“Tiger, tiger with refulgent conflagration in the nocturnal afforestation, kindly provide details regarding nature of supernatural identity responsible for your design and technology.” A bureaucrat From ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’ by Alan Fletcher
There’s a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail’s ready to depart,
Saying ‘Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can’t start.’
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster’s daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying ‘Skimble where is Skimble for unless he’s very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can’t go.’
At 11.42 then the signal’s nearly due
And the passengers are frantic to a man —
Then Skimble will appear and he’ll saunter to the rear:
He’s been busy in the luggage van!
He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes
And the signal goes ‘All Clear!’
And we’re off at last for the northern part
Of the Northern Hemisphere!
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword Read more…
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, Yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, Read more…
The wind was rough And cold and blough She kept her hands inside her mough. It chilled her through Her nose turned blough And still the squall the faster flough. And yet although There was no snough The weather was a cruel fough. It made her cough (Please do not Read more…
I take it you already know Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through? Well done! And now you wish, perhaps To learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and Read more…
Windows alerts inspired by Haiku, a traditional Japanese form of poetry. Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone. Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that. A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone. More here
I halve a spelling checker It came with my pea see It plainly marks four my revue Mistakes I dew knot sea Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait aweigh As soon as Read more…