The Angry Exile: The Teletubbygraph does it again

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

Wednesday 6 July 2011

The Teletubbygraph does it again - UPDATED

Did you see that story about the Thai bomb disposal guy who survived a small car bomb going off literally right next to him? Did you see The Telegraph's article on it? Well, I say article but one glaring error and one weird one make me wonder if it was a copy and paste job from somewhere else on teh interwebs.

The bomb disposal expert despite being lawn away (sic) nearly 10-meters by the explosion, picked himself up and walked away. He was treated for minor injuries.

First the weird one - what the hell does being 'lawn away' mean? The car wasn't moving and so I think we can rule out possible confusion about being mown down, so all that's left is a conflation of 'launched' and 'lawn'. This doesn't seem likely to be a typo since the U and W keys are half a keyboard apart but I suppose it could be because the person who wrote it doesn't speaking and writing the English so goodly, which admittedly might include quite a number of people supposedly educated to ~~ASBO~~ GCSE standard in Britain over the last decade or two.

Now if that's the case then it seems like a lousy bit of sub-editing not to have picked that up, but I think it pales almost into insignificance against the truly shithouse example that followed it. Let's have a look at the poor guy being lawn away nearly ten metres, shall we?

Click for biggerisation

I do realise that not everyone in the UK knows what a metre is in old money but I would have thought that the fact that we're talking about ten of them would make most people think that it must be a reasonable distance, right? I mean, if a metre was about the same as a foot that'd mean the guy would have been lawn ten feet away, and since from the pictures it's clear it wasn't even that far you'd need to be under the impression that a metre is about 6 or 8 inches. Somehow I doubt that's a very commonly held belief even among the dafter newspaper sub-editors, which leads me to speculate that in fact the sub-editing just had less awareness and attention to detail than a goldfish on Rohypnol.

Or maybe there wasn't any sub-editing.

Is this where The Tele got ten metres from?

Maybe, not unlike last month's Bugatti that wasn't, the online Tele is being padded with content pulled and repackaged from elsewhere on the web, possibly by some very junior hack in a hurry and without much in the way of sub-editing or proofing before being put out on teh interwebs in all its inaccurate glory.

It'd be nice to know which because I was tempted to spend a tenner and treat The Teletubbygraph to one of these to use as a reference the next time someone is lawn any distance through the air.

But if no bugger's actually checking the content before it goes out I shan't bother.

UPDATE - Mrs Exile suggests that I should point out that this blog is far from error free, though of course my entire writing, editing and sub-editing staff consists of me, myself and I whereas The Telegraph has... well, who knows exactly, but certainly a lot more than I do. Still, in the interests of fairness I'll try to remember to say so the next time I lawn into them over something.