Di-vine intervention by the subtitles machine

WHEN I was a football reporter doing lineage for other papers in the days before emails and had to dictate copy over a phone, you were never sure what the printed version would look like if the person on the other end of the line misheard a word.

I never saw the issues in which the reports appeared so cannot give any examples but I was reminded of it by a modern day method which is also open to the same risk of error.

With churches closed due to the lockdown, enterprising clergy up to the Archbishop of Canterbury have been holding virtual services from their homes with family members taking part to overcome the need for social distancing.

While watching the video screening of one service on Easter Day, auto generation was used to show on screen words said by the vicar, similar to subtitles. At one stage he asked viewers to repeat the lines of the great resurrection hymn, the title of which came up as Vine Be The Glory!

This Covid 19 crisis is enough to drive anyone to drink and this was borne out by a remark I overheard in a supermarket queue, saying that a century ago there was prohibition and now since the lockdown alcohol sales have rocketed. Postie praise

In the present situation we all have much to be grateful for in the services that are carrying on, the NHS obviously and too much can never be said about what they are all doing in the most trying of circumstances.

It is pleasing, however, that others like binmen and posties, for example, are being included in the clapping for carers on Thursday nights and I would like to thank the latter of these for finding me, in all that is going on or not, with a letter from Terry Langham simply addressed to me as Hinckley Times correspondent and the place where I live.

Terry, whom I have known over a good number of years is now in a nursing home but wrote to me with many memories of the same place, too many to relate now as space restricts but I will share in a future column or columns.

Loo lambs?

I was taken aback to read that if getting loo roll is still a problem one could use lamb’s ears!

It conjured up images of the newborns I had seen on “Country File” not only having their tails docked in a natural manner but also losing their aural appendages.

However, reading on, I learned that the suggestion n came from a panellist on “Gardeners’ Question Time” who said the herb with silver, woolly leaves would feel really soft and lovely. He went on to say an alternative could be mullein, a common weed also known as cowboy toilet paper. Is that what Bronco was?

Day difference

Had an email from Kenneth Farmer regarding my piece about the origin of Care Away Sunday (April 1) in the old rhyme. He says he had never heard the one after that called Passion Sunday and has diaries going back years all listing it as Passion Sunday.

On the subject of my item Kenneth said: “When I was working, a colleague who sat next to me always insisted it was Curds and Whey and not Care Away. He was really adamant about this and took the argument seriously until he was blue in the face. I don’t know where he got it from and he was a few years older than me and said that’s what he had been brought up to say.”

Thank you Kenneth.