Dawn

Dawn

Friday, December 09, 2011

So, Britain finds itself out of step with all the other 26 nations in the European Union. I wonder if tomorrow we'll wake up to anything like the famous Daily Telegraph headline of 1928 :-  "Storm in Channel - Continent Isolated".


Something I've unearthed while checking this quote suggests that its funniness will be lost on the other side of the Atlantic. Toby Young, writing in The Spectator in 2008, confessed:- I know from having lived in Manhattan in the mid-1990s that you constantly have to point out that there’s a world of difference between the residents of the British Isles and the rest of Europe and that, strictly speaking, the term ‘Eurotrash’ only applies to the latter. I lost count of the number of times I had to explain to Americans why the following headline was funny: "Storm in Channel - Continent Isolated". As far as they are concerned, Europe is just one country, no different from the United States.

As if.

A quick follow-up to yesterday's mention of George Borrow . . . Some time next week, a plaque will be installed at what might or might not have been where he lived in Madrid - in Calle Santiago. 


Finally . . . Who would have thought that Katherine Hepburn would have been the one to sum up the Spanish in only 11 words? - ‘If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun’.

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