The Angry Exile: Bonjour et bienvenue aux Jeux Olympiques 2012 de Londres.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Friday 10 December 2010

Bonjour et bienvenue aux Jeux Olympiques 2012 de Londres.

Via Captain Ranty I see the 2012 Olympic Games - you know, the Games that Paris lost out on to London - are going to be held in French.

French is the first language of the International Olympic Committee and as such that means that it must take precedence at all Olympic ceremonies including when medals are being handed out.
The presentations will also take place in English but any statement in English "should be read after the French".
All "billboards and pageantry" must also be in French, with English relegated to a second language for the duration of the Games.

They're fucking smart, the French, aren't they? Not having to pay a red cent towards the insane cost of hosting the event and they still get their language given preference.

Now in fairness to the International Olympic C... er, what does the C stand for anyway? Probably not the first thing that sprung to my mind. Anyway, in fairness thinking back to the Beijing Games I do seem to recall that everything was said in French first and then a Chinese language, presumably Mandarin, afterwards. Doesn't make any sense since there are more Chinese speakers than speakers of anything else, and it seems to me that geographically both Spanish and English have a better claim to, ah, lingua franca status than French does these days. And if it's an Olympic tradition surely Greek should take precedence, even though there are only about 12 million people in Greece and half of them may need to eat their TVs before 2012.

The Union Jack should only be flown fifth in precedence behind the Olympic flag, the London 2012 symbol, the United Nations flag and the flag of Greece.

See? The Greek flag comes before the Union ~~Jack~~ Flag (note to the media, please look up the fucking difference), and because of the history of the Games in ancient times I don't have a huge issue with that. Certainly not compared to the UN and EU rags being even high up the pecking order.

Anyhow, French first is clearly what the London bid team signed everyone up for, presumably as a nod to the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin (how come he was a baron? I thought they'd executed or exiled all their aristos decades earlier). And if that's in the contract there's probably nothing thatt can be done about it, not even my suggestion of saying:

Voici votre facture de eleventy billion fucking quid, M. Johhny Frog. Parler en francais all you please, me old china, but only once you've coughed up, eh?

But that's really by the by. As Witterings From Witney points out in the comments over at Ranty's, the real question is why it took two years of battering the bastards with the Freedom of Information Act before this came out. Or why they didn't feel able to be open about it and say this in front of all the flag waving crowds five and a half years ago when there was still a chance for Britons to demand the bid be withdrawn.

I wonder... could there have been money in it, or am I just becoming a cynical old bugger?