Thomas Bulford's Essays on Life, Language & Love

by

Thomas Bulford (dec’d) Edited by Ian Burns Click here to purchase the paperback, or download from Kindle.

‘Eclectic’ is the word that most readily springs to mind when searching for an appropriate descriptor for Dr Bulford’s latest, and hopefully last, work.

The fact that these essays are published posthumously does not detract from their enormous importance; indeed, it highlights our good fortune, knowing that there is, in fact, a limit.

Editor’s Note Readers may be aware that Thomas Bulford, PhD (UCLA), M.A. (Oxon), M.Ed. (Melbourne), B.Litt. (Edinburgh), LLM (Sorbonne), Dip.Conflict Resolution (Belgrade), Dip.Languages (PNG), Dip.Mining (Johannesburg), Dip.M’biology (Christchurch), Dip.Phys.Ed. (Pyongyang), Cert.Teaching (Adelaide); A.Mus.A. (Australiaalia), Member, Societe de Transporte (Belgium), Fellow, Royal Conglomerancy of Etymologists and/& Lexicographers (Scrabble), died recently (though not as recently as before), and that I had what I then regarded as the onerous honour of editing his lexicographical work1.

Following this, his son – Thomas Bulford Junior II – presented the Publisher (whom even I now acknowledge the need to capitalise) with a box of scribblings that he said were his ‘distinguished’ father’s.

On being shown these, my impression was that they were, indeed Thomas Bulford’s (the senior, that is), for two reasons, though not without reservation (as some of them do appear to be at least a little out of character with the bulk of the opus).

Firstly, they bore a striking resemblance to the ‘essays’ that the Publisher insisted on being incorporated in the English Companion as introductions to the various definitional categories.

Secondly, and I say this with as much grace as I can, they, whilst being somewhat idiosyncratic in construction and questionable in logic, contained a number of insights into the human condition that were also occasionally present in the earlier volume.

Accordingly, with less reluctance than before, I agreed to edit this material, and offer it to readers for their judgement. As readers will certainly understand, this task was not without its challenges, especially when considering the publishing order (where I finally decided to simply follow the alphabet).

Ian Burns Melbourne 2005

1

Thomas Bulford’s English Companion.

The Essays

(sample)

1. Alf

2

In the beginning...

Once upon a time... ...the two great preliminaries in the ‘Western’ world, I think.

One pretending to command the literal, the other literally commanding pretend.

These profound musings led me on to a question asked of me by my students throughout the world, a question, when asked, that I have answered that I could not answer, at the time, as it needed a lifetime of experience to have gained enough knowledge and wisdom to answer it, and that I hadn’t had that lifetime of experience, yet.

Until now.

That’s not to say, of course, that it takes a whole lifetime, or the question would never be answered, but it surely takes at least nearly a lifetime, it being a question then of judgement regarding how much ‘life’ constitutes a ‘lifetime’, in the context of answering this oft-asked question.

Vast age is not a sufficient indicator of wisdom, even if much knowledge has been accumulated – each year may simply have been a repetition, more or less, of the previous year, or little or nothing learned from the knowledge, which is undoubtedly the case with television quiz show hosts and government statisticians.

Yet age is important, as youth, energetic and curious, needs time to do all the things necessary to acquire knowledge, time to read the great and lesser books, time to contemplate and meditate, time to debate and argue, time to write, time to3

2

I’m quite puzzled about this title, assuming that it must be a pun on ‘alpha’, which is why I placed this piece here. Ed. 3 This essay being found on Bulford’s body we must assume that, at this point, time ran out. Ed.

2. Always Another Way I envy the expert. Well, not quite the expert, unless he or she is also a professional.

By this I don’t mean that I envy the professional expert, as such a person, in my experience, which, as is becoming increasingly well known, is very broad, not to mention deep, is almost as bad as someone who’s convinced that he or she knows the ‘truth’.

I can think of nothing in human contemplation or behaviour where there isn’t at least one other way of looking at it or doing it, and our language (I speak, of course, of English) reflects this.

“Double standards”.

“Double or quits”.

“Double trouble”.

“Double back”.

“Double take”.

“Double hung”, though I’m just a tad ambivalent about this one.

“Two faced”.

And so on.

Not only are there always two or more ways of looking at things, when we actually do this we find that other possibilities emerge – for pleasurable or heated argument (which are often the same thing), for further investigation, for applying for research grants.

And knowing that there isn’t only one way opens up options for living.

Unless, of course, as native American Indians have warned us, one speaks with a forked tongue.

3. Ambition Napoleon is said to have said that every private soldier carried a Field Marshall’s baton in his kit bag, but this is clearly apocryphal or else he quite obviously never did anything to verify this, or he would have spent most of his time asking his privates what in the @#!P1s@Z! they were doing with a Field Marshall’s baton in their kit bag and which #@!PsZ2@! Field Marshall did they #3!P@Zs@! steal it or more properly them from??!!?! and how many #!P4s@@Z! Field Marshalls are there in the !Ps@Z@5#! French Army merde no wonder I can’t get any #Z!P10s6!Z battles under way on ZZZ7ZZZ time and have to wait for kit Z!P1s@8 bag inspection I’ve heard the Americans talk about too many !Ps96Z#! chiefs and not enough !P7s@Z10#! Indians but they don’t have P! 11s1Z8 Field Marshalls with P12s!@Z batons in their P #!

10s@!Z kit bags or where@#!P14s@Z!else that they can think of hiding them to miss PZsP!15s* inspection for sPZ16sP!s’ sake and why don’t they get a PsP!Z17s life instead of taking everyZ18 thing I Z19sP!Z say so !P1s@8Z literalZ20ly??!!

All this would have been in French at a very great speed and not all that far from the ground.

You understand, inevitably, that Napoleon spoke in a very Cors(ican) manner, the principal reason for him being sent, finally, to St Helena for reeducation.

4. A Painful Pastime I think that I must be the only person who’s played Peter Pan and won, in the sense of having a life-changing experience.

It was at the great Palais Theatre, in the ’60s, with nearly 3,000 in the audience – I could certainly draw them in those days! ...although the artistry was more of the stage kind than an actual drawing, even though there were many sketches involved. This is, to foreigners, one of the troubles with English: mentioning drawing and sketches in a sentence leads most of them to think about paper, but they can’t really help it.

Of course I was Peter Pan. As well as requiring a fine actor the director needed a hero with appealing legs, and I certainly fitted the bill, modesty and space precluding a proper description in this volume (a photo can be found, by the persistent, in the New York Museum of Performing Art).

Rehearsals were barely necessary, other than for my co-actors – and, of course, my then-friend John, who was in charge of the rope and pulleys.

All went well until the dress rehearsal, where I would ‘fly’ for the first time. John brought out the harness. I was unfamiliar with these but had worked quite a bit with horses in the outback around Carnarvon and Meekatharra, as well as Nevada, but it seemed to me to be a little small. I’m not a big man, so John’s explanation that it came from a local high school, and was the only one in Australia anyway, satisfied me for the time being.

It took a bit of wriggling to get it secure, then we began. I was in the wings, watching, John beside me, hands on the rope. As my cue came closer he gradually tightened it, then...I was airborne, swinging across the stage...as the harness quickly adjusted itself to the new circumstances...

And, for the first time in my life, I delivered my lines in a tenor voice.

5. Aspirate Airs When one closely examines the English alphabet one recognises that, whilst not being perfect, it is the peak of development, in spite of its Greek elements.

As pertains to the language as a whole, a major fascination is its apparent inconsistencies, one of which is the pronunciation of the letters of the alphabet, depending on whether one is simply calling them by their names or, more entertainingly, by their sounds.

Most of the letters, as no doubt everyone is well aware, are known by their letters. That is, they begin with the letter in question. I refer to A, B, C (though this one is a little ambiguous), D, E, and so on.

This logical system, however, as is well known, breaks down in several cases, for example F and M and S, amongst others, which all begin with E. One letter, though, stands out from the other twenty-five.

Yes, it’s easily guessed: H. How did you say it? “H”? or “H”?

If you are Irish you almost certainly said “H”.

If you are French, of course, you probably ignored it entirely.

As for me, I think the Irish are right, but I’m not sure about my heirs.

6. A Thankless Task Stepping between warring parties is almost as fraught as attempting to prevent or merely defer a Viking whoring party, as I almost found to my cost not so long ago.

I was in Volta, in between Upper Volta and Lower Volta, a kind of No Man’s Land, though, strictly speaking, I was actually on a river.

My mission actually had nothing to do with war, or parties, or, indeed (though my enemies tried for many years, with only limited success, to smear me with the suggestion) whoring.

Nor was I there to mediate, conciliate, or arbitrate – how could I, as I was totally unaware of the situation?

The reason, in fact, is not germane to the discussion.

Word had filtered down through the ages to me about some of the characteristics of the people of the region, which, naturally, intrigued me, and I must admit to bearing some curiosity about them, to the degree that, if time permitted from my primary mission, I planned, if possible, to paddle either up stream or down, depending on my mood, to establish a dialogue and to introduce them to at least some of the wonders of the English language. (At that stage I’d spent a little time in Australia.)

One of the difficulties facing me, however, with this pre-pubescent plan, was in determining just which was Upper Volta and which Lower. How I wished my idea for an orbiting amplified transistorised radiochronometric positioning device had been taken seriously by Arthur C Clarke back in the ’30s!

Fortunately this task was made ineffably easier for me when I stumbled across a crumpled page of Livingstone’s diary in the Bulawayo Public Library, where he described a place on a river in western Africa with the dual name The Rapids and the Slows. It was clear that this was a significant division, and that that division was most likely between Upper and Lower Volta.

It was the only clue I needed or, indeed, had.

Unfortunately I could find no such name on any map drawn by man, so, finally, I had to give up the idea altogether and return to Australia.

7. Aziz I’d come to the conclusion that there was only one word in English that ends in ‘is’, and that is is.

The Belgians come close, with ‘pis’, but that doesn’t count – in the first place because they pronounce it ‘pee’, or even ‘pea’, and in the second place because they’re foreign.

Ah, you might say, but there’s ‘precis’! Which only, indeed precisely, makes my point. The sloping sign on the e – what nowadays might be called a slash – gives it away. French and foreign.

Not only that, but is is pronounced iz, which is game, set, and, of course, match.

Unless, as one of my earlier wives unkindly pointed out, one thought of this, but, as I quickly pointed out back, this does not sound like thiz.

‘Or his,’ she said, ‘and,’ which was where she stretched the friendship, including the marriageship, beyond reconciliation, ‘’tis.’

Undoubtedly, though, as I explained to a subsequent wife, is is the plural of i, just as as is the plural of a, and us is the plural of u.

‘And,’ I went on, ‘there are certainly no two-letter words in the entire English language that begin with e.’

‘Eh?’ she said, ‘Er…’ At which point I had to agree that it might have made sense, in the long run, and it would have been a long run, to have stuck with my first wife.

8. Bestiality The animal world has a lot to offer us, besides dinner.

They are undoubted exemplars of my maxim that to be the best you must play the best.

This, in turn, gave rise to a whole new branch of study, which I have termed Bestiality, combining, as it does, the concepts of fitness and quality4, as well as something to strive for.

Thus we have Bestiality I, the Study of Fitness; Bestiality II, the Study of Fatness; Bestiality III, the Study of Fecklessness; Bestiality IV, the Study of Fulsomeness; and Bestiality V, of course, the Study of Foulness.

Thanks to the creation of this learning program and the research topics arising from it, we now have the opportunity, as the dominant and most intelligent species, to look at the natural world in new ways, ways that can lead to transcendental epiphanies that might make the road to Damascus look like a cow path in a paddock.

Theories are all very well and have their place, and it doesn’t really matter whether they come before or after, but it’s practice that counts, so each of my subjects (I speak in the educational sense) requires the student to get out there and get his hands dirty (so far as I can tell, no member of the female gender has yet enrolled, but it’s only time).

Those practical elements provide not only wonderful research and much travel to seldom-visited parts of the world, they are, without exception, character building. I could give many examples here for your edification and benefit, but this would be vicarious without the vicar.

Therefore I invite my past students to send me their first-hand accounts, so that, if a suitable Publisher can be found, these may published.

4

Bestiality (best.ee`al.it.ee) n. a state beyond, and superior to, reality. English Companion.

9. Both Ends I was walking my dog – obviously a Labrador – when we were uncivilly subject to a cacophony (I use the word advisedly) of noise, which, as you would appreciate, given your knowledge of English, is an entirely appropriate phrase. It would be difficult to imagine a cacophony of silence. On the other hand, a cacophony of wives would probably ring ruefully true in Arabia.

It was a black and white dog – obviously a mongrel, regardless of the owner’s views – and it was barking its head off.

I should pause here (and the pun was, naturally, intended) to remind foreign readers, that is people not born on an island continent (unless, as in one’s case, special dispensation has been made), that not everything in English should be taken literally, especially regarding any phrase ending in ‘off’. Failing to understand this subtlety may lead to unfortunate or embarrassing outcomes, with unforeseen consequences perhaps including the constabulary.

In this case, however, we simply had a noisy dog, doing its job.

But the intriguing thing, given what was happening at the front end, was what was happening at the back end.

It was wagging.

Now this is a very ambivalent situation, both for the dog and for the object of the dog’s attention.

Clearly the dog was in two minds5: ‘That thing on the footpath may be a threat, or it may be the bearer of a tasty biscuit. Better profile myself as a flexible creature, prepared to rip off the thing’s legs or roll over for a tummy tickle, depending on the evidence as it unfolds.’

From one’s point of view, of course, the signals were clear: the dog could go either way.

5

Foreigners are referred to paragraph three above.

And I thought to myself, as we walked on, eating a couple of biscuits, that that was life: black and white, threatening and welcoming, ready for action (attack or tickle).

All in the one package.

10. Boy, Bike, Basket & Bet I was sitting on or in the underground station at Melbourne Central, wondering if it was possible to invent more words than Shakespeare did, and thinking that it certainly would be, for one, when a boy walked past, wheeling a bicycle, with a milk crate attached to the handle bars, and, in the crate, a puppy.

Before proceeding, I should point out to foreigners who may be confused – a natural phenomenon – about this situation, and who question how someone could be sitting on an underground station, whilst accepting readily (and reasonably) that someone, although for what reason, could, in fact, and without great effort, although possibly some discomfort and a real risk of incurring the displeasure of the authorities, sit on an above-ground station, that English readers are assumed to be intelligent and will know that prepositions are not without their own subtlety, which should be, and normally is, taken into account, albeit unconsciously, when interpreting what is said or written, or even inferred.

Inspiration.

But not for new words.

Now this happened on Tuesday, and it is now Friday, though not any Friday, but the Friday after the Tuesday when the observation was made.

This is important, though not necessarily overly so, the question being whether the boy and the bicycle and the basket and, particularly the dog, would be there today, or any Friday, or any other day than a Tuesday, or that Tuesday to the exclusion of others, and if the last, why?

The lesson to be learned, that stands out like dogs’, well…that stands out, is that, even from such an early age (we are referring to the boy with the bike and so on), some people acquire a characteristic that takes them through life, that is demonstrated by some externality.

In this case, doggedness.

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