We all know this sentence, but I thought that as I’ve often briefly wondered how anyone thought to write such a stupid thing, and never wondered why or how it became so widely known, that should look into it before mentioning it here. Don’t worry about why it popped into my head this morning – that could become clearer as you read on. Anyway, I decided I’d google it before writing anything about it, and became so engrossed I almost forgot what was on my mind when I began today’s post!
First, I learned that this sentence is a pangram. As often happens when you go to Wikipedia, I then wandered off on a trail of discovery, which you can follow, too, by getting out your own googler – you do have the time today I’m sure, as you’re most likely not going ‘out’ anywhere. You’ll come across references to early printing and computer technology, learn of testing various systems like morse code and flag signalling, typing speeds and more. You’ll learn of lipograms and analysing a pandammic lipogram. And there’s an ancient Chinese heiroglyphic 1000 character poen from the Song dynasty, known as the Thousand Character Text in which every character is used just once, which also makes very interesting reading.
We take all kinds of things for granted, and this quarantine we’re all caught up is producing the realisation of this reality, often with thoughtful comment, even confessions and promises of the “I must do gooder… ” nature (this sentence was a lines detention, written out 100 times on the blackboard by Nigel Molesworth as I remember in a wonderful cartoon from “The Compleet Molesworth” that Dad and Mum had. I would just love to get a copy of that book. Kids today would have absolutely no idea of what a detention is/was, and how frequently it was of laboriously writing out lines over and over many times, sometimes hundreds, on paper or the blackbroard. Ah, the memories …
You can find images of some of those cartoons on line, but apart from the generational culture gap, they’re all copyrighted, so I can’t reproduce one here. But anyway you have time to go and look at some of those brilliant drawings by Ronald Searle , and I really enjoyed this marvellous interview with him, aged 90, around 10 years ago – very revealing of the influences of the times and of his attitudes.
Now, where was I? Oh yes: last night as we finished our episode of a gripping series we’ve started watching on Netflix “Fauda”, the little routine of switching back to the TV wouldn’t work – we were stuck, and Mike determined the failure was due to the batteries in the controller were flat. We were going to bed, anyway.
Around mid morning Mike went out for the needed AAA batteries, and fitted them. We then found we could get visuals+sound, but couldn’t go where we wanted to be – which at that time of day was NOT the BBC news, but the music tv radio station for the day – (70s hits, beautifully playing upstairs) Downstairs the Cable TV/radio system was essentially totally messed up. I took command of the controller, switched it off for the 20 seconds that often works – with no change. Pressing seemingly every button on the unit, and going to the menu several times (different results each time) finally, finally, we got to the point that all systems work properly when you touch the relevant button.
Do I know how this happened? NO. Do I care? YES, only in so much as it means our listening and viewing enjoyment continues uninterrrupted at this difficult time.
Have a great day everyone, stay safe, and be patient. Mike has lunch ready out on the terrace = so I’m out of here for a(nother) wine and some vitttals 🙂