Thomas Bulford's English Companion

Titles by Ian Burns

Scratcher (First Niamong book) (illustrations by Bruce Rankin)

Lissie Pendle (Second Niamong book)

Possum and Python

The Alone Man

The Search for Quong (Third Niamong book)

Thomas Bulford’s English Companion

Thomas Bulford’s Essays on Life, Language & Love

Ranga Plays Australia (Fourth Niamong book)

The Day and Night Machine (First Jess story)

Twevven and the horrible big bigger biggest baby burp (illustrations by Lauren Eldridge-Murray)

Twevven in a very dangerous situation (illustrations by Lauren Eldridge-Murray)

The Package on the Tram (Second Jess story)

Sequel to The Day and Night Machine

The Wisdom of Harkishen Singh (with old photos)

Beethoven! a play with music

Messing With Your Mind

Stories from Somewhere

The Once Shredded Rainbow and other stories from Down Under

Some readers’ comments of earlier stories by Ian Burns

The Wisdom of Harkishen Singh What a wonderfully innovative publication! I think it ranks as only one of its kind, a glorious tribute to a country from someone from another, a great juxtaposition of the visual, poesy and profundity. Moola Bhaktavatsala, Bangalore, India

Ranga Plays Australia The book is a delight. Lindsay Armstrong, New Gisborne

Ranga Plays Australia Funny, interesting and not too hard to read and understand, which was nice. Anuj Kumar, London

Ranga Plays Australia To me it is one of the best books I have read that initiates a child into an alien country while at the same time working as a text of study. Moola Bhaktavatsala, Bangalore

Ranga Plays Australia It feels thoroughly researched and demonstrates a great love and understanding of cricket. There is a subtle humour, throughout the text, that caused this reader to chuckle more than once. The Historical Novel Society

Ranga Plays Australia Well all up the best part of the story I would think was the end. It was a fantastic end to a fantastic story. Ashleigh, Greensborough

Ranga Plays Australia This delightful story comes with a sparkle of freshness and simplicity and the reader will be left wondering how much is fact and how much is the imagination of the author. Neil Thompson, Diamond Creek

Ranga Plays Australia [The author’s] description of Ranga in an Indian village environment is really astonishing. S. K. Bandyopadhyay, Bangalore

Messing With Your Mind This is a very culturally diverse and uniquely Australian Novel. Both a collection of short stories with their own unique set of events and an overriding mystery that carries you through to a surprising end. Matthew Hughes-Gage, Melbourne

The Alone Man This is one of the most beautiful stories I can say that I have read in a long time and it brought tears to my eyes. Carolyn Jacobsen, Tura Beach, NSW

The Alone Man I thoroughly enjoyed this short story. It's poetic, informative and Australian. Matthew Hughes-Gage, Melbourne

The Package on the Tram Colour-changing cobwebs,..... impossible? A detective working with seven puppies……. unlikely? A dog as large as a mammoth.......crazy? Getting lost in a forest of animal fur......yeah?? A fine read for children and grandchildren. And you will enjoy it also. Gysbert Fine, Eltham

Scratcher I found Scratcher a very funny, unique and exciting book. Sahaj, Bangalore, India

Scratcher I’D EASILY GIVE IT A BIG 10 out of 10! Matt, South Frankston

The Search for Quong I would recommend the book to other kids. It’s got all funny names for animals and other creatures. Rebecca Kreltzsheim, Wangaratta

Twevven and the big, bigger biggest baby burp This is a delightful read and will be one of those books kids will want adults to read to them over and over. Peter Eerden, amazon.com

Twevven and the big, bigger biggest baby burp I liked when the baby farted. Favian, Mitcham

Thomas Bulford’s

English Companion

Being an annotated review and clarification of certain words and phrases in the English Language, from an Australian Perspective;

based on Hysterical Principles.

Incomplete and somewhat bridged.

Edited (pertinent comments in print edition only) by

Ian Burns

Copyright Ian Burns 2005, 2020

Second edition January 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright owners.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your eBook site and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Click on: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ianburns

[email protected]

For Sue

who’s usually at my wit’s end

Preface to Second Edition

Surprisingly, since the original production of this work, a number of words and their definitions, purporting to by by Dr Bulford, have been found, often in obscure locations and on every continent except Antarctica.

It has been my task, undertaken with a degree of unwillingness, but less so than originally, to determine which of these pieces of paper was (1) authentic and (2) worthy of inclusion in a new edition.

My initial reaction, it must be said, was a little incredulous, along the line of why bother, but I was prevailed upon.

I hope that new readers – there surely can be no others – find the exercise worthwhile.

Editor

Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners

Attributed to George Bernard Shaw

I take it you already know

of tough and bough and cough and dough.

Others may stumble, but not you,

On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead – it's said like bed, not bead.

For goodness sake, don't call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat.

They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there,

Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.

And then there's dose and rose and lose

Just look them up – and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward.

And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart.

Come, come I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,

I'd mastered it when I was five!

Thomas Bulford – a Profile

Thomas Bulford was a giant of the 20th century, a man in virtually every sense of the word, who had, to quote George Bernard Shaw, when speaking of him, ‘a word for virtually every sense of man’.

His amazing, and somewhat confounding, knowledge of the English Language began, with an aptness that he often remarked on, with a twinkle in his good eye, in England.

Born in Winchester (the ancient capital of that sceptred isle) on the very day that the Victorian Age ended – another much-relished piece of aptness – the then-very young Bulford spent his waking hours staring at his nursery ceiling, devising words from the (to anyone else) chaotic strands of cobwebs which festooned the intricate plaster work, often discovering different words in the same place at different times of the day, according to the varying shadows cast by the ever-changing English sun streaming fitfully through the high-arched window, on a good day.

At an early age, though not quite as young as in his Winchester days, his parents took Thomas and his sister (who, at the time, was not born) to America, the first of the many times that he visited that great country (which he oft called, with great affection, the You-Knighted States of Amerigo Vespucci).

It was here that he again demonstrated his amazing, though still relatively nascent, abilities, being able to recall, without error, the name of every railway station that their train stopped at between New York and San Francisco, the quality of that station’s coffee (execrable, without exception), whether the station had main or branch lines leading away from it to the north or south, or even both, and the nationality of each conductor who came to their compartment while he was awake. Interestingly, and it cannot be pure coincidence, he later studied in each of these countries, learning the local language and, remarkably, teaching this as well.

From San Francisco the family trio and gradually expanding extension took passage on a steamer for South America via, of course, Central America. It was during this period that young Thomas first experienced the world of revolutions, revoluciones, and revolutionaries – he termed them ‘revolting ’ long before the pun became fashionable with the chattering classes – and this whetted his appetite for adventure, an appetite that remained unsated up to his unfortunate but interesting death.

Regrettably a very large gap ensues in Thomas’s biography following their arrival in Tierra del Fuego, roughly spanning the period between the beginning of World War 1 (which he christened, but never copyrighted, ‘the WWW’) and the end of the Great Depression. Several times I tried to discover where he and his family spent this period but each time I broached the subject he retreated into embarrassed introspection, being particularly unforthcoming about his sister. The only clue I ever had, and this was the merest of hints, was his sudden and unusual animation during a David Attenborough program on the Galapagos Islands (the part where the newly-hatched baby lizards had to escape from the bottom of a dormant volcano, running the gauntlet of luckily prescient birds of prey).

1935 was when I first met Thomas, and it was in Australia. I’d been sent there by a respected, though now sadly defunct, Winchester (yes, quite a coincidence!) monthly, to write an article discussing whether the long boat trip out – and back – was really worth it. We struck up an immediate friendship, me being a very good listener, and, one thing leading to another, even down under, I never went back to England so could not, in all conscience, complete the article.

By this time Bulford was well into acquiring his impressive array of academic qualifications, an admirable, if exhausting, policy which he pursued at great personal cost up until only a few months before he died.

It is pertinent to point out, here, that all of his studies were undertaken in the native language of the host academic venue, which surely gave him many insights into this astounding human condition, as well as an appreciation of the many possibilities of the spoken, as well as the written, word. He also became convinced of the importance of maintaining local languages, as long as these were accompanied by a proper recognition of, and approbation for, English.

Thomas had a wicked, if subtle, sense of humour (hinted at in his family motto: fallire est successus factum), and he could find the lighter side almost everywhere he went. I remember him telling me how he’d once found himself in an all-girls’ college’s science laboratory, where a periodic table attached to the wall listed everyone’s ‘time of the month’!! This kind of thing happened to him all the time.

Thomas Bulford. A smith who took base words and spun them into gold.

Yes, a giant of the 20th century.

Author unknown

Foreword

This remarkable book, modestly including in its title a word indicating an intimate relationship but not necessarily in the sexual connotation, also subtly but stylishly understates its importance to humanity, which, I’m delighted to affirm, in spite of doubts uncharitably expressed by citizens of the United Kingdom, or England anyway, definitely