June

Progress wasn't made in June: no books read (to their ends); no OU finished; no fish or hens buried.

Nowt.

I'm sor(r)y...

Cory. But, I'd given up with Makers when I'd hardly begun. My interest in the work killed outright. A victim of the third paragraph:

The man of the hour was Landon Kettlewell—the kind of outlandish prep-school name that always seemed a little made up to her—the new CEO and front for the majority owners of Kodak/Duracell. The despicable Brit had already started calling them Kodacell. Buying the company was pure Kettlewell: shrewd, weird, and ethical in a twisted way.

Sentence one was fine--odd first name notwithstanding (I gather our friends across the ocean sometimes cast more widely for appropriate monikers) and "prep-school" (whose precise meaning I'm unsure of in a US context).

But sentence two got out a knife and jabbed me in the readerly eye.

"Brit"! Brit?

No, he's English or Welsh or a Scot. And no Brit inhabitant of Great Britain who's attended a prep(aratory) school (i.e. one of those private institutions that feeds into the public school system) would have a name like that. It does not reek of posh, of privilege, of Eton Mess and Wet Bobs and Dry Bobs (and all those other things that are completely foreign to me too). With a surname like Kettlewell, I'd've believed a good honest ordinary name like John or Andrew, and might assume he was a bright boy on a scholarship. Or something more unusual like Peregrine or Auberon would've worked with a slightly more elevated family name: Lacey? de something or other with a family tree right back to the Norman invasion?

But, Landon? Nope. No way. It's not in the Oxford Dictionary of First Names. Not even as a mainly US coinage.

Now, as a surname it's fine. But here in the UK, I don't think it's yet made the move from last to first that other names have made over the centuries.

Of course, the joy of electronic text is that I can fix it... if I so choose. A little search-and-replacer-y is all it takes. So maybe I can continue reading about [insert appropriate first name] [insert appropriate last name] after all.

And don't worry (and I'm sure you won't), you're in good company: I failed to buy Revelation: Space (I think it was that one by Mr Reynolds) for several years due to the misuse of "crescendo" on the first page. And there was a Brian Stableford I hesitated over because of the typo in the first paragraph.

Signed,

Perfectionist, Pedantic and Proud (and English)

Henz!

We have two new hens. Looby Loo has named the red one Redly and the Bluebelle, Tinkle.

They travelled up from Dorset remarkably calmly, took to the run, weren't too bothered by the white hen wandering round the garden beyond SHOUTING HER HEAD OFF.

Miss Daisy wasn't as happy. The situation wasn't helped by the thunderstorm and torrential rain. (I wasn't much pleased by it: the first shower landed on myhead and bare shoulders whilst I was cleaning out the Eglu and putting new bark chippings in the run. Checking up on the fowl has meant tramping up and down the garden several times since--with an umbrella.)

At 8.00 pm with the sky looking thunderous, I had to decide what to do with Miss Daisy who was hanging round near the run evidently wondering about bed. I took the risk of popping her in with the new ones and leaving them to it. Half an hour later, Miss Daisy was marching up and down one side of the run (think maddened caged tiger here) CROWING FIT TO BURST and the new hens were watching her quite calmly. I scattered a trail of corn into the Eglu and got Miss Daisy to shut up long enough to eat some from my hand. Tinkle forgot herself and followed suit. Redly ate some from the ground beside mt hand. Miss Daisy stomped off SCREAMING INSULTS AT THE HEAVENS.

I left them to it. There was further EFFING AND BLINDING. Then silence. As of 10.10 pm, unless they've been abducted by aliens, all three are tucked up in bed together.

Success.