Walking English by David Crystal

Author:David Crystal [CRYSTAL, DAVID]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LAN009010, LAN024000, HIS015000, TRV009070
ISBN: 9781468306255
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2012-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

If none of this convinces, and you do say ‘Macbeth’ outside of performance or rehearsal, there are a number of stratagems that you can perform to ‘remove the curse’. A widely practised one is to leave the room or the space you are in, close the door behind you, turn around three times, swear, knock on the door, and ask to be let back in. The swearing is important. Words can only be defeated by other words.

Alternatively, quoting Hamlet’s ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us’ will do it.

I gingerly made my way to my B&B – the Carlton, where I had stayed several times before. I can’t remember why we went there originally. Perhaps because it didn’t have a Shakespearean name? A more mundane reason, very likely. A handy car-parking space always helps in Stratford.

You have to drive gingerly in Stratford town centre. There are tourists everywhere, from all over the world, many of them evidently acting on the belief that cars have not yet been invented. Along Southern Lane, next to the River Avon, I once encountered some ducks waddling purposefully along the middle of the road, presumably operating on the same principle.

Maybe they were going to The Dirty Duck, which is also on Southern Lane. If so, they would have recognized it by the unique signboard. I don’t know of another pub sign which has different names on its two sides. On one side is The Black Swan, floating serenely. On the other is The Dirty Duck, holding a beer glass and plastered.

My gingerliness paid off. As I drove along Chapel Street I saw a group of Japanese tourists standing outside the Falcon Hotel, waiting to be photographed. There was no sign of the photographer.

Yes there was. He was in the middle of the street, oblivious to all but his viewfinder. I stopped a few inches from him. He took his photograph, and with supreme aplomb bowed to the group, and then to me. I bowed back.

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