The Weird and wonderful place names of England

 

Oscar Wilde famously said Britain and America have everything in common except language.

He may well have been right. When I was in England a few years back, I struggled to find anybody, at least in the hospitality sector, who spoke English with anything other than a broad East-European accent. 

When I arrived in America, I found everyone spoke English with clarity and control. There was, however,  a propensity, widely used, to call me “Bud”. I can forgive that, coming as I do, from a nation where everybody is called “Mate”.

Anyway, I love English and the English. A great mate of mine, and a frequent Fryday correspondent, hails from England and the days when we would gladly and derisively call him a Pom died with the unions.

We love them out here.

Inspired by my friend, I decided that this week Fryday would explore the English use of English, particularly when it came to naming their towns and hamlets. I have done this before, but I have found some new ones. The English are wonderfully creative about this.

Here are the weirdly wonderful names the English have given their towns and places:

Towards Newcastle in the North, we find “Pity me” and “Wide Open”. Heading down through Teeside to Yorkshire, we have “Crackpot”, “Giggleswick”, and “Wetwang”.

Not too far from Southport, we have ”Blubberhouses”, “Jump”, “Bunny” and “Barton in the Beans”. Near Norwich is a particular favourite of mine, “Great snoring”, which is almost level with “Wig wig” and Chemistry” near the border of Wales. Near Gloucester, there is “Catbrain” and who could forget “Matching Tie” near Cambridge?

The far south of England, though, is the easy winner as far as odd names are concerned. “Curry Mallet” isn’t too far from Bath, “Donkey Town” is south of London, and in the far south, aptly at the bottom of England, we have the delights of “Brown Willy”, “Droop”, “Loose Bottom” and “Crapstone”.

Elsewhere we find ourselves in:

Badgers Cross, Balls Cross, Bell End, Bitchfield, Bishop Spit. Boggy Bottom, Cockermouth, Cockfosters, Crudwell,  Greedy Gut, Greensplat, Ha-Ha Road, Moofield, Mudchute, Mudford Sock, No Place,  Once Brewed/Twice Brewed, Penistone, Pratt’s Bottom, Pucklechurch, Queen Camel, Rotten End, Sandy Balls, Scratchy Bottom, Spanker Lane,  Tiddlywink, Upperthong, Ugley, Westward Ho!, Windy Nook and the one I get really high on…

Tokers Green.

Presumably the last of those hosts a music festival…or should.

 

It's not Cricket

 

I once heard an American question how a game of test cricket could last five days and not necessarily produce a winner.

Of course, the nuances of cricket are incomprehensible to someone not steeped in the game, but the question is rich coming from America, the country that inflicted on the world the most complex and unfathomable of all games—American Football.

The American has a point, however. There are many aspects of cricket lore that defy explanation and whose origins we lost to antiquity. Take player positions on the field, for example. What sense can we make of silly mid-on and silly point, slips, gully, backward short leg, square leg and, surely the loneliest position on the field, third man?

What appears to be even more incomprehensive to Americans is the phraseology used to describe the juxtaposition and status of the two teams playing the game. 
To simplify that aspect of the game, someone went onto the World of Cricket Forum and came up with:

 

The Rules of Cricket:
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. 

Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. 

When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. 

There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. 

When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game! 

 

There is a juxtaposition here with our prime minister that is not immediately apparent. Let’s unlock that:

We have a prime minister who is in, but an increasing number wants out.

We have a prime minister who, when she got in, most people voted to keep out.

We have a prime minister who is in, but many consider out of her mind when it comes running the country.

We have a prime minister who was in Auckland this week, but not out and about.

We have a prime minister who is in with the media, but out of touch with everybody else.

 

What Ardern is doing to this country is not cricket, but it is just as confusing. Let’s call “over.”

Cushion...a blow

 

What is it about women and cushions?

Cushions are about as useful to humanity as eyebrows are to the body—something I learnt lately when I “lost” an eyebrow and gained the character of a more macho and sensible scar.

Yet women seem to throw cushions around with gay abandon. They litter couches, clutter chairs and are useless impediments in bed. And the cushions are even worse!

Cushions on the bed are particularly galling. What purpose are they serving? Most beds in my experience have pillows, sometimes quite a few of them. To bury them beneath cushions is surely a redundancy.
If you are a woman, you will undoubtedly counter that by saying cushions are decorative. The far more pragmatic male of the species will bring some common sense to the argument: yes, decorative, and dangerous.

What happens to all those cushions when you get into bed? You immediately discard them on to the floor where they lay in wait, an unseen hazard on your stumbling route to the toilet.
Cushions in the bedroom are insidious and gender specific. You don’t see them in a man’s bedroom. It is only when said male enters a partnership with a woman that those cushions magically appear. There should be a standard clause in pre-nuptial agreements banning cushions from bedrooms and, indeed, anywhere in the house.

Men have rights too.

The only practical use I can see for a cushion is to provide a level of comfort for the woman who kneels at the feet of her man, ready to fetch him a beer, while he watches Supercars. Even then, a pillow would suffice.

I have researched this issue. The question I raise—what use are cushions---is common on the internet. The only answer given is that they are decorative. There is a nod to posture. But again, that is gender specific. Blokes don’t care about posture. That’s something that went out the door with Polaroid photos and taking nude photos of your wife.

So, as much as I would like to fashion an argument for cushions, the only argument I can fashion is fashion.

And that is simply not good enough for me.

The only good news is that fashion, by its nature, goes out of fashion and becomes nothing more than a useless object.

It’s happened to the Prime Minister; I hope it happens to cushions.

Many Sheeps in the world

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Office of the Foreign Secretary

123 Bruce Springsteen Boulevard (third door on right). Telephone: 125.

 

 

 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister of New Zealand, where sheeps are

Parliament House

In New Zealand

 

Dear Prime Minister Jacinda

 

Our Presidente for life Yoseph Flagrantie send you fragrant greetings from the Peoples of Democratic Republic of Wogistan.

Our Presidente grate admirer of you. He likes how you rule nation of sheeps. We are a nation of sheeps. You are on the world stage for that. Our Presidente want to be on stage with you, but we are poor economy so yous and Presidente needs to share bedroom.  Bring gay boyfriend if you afford him to come. Presidente bring his sheeps so he comes.

Youse then compare notes on how to rule nations of sheeps. Presidente believes you has your sheeps under control and he would like to learn from you.

Wogistan also got troublesum peoples. Is answer to do what you do, treat them like sheeps? If so, maybe we kills two sheeps with one stone? That works for him—Wogistan got no bullets left.

Let’s get stoned together.

Please reply quickly. Country’s air traffic controler back from holiday next Monday. Will open airport then.

 

Sincerely

 

Yoseph xxx

Yoseph Wankerstan

Foreign Secretary The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Proprietor Spartacus Male Gym and Bathhouse.

 

Hard Labour

 

 

Hard Labour

 

If you are part of the current Labour Government and saturated with power you don’t know what to do with, you could be forgiven for thinking every day is Labour Day.

Ego and immaturity play games like that.

If you live in Auckland, and in the 11^th week of lockdown, you can be forgiven for thinking that Labour has had its day and it is time to move on.

Of course, there is only one Labour Day, and that is next Monday, extending the weekend by one day.

Sadly, for you in Auckland and to a lesser extent the rest of us in New Zealand, it will be a hard Labour Day. Variable restrictions on movement and gatherings  still apply, the spectres of non-compliance and illegal cross-border travel will increase, and the tourism and hospitality sectors will continue to stagnate, despite this so-called and erstwhile “holiday”.

It used to be a great day, the first after the winter and the harbinger of summer.

It was when we planted tomatoes.

It also used to be a celebration of the eight-hour working day, though this is largely forgotten, as is the actuality of a working day for many in our community.

But a celebration it was and will be again. And it is one we New Zealanders can be justly proud.

New Zealand was among the first countries in the world to adopt the eight-hour day and it was instigated by a Wellington builder called Samuel Parnell. For those of you reading this on the blog, that is the dude up top with the enviable sideburns.

In 1840, local shipping agent George Hunter commissioned Parnell to build him a new store.

Parnell accepted the commission but added a proviso.

These reportedly are his exact words:

“But I must make this condition… that on the job the hours shall only be eight for the day… There are twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for me to do what little things they want for themselves.”

Hunter replied that in London, workers were expected to be on site for 6am.

“We’re not in London,” replied Parnell.

That truism saw the instigation of the eight-hour working day, which we celebrate on Monday. It became official in 1899.

And so, we have a holiday on Monday, thanks to Mr Parnell. How much of a holiday in lockdown will depend on what we make of it. To make the best of it will require ingenuity and imagination. The good news is that is exactly what we are good at—being imaginative, innovative, being ourselves, not what the government wants us to be.

Enjoy the holiday, make it your own.

Where Helen Clark Lite is the only salvation.

 

We have a problem.

It is not Covid. It is not the prospect of economic meltdown. Nor is it that the McDonald’s horrendous “Monopoly” commercial with its creepy front figure is back.

It is that Jacinda Ardern—Helen Clark Lite—has lost it. 

The current signs are that she, the government she leads/controls, and their collective Covid response are spiralling downward out of control. Unlinked community cases are growing daily in terms of numbers and areas, vaccination and testing rates among Maori are the lowest of any ethnic community in New Zealand, and there is a failure to acknowledge—let alone, accept—that there is a gang element at play here putting the rest of us at risk.

And on that last point, it literally comes close to home for me. For those who don’t live in New Zealand and may not know, two sex workers, both with Covid, used forged papers to illegally cross police checkpoints to travel from Auckland to Northland. It’s known that they were travelling through Northland over several days, but because they are being “uncooperative” when questioned, little is known about where exactly they went and whom they engaged with. It is widely alleged they have gang connections—something the prime minister initially denied but has since gone strangely silent about.

Despite the prime minister’s reticence, the evidence of gang connections is compelling and for the prime minister to deny that, or even not to entertain the idea, is deeply concerning and does raise the suspicion she is not being wholly truthful—that her too-hard basket is becoming increasingly full.

But let’s get back to the link between Jacinda Ardern and Helen Clark. It’s been widely reported that Ardern has a huge amount of respect for Clark and considers her something of a mentor. Nothing wrong with that. Nor is it wrong that she may want to follow in Clark’s footsteps and stride the world stage in some capacity—probably a post with the United Nations.

But here is why I don’t think that is going to happen.

First, she is not Helen Clark. I was never a great admirer of Clark, but I knew she had gravitas and a fierce intellect. She is not the most charismatic person I have met, and I have met her several times, including being on the wharf with her the day the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, but she had presence and used that effectively without resorting to photo-ops. There is no superficiality about her, but there was a decisiveness that guaranteed this country of ours a clear direction.

Jacinda Ardern has none of that—offers none of that. Instead, we have someone who leads a shoddy, incompetent government that is almost entirely dependent on the superficiality of her television presence and the ministrations of a compliant heavily funded media to survive. Add to that last point, an equally incompetent Opposition.

I know some of you will disagree with that assessment. I can’t change that. But I do invite you to answer one question: In the four years of Ardern’s coalition and then Labour Government what has she successfully achieved? I said successfully. The Covid response? Initially commendable but turning to custard after the failure of elimination. Mental Health? Child Poverty? Affordable Housing? Homeless? The Health Sector? Policing? No significant achievements there.

What about her response to the Mosque Shootings and White Island?

Those last two only beg a second question: What did she do then that would be different to the response of any other prime minister in the same circumstances? You don't know. I don’t know. We’ll never know.

What I do know is that some serious questions are being asked about her competence, her credibility, her motivations, and her transparency and I have yet to see that, to this extent, in more than 49 years involved with politics.

And not just here in New Zealand. She is losing traction overseas where the media are railing against her and her perceived lack of policy and flexibility to handle the ever-evolving Delta pandemic.

Bloomberg once rated us the best country in the world in terms of our Covid response. In September 21 this year we were 38^th and in freefall.

Jacinda Ardern is not the person we hoped she would be. She could have been. She could have been our second Helen Clark, a true statesperson, rather than a lite version trailing in Clark’s shadow.

It’s a shame really. It was a shame that we didn’t give her three more years in Opposition to hone her leadership skills, to get her frontbench up to speed and eject those who were never going to make it.

But that didn’t happen and despite a wish not to be pessimistic I think we are about to see the consequences of that.

 

The (Un)Kindness of Strangers

 

It is unforgivable what New Zealanders are doing to New Zealanders now.

The ill-conceived, cumbersome, and intransigent MIQ Lottery System is leaving thousands of New Zealanders overseas unable to return home, and confronted by the debacle of a totally inadequate quota system.

We have, effectively and, in the government’s case, inefficiently, abandoned these people.

The Government will point to what in their view is a fact—that we are living in an unprecedented time. We’re not. We have faced pandemics before: Spanish Flu in 1918, SARS from 2002 to 2004, Avian Flu between 2013 and 2017 and ongoing cholera. In none of these cases, did the then governments close our borders stranding our people on the other side of them.

As a further rationale for their actions, or inactions, the Government tells us that the lack of MIQ facilities is a direct consequence of our inability to staff them. Their hands are tied.
Again, not the full story. It’s been almost two years since covid reached our shores and almost from the outset, there were calls for the Government to build a dedicated MIQ facility staffed by dedicated staff in a relatively compact, safe, and secure environment. Instead, we still have a hodgepodge of facilities which amount to little more than cattle pens, with staff spread thin throughout the country and struggling to cope.

The system has failed those people overseas. Yet the Government’s sticking to it, trying to explain and rationalise it and showing a grim and cruel determination to keep it going.

Regardless.

What it (the Government) is not doing is changing it, let alone apologising for it. 

 

Then there is the case of Winston and Rae Wallace. Stuff reported their plight earlier this week.

Mr & Mrs Wallace are stranded in Australia. They went there in mid-April, when travel was allowed, to help their daughter, who they say was desperate for support in these difficult times.

They could not return before trans-Tasman travel closed in July but hoped to return on October 29.

Their flights were then cancelled, leaving them stranded and unable to get space in a managed isolation and MIQ facility.

And now comes the point. Under the law, a person is entitled to the first 26 weeks of their normal rate of superannuation while overseas, provided they return to New Zealand within 30 weeks.

The Wallaces have been told their payments will be suspended on October 22 and, if they cannot return by November 11, they may have to repay six months’ worth of their pensions – estimated to be between $13,000 and $14,000.

In other words, they have the potential to be penalised severly for the failures of this government and MIQ.

I have a friend in a similar situation, though he is not yet overseas, but would like to do so for compassionate reasons.
When he wrote to the Ministry of Social Welfare seeking clarification on the pension situation, he received a reply which stated in part:

“I can advise that people who leave New Zealand after lockdown started on 26 March 2020 would not meet the criterion of being an unforeseen circumstance. This is because COVID- 19 and the effects on travel are widely known and accepted; therefore, it is reasonable to foresee that there could be issues returning to New Zealand.”

Again, really?

What my friend is being told is the Government expected us to know back in March 2020 that MIQ would be totally inadequate and there would be no compassion or flexibility offered.

Many months ago, the Prime Minister went on television and told us to be kind.

She didn’t need to.

It is my belief that, at least until recently, New Zealanders are inherently kind. It is who we are.

The only people not being kind, it seems, is the government she leads.

They are strangers to us.

This is not who we are.

 

Crazy Book Titles

 

An annual staple of early Frydays was the Hamilton Public Library Book of Lists. It listed those books which, for various reasons, attained a special place among the portfolio of books offered for loan by the library.

Unfortunately, the same books kept appearing on the list every year. Fifty Shades of Grey was the perpetual most loaned book; the most popular career book was A life in Hairdressing, and when it came to computers, the most popular books were A Step-by-Step Picture Guide to Finding Google on your Computer and A Step-by-Step Picture Guide to Turning on Your Computer. The only new books to puncture the status quo were: the most stolen book (from the library), Shoplifting for Dummies (2020), Jacinda—A Love Story (2021) and A Dummies’ Guide to loving Jacinda, Despite Everything. (2021).

With so few entries on the list, the list became unsustainable. So, I scrapped it.

Now, however, I have become aware of The Diagram Group and its awards for the oddest book titles of the year. These are, believe me or not, real published books. They make for interesting reading--the titles, not, I suggest, the books themselves.

I’ll start with the most scatorial of the year 2014. Finalists that year included:

·      How to Poo on a Date: The Lovers' Guide to Toilet Etiquette.

·      The Origin of Faeces.

 

Over the years the Awards have managed to accumulate some strange titles indeed. Here is a sample. Remember, they are real books and can be found on Amazon. I have given you links.

·       BOMBPROOF YOUR HORSE

·        WHO CARES ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE?

·       DOES GOD EVER SPEAK THROUGH CATS?

·        HOW TO DISSAPPEAR COMPLETELY AND NEVER BE FOUND

·       SUN-BEAMS MAY BE EXTRACTED FROM CUCUMBERS, BUT THE PROCESS IS TEDIOUS

·        HOW GREEN WERE THE NAZIS?: NATURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND NATION IN THE THIRD REICH 

·       HOW TO SURVIVE A GARDEN GNOME ATTACK: DEFEND YOURSELF WHEN THE LAWN WARRIORS STRIKE (AND THEY WILL) 

·        KNITTING WITH DOG HAIR: BETTER A SWEATER FROM A DOG YOU KNOW AND LOVE THAN FROM A SHEEP YOU'LL NEVER MEET

·        HOW TO TEACH PHYSICS TO YOUR DOG

·        MANIFOLD DESTINY: THE ONE! THE ONLY! GUIDE TO COOKING ON YOUR CAR ENGINE!

·       DATING FOR UNDER A DOLLAR: 301 IDEAS 

And my favourite:

·      TEACH YOUR WIFE TO BE A WIDOW[1]

So, there are some strange book titles out there and it seems to be that you can find someone, somewhere who has written on just about every subject imaginable. For example, a few years back I wrote a Fryday on the subject of toilet lids and their usage. I went on google to research that and found no fewer than 7,290,000 documents on the subject.

But me, I am above all that. I have life, substance, pride, self-respect and intelligence. You won’t find your Fryday friend writing drivel. Never! God help me if, through sheer boredom, I ever resort to putting pen to paper on meaningless subjects such as, well, for example,  Crazy Book Titles.

---

[1] This was one reader’s review of Teach Your Wife to be a Widow: I got my wife an Amazon gift card for Christmas, and she used part of it to buy this book. My health hasn't been the best lately and I've been very busy at work, so I think that she's being very prudent in learning how to deal with "final expenses" and take over the household finances and maintenance of the house and car. Yesterday another book arrived for her from Amazon: A Field Guide To Toxic Plants Of North America. I have such a thoughtful wife! She knows that I have a number of life-threatening allergies, and she wants to make sure that I stay away from anything that might harm me. Gotta go now, it's dinner time. She's made me a big salad that she says will end all of my worries about cholesterol.

 

The Second Coming

 

The Political Podium and how it is being used

 

The Prime Minister’s daily covid updates, usually at 1.00, are past their use-by date, no longer serve any useful purpose and have deteriorated to where they are little more than cynical manipulation for political purposes, bordering on the disgraceful.

Now, you may disagree with me on that. You may think the Prime Minister is doing a superb job communicating with the country and keeping us in touch and keeping us calm.

And keeping us kind.

But I would like to list the reasons that is not true. Some of the following may seem incredibly trivial to you, some of them are just nuances that normally would go unnoticed, but collectively they build a picture of pitch-perfect politicking. So, here we go.

·      Timing: The press conferences are scheduled for 1.00 pm. The Prime Minister is invariably late arriving, sometimes by up to 15 minutes (though she has got better of late). Why is that? If Chris Hipkins or Grant Robertson are running the conferences, they turn up on time. But the Prime Minister? No. There is no, I repeat no, valid reason for her to be consistently late. It is unbecoming of a prime minister and, to be honest, it’s rude. Simple as that. But I can tell you why I think it happens. Could it be because it gives time for fawning sycophantic Press Gallery journalists such as Jessica Much-McKay to blow the government’s trumpet as a curtain-raiser to the “big event”. Pure theatre.

·      Then there is the time the Prime Minister takes to get to the point—again, keeping us waiting for effect. These days, the announcement we are principally looking for is whether we are going up or down levels. Instead, we must wait for that one simple piece of information until Ashley Bloomfield has, in his droning delivery, gone on about the number of cases, scanning rates, genome sequencing, and vaccination rates. Why? Couldn’t that wait until later? But no, the Prime Minister needs to keep us waiting.

·      About Ashley Bloomfield, he has joined the growing list of bureaucrats and media that can’t bring themselves to say Auckland. I am sorry. But I am failing to understand why we are increasingly defaulting to a language of just 15 percent of the population, many of whom don’t speak or understand it themselves. And what is it about his use of the word motu as in “across the motu.” Motu means the country. Why can’t he just say the country? Dr Ashley Bloomfield has become the Andy Coster of the medical fraternity and is condescending and patronising of Maori and, for many of us, offensive and so unnecessary.

·      But now we come to the crux of why I think the Political Podium is past its use-by date—the Prime Minister and the Director General are bringing nothing new to the table. Watch this afternoon’s conference carefully—or, more accurately—listen to it carefully. The Prime Minister is prefacing just about every sentence with “As you have just heard Dr Bloomfield say…” or “You will recall me saying…” So, she is repeating what we have already been told. Why? Does she have nothing new to say and is just hungry for the screen-time?

My point is that if these press conferences no longer have anything to say, other than an update on the statistics, and possibly grandstanding by the Prime Minister. They should be mothballed, and a press release for the Department of Health could distribute the statistics. Now, you may counter that by saying that the press conferences open the Prime Minister to questions from the media. Do they? How about this question to the Prime Minister last week: “How important is it that people follow the rules of Level 4?”

Really?

Let’s dispense with the “press conferences" and, for goodness’ sake, get back to being treated like adults.

Have you woken up yet?

 

For those who don’t know, and many of you don’t, Fryday started four decades ago as an attempt by me to prove the pen was indeed mightier than the sword. I created the Fryday e-letter, one of the first in New Zealand, to fry a Glen Innes panel beater who demonstrably screwed me. That post is lost. Anyway, it didn’t work; he is still in business. But so, too, is Fryday, though it has mellowed and has recently taken a hiatus of a couple of years…until last week’s revival and my homage to Charlie Watts.

Thank you very much for your response to that.

My problem with Fryday is that I have no idea when I start what I am going to write. I get up at 6.00 Friday mornings, go to my computer and suffer. There is nothing.

So, this week I thought I would write about…nothing.

One definition of nothing is a lack of something.

Here in New Zealand and around the world there is a lack of common sense, augmented by a paucity of maturity. How else can we explain the deluge of wokeness that has rushed to fill the void left by the departure of those two great human traits—the remnants of which can be found only in the far reaches of the Outer Hebrides and visitors to Spike Milligan’s grave?

If I had seen that flood of wokeness coming, I would have got Donald J. Trump to ask God to send Moses back.

Examples abound, and I don’t want to give them credence by promoting them here. However, some of them are just plain silly and nonsensical. Why on earth would you not put a baby’s gender on the birthday certificate? Why would you tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln (of all people) in Lincoln Park (of all places)? Why would you appoint newsreaders seemingly incapable of pronouncing Auckland and New Zealand? And don’t start me on the endless “issues du jour”.

None of this is, of course, new. When I worked in advertising in the 70s, an edict came out from Radio New Zealand stating that it was no longer acceptable to use the word manhole; it was to be replaced with person-hole. Thank goodness that didn’t take off, it could have injured someone.

The “issue” I have is that anybody who won’t embrace wokeness or criticises it is automatically labelled out of touch, reactionary, middle-aged or older, white, racist, and inferior. They might have a point on some of those points. I am white and at my age, if I bent a knee, I might not manage to get back up.

But look, don’t label me the way you want to label me. Don’t label me at all. You don’t know me. You only think you know me.

And don’t automatically assume that because you think you are right, I am wrong.

There is in my world, room for diversity. In yours? Apparently not. Ironic, eh?

Yes, the world was asleep before you woke us up. And good on you for doing that. But now you are taking it over the top and getting boring. So boring, in fact, that you are sending me back to sleep.

Good night.