Poets Called John

1. John Keats ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”– that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know)

2. John Dryden (Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own)

3. John Clare (Language has not the power to speak what love indites: The soul lies buried in the ink that writes)

4. John Donne (Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, tolls, It tolls for thee)

5. John Gray (The garrulous sparrows perch on metal Burns. Sing! Sing! they say, and flutter with their wings)

6. John Masefield (I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky; and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by)

7. John Betjeman (Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!)

8. John Milton (They also serve who only stand and wait)

9. John Updike (The sky is low. The wind is grey. The radiator Purrs all day)

10. John Newton (That I am hers, and she is mine, Invites my feeble lays; But Saviour, that we both are thine, Demands my highest praise)

Football Teams that play in black and white stripes

1. Notts County
2. Newcastle United
3. Grimsby Town
4. St Mirren
5. Dunfermline
6. Juventus
7. Santos
8. Botafogo
9. Borussia Munchengladbach
10. Beşiktaş

Bands with Latin names

1. Status Quo (The existing state of affairs, Rock band)
2. Desideratum (What is needed or wanted, Brazilian metal band)
3. Oasis (Fertile spot in a desert, Rock band)
4. Carpe Diem (Seize the day, French Progrock band)
5. Ipso Facto (By that very fact or act, Goth influenced psychedelic band)
6. Mea Culpa (My fault, US Punk band)
7. Rigor Mortis (Stiffening of the joints of a body after death, US Thrash metal band)
8. Vice versa (In reverse order, Electronic rock band)
9. The Cortinas (Curtained, used for such a phenomenon on some mushrooms, Punk band)
10. Procol Harum (Misspelt, Far from these things, Latin name for Blue Burmese cat, Rock band)

(Based on a Craig Brown idea. Perhaps Madonna and Muse fit)

Scavenger type words

There was a news article recently about mudlarks. It got me thinking of these various terms.

1. Beachcomber (someone who walks along a beach looking for valuable or interesting items)
2. Mudlark (someone who scavenfes in river mud lookiung forobjets of value)
3. Scavenger (someone who searches for and collects discarded items)
4. Forager (someone who searches widely for food or provisions)
5. Treasure hunter (someone who searches for suken, buried, lost or hidden treasure and other artifacts)
6. Scrounger (someone who searches about and turns up something needed from whatever source available)
7. Rummager (someone who searches for soemthingdifficult to find among other things)
8. Gatherer (someone who collects things or forages for them)
9. Collecter (someone who collects objects togerher, ususally becasue they are valuable or interestng)
10. Hoarder (someone who collects large amouonts of something and keeps it for themselves, often ina secret place)

(A detectorist is someone whose hobby is usinga metal detector to locate lost coins, etc)

Items to collect on a fool's errand

George Orwell's Coming up for air includes a list of items for a fool's errand (new apprentices, etc). He only gives four examples. I start with his and then add others.

1. Ha'porth worth of penny stamps

2. Rubber hammer (my dad was sent for one of these and actually got one as they do exist, a glass hammer is a better alternative)

3. Left-handed screwdriver (or hammer or spanner)

4. Striped paint (also available in tartan)

5. A new bubble for the spirit level

6. Sparks for the grinder

7. Bucket of steam

8. Straight hook

9. Long weight/wait

10. Skirting board ladder

(Bags for a Dyson is more modern; sky hooks is an old one)

Respiratory Tract Infections

1. A common cold

2. Bronchitis (inflammation of the airways in the lungs, usually caused by an infection)

3. Sinusitis (swelling of the sinuses, usually caused by an infection)

4. Tonsillitis (an infection of the tonsils at the back of your throat)

5. Laryngitis (when your voice box or vocal cords become irritated or swollen)

6. Pharyngitis (an inflammation of the pharynx resulting in a sore throat)

7. Pneumonia (inflammation of the lungs, usually caused by an infection)

8. Pleurisy (inflammation around the lungs, which causes sharp chest pain)

9. Influenza (highly contagious viral infection of the respiratory passages causing fever, severe aching and catarrh)

10. Asthma (a common lung condition that causes occasional breathing difficulties)

Words beginning with Q

A random list of 10 words beginning with Q

1. Quadriga - A two-wheeled chariot drawn by four horses abreast.

2. Quadrille - A. A square dance of French origin composed of five sections and performed by four couples or Music for this dance in 6/8 and 2/4 time. B. A card game popular during the 18th century, played by four people with a deck of 40 cards.

3. Quadroon - A person having one-quarter Black ancestry.

4. Quaff - To drink heartily.

5. Quale - A property, such as whiteness, considered independently from things having the property.

6. Quango - An organisation or agency that is financed by a government but that acts independently of it. (Qua(si) n(on-)g(overnmental) o(rganisation)).

7. Quark - A. Any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons.* B. A soft creamy acid-cured cheese of central Europe made from whole milk.

8. Quena -A recorderlike Andean flute having a notched mouthpiece.

9. Quidnunc - A nosy person; a busybody (Latin What now?).

10. Quondam - That once was; former.

*Word History: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." This passage from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, part of a scurrilous 13-line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Tristan legend, has left its mark on modern physics. The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds, and the poem is a squawk against the king that suggests the cawing of a crow. The word quark comes from the standard English verb quark, meaning "to caw, croak," and also from the dialectal verb quawk, meaning "to caw, screech like a bird."

It is easy to see why Joyce chose the word, but why should it have become the name for a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter? Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who proposed this name for these particles, said in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of the OED that he had been influenced by Joyce's words: "The allusion to three quarks seemed perfect" (originally there were only three subatomic quarks). Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with (ô) not (ä), as Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such as Mark. Gell-Mann got around that "by supposing that one ingredient of the line 'Three quarks for Muster Mark' was a cry of 'Three quarts for Mister . . . ' heard in H.C. Earwicker's pub," a plausible suggestion given the complex punning in Joyce's novel. It seems appropriate that this perplexing and humorous novel should have supplied the term for particles that come in six "flavours" and three "colours."