Buffoon

This is a journey into words.

Well it’s not really; I wouldn’t know how to write a journey into words. In fact regular readers of this blog will know that my knowledge of grammar and punctuation is extremely rudimentary and I often employ commas and semi colons in the wrong place, misuse the hyphen and dump on correct sentence structure.

The trouble is that I learned the basics of English in the failing school system of 1970s and 1980s, which concentrated on reading English rather than writing it. Such things as articles, prepositions and verbs were simply not taught. Neither was the correct usage of punctuation. I’m thirty seven and I’m still filling in those gaps in my knowledge. This process will continue until I’m on my death bed, where I will write a perfectly constructed missive on the quality of NHS soup.

However I can take solace from the fact that Oscar Wilde himself had problems with the language. A number of years ago a note to his publisher was discovered in an original manuscript. It said ‘I’ll leave you to tidy up all the woulds and shoulds, wills and shalls, that’s and which’s etc.’  So if a master like Wilde had trouble with the language, what hope is there for an oaf like me? No chance at all I’m afraid and I’m glad of it. Sometimes it’s good not to know all the rules, especially when you remember that those rules are only around 250 years old. This may seem a long time but it’s only a drop in the ocean when compared to the thousands of years in which this language has developed. This doesn’t mean that I’ll stop trying to learn those rules but if they get in the way I’ll squash them like a rotten orange.

You may have noticed that even though I commented on my lack of education I stopped short of blaming it. This is because I lost that right a long time ago. The excuse that ‘I didn’t learn it at school’ can no longer hold water in a world where information is readily accessed with only a few clicks of a mouse. So blaming ones school for a lack of knowledge is like blaming it for not teaching you how to drive a car or masturbate. These are things you take responsibility for learning. Hopefully not at the same time or you’ll end up like this guy.

For instance I wasn’t clever enough to go to University so left school when I was eighteen and got a job. This didn’t mean that I stopped reading or learning. Only an idiot settles with his lot in life. Sadly there are plenty of these idiots around, they talk about ‘The University of Life’ an institution with a student body of around six million fuckwits. It is the only university in the land to have its own uniform. This consists of: jeans, white training shoes and an untucked Ted Baker shirt. There is only society for students to join is: The Lager and Fighting Soc. who meet every Friday and Saturday night in a town, city or village near you.

Whoa! Stop there Wolfenden! Sorry about that, I seem to have lurched sideways into snobbery. I may be an uneducated buffoon but I’m as woolly a liberal as any graduate.

Haggis tonight.