Avaragado's blog

Sitting in Costa Coffee my mind wanders, as it does, onto irregular verbs.

I’m no linguist so the precise terminology escapes me, but irregular verbs seem to generally follow one of three patterns: A/A/A (bet/bet/bet, for example), A/B/B (build/built/built) or A/B/C (smite/smote/smitten).

There are a few A/B/A, such as come/came/come. But can you think of any A/A/B?

I can think of one, and it’s a new one that doesn’t make any lists yet. Officially I’m sure it’s not considered irregular, but if you listen to people speaking they use it irregularly all the time.

I contend that text/text/texted is this new irregular verb. The number of times you hear a sentence like “I text Darren last night and he said…” is proof to me that people are using it irregularly in the simple past form. I’ve never heard it used that way as a participle, it’s “I’d texted him” not “I’d text him”.

Am I right?

IXI 1, Visionware 0.

Confusingly, David Lucas was in goal for Visionware, and another of their players was called Sheehan.

First half was mostly IXI. How we didn’t concede any in the second half I’ll never know – they hit the post twice. The rain played a part in the result as the pitch was a bit of a mare. Attendance 4,000-odd, pretty good for a population of 8,000.

The ITV commentator name-checked the Barleymow and the Boot at least, but not the Vue. He emphasised the sleepiness of the place, omitting any mention of the high-tech nirvana that is Vision Park.

Home to Swansea City in Round 3. On our way to Wembley.

Courtesy of the lovely people at b3ta, the first ten seconds of all 191 number one singles of the 1980s. Half an hour of your finest nostalgia!

Well, fifteen minutes. The stuff at the end of the eighties was mostly rubbish.

The first time I saw the name Barack Obama was in a blog entry by Lawrence Lessig instructing me to watch his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I did, as it’s always a good idea to do what Lessig says. And I came away thinking, wow. After two terms of John Kerry, I thought, he’d be a great Democratic candidate in 2012. I even vaguely remember mentioning his name to a few people, and forgetting whether “Barack” or “Obama” was his surname.

Lessig knew him from the University of Chicago and had first tipped him for the top in March 2004 when he was nominated for the US Senate: “And keep your eyes on 2012: when he will no longer be known as the 5th whatever, but will become the 3d and 1st in one year. (Consider it the Lessig Sunday Puzzle).” (Decoded to mean the fifth black US senator, the third to run for president, and the first to win.)

When I heard he was running for president in 2008 I didn’t believe he’d get the nomination: four years too soon, I thought. I thought Hillary Clinton would get it. So did she. She and her campaign team underestimated him completely, neither the first nor the last to do so.

And here we are, four years earlier than scheduled. Karl Rove’s proteges and their McCain/Palin puppets beaten, their smears laughed off, their lies disbelieved. The election not decided by lawyers or fraudulent machinery or appalling graphic design.

As I sat watching Obama’s victory speech at 5am, I thought about the change soon to sweep through Washington and the US, and the wider world. How much of a honeymoon will he have? Six months? At some point rhetoric and reality will collide, as it did with Blair. How many of Bush’s constitutional land-grabs will he return? What will actually happen in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo? Will he give his old mate Lawrence Lessig a job?

And, of course, how will the Secret Service cope? That one I prefer not to think about.

But most of all I can’t wait for the end of eight years of Bush. Historians will not look kindly upon his presidency; I believe that in thirty years or so we’ll look back and say, firmly, that this was when everything went to cock. The hanging chads of the 2000 Florida debacle were an omen.

I look forward to a president who can say the word “nuclear”, who can read a speech and sound like that’s not the first time he’s seen it. I look forward to a vice-president who doesn’t cause the Emperor’s Theme to immediately pop into my head whenever I see him on TV, and who is, actually, human. And I look forward to a White House that’s more West Wing than Green Wing.

Same cast, apparently.

I would have posted yesterday but I seemed to spend most of the morning wandering aimlessly and bumping into furniture. I’m never drinking alcohol again, until the next time.

Chris and Melanie were married at Quy Mill on Saturday, a gloriously warm and sunny day better than most we had in July and August.

As one third of a best man my duties included minimising Chris’s alcohol intake pre-ceremony (too much booze = no wedding), herding friends and relatives for photos, and changing the batteries on fairy lights. And I was Bearer of the One Ring. I successfully cast it into Mount Doom, AKA placed it on a cushion, as the ceremony began.

The other two thirds of a best man, Chris’s brother Paul and his mate James, helped with shepherding duties and did the speeches (to which I contributed).

The day was very drunken. Everyone was there, and most had cameras. I’ve created a Flickr group for people to add their wedding photos. Just mine in the group so far, since I only created it a few minutes ago, but Louise’s photos have been uploaded.

Forgive the delay. It doesn’t mean I’ve just got back, I’m just lazy.

Chris called the event an “unqualified success”, which is all you can ask for. I think it went well, and I enjoyed it myself.

It was a London-based stag, which Chris discovered moments after we drove off from his house when Micky blabbed accidentally. Engineering works between Cambridge and Royston meant we headed to the latter to catch the train, as it seems did everyone else: the car park was full, and we parked in a side street. We then suffered the interminable, fruitless haggling of a couple of students with insufficient ID who were trying to save money on their tickets but just bounced repeatedly off the cheerful intransigence of the ticketdroid.

Finally ticketed, trained and travelled we met the other attendees in a rather nice hotel: the Thistle Euston. We checked in and had a beer, then moved on to a semi-random pub in the West End: Chef led us to Leicester Square, draped in tourists and late summer sunshine, and into All Bar One where it was declared Pimm’s o’clock. And also chips o’clock.

Booze led to ice cream, as it seldom does. Then a short walk to the theatre for the matinee performance of Avenue Q. Chris had no clue we were seeing it until we stopped outside and I started doling out tickets. It was very good (again) – I’d seen it, as had Andy and Chef, but Chris and the others hadn’t.

Another pub followed for an hour before food at Porters English Restaurant in Covent Garden. Decent stuff, and reasonably priced too.

The official organised events over, an unscheduled trip to the Comedy Store was mooted. We found it but the bouncers deemed Chris’s brother Paul to be a danger to shipping (he’d been drinking since about 11am on the train down, and it was now 11pm) and refused him entry. All for one, etc, so we gave up on that idea.

Someone – Chef? – then convinced us that we’d have more luck getting another drink in a random, dingy side street in Euston than in the bright, bustling metropolis itself. So we found ourselves wandering vaguely in the vicinity of our hotel, looking forlornly at dark, deserted, closed pubs, until chancing upon an establishment advertising itself as a Sports Bar-slash-Indian Restaurant.

It was open and served beer, which was incentive enough. We ignored the old man with wild eyes who looked upset that we’d punctured his evening’s grim alcoholic silence with our jollity, darts, pool and dozing.

By the time 1am rolled around some of the party had taken to attacking others in the group with flying beermats, and we left before we could be thrown out. Most of us found our way back to the hotel relatively easily; others took a bit longer, having somehow got lost.

The hotel bar was shut, but they sold us beer from behind the counter and let us sit in the bar to drink it. I lasted until 3am; Chris, his brother and dad kept going until 4.30am.

Breakfast was English, cooked, late and subdued. But very welcome. We caught the train back and were home by 1pm.

So Chris wasn’t tied to a lamppost, or shaved raw and placed on a container ship bound for Ecuador. I’m sorry if this disappoints.

Chris took some photos. I took a couple too, but I haven’t uploaded them to Flickr yet.