I’m so excited.<\/p>\n
The first batch of set texts for my OU course have just arrived.<\/p>\n
Of course, getting excited about the arrival<\/em> of (plucks a book off the pile) ‘Medea and Other Plays<\/em>‘ by Euripides<\/em> isn’t the same as getting excited about reading<\/em> the said work.<\/p>\n Actually, it’s being a very literary day.<\/p>\n I’m trying to finish a short for publication. Yay.<\/p>\n I’m working on a book review. Yay (again).<\/p>\n It’s Book Group tonight. Yay.<\/p>\n And, as mentioned,\u00c2\u00a0some set texts have arrived. Double Yay.<\/p>\n Unfortunately I’m struggling with Billy Bragg’s polemic on the meaning of national identity in modern Britain – ‘The Progressive Patriot<\/em>‘. Boo.<\/p>\n In simple terms Billy – a guy I’ve admired for a couple of decades – has lost the plot.<\/p>\n He demonstrably fails to\u00c2\u00a0understand what it is to be English let alone British.<\/p>\n Billy\u00c2\u00a0doesn’t even consider what\u00c2\u00a0being English or British means within the context of being Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Mancunian or Liverpudlian.<\/p>\n But he does have\u00c2\u00a0an excellent grasp of what it is to be a middle-aged white male from the south-east of England.<\/p>\n Ho hum; Billy Bragg seems to have\u00c2\u00a0become\u00c2\u00a0the typical Guardian<\/em> reader.<\/p>\n Meanwhile over on the other side of the Atlantic…<\/p>\n A group of people called The Simplified Spelling Society have launched a campaign to cull the English Language of all those confusing words and phrases in an attempt to make things easier.<\/p>\n I’m not altogether who they’re trying to make things easier for.<\/p>\n But as The Simplified Spelling Society are a US organisation (they would say ‘organization’ and therein, I suspect, lies the rub) it’ll be interesting to see if they have any impact on society – British, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian or even<\/em> American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m so excited. The first batch of set texts for my OU course have just arrived. Of course, getting excited about the arrival of (plucks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}