanting something to read. I abandoned my own shelves and turned to those of my son. 1 had given him a copy of “The Wind in the Willows,” years ago, and fished It out. He had never said a word about it. characteristically, but the rubbed state of the wrapper assured me that he had read and re-read it; and I was glad to take his mark and recommendation, after all those ignored before, and read it for myself, with what extreme and grateful pleasure I do not stop to say. All I want is to record the thrill I felt on coming on the source of the heading on the sports page of “The Press": that is, “Messing about in Boats.” It is—whether the sports editor knows it or not—drawn from one of the earliest speeches of that charming character, the Water Rat, who never opens his mouth but to say something substantial and tangy, as when he introduces his new friend, the Mole, to the joys of rowing on the river: “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing and half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing . . .

about—in—boats.” And if the sports editor knew his source, I congratulate him on having met the Water Rat before me: and if not, he will be glad to know the source

of a happy heading he picked up somewhere and somehow else.

An interesting thing is that Kenneth Grahame, the author of this perfect fantasy, was a banker: I think on the staff of the Bank of England. Escape from the ledgers into the world of childhood and imagination? Perhaps. But he was not the only banker-escapist; nor did he take the only way. Bagehot diverted himself In literary criticism and wrote three volumes of it, much of it excellent. Grote escaped into the history of Greece. Roby—not be confused with Sir George, the champion pantomime dame escaped into Latin grammar. ** , *

My son's edition of “The Wind in the Willow” was the 96th: 1950. I wonder what the total is now. Or has it gone out?