Thursday, April 02, 2015

A prolegomena to all future essays

when you write articles and journalism rather than scholarly papers sometimes you resort to short lively phrases to indicate the types of things you have in mind which in a more formal piece of writing might need qualifications for example if i wrote the man on the clapham omnibus i think you would know what i meant and wouldn't need to say ah but what about the woman and and hasn't the clapham omnibus been replaced by a tram and anyway who the hell calls them omnibusses any more

omnibum? omnipodes?

ergo

when I say church of england i probably mean mainstream unthreatening religious belief even though i know there are some nasty extreme wings of the church of england as well.

when I say radio 4 listener i prolly mean a sort of comfortable well educated middle class liberal english person EVEN THOUGH i know that some of the late night talk shows are quite racy and i once knew a poor person who liked nicholas parsons (there was a lady who liked nicholas parsons and also a parson who liked nicholas ladies)

when I say sun reader i mean a certain sort of tory voting working class ... oh god you know what i mean by sun reader

when I say mail reader i mean a racist

when I say guardian reader i mean a certain kind of academic theoretical left winger who worries a bit about ideological purity, say, checking up on whether his fruit comes from a country which traders with israel even though they print a variety of different opinions

by guardian writer i mean a person who writes in the guardian

similarly for middle class public schoolboy oxbridge type sussex university graduate hipster folkie comprehensive schoolboy tory lib dem hipie

i hop that i have not offended any one in any of those groups three of which i am included in myself