Ca Plane Pour Moi: the New York Dolls' legacy

Ca Plane Pour Moi, the iconic Plastic Bertrand song. People have more chance of remembering their first hearing of this than where they were on 11/9/01, or when Kennedy was shot.

In a moment of idleness, I set about capturing a list of covers with youtube or similar links. Mercifully, early on in this pointless exercise I discovered a shrine to this immortal song. Whoever did this work has done a more than thorough job. Go see.

Do not miss:

• The deeply poignant original by Elton Mortello, Jet Boy, Jet Girl.
• Hemmi Gunn's version, translated into Icelandic as Einn dans við mig.
• The dancing video in Thee headcoatees version.
• Seriously foxy ladies in the Swiss band Tears.
• Pigloo - hahahahahahaha!
• Andre Vershuren's accordion instrumental.

(Apropos of Elton Mortello's version, he must have known of Jet Boy by the NYD, which I saw performed live in York in, ummm, 1974.)

My French is appalling, but I also commend David Gibb's attempted translation of the lyrics - My cat Splash indeed. An Aussie chat show has these lyrics overlaid on the PB original.

Ca plane pour moi - ganz wahr.

Piglet Cuckoo MP beer

• In Polish, the word for please is proszę, which the British cannot distinguish in pronunciation from prosię, meaning piglet. How many times have I walked into a Polish bar and said "Two beers, piglet!"?
• In Welsh, the word for beer is cwrw (do remember that w is a vowel). A cuckoo is, unsurprisingly, cwcw, which is a distressingly close thing.
• The Greek for beer is μπύρα, which is bloody confusing for the linguistically inept mathematician who knows the letters, but not that mu and pi combine to give a b. So actually, they call it beer.

One might have assumed that linguistic Darwinism would have assured that all words relating to beer and its purchase would be unambiguous and easily understood by all: I favour calling it "beer" everywhere.

(The Polish for cuckoo is kukułka.)

Safle bws encore

I have in the past had cause to remark on the bus-stops of Aberystwyth:

• For data capture of, inter alia, passenger mass
• As unusual and rare sights in the cityscape

Now - to my surprise and delight, the rarest of events just outside my own house! Over a period of months, the authorities [sic] have erected a fine new stop some 25 yards east of the previous; nobody is sure why. Endless hours of fun are to be had watching putative customers deciding which one actually works - the same confusion afflicts the bus drivers.

We know of no plans ro remove the "old" one.

The best pub in Llandudno

We travel to Llandudno, a town of over-high buildings where the model aeroplane enthusiasts dress their craft as seagulls and rare cable-hauled trams run amok in the streets.

Those habitual liars Trip Advisor tell you the best pub in town is a place I will not name, to avoid risk of libeling. With minimal effort we found two contenders in The Cottage Loaf and The Albert - who knows how many more and better there may actually be?

They also undersing one of the country's most exceptional ancient monuments where you can see blissfully happy people excavating malachite, to impede the parking of cars.

The Fields Medal, Goldbach, Twin Primes and fraud

A wonderful month for number theorists: the Weak Goldbach Conjecture is proved [Helfgott], and an enormous inroad is made to the Twin Prime Conjecture [Zhang]. Neither advance owes anything to me.

Kevin then posed an interesting question: is the Fields Medal awarded in the year of the work that merits it? If so, wouldn't you be pissed off to make an advance of huge stature to be pipped by someone else?

I'll delay my publication of a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis until next year, just in case.

More productively, we thought about manufacturing a facsimile of a Fields Medal using the underused 3D printer in Gwyddoniaeth Gyfrifiadurol at Prifysgol Aberystwyth and taking it turns to wear it during excursions to the pubs of Aber.

Kevin, incidentally, is runner-up in the World Outdoor Cribbage Championship.

A tasteful question about M Thatcher's demise

In some parts of the world, care is taken to ensure that places closely associated with less popular ex-leaders do not evolve into shrines attended by the misguided.

Is it true that Grantham is to be demolished?

Mulholland Boyle Leeds Paediatric Surgery Admirals Earl of Orrery

On the BBC this morning, Greg Mulholland MP said (I paraphrase), "Roger Boyle needs to account for his actions".

He meant the other one.

I think. For the record, he is "Professor Sir Roger Boyle", while I am "Visiting Professor Boyle", an eternal disappointment to my sisters. If this baffles you, compare the issue with the hierarchy of Admirals.

(I'm fairly sure Mulholland wasn't referring to the other other one, or indeed his son, also blessed with my name.)