Victor Meldrew
Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 4:19 pm
I'm currently engaged on proofreading & typesetting a novel by David Renwick based on his original scripts for One Foot In The Grave. I thought the membership of this community (featuring as it does quite a large number of Victor Meldrews among its number, self included) might appreciate the following excerpt:
If there was one thing guaranteed to drive Victor Meldrew up the wall – and on certain days ninety-eight per cent of the universe appeared to fall into this category – it was the infuriating expression “back to back”.
More specifically, it was the infuriating way people insisted on using the expression “back to back” when they really meant “end to end” or, more usually, “next to one another”. He had often seen television programmes referred to in this way: “the two shows will be transmitted on Sunday night back to back” – presumably implying the second of the two would begin with its closing credits and then run in reverse till it came to the opening titles.
Similarly, the estate agent who had sold him his new house had described the road as “a delightfully well-maintained row of properties running back to back” when – so far as Victor could see – they did nothing of the kind. Could he gaze out of his rear bedroom window directly into that of his next-door neighbour? Mercifully, he could not. Thus during an angry exchange in the agent’s office one day he had suddenly produced a large reputable dictionary and suggested the primped youth behind the desk look the bloody thing up and learn how to speak English for a change. And blow me down if he didn’t find the book gave “consecutive” as one of the definitions! More horrific still, it declared “alright” to be an “alternative spelling of all right”!
Which only goes to demonstrate that our language is in a state of constant flux and evolves to fit popular usage. However, since this naturally impressed Victor not one jot his reaction was to storm out through the double doors and ceremonially lob the dictionary in the canal, before recalling that he’d borrowed it the day before from a mobile library.
If there was one thing guaranteed to drive Victor Meldrew up the wall – and on certain days ninety-eight per cent of the universe appeared to fall into this category – it was the infuriating expression “back to back”.
More specifically, it was the infuriating way people insisted on using the expression “back to back” when they really meant “end to end” or, more usually, “next to one another”. He had often seen television programmes referred to in this way: “the two shows will be transmitted on Sunday night back to back” – presumably implying the second of the two would begin with its closing credits and then run in reverse till it came to the opening titles.
Similarly, the estate agent who had sold him his new house had described the road as “a delightfully well-maintained row of properties running back to back” when – so far as Victor could see – they did nothing of the kind. Could he gaze out of his rear bedroom window directly into that of his next-door neighbour? Mercifully, he could not. Thus during an angry exchange in the agent’s office one day he had suddenly produced a large reputable dictionary and suggested the primped youth behind the desk look the bloody thing up and learn how to speak English for a change. And blow me down if he didn’t find the book gave “consecutive” as one of the definitions! More horrific still, it declared “alright” to be an “alternative spelling of all right”!
Which only goes to demonstrate that our language is in a state of constant flux and evolves to fit popular usage. However, since this naturally impressed Victor not one jot his reaction was to storm out through the double doors and ceremonially lob the dictionary in the canal, before recalling that he’d borrowed it the day before from a mobile library.