Morning!
Hello, there!
After a couple of abortive attempts at ‘blogging, here it is, the real-life Statto-’blog. With, and this is unusual these days, an apostrophe to denote that it’s short for weblog.
I’ve actually got no idea what I plan to use this for, save a small, easy outlet for my random mumblings. So, here goes.
I formed a lifetime ambition today; to become more famous than the ‘most famous’ person to have gone to both my school, and my college at unversity (the former being Adams’ Grammar School, Newport, the latter being Christ Church, Oxford).
The alumnus’ name is Tom Brown, and (rather depressingly) he left Christ Church degreeless. He was a satirist, who lived from about 1663 to 1704, and his most famous work is something which, according to the story, stopped him from being sent down (an archaic term for ‘not allowed to come back to uni’). The Dean at the time, Dr John Fell, was, for some reason, cross with Brown, but said that he would spare him if he could translate the following Latin:
Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare; Hoc tantum posso dicere, non amo te.
He apparently replied, without missing a beat:
I do not love thee, Dr Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not love thee, Dr Fell.
He then proceeded to leave Oxford some time later qualification-less, and went to London, where he annoyed people through satire until copping it, just over forty years after his birth.
So, there’s the mission. And the ‘blog. Super indeed!