The Way I See It - Wordsworth would turn in his grave

Maybe the only way they could find to finance the big extension next to the Wordsworth Museum is to sell off Dove Cottage as a holiday home.

I suspect, however, that is more a case of a picture library assistant wandering lonely as a cloud through the vast corridors of the headquarters of the Express and, as is the way of Londoners, never having roamed on high o'er vales and hills, grabbed the first picture of a cottage unaware of what, or where, it was.

Or, to borrow a line from deeper into Wordsworth's Daffodils he: "Gazed - and gazed - but little thought" - then used his computer to superimpose a grinning family in front of it.

RELIEF EFFORT

WITH all the fuss made about the toilet

closures in the district, it is gratifying to read that Cumbria County Council is again considering a relief road to the north of Kendal. I trust it will have plenty of lay-bys and be lined with cheap-to-maintain dense, but thornless, bushes!

GREEN MILE

I WONDER how many people have noticed the way traffic grinds to a halt at the Sandes Avenue/Stricklandgate traffic lights even though there is nobody waiting to get out of Maude Street. Everybody just sits there amid growing congestion, yet I would have thought that in an age where even temporary road work lights are radar-controlled it would be simple enough to rig it up so that it only goes green for Maude Street when somebody is actually waiting to come out.

Waiting in the lower reaches of Stricklandgate does, however, give drivers the chance to ponder yet another piece of useless cycle track.

Do any cyclists actually use the thin green strip between Library Road and the bottom of the road, given that once they reach the lights all the cycle lane appears to do is turn sharp right across the waiting traffic and then disappear in the general direction of the shop fronts on the eastern side of the

street?

IS IT A TREE?

WITH local elections just round the corner it may be time to ponder anew the value for money we get from our local councillors.

My colleague Lisa Frascarelli, who

attended a recent Windermere Parish Council meeting, tells me that councillors were stumped over whether or not they could prevent a prominent rhododendron being cut down. It all depended upon whether it was a tree, which could be made the subject of a Tree Preservation Order or a bush, which couldn't.

It quickly became apparent that nobody knew and I would have thought the sensible thing to do to save both time and money, would have been to defer the whole thing until they could consult somebody who did know.

Councillors do not work like that, however, as they consider it a cardinal sin to admit to not knowing anything.

Inevitably, they all wanted to have their say, but by the time they started to beat about the bushes for the second time round, so to speak, Lisa could stand it no longer and left.

OOH LA LA!

I AM told that a French teacher was

explaining to her class that in French, unlike English, nouns are designated as either

masculine or feminine.

"House is feminine and, therefore, la maison, while pencil is masculine and le crayon," she said.

"What about modern words, how is their gender decided?" asked one student. "How about computer for instance?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into male and female groups and asked them to decide for themselves

whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun.

Each group was asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.

The men's group decided that computer' should definitely be la computer because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.

2. The native language they use to

communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval.

4. As soon as you get one of your own, you find yourself spending half your wages on accessories for it.

The women's group concluded, however, that computers should be le computer because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on.

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves.

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they are the problem.

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have got a better model.

April 25, 2003 13:01