Hmmph. Some months ago, the great cargo vessel of ideas that provided this blog with meagre rations of observation and speculation was torpedoed, perhaps by an enemy submarine off the coast of Scotland. Now it seems that all reserves have run out.
This turn of events could be managed were it not for the fact that I have been afflicted with debilitating cynicism. Whatever the subject might be, it seems I can’t muster the minimum amount of motivation to write about it.
When residents of Beirut want to describe a ruinous scene, what do they use as their point of comparison? Here is Danny Kennedy, UUP assembly member, on last night’s antics in Bessbrook:
He described the scene in Bessbrook village in County Armagh as “something akin to Beirut, with bottles, bricks and large lumps of wood and burning embers scattered” all over the centre.
It seems like it’s always Beirut, although the alliterative impulse may have taken hold in this instance – Bessbrook/Beiruit/Bricks/Burning Embers. I think there is a particularly satisfying cumulative effect in repeated use of the voiced bilabial plosive. As in:
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