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Nowhere has the death of the English language been more clearly illustrated than in the rise of ‘corporate’ English. You know what I mean – that needless use of ten words where one will do to suggest greater linguistic reach than is apparent. But before I chew on this matter more, let me get all my ducks in a row, make sure we are on the same page and that we have enough wriggle room to reach conclusions and the win-win we so anxiously anticipate.

I’ll begin the blamestorming immediately. It’s America’s fault Specifically I blame their every corporate boardroom of each multinational conglomerate where the English language is spoken (or mangled, misappropriated, disembowelled or abused).

English, and let’s not forget that it is still, however tenuously, called English and not American, is the language of Shakespeare and Dickens and, despite this weighty pedigree, is a language in evolution. All languages are. If they don’t evolve, they are lost to the pages of history. How many can read, truly read, the language of Chaucer?

Take Welsh for instance. As a child on holiday in Wales I was openly amazed at the language which had clearly not evolved but remained rigid and inflexible, preserved more as a museum item perhaps and less as a living language. In tiny corner shops, ancient wrinkled crones, wrapped in warm scarves, spouted what seemed like gibberish, occasionally punctuated by English words such as ‘teenager’ or ‘lemon barley water’ and ‘refrigerator’ evidently words which had too little sway in common parlance to necessitate a specific Welsh counterpart. one can imagine some kind of Eisteddfod delegated to the preservation of ”microwave’, ‘diet plan’ and ‘garden centre’.

Even Germany recognises the need for linguistic evolution. In the First World War, faced with tanks for the first time ever, Germany struggled to find a word to describe them, plumping eventually for ‘Schutzengrabenvernichtungsautomobil’. By the time they had alerted other troops to the presence of tanks on the battlefield “Finden sie mir bitte schnell eine schutzengrabenvernichtungsautomobil”, (get me a tank quick) the war was over frittered away in those extra letters and syllables. Twenty years later they had the much more catchy ‘Panzer’ and, for a while, things went much better for.them.

Corporate bullshit, or bovine scatology, as General Norman Schwarzkopf famously dismissed the Iraqi propaganda machine, is everywhere. Many years ago I worked in a medical writing agency where we were expected to churn out this kind of drivel for clients impervious to proper English, too desensitised by corporate claptrap, to recognise a well turned phrase if it hit them between the eyes. A colleague, who I shall call Jim Jones, and I, from the opposite side of the office would play bullshit bingo with unsuspecting clients. In case you are unfamiliar with the rules, they are few and simple. Players (the participants in a particularly tiresome teleconference) generate their own list of bullshit terms and wait until the clients use them. This continues until somebody declares bingo. Listen out while a reticent client asks to “circle back” on the proposition while they “get all the ducks in a row” then asks to “table this” so that they can get enough “boots on the ground” to pick off the “low hanging fruit”. Obviously it’s important not to “reinvent the wheel” whilst throwing the idea “up in the air to see what sticks”. Jim had an exquisitely sensitive ear for this kind of boardroom nonsense and generally won the contests. It all came to an abrupt halt after one particularly comical session when Jim, as usual, celebrated his victory by screeching “Bingo”. Jim learnt a valuable lesson that day. Always check whether your microphone is live. The explanation that followed from the client services representative was worthy of Blackadder at his most evasive.

Once I found my own grasp of the English language being polluted by these ridiculous linguistic distortions, I had to leave. Even without a new job in the offing, it was hard to stomach. I’ve never deluded myself that I am a significant writer but I simply couldn’t keep a straight face when asked to churn out more of the same.

As I said earlier, I hold most Americans responsible for the development of obfuscating terminology and its adoption by boardrooms around the world. Sorry chaps but color is not how you spell colour. And the opposite of day is night not nite. There is also no American equivalent of fortnight as I discovered once when trying to book a hotel stay for fourteen nights. Sentences end with a full stop not a period. British chips are American fries while British crisps are American chips. “Let’s get a handle on this” by an American means broadly “let’s try and understand this”.

Even in extremis our American cousins still find time for linguistic mangling. “Let’s catch him” a British policeman might say. His American equivalent might invite his team to “endeavour to apprehend this individual”. These terms even extend to our last cherished moments. No longer do doctors talk plainly of ‘death’ but wrap this in absurdities such as a ‘negative patient care outcome’. Well yes, patient care outcomes don’t come more negative than death. A kind of lose-lose scenario?

We don’t want to reinvent the wheel so let’s put a pin in it before we throw it up to see what sticks. While we work hard and play hard, let’s table this until we get boots on the ground. We can always circle back to get our ducks in a row or synergise before we hop on a call.

*Apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is rare enough for Tunbridge Wells to appear in anybody’s newsfeed. Beyond the usual “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”, it is, in most people’s books little more than a minor tourist town between London and the cost. Although I believe (before my time really) that there was a poll tax riot in TW. Obviously not a riot in the sense of Toxteth but, in our dainty terms, a riot nonetheless. Several teacups were knocked over along The Pantiles and a couple of pensioners jostled outside the library although apologies were immediately forthcoming. A wing mirror was cracked on a car although the owner later suggested that it was already weakened.

Of course I can verify none of this. I came to Tunbridge Wells a decade or so later, before these events and mischief making acquired the status of legend. Honestly, my alibi is watertight.

On the subject of water (did you see what I did there?) Tunbridge Wells has been much in the news over the last two weeks. And I don’t mean a byline in The Courier or Sevenoaks Chronicle. No I mean national newspapers and broadcasters. We even got on television before the latest acts of lunacy from the White House resumed its stranglehold on the airwaves.

All of this is my way of saying that the water crisis in Tunbridge Wells has not been resolved. National newspapers and media outlets may be taking no interest now but the problem that caused their interest in the first place has not gone away. Okay we have water coming out of our taps at more or less full-strength. But we are still being urged, nay instructed, to boil all such water before ingesting it. This is at the very least an inconvenience.

In fairness, being apparently on the water authority’s “A List” as a result of the Parkinson’s, I don’t even have to fetch and carry. SE Water delivers it to me. I only have to leave the house for an instant and another twelve bottles appear on the doorstep. I finally drew that to a halt but not before a total of 84 bottles – that’s 168 litres – have been delivered. Far from being simply drought relief in a manner of speaking, this now poses a significant drowning hazard. The bath is full of bottles. There are bottles everywhere. And, in fairness to SE Water, if it were not for this allowance, life really would be challenging.

For the moment, the flyer from the government making clear that tap water must be boiled remains in force. But as of today (Friday) there is no indication of when the ban will be lifted. Not a squeak from SE Water or Westminster. Even the scientific explanations of prior and current events have rather dried up. A pity because, any absence of credible information provides fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Moreover, the chief executive of SE Water remains in post without a whiff of a resignation in the offing. And it’s not as though SE Water has an unblemished record of performance. It has previous. Continuing to reiterate the “just-boil-the-tap-water-and-it’s-fine” mantra while the chief executive hangs on by his fingernails doesn’t fool anyone. After all, they said the same after Camelford.

For around 9000 homes in my town, Tunbridge Wells, the last three days have been accented by a mains water supply failure. I won’t bore you with the details, only to say that, in the continuing imbalance between consumer expectations and shareholder dividends, there is only ever one winner. I’ll give you a clue – it’s not the ones searching for standpipes in the street or having to visit the local sports centre to pick up their allocation of water (around six bottles per capita). At peak demand (around Sunday lunchtime), a stationary queue of traffic extended most of the way out of Tunbridge Wells, beyond the sports centre, most of the way to Tonbridge, along St John’s Road. For those of you who do not know the locale, you will just have to take my word for it. It’s a traffic jam of biblical magnitude. The local MP has already called for the head of South Eastern Water, on a silver salver. Okay I made up the last bit – he may keep his head and – but will presumably lose his job.

You might imagine that this this supply pico-problem would be particularly trying for those of compromised mobility such as we Parkies – my nearest ‘bottled water station’ is a mile away on foot. In other words out of the walking range of many disabled.

Although there appears to be a general absence of any serious contingency plan for such an aqueous interruption, I can’t fault them here. I was aware on Saturday morning that something was amiss when I opened my front door to be greeted by 12 litres of mineral water. Various peeps have offered to help carrying the bottles in. Three hours later, another six have arrived unannounced. And then a further six around late afternoon.

The following morning, I open the front door to another 12, a virtual tsunami
of bottled water. Although still in my pyjamas, I scan the horizon for people hiding behind trees or dustbins clutching bottles and waiting to pounce with more water. They are stealthy, waiting till I leave the house, however briefly, to bring yet more.

And the water comes from Devon, Brecon, Lichfield and Cumbria, affording me the luxury of a blind tasting. The ‘blind tasting’, that bedrock of the wine industry reveals next to nothing about these waters. My palate is unable to tell between Devon and Cumbria, between Brecon and Lichfield. Or any with any other.

One of the bottles is simply labelled “Courtesy Water”, as though such a title is meaningful. This particular water, despite claiming it is fit for all domestic purposes still requires boiling before use to make up infant feeds. It is also the only water that offers no detailed mineral analysis. The others are positively effusive, openly flaunting their respective sodium, potassium, and calcium. One is even so confident as to list its ingredients – water apparently. And a Best Before Date. There’s confidence.

By the end of the second day of deprivation, the mains water is conspicuous by its absence and further bottles arrive in the time it takes me, or would normally take me, to shower. The bottled water suppliers are gaining in confidence, describing their water as “wildly refreshing”. Another is brought to us from “a Small Cottage in the Beautiful Brecon Beacons National Park”. It even has a Facebook page.

Meanwhile South-Eastern water is beginning to run out of apologies, having run out of water a some four days earlier. But I know they are “very sorry” (Sunday morning), “working round-the-clock” (same evening), “slowly sending water to the drinking water storage tank” (Monday morning) and “water is gradually returning” (yesterday afternoon). By 9 PM yesterday evening they were “making good progress and seeing supplies gradually return”. By this morning (Tuesday) they were “continuing to make progress” without detailing how. By 2 PM, we were informed that the bottled water stations would remain open until 10 PM although we had been told they would be unnecessary from Sunday. The latest bulletin explains that they are still very sorry and reassures us that they “understand how incredibly tough this is for the community”. You don’t say.

I am keeping my head down. For me this is not so much a problem of water absence as the deluge of bottled water. At least that seems to have at least peaked. There is water in every cupboard and crevice. Far from being short of water I am practically awash with bottled water. I have at least stopped the fly tipping of water on my doorstep. In terms of their response, I cannot fault them.

Mindful of The Wedding Feast at Cana, I’m thinking I might offer a reversed version – people could bring wine to me and I could give them water in return. But please, no more bottled water – enough already!

The Lord’s test match between England and India finished around 5 PM yesterday (14/7/25) when Mohammed Siraj played on to a ball from Bashir. It was the tiniest of taps, kiss almost, and a damp squib to end what had been an astonishing test match. While commentators waxed lyrical about how this test had been one of the most exciting ever and a magnificent validation of the longer form of cricket.

I’ve never needed any persuading. Five-day test match cricket is, to my mind, the ultimate expression of the game, indeed for me at least the only true path. Even at my school, we were encouraged to respect the longest form of the game, with all its subtleties and nuances. The summer season invariably ended with a match against Rugby played at Lord’s over two long days. In schoolboy terms this was a proper test match. And the school was not without some degree of cricketing success – the college produced a dozen or so county level players, Christopher Martin-Jenkins perhaps the most immediately recognisable name. Several went on to play for England, with one – AG Steel – an England captain, playing in the first ever test match in 1880.

I wonder what these boys would make of all the shenanigans at Lord’s in this test. It’s all very well saying that, in the heat of battle, passions run high and the occasional unguarded remark might slip out. That doesn’t wash. The behaviour of the players in this most recent encounter has, in my view, crossed a line. To regard a tirade of profanities delivered directly at batsmen by bowlers and fielders (it’s usually that way round) as acceptable even in the cauldron of emotions sets a dangerous precedent.

I abhor sledging in any form. In its own way it is an admission of defeat. A bowler who sledges a batsmen is, in essence, admitting that he cannot dislodge the batsman by skill alone. In this most recent test match, behaviour has reached a new low. Siraj, rightly fined and punished for his behaviour earlier is merely symptomatic – there were plenty of others who transgressed in equally or worse manners. Carse grappling with an Indian batsman overstepped in many ways.

On some occasions, the misbehaviour threatened to boil over into actual fisticuffs. Again, it is unpardonable. What game to the players think they are playing? Football? How long before we have individual players nose to nose with the umpires contesting their judgement. And the umpires in this test hardly distinguished themselves with a number of incorrect decisions, sometimes reversed by VAR. On occasion they simply stood like rabbits in the headlights uncertain of what was taking place and how to deal with it.

Many are looking forward to Old Trafford, relishing the opportunity to resume hostilities between the two sides. Others, myself included, fear for the future of a game which tolerates this kind of behaviour. Rugby for instance is adjudicated with absolute authority by the referees. Referees are addressed as Sir when they are addressed at all. Players are not invited to offer opinions on a passage of play or to direct comments to a wider audience. Swearing is proscribed. Punishment is instant and severe.

Compare this to football. Players standing and shrieking in the face of a referee whose analysis of the game differed from their own is the modern norm. Players may surround and jostle the referee. It happens.

I fear we will look back on this test in years to come as a pivotal point. We stand at a crossroads. By all means, celebrate a marvellous test match from a purely cricketing stance. But let’s not delude ourselves that this outweighs any misbehaviour. It doesn’t. Cricket remains a family game, perhaps even more so nowadays. So let’s have an end to this misbehaviour. Giving a departing batsmen a ‘sendoff’ is wholly unnecessary. Nothing is more eloquent than silence.