Friday, February the 6th, 2009
back to: title, date or indexes
And while I was scrubbling about in the archive looking for Babbage, I came upon this, from 28 January 2004:
“It is a curious fact that the crowbar is one of the very few tools to be named after our avian cousins. Things have come to a pretty pass when our habits of nomenclature are so bereft. It is in an attempt to rectify this sorry state of affairs that the manufacturing arm of the Hooting Yard Foundation is working on the production of an exciting new range of ironmongery products, to wit: guillemot bolts; lapwing nozzles; lark basins; coot clips; teal pins; bittern jacks; little bittern jacks; snow bunting tacks; flamingo hasps; grebe locks; moorhen horns; corncrake hinges; raven sticks; tern rotors; buzzard extractors; and pipit wrenches.”
With much shame, and rending of garments, I have to confess that in the five years since that was written, not a single one of these fabulous products has yet appeared on the shelves of our credit crunchy mongers.