[lit-ideas] Re: Absent that day, ehh, year

From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 17:44:14 +0100 (BST)
Only at 21, and asking others when it would be served as I'd never had it 
before and was looking forward to it, did I learn that asparagus is not a 
delicious small-bird delicacy but the green stuff we'd already eaten as a first 
course. And I took some convincing. And it was even later that I was finally 
convinced that it also would affect your wee. 

In the realm of not-knowing there are very different shires of ignorance. There 
is the inevitable gap or misunderstanding [somewhere did asparagus get linked 
with small birds, via sparrow, or some tv drama where the 
bird-shooting-and-eating upper classes ate it?]. Then there is the county of 
the credulous, which is surprisingly populous, but perhaps situated somewhere 
much further off:- an Oxbridge-educated lawyer was with a group of us in a car 
at a petrol station when two of us discussed in an absent tone an orange sign 
on a wall of the forecourt.
"Amazing that OPEC insisted on a sign for 'Petrol Station' in Arabic to be put 
on every petrol station in Britain."
"Oh, that one."
Lawyer: "Which one?"
"The one that says 'Hasheem'".
"Yes, but at least its small and not even clearly visible from the road."
"True. But if there were more Arabs around to complain about its size and 
position, it might be moved right out front, like it is on the continent."
Lawyer: "I always wondered what that sign meant."
[http://www.directa.co.uk/product_images/warning-hazchem-sign.jpg]
Then added, "But why "_Warning_ Petrol Station"?"
"Health and safety, isn't it?"
"Yeh, I mean petrol's dangerous."
Lawyer: "But wouldn't they know that?"
"Not necessarily: in Saudi Arabia and those places some people never fill their 
own cars up."
"Yeh, petrol's so plentiful it's free to citizens but they only get an 
allowance administered by an attendant, so they never fill up themselves and so 
wouldn't be aware of the danger."
Lawyer: "I see."


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[lit-ideas] Re: Absent that day, ehh, year

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