It’s easy to be outraged these days by almost anything (potholes and tariffs, in that order, are my current favourites) but that’s exactly what I am about the latest spelling bee news. The report from Florida (where else?) is that the parents of 12-year-old Amara Chepuri want to sue spelling bee organisers because she was asked to spell words that were not on a pre-approved list.
Now, there is no doubt that Amara is pretty spell-tastic. She only lost last year after failing to nail “ephetic” (a word to describe ancient Greek sceptics, as I am sure you knew). This year she sashayed through “sashay” only to misspell the word “pallbearer” in a pre-qualifying round.
The whole hoo-ha (not easy to spell itself) centres around the fact that “pallbearer” was not on the list of 150 words given to her beforehand. But surely providing such a list is wrong in every way. That means it’s not a spelling bee at all, only a “memory bee”. In future they should ditch the lists entirely.
• Parents threaten l-a-w-s-u-i-t after daughter barred from spelling bee
By the way, her parents insist that Amara loves to spell “for fun”. But Amara tells the Tampa Bay Times that she also enjoys tennis and adds: “I don’t have the time to do words more than three hours a day.” I am sure you can see how fun that sounds.
Solar flare-up
I wrote a few weeks ago about the huge Cleve Hill solar park now blanketing a swathe of marshland on the north Kent coast and how it claims that its 880,000 panels will provide electricity for up to 91,000 homes. But when is a home not a home at all? As a reader, John Masters, points out, the entire production of Cleve Hill has already been contracted out for more than ten years to the supermarket chain Tesco and energy giant Shell.
Surely the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, should require, as part of the approval process, that these very large “farms” provide energy for at least some homes nearby? Over to you Ed.
Very English outing
I did something quintessentially (good spelling bee word) British this week when, during the annual family holiday in Camber Sands, we had a day out on the miniature Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway. Toot toot, indeed.
We started off in Dungeness, where the station is located (surreally) right next to the old nuclear power station, and went to Dymchurch (for the funfair) and back. The track runs behind the seaside homes and so our view was mostly of back gardens. The favourite was one garden given over entirely to its own train set with a track that wove its way round and about various mini-landscapes as well as some rather impressive and very pink fake flamingoes. Surely this is the ultimate British day out.
Pet peeves
Modern life, number 812. A sign in a restaurant window asks diners if they would please not allow their dogs to “sit” at the table and also requests that dogs should not be allowed to eat off the restaurant’s crockery. Really? Do people actually let their dogs do this in public? Is it possible that Britain is becoming even more dog-centric?
Ahead of the curve
As I write, the wisteria in my (new) garden is fit to burst. Its hundreds of racemes, fluffy and furry, are on the brink of flowering, with peeks of purple already showing through. My neighbour, who is a wisteria expert, advised me to soak banana skins in water and give the wisteria a banana-flavoured feed. It seems to have worked.
