Double Negatives and Happy Endings.

Today I was fortunate enough to observe human behaviour in an unexpected situation.  Of course, when I say 'fortunate', I really mean 'damned', and by 'situation' what I really mean is 'gridlock of traffic'.  There is no doubt that driving during rush hour to university for your first week (and earliest lecture of said week) is stressful enough.  I must say, I have been quite lucky as rush hour goes; I haven't been late to a lecture/seminar yet.  So imagine my despair when I reached the final road of my journey - the road I park my car on - only to find myself in a major gridlock situation.

I should probably explain how this happened.  The road (I shall not name it as it is hard enough to find parking near my university, without giving away the name of the secret road - which has all of two spaces left on many occasions - to my fellow Twickenham drivers) has various bollards down the middle of it, and cars parked on each side of it.  This makes it impossible for vehicles to travel in two directions down the road, so everyone has to wait, be polite, let people through, etc, etc, etc.   For some reason that I cannot fathom, the driver of a small lorry decided it would be a good idea to drive down this road... during rush hour.  Although this would have been a nuisance and a pretty stupid thing to do under normal circumstances, it was exacerbated by a van coming the other way.  Needless to say, people are not in the best of moods during rush hour, and so no one waited, no one was polite, and as a result, no one could 'get through'.  Thus, we had a gridlock situation.

Now, I'm not afraid to say that I had no idea what to do at this point (apart from calling my friend and asking her to save me a seat at the back of the lecture which I would surely be late for).  Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to sort it all out.  I looked in my rear-view mirror to see what the man behind me was doing, to find him opening a book and beginning to read.  Apparently he intended on staying a while.  I looked back at the van and lorry drivers, who were parallel to each other, chatting through their open windows, and casting disapproving glances at the cars surrounding them, as if the situation was the fault of the other drivers.  To be honest with you, I don't know whose fault it really was, but I can tell you that driving a van, let alone a lorry, down the secret road is a very, very, very stupid thing to do.  Anyway - with the man behind me reading and the van and lorry drivers talking, it was now all down to Mother.  Obviously making her way to work/ home after the school run, an authoritative-looking woman stepped out of her car and told everyone what they needed to do.  I found it interesting that every driver's trust was in the mother-figure of the group.  None of us knew her (to the best of my knowledge) and none of us knew if she knew what she was talking about.  Good ol' Mother.  Turban Man (I do not mean this in any disrespectful way, it just so happened that this man was wearing a turban, and like Mother, Book-reading-man, Van driver and Lorry driver, I did not know his name) also stepped out of his car, but just sort of stood there, as if his mere presence would be helpful.  It was not.

When this little incident was over, I made two attempts to reverse into two different spaces, to which book-reading-man (now not reading... I hope, as he was driving) might as well have stuck two fingers up, because he made it impossible for me to do so.  Luckily for me the space behind the tiny caravan at the top of the road was free (a rarity on such a road).  So I parked, and got to the lecture five minutes early (before my friend as a matter of fact).  Happy ending.

The lecture was on 'The Nature of Language', which was (thank God) interesting.  After two years of fearing my love for English was dead (and pretty much detesting any lessons on language) I was grateful for this.  However, I was somewhat saddened when I was told that a great deal of what I had been taught about the English language throughout my life was wrong.  Here are some examples:
- Ain't is word that should be acceptable to use
- Pronouncing 'Ask' as 'Aks' or 'Ax' is perfectly acceptable.  In fact, 'Ax' and 'Ask' we a part of the English language at the same time.
- (This one gets me right in the heart) A double negative does not make a positive.  A double negative just makes a stronger negative. (Ouch.  I still haven't come to terms with that one).

This 'free love' attitude to language is one I suppose I will have to get used to.  Don't get me wrong, a great deal of what my lecturer spoke about had to do with different dialects, which was perfectly understandable.  I just can't really wrap my head around the three points above.  However, if next week I am told that the rules of apostrophes are wrong, I may just have to drop the course.

I'm about to go and be best friends with R. L. Trask. 

Tails.