Canny lass

Thanks Adam! Another question - I know where the Halfpenny Woods are but where in Bedlington are the Free Woods? I've never heard the expression before.

Read with interest of the new exercise equipment in the Halfpenny Woods and prompted by Brian's question " is it the Halfpenny Woods or the Free Woods," I'm now wondering how it came to be called The Halfpenny Woods. Anybody got any ideas?

Very well done! I closed my eyes, I listened and for a few minutes I was in Bedlington on Front Street.

Any chance that we can see it on this site - for those of us who don't get to go 'home' so often?

Happy birthday from me too, Adam. Foxy, you are 19 - with 46 years of experience!

Not sure I ever saw a flag but the motto 'de profundis' was also the motto att Westridge school. It was found beneath the shield on the school badge and the mosaic shield that hung in the entrance hall. Both had a white cross of St.Cuthbert on a dark blue background. You can see the shield in some of the school photos in the gallery.

I really hope it does well Paul.

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear Micky Happy birthday to you. Sung to the tune of 'Happy birthday to you'.

Definitely standing behind a camera! It's late July - early August. Not sure about the year.

You've got the tears rolling down my face Malcolm. I just love Tommy Cooper!

It say's you know a good book when you read one!

Thank you Brian. I was just beginning to think this thread had died!

Anything that gets young people moving and away from the sedentary lifestyle that predominates today ( I'm thinking about computer games mainly) gets my vote. It's maybe a huge investment initially but it's an investment for their future health and that's a saving in the long run. Why do councillers have such difficulty seeing that?

A book in "excellent nick" is often a book that's never been read!

... and Bedlington.co.uk!

Ha ha! Very good Foxy.

Is that still going by the way - Encyclopaedia Britannica?

Thank goodness we have him here. It's like having your own personal copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on line.

Well, I think that says it all. I rest my case.

Now that you mention it, I believe it was Duane Eddy. What a memory you've got Pete!!! well done.

Was that him with 'Twangin up a storm' or am I thinking of someone else?

Chris, I forgot to ask: Given that 'plenty' means 'more than enough' (OED) just exactly what percentage of Bedlington's drinking fraternity is it who feel the need to swear so much?

I stand corrected and I apologise.You didn't tar 'everybody' with the same brush.You only tarred 'most' people with the same brush. I really don't think you have a warped mind or that you in any way are any sort of language police and I would never dream of calling you Dolly! I believe that you, like myself, hold your native language very dear and, observant as you are, you have noticed changes over the years which you do not like. So have I. But the fact is that language in general, and its vocabulary in particular, is constantly changing. The changes are brought about by a wide and complex variety of influences the majority of which lie outside the control of the individual or the government and schools can play a very little part in stemming the tide of that change. I am a Geordie. I was educated in and around Bedlington in the 50's and 60's. I have very vivid memories of articulation classes- part of the drive to wipe out dialects all over Britain and get children speaking the "Queen's English". I don't know how many times I had my knuckles rapped because I couldn't pronounce the words 'boat' and 'coat' in any other way than the way I'd already learned to pronounce them - by way of natural acquisition through listening to the people around me before I started school. Almost sixty years on I still speak Geordie, albeit somewhat modified as I live in another country where they have difficulty understanding it in its purest form as they are only taught "Queen's English" (now called 'received pronunciation') in school. You could say that I've modified my language to be part of the group. The point I would like to make is that I wanted to speak "Queen's English" I thought it sounded nice but I just couldn't make it stick. The social and psychological forces at work outside of school were infinitely stronger than those in the school. Social and psychological forces are however only two among many affecting language change. They are only the tip of the iceberg. Whether or not the changes they initiate should be called language progress or language decay is another matter. It's a complex question where subjectivity can play a large part. Linguists, like myself, prefer to deal with it more objectively.

Happy birthday from me too Brettly. What's happened to your picture?

I think we may be talking at cross purposes here Mercury. When I say that there is not one word in the English language which is unnecessary I am speaking totally from a linguistic point of view. From that view a word is an entity which has form, function and meaning and even the taboo words fill these basic criteria. They can be spoken and written, therefore they have a form. They fulfill several functions, among them expression of emotion, substitution for aggresive bodily response and group affiliation, as I mentioned earlier. They also convey a meaning to the listener/reader. If a word fills these criteria then it has a justifiable place in a language, albeit in a very small niche. That word can help somebody, somewhere to communicate what he/she is feeling, thinking or affiliated to and is therefore is necessary part of a language for just that person. That doesn't mean to say that there aren't words other than swearwords which could do the job equally well and all else failing the English language abounds with euphemisms for the majority of its swearwords ( I belive the c-word had around 700 at the last count). Neither does it mean that I condone the use of foul language in public places or outside of the group in which it is a marker of affiliation. You are a professional writer and that leads me to believe that you are fortunate enough to have at your disposal a vocabulary which is probably larger than the average. However, everybody is not so well blessed. Like you, I also despair at the use of superfluous and unnecessary words and phrases that make their way into the mainstream press. I can agree that a superfluous word is unnecessary but then I'm not speaking from a linguistic point of view - rather from a literary one. As for taboo words in pubs, I don't agree. Again from a purely linguistic viewpoint, swearwords have a place as a social marker if the landlord hasn't set any boundary for what is acceptable and what is not. The landlord/lady may well wish to encourage a certain type of customer and use the same type of language him/herself, in which case the swearing would be acceptable as it wouldn't be occurring in the wrong situation. You could say that landlord and the guests who swear are all part of the same social group and those guests who found it unacceptable would go elsewhere. If, on the other hand, landlord does not want swearing in his pub - as in Chris' case - then it's up to him to make explicit the unwritten understanding of what's taboo by correcting or commenting on the language of his guests thereby making it clear to the user that taboo words are not acceptable in the pub. That leaves the user free to decide if he wants to modify his language during his visit or leave the pub. Hope this has explained how I was thinking.