As I may have mentioned on here before (though I’m not that sure that I have) I did A Level English Language. In the A2 half of the course (or ‘second’ half for those unfamiliar with A Levels) you have to carry out a language investigation. What this quite literally means is find any piece of written language (transcript, script, novel, magazine, MSN conversation etc) and then investigate it. By ‘investigate it’ I mean that you must apply the theories of various linguists and make your own theories about the particular text you have.
    Now, as I’m somebody who really enjoys reading, I decided I would do my investigation on some area of literature. Luckily I had recently finished reading the book American Supernatural Tales which is an anthology of horror stories written throughout history by Americans (it’s really good, if you’re interested, you should buy it!). At the time, aside from coursework, we were also studying the theories about the ways that language changes over time and the reasons behind it, so I thought, as the book had several stories from a period of about two hundred years, I could apply these theories to it.
    However, my English teacher warned me that my study might be verging more into an English Literature area of study rather than an English Language one. This meant that she kindly did several after-school English sessions so that I could ensure that I was writing about English Language points and not English Literature points.
    I remember I had written something that wasn’t very good and was very English Literature-y so my teacher was explaining specific kind of points I could make: “One thing that you can see is the way that, in older stories, there is clearly a much more formal tone. I mean, it’s most clear when you look at children’s literature, compare Treasure Island (another good book!) which opens with some large fourteen line paragraph or something like that, to the opening of Holes (a third good book!)  which just starts with ‘There is no lake at Camp Green Lake’! it shows that the people of today have much lower expectations of children than they did in the past. Children’s novels written roughly a hundred years ago are still read and enjoyed by adults today, showing that there’s a drastic difference between the reading ability of children of the past than of today.”
    Then my good friend, who was also in the room, interjected with a really hilarious observation about it “Nah it doesn’t,” she said “it just shows that adults of today are as intelligent of the children of the past!”

In the summer of 2008, my friend Milo Goodspeed was kind enough to let me and Elliott Egan come with him to Cornwall and spend the week staying in his Grandmother’s bed and breakfast. One evening, while strolling through a holiday site, Milo or Egan had the idea of playing Knock Knock Ginger (if you don’t know what that is, it’s a game where you knock at somebody’s door and then run away, it may seem kind of childish, but we were just a group of fifteen year old boys) here’s how the game came out:
    “So I’m gonna go first,” said Milo. “Watch this.” He then ran over to a chalet knocked on the door and ran away
    “Very good, Milo,” I said.
    “Yeah, now it’s Egan’s turn,” he said. “When you go, you have to say ‘Opps sorry, I forgot to run away!’ and then run away.”
    “Okay then,” Egan replied and then ran and knocked on a door.
    “Yes, what is it?” asked the stranger who answered.
    “Opps sorry,” Egan replied, “I forgot to run away!” Then he ran away and all the person at the door could do was sigh.
    “Now, Randall,” Milo said to me, “you have to do the same, except say something different to them.”
    “Hmm, I don’t know….” I said. The game seemed fun to watch, but did I really want to do it myself?
    “C’mon, you have to do it. Me and Egan have, now it’s your turn,” he said.
    “Hmm.” I still wasn’t sure.
    “Just do it!” he said, so I thought I may as well, it wasn’t harming anybody after all.
    So I knocked at the front door of a chalet and waited.
    “Hello, what do you want?” asked the person on the other side in a friendly manner.
    It was then that I realised I should have planned something to say to them. In the end, I quickly said the first thing that came to mind.
    “Hmm, well I like to eat a slice of bread every morning, but today I’ve run out of bread and so I thought I’d come and ask you if I could just have one slice of bread…”
    “Come in,” said the stranger politely.
    Meanwhile, Milo and Egan watched from a distance. From where they were, they couldn’t see who had answered the door, all they could see was that I had gone in. They began to worry. They both seemed to think that I’d knocked on the door of some angry maniac who had let me in either to beat me up or to hold me until the police came.
    Back inside the chalet, the woman who had answered the door had wandered into the kitchen and come back with a nice slice of fancy bread. “Here you go a nice fresh slice of bread,” she said.
    “Thank you,” I said with a smile. “I look forward to eating it tomorrow.”
    They walk me to the door,
    “Which chalet is it that you’re staying in?” she asked
    “Oh you know,” I pointed vaguely in the distance, “over there somewhere. Thanks for the bread!”
    She said goodbye and I headed towards Milo and Egan.
    I explained to them all that had happened and enjoyed my bread.
    So yeah, the trip was quite an enjoyable one, and this was just one of the more memorable events from it, I hope it was entertaining for you too!

I found this song recently, please take a listen to it:

What did you think of the song? When I first listened to it, I thought “Hmm, what a nice song about friendship…” then along came the line “darn, I wish I was a lesbian so I could fall in love with you” and suddenly the song seemed to ‘rub me the wrong way’ as the saying goes. I mean, think about it, would any of you (my readers) really want to change sexuality so that you could have that kind of relationship with your best friend?
    The problem is, I think, that the word ‘love’ in English is used to mean too many things. You love your family, you love your friends and you also love a particular person who you want to spend as much time with as possible. But, despite using the same word, all three of these things are almost entirely different. Let me explain using diagrams, here is the Love Spectrum: