Χωρίς Όνομα and Prawo Jazdy 30 January 2012
Posted by cooperatoby in Uncategorized.Tags: language, maps
add a comment
I consulted Google Maps the other day for a route to Athens. It contains the surreal instruction: Take the exit toward Choris Onoma/Χωρίς Όνομα. Memories of my schooldays tell me this means “without a name”!
It reminds me of the case from 2009 in which the Irish police tried to prosecute a Pole called Prawo Jazdy for about 50 traffic offences. Prawo Jazdy is Polish for ‘driving licence’.
A Yorkshire poet in the family 25 January 2012
Posted by cooperatoby in Uncategorized.Tags: family, Yorkshire
add a comment
I’ve just discovered a strange coincidence. In 1859, my great great grandfather James Casmey wrote a poem, A Voice From Hackfall, in praise of the 18th-century landscape gardens at Hackfall Woods near Grewelthorpe, just south of Masham, North Yorkshire. That same wood fought off stiff competition to be awarded a grand prix in the EU Cultural Heritage Prize for conservation in 2011.
James Casmey was born in 1813 in Goa, and died on 24th December 1886 in Brighouse. He was a nailmaker, and, ironically, also an active teetotaller and co-founder of a temperance society in Staincross, just north of Barnsley. The rather rare name Casmey is still being passed down among my Rands cousins, and my brother Najm-ud-Din (to whom thanks for the genealogical research) uses it as an internet handle.
