The bus dropped us at London’s Victoria Station named after the Queen who was not often amused, despite owning the Crown Jewels, an Empire streaked across the globe, plus vast estates, palaces and castles. Not to mention hundreds of pubs named after her. Some people are never happy with what they’ve got.
These days her majesty's station is a dingy wreck of a place, filled with sweaty commuters and sprayed black by the internal combustion engine, invented in her majesty’s day by Robert Stevenson and his Rocket.
Lord Alfred Tennyson was Victoria’s Poet Laureate who used to live just up the road from my Mum. Her husband (Queen Vic’s, not my Mum’s) was a man who took the title 'Prince Albert' and was a German. In modern parlance a Prince Albert refers to a piercing of the male genitalia, ie. dick and bollocks, meat and two veg. Nb. DO NOT click that link if you are of a queasy nature ........
See! You can learn something new every day, just as Komensky said.
There was time for a full English breakfast and a stroll up to Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall named after Victoria's spouse and a spot a year earlier where I’d been accosted by a drunken Scot asking if I wanted tickets.
“Tickets for what?” I ventured, quite reasonably.
“For the concert.”
“What concert?”
“Don’t you start getting clever with me.”
“Well, I’m not getting clever. I just want to know what concert you are selling tickets for.”
“Do you want tickets or not,” the blithering idiot shouted as I walked away laughing. I bet he voted yes in the referendum, despite living and 'working' in London, and for sure he scares the pants off Japanese tourists.
Another bus, the 90x with wi-fi connection that didn’t connect, took us onto the Westway through Hammersmith and Acton on an elevated highway that would have allowed glimpses into passing homes if it hadn’t been for the grey net curtains and windows sprayed black by the internal combustion engine, invented by Robert Louis Stevenson and his Rocket and then we were in endless suburbia - Brentford, Ealing, Boston Manor, Stoke Poges, West Drayton - when an unfamiliar London sight came into view as a splendid arch, a metalled rainbow spanning Wembley stadium, enlivening the semi-detached horizon and far easier on the eye than the phallic symbols now going up in central London.
The green fields of Oxfordshire somehow shone from the dark, dipping down to the Thames Valley and before long the city of dreaming spires appeared and we were sweeping over the lamp-lit cobbles of St. Clements and Jericho and I got off at The High and headed for The Eagle pub where DNA was discovered by drunken students and on this trip I learned of the 'Oxford comma', which is an optional comma before the word 'and' at the end of a list.
Eg: We sell books, videos, and magazines.
It take's the name from being traditionally used by printers, readers, and editors at Oxford University Press. Not all writers and publishers use it, but it can clarify the meaning of a sentence when the items in a list are not single words
Eg: These items are available in black and white, red and yellow, and blue and green.
The Oxford comma is also known as the 'serial comma'.
So, there you go. Now here's some food for thought ..........