This is something I never expected to see — a Saxophone ‘played’ by a paper roll. Seen in the wonderful Speelklok Museum in Utrecht.

Wedded bliss, originally uploaded by jjn1.

Seen in a shop window in Holland.

The strange thing is that the woman looks disaffected and disillusioned already, and the chap is already looking over her shoulder for another model. Or perhaps he’s wondering how on earth they are going to pay for this shindig. No wonder there’s a strong correlation between the price of weddings and the divorce rate.

Legal niceties, originally uploaded by jjn1.

Spotted on a Dutch street. Reminds me of that old stalwart of Private Eye, Messrs Sue, Grabbit & Run.

And then I Googled for “funny names of legal firms” and discovered — as you’d expect — that there are lots. For example:

And there are still more here. Examples:

Hmmm… I was a bit suspicious about that last one, on the grounds that if something seems too good to be true then it probably is. So I Googled it. This is what I found. Based in Paris, Arkansas. Specialities include:

Divorce, Bankruptcy, Personal Injury, Over 50 Years of Legal Experience, Death Cases, Drug Cases, Dwi/Tickets, Dwi/Traffic, Family Law, Industrial Accidents, Criminal Law/Drug Cases, Criminal Law, Child Support, Child Custody/Visitation, Car Wrecks, Bond’s Set, Back Injuries, Back & Spinal Injuries, Auto & Truck Accidents, Insurance Cases, Job Injury, Wrongful Death, Workers’ Compensation, Workers Comp, Social Security.

Entertaining rant by Farhad Manjoo in Slate Magazine. Sample:

What galls me about two-spacers isn’t just their numbers. It’s their certainty that they’re right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the “correct” number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space “rule.” Still others said they used two spaces all the time, and they were thrilled to be so proper. When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong [sic] —that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space—the table balked. “Who says two spaces is wrong?” they wanted to know.

Typographers, that’s who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20th century. America followed soon after.

Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left.

Huh! I’m an unrepentant two-spacer. And, besides, one’s entitled to be suspicious of advice from a guy who writes that he “pointed out that they were doing it wrong” — which suggests that the distinction between an adverb and an adjective may have escaped him. But then it also escaped Apple Inc. Remember that company’s advertising campaign urging us to “Think Different”?

LATER: Tom Szekeres wrote to point me at Know Your Meme.

Just stumbled on a delightful site — Bookshelf Porn — via a tweet. Not at all what you’d expect from the name. Just a glimpse of the infinitely-varied ways people have of storing their books. It’s truly amazing what one finds on the Web.

We went to see The King’s Speech last night. I thought it was terrific — beautifully acted, cleverly written and surprisingly moving. Colin Firth gives a great performance as the stammering monarch-to-be but what really blew me away was Geoffrey Rush’s rendition of Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who gave him his voice. (Helena Bonham-Carter is also good as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, but her performance isn’t in the same league as that of the two men.)

One small, cavilling point. The film claims to be based on a true story — of how a rough Antipodean diamond of a speech therapist enabled a shy stammerer to carry out his public duties. But Derek Jacobi portrays Archbishop Cosmo Lang — who played such a pivotal role in the Abdication crisis — as an odious little creep. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that senior prelates can be odious creeps (as a former Irish Catholic I could give you a long list of same), but Lang seems to have been a more complex character than Jacobi’s performance allows. For example, the Wikipedia entry on him claims that he denounced Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia and was outspoken about European anti-semitism. On the other hand, Wikipedia also claims that he supported the appeasement policies of the Baldwin and Chamberlain administrations.

The real Cosmo Lang.

Whatever else, Lang was right about the odious Edward VIII and his manipulative floozy (magnificently rendered in the film by Eve Best). A Life magazine profile of him published in 1939 records that in October 1936 he and the Archbishop of York “respectfully requested to be permitted to decline” a Royal invitation to a dinner at St. James’s palace at which Wallis Simpson was to be present. Later, Lang threatened to withhold communion from Edward if he married her. Eddie is reported to have retorted: “Please remember that I am the head of your organisation”. The magazine also goes on to reveal something startling: that on November 17, while the great British public was still completely in the dark about what was going on, Lang presided over a secret session of the House of Lords to discuss the crisis. (Hmmm… I wonder about that: surely the ‘speaker’ of the Lords at the time would have been the Lord Chancellor.)

The IMDB entry for the film notes one ‘goof’: in a scene set in 1934 Bertie (then still Duke of York) refers to “Marshal Stalin”. However, says IMDB, “Joseph Stalin was appointed Marshal of the Soviet Union almost 10 years later, in March 1943.”

The trailer for the film is here. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

On reflection… Another thought. Given that it’s supposed to be a true story, the film’s portrayal of Winston Churchill’s role in the Abdication crisis seems misleading. The impression is given that Churchill — played by a smouldering cigar ably brandished by Timothy Spall — was firmly behind Bertie and — by implication — implacably hostile to Eddie. But that wasn’t the case. For example, he and Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper proprietor, were in favour of allowing the King to put his case (for being allowed to marry Wallis) to “the people” via a radio broadcast. This idea was blocked by the Cabinet, on the grounds that it would undermine the principle of a constitutional monarchy (which is that the only body entitled to decide these matters is Parliament).

The funeral of Tony Howard, the best and wisest political journalist of our time, is taking place today in London. I can’t be there but had been planning to attend his memorial service until I discovered that there won’t be one: he had explicitly insisted before he died that he should go unmemorialised. Which is not entirely surprising, because although he was outwardly the most plummy and ‘Establishment’ of figures, he was, deep down, the most unpompous of men who loved making mischief for the toffs of this world. One of my fondest memories is of being taken to lunch by him in a posh London restaurant in which he scandalised the toffee-nosed waiter by demanding tomato ketchup. A few moments later, with exaggerated and sarcastic elaboration, a small silver dish of ketchup was solemnly produced, and Tony delightedly slathered it all over his steak.

There was a nice item about him this morning on Radio 4’s Today which included an interview with my former Observer colleague, Robert Harris — once a political reporter, later a successful novelist. The interviewer mentioned the fact that in the days since Tony’s death a large number of established journalists had said that they owed their careers to Tony. Robert replied that he himself had also been one of that privileged band: Tony had lured him from BBC’s Panorama programme to become a political reporter on the Observer.

I was also one of the hacks who benefited greatly from Tony’s patronage. I first met him when I worked on the ‘Back End’ (i.e. literary section) of the New Statesman and he was Deputy Editor of the magazine. He provided me with one of my first glimpses of the British Establishment at work. I was in the office one morning in December when Roy Jenkins, then Deputy Leader of the Labour party and a former Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, called in to hand in a book review that he had just written for the paper. (Pause for a moment to ponder this: can you imagine Harriet Harman — or George ‘Oik’ Osborne, come to that — being able to compose an elegant book review, and then trudge along to a newspaper office to hand it over in person?)

Just as Jenkins was leaving, Tony came up the stairs and (surprised) greeted him. My memory of the ensuing conversation runs like this:

Tony: “Oh, hello, Roy! I didn’t know you were coming in.”
Jenkins: “I just thought I’d drop in my piece.”
Tony: “We’re seeing one another tonight, aren’t we?”
Jenkins: (surprised) “Are we?”
Tony: “Yes. You’re coming to Victor’s birthday party, aren’t you?”
[Victor (V.S.) Pritchett was one of the New Statesman‘s most eminent contributors, and a well-known man of letters.]
Jenkins: “Oh, yes. I’m glad you reminded me.”
Tony: “Don’t you think it’s strange that Victor doesn’t have a K?”.
Jenkins: “Really? Doesn’t he?”
Tony: “No. It’s a disgrace.”
Jenkins: (Reflectively) “I’ll fix it.”

The two then parted amicably. Some time afterwards, V.S. Pritchett became Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett, knighted for “services to literature”. He became a Companion of Honour in 1993.

After editing the New Statesman, Tony moved to become editor of The Listener, a great weekly BBC magazine (now, alas, no more). At the time, I used to write fiction reviews for the paper under the tutelage of its magnanimous Literary Editor, Derwent May. (When he asked me to do it, I protested that everything I knew about fiction could be written on the back of a postage stamp in 96-pt Helvetica Bold. “Don’t worry about that, dear boy”, said Derwent. “I know about literature, so I’ll just choose four books a month and all you have to do is review them”. So I did.) Then one day, Tony called Derwent into his office and said that my novel reviews were the only fiction reviews he (Tony) could understand. “Why don’t we get Naughton to review television?” he said. And so it was that, in 1982, I became a television critic.

Eventually Tony left the Listener and moved on to become Deputy Editor of the Observer. In 1987, he persuaded the Editor, Donald Trelford, to offer me the post of television critic, in succession to Julian Barnes, who had done a stint after Clive James left the paper. And thus it came about that for nine enjoyable years I had one of the most agreeable slots ever provided by a national newspaper — half of a broadsheet page to myself every Sunday, with no editorial interference beyond that provided by the in-house lawyer whose standard, weary, question to me on Friday nights was: “What I’m trying to decide is whether this (pointing to my column) is just vulgar abuse or grounds for legal action” My stock reply was that it was vulgar abuse. But none of this would ever have happened without Tony Howard’s generous patronage.

I found him a formidable and contradictory figure. He was fantastically knowledgeable and fanatically hardworking, so that one always felt uneasy about trespassing on his time. He read every word in every publication that he edited. He seemed to know everybody, but the people he mixed with always seemed to be more important than oneself — hence the temerity about trespassing on his time. He was terribly mean with his employer’s money, but very generous with his own. He was a good editor, who understood the First Law of editing, which is to be able to reject stuff without having to explain why. And he was a wise and experienced observer of political life. I’ll miss his plummy voice and his rapid-fire verbal delivery. And our political culture is poorer for his passing.

I know nothing about football, but somehow I think that this headline doesn’t capture what Chelsea meant. Normally, if someone is said to be “going nowhere”, that means he’s destined to be sidelined or fired.

Pedantic, I know, but…