Or...here's to Edinburgh, at least. Somebody up there really knows how to put on a fireworks display.
Although the fireworks were enough to make everyone on the street feel like a 7-year-old seeing the phenomenon for the first time, I have to say that the activities on the street were much more tame that I would have imagined.
We did see the odd guy walking round in a kilt, the occasional party-goer that was returning all their food and drink to the ground (circle of life and all that), and the obligatory crowd rendition of Auld Lang Syne (written by none other than Robbie Burns, so singing it this year did carry a certain je ne sais quoi).
I'm convinced there are as many Aussies in Scotland as there are Scots (which I've determined is a direct result of their unwillingness to endure the return flight to their homeland once they've arrived). There was a small group of them next to us at a pub the night before New Year's Eve - and they were OUT OF CONTROL on THAT night. As we showed up to the restaurant on New Year's Eve, they turned out to have a reservation at the SAME PLACE. What are the odds? If we had thought to think that they couldn't have been more wild...we would have been wrong. Someone in their group actually managed to set herself on fire over dinner...let me just say that the combined smells of burning sweater, hair and a bit of flesh are NOT appetizing. It was only a flesh wound, however, and all that happened was the waitstaff's removal of their table candles.
Cheers to Bobby and Katrina and Matt and Jemma - new friends (by extension from Susannah May) we met in Edinburgh. And cheers to Russell and Hamid - new friends in my neck of the woods, who seemed to enjoy the Americanisms of Susannah, Laura, Heather and myself as much as I enjoy my daily dose of Britishisms.
9 comments:
Australians are the world's best travelled partiers. No question, no debate. Beautiful! Anybody who's traveled has a story that starts "I met these Australians in a pub" and ends with somebody in jail, on fire, or similarly incapacitated.
Dear grammar patrol:
1) "I have to say that the activities on the street were much more tame that I would have imagined"
I believe you mean "than."
2) "the occasional party-goer that was returning all their food and drink to the ground (circle of life and all that)"
party-goer WHO was returning all of HIS/HER food
Party-goer is a person, thus is designated by WHO. Party-goer is also singular. His/her should follow it, not their.
3) "It was only a flesh wound, however, and all that happened was the waitstaff's removal of their table candles."
Waitstaff is plural. It should read waitstaffs' removal.
Have a great day!
Point taken on items 1 and 2, and both have been chalked up to the fact that I was writing at 6:30 in the morning, which would be fair to say doesn't count, but it is what it is.
However, my dictionary disagrees with you on item 3. It says that "waitstaff's" is fine, and that it actually prefers "wait staff's".
Also, if you want to talk details, my dictionary prefers "tamer" to "more tame", but I don't like the way that sounds, so I reject that suggestion.
Same goes for "more wild" and "wilder".
Mike, you are so right. My one trip to London includes a story about meeting two Australian guys at a West End Theatre. It's quite a good story actually...those Aussies. *sigh*
Waitstaff is a compound collective noun. As a collective, it has a unique place in English. British usage has collectives taking the plural, e.g. "Microsoft have been busy patching security holes", while in the US, collectives generally take the singular "Apple has announced a new iPod". In neither case, however, would the possesive of waitstaff be waitstaffs', unless referring to the collective possession or separate possessions of multiple waitstaffs (as in different shifts or restaurants).
And on the issue of the third person singular possessive pronoun, this is such a politicized nightmare that we should all grant grace here, IMHO. The classic answer would be "his" for either male or non-specified gender, and "her" for female gender. "their" and "his/her" are both rather cacaphonous responses to the issue of gender neutrality in English usage. The fact is that there is no solution that meets the need without sounding forced.
Waitstaff, itself, is another one of the bugaboos of gender neutrality. In older days, one would just say "waiters" or "waitresses".
Which reminds me of an old joke:
A diner at a restaurant asked a tray-carrying woman whether she was his waitress. She informed him in no uncertain terms that she was not his, or any one else’s, ‘waitress.’ In fact, the restaurant had no waiters or waitresses. She was a ‘waitron.’ The man inquired what a waitron was, and the woman condescendingly educated him that a waitron was a gender-neutral name for a person who blah, blah, blah. When she finished her blather, the customer inquired whether she would bring him a glass of water. ‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘the busboy will do that.’
One should agree with Mike in the whole "his/her" hubbub, as it does nothing but pacify a few people who are overly sensitive to gender neutrality issues, while at the same time it alienates the reader subconsciously by cluttering up the text with what amounts to a stumbling step in the syntax. My professor in college, who happened to use "his" as often as "her" to connote gender neutrality, countede offf style points for using the his/her option. It just doesn't read well.
Sincerely,
Grammer Patrolman #12525
and Dovie, is it legal to use the term, "je ne sais quoi" in Scotland? Don't they beat people up for that sort of thing?
Post a Comment