One Stop Short Of Barking

From bizarre drivers' announcements, the new relaxed rules for buskers and timetables that exist only in the imagination, this book unearths the secrets, the eccentricities, the history and the survival tips of the London Underground.

Can it really be true that 'golf' stands for 'Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden'? Or that 'rule of thumb' comes from an archaic legal principle that a man may chastise his wife, but only with a rod no thicker than his thumb? These and hundreds of other stories are commonly told and retold whenever people meet. They grow up in part because expressions are often genuinely mysterious. Why, for example, are satisfying meals 'square' rather than any other shape? And how did anyone ever come up with the idea that if you're competent at something you can 'cut the mustard'? Michael Quinion here retells many of the more bizarre tales, and explains their real origins where they're known. This is a fascinating treasure-trove of fiction and fact for anyone interested in language.

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.

Thinking of a jaunt to England? Let Arthur Bryant and John May, London’s oldest police detectives, show you the oddities behind the city’s façades in this tongue-in-cheek travel guide. “The best fun is running all over the city with these amiable partners.”—The New York Times Book Review, on Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour It’s getting late. I want to share my knowledge of London with you, if I can remember any of it. So says Arthur Bryant. He and John May are the nation’s oldest serving detectives. Who better to reveal its secrets? Why does this rainy, cold, gray city capture so many imaginations? Could its very unreliability hold the key to its longevity? The detectives are joined by their boss, Raymond Land, and some of their most disreputable friends, each an argumentative and unreliable expert in their own dodgy field. Each character gives us a short tour of odd buildings, odder characters, lost venues, forgotten disasters, confusing routes, dubious gossip, illicit pleasures, and hidden pubs. They make all sorts of connections—and show us why it’s almost impossible to separate fact from fiction in London.

In London Underground, David Ashford sets out to chart one of the strangest—as well as most familiar—spaces in London: its famed underground rail system. Providing an account of the evolution of this archetypal modern environment, he sees the underground as the first space to complete the slow process of our estrangement from natural landscape. For Ashford, it is, as Marc Augé has called it, a nonplace, a way to traverse an invisible landscape through the medium of signs and maps. Surveying an impressive diversity of materials, from the Victorian triple-decker novel to modernist art, pop music, and graffiti, Ashford combines cultural history with spatial theory to tell a story of how people have attempted to make a home in the sometimes bizarre spaces of the modern world.

"In another impossible case for the Peculiar Crimes Unit, a woman is found drowned in the Thames after being tied to a pillar at low water--and only her footprints lead to the spot where she was killed"--

How long has a corpse been staring out at passengers on the tube? Was London Bridge really shipped abroad by an American thinking he’d bought Tower Bridge? Did the Queen really mix with the crowds as a princess on VE Day? And did Hitler actually want to live in Balham? Urban legends are the funny, frightening and fierce folklore people share. Just like the early folk tales that came before them, these tales are formed from reactions to spectacular events in the world, and reflect our current values. From royal rumours to subterranean legends, Scott Wood has researched and written about them with a sense of wonder, humour and a keen eye. He finds the truth, the myth and the lies amongst these tales.

Jade is the avatar. Snatched from her home, family and friends she is imprisoned in the remote Castle of Demons and forced to become the reluctant heroine of a computer game. Entrapped in a world of virtual reality she engages in a deadly battle with killer rats and dogs, and the even more deadly humans that she encounters in her travels through cyberspace. But what is real and what is imagined? Who is the mysterious Doctor Kobal: enlightened man of science or dangerous criminal? Who is the sinister warrior monk who pursues her from fantasy into reality? And what happens when you can no longer separate the two? In Avatar, Book 2 of the Mysteries of the Septagram, Jade explores a parallel world in a bid to find her lost family - and even more importantly, to find herself.