Trouble on the Cam

The good burghers of Cambridge have got two particular troubles on their mind.

The first is the threatened invasion of a Tesco Express into ‘bohemian’ Mill Road. Why, they ask, when Tesco already controls more than 50% of the grocery retail in the town should we hand it any more? And why should we give them a chance to squeeze out all the local shops? Particularly in this area of town, which is (as it is fondly put) a ‘retail version of the United Nations’, from butchers (old fashioned and halal) to health foods, Italians delis and Korean supermarkets.

I’m entirely on the side of the objectors. However many lorries it will take per day to replenish the proposed outlet, is bound to be too many. Yet it is funny to watch the middle class residents change their tune with the wind. Those who only recently used to deplore the vomit on the pavements, the loitering drug dealers, and the rubbish around Mill Road, are now extolling the cosy multi-culturalism of it all – against the even worse enemy of Tesco plc.

And well-connected as they are, they get their objections onto the Today programme too. All power to them. But it’s not a route open to most of the population who don’t want things in their back yard.

Even more worrying though is what is planned for the Cam.

Some local entrepreneurs have proposed to run motorised punts on the river to Grantchester. Apparently  the motors will be as green as possible (electric, that is). And they will only go at 4 miles an hour, which is no more than the speed of regular competent punter.

So why put a motor in? Because these ‘punts’ are the super tanker variety, designed for the mass transport of tourists from the city centre to lovely Grantchester with its Rupert Brooke tea rooms, 12 in a punt – way beyond the capacity of all but the strongest wielder of the punt pole (especially on the way to Grantchester where the current can get pretty strong).

You can see the likely effects now. The river will be packed with these monsters, ploughing through the little manual punts and the assorted naked swimmers. And as for the idea that they will stick to the 4 mph limit . . . dream on.

And almost worse will be the land-side touting for business. Even the ordinary “chauffeur punt” trade has turned the two main bridges in the town into a less picturesque equivalent of the Istanbul bazaar – battalions of mostly (ex-)public school boys and girls, on commission, pestering every passer by with offers of a punt trip. Heaven knows what it will be like when they’re trying to fill up loads of 12 seaters.

The fate of this one is in the hands of the venerable Cam Conservators who will meet to adjudicate on the scheme in April. Meanwhile it’s punt poles crossed.

Comments

[Paul Potts]

Dear Nick

Yes, thanks. Kennedy was definitely not a peron from Berlin, or in any literal sense a doughnut. He wanted to claim, metaphorically, that he was the former, but then should have said "Ich bin Berliner". This raises the question of how he or his speech-writers could be so ignorant or careless or stupid. Perhaps he, or his advisers were metaphorical doughnuts then as now.

Paulo

[nick]

With regard to mistranslation see todays news that the current campaign against plastic bags is based entirely on a mistranslated / misquoted document.

Definitely not funny but I am sure the fine art of correct translation is a subject close to the hearts of many here.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece

[nick]

Paolo,

"ein Berliner" is what we in the UK would recognise as a jam doughnut.

Kennedy's comment could therefore be translated as I am a doughnut by using a dictionary to translate it word by word as berliner can mean either "a person from Berlin" or "a doughnut of the type made in Berlin". No German speaker would confuse the two.

I am sure there are many such jokes created by mistranslation either accidental or deliberate.

[Xjy]

A Camburger would be like the size of a Chelsea bun, constructed like a licorice allsort with lots of different layers, each one diametrically distinct from its neighbours, with a sticky layer of religious goo all over it spiced up by little taste bombs of epiphany drops and intellectual stratoblasters.

Unfortunately for everyone's health, totally unforgettable and totally addictive.

Also blessed with the most mendacious advertising on earth.

[Paul Potts]

Nick, I thought that "ein Berliner" was a kind of Hamburger. Hence the link with Michael Bulley's Camburgher. I wonder what a Camburger would be like; sweet and soft and sticky, or sour, tough and dry.

Paulo

[nick]

Was Kennedy not in fact claiming that he was a doughnut?
"Ich bin ein Berliner"
which should have been "Ich bin Berliner"

Or is this yet another urban myth?

[daphne sayed]

how about organising a group with drills. a few strategic holes should do the trick.I just despair at how greedy this country is becoming and that is the motivation for all these things.Life needs to be simpler and people are no happier for their affluence.

[Paul Potts]

Dear Mary

In your quaint phrase, "the good burghers of Cambridge", is the word "good" a descibing or a defining adjective? I mean do you mean that these burghers are good by virtue of being burghers (describing), or that they are only good if they don't like having Tescoes everywhere (defining) and that the other burghers are not so good. And is the Professor of Classics not a burgher, good or otherwise? If not, why not? Perhaps she might be called a Camburgher. Even President Kennedy claimed to be "ein Berliner".

Paulo

[abc]

Cambridge is due to flood so they'll probably uplift it to Mars and then nobody can go there, apart from inhumane alien green fungi.

[Michael Bulley]

Are the good burghers of Cambridge called Camburghers? Anyway, here it is in elegiacs:

pro paruis triuii Tescunt ubicumque tabernis.
pro pare iam bis sex paruula cumba tenet.

(glossary: parua triuii taberna = little corner shop; Tesco, Tescere, Teui (or Tetiui), Tetum = to build a Tesco's)

[Tony Francis]

Like Dr. V. P., I was under the impression that the world's bee colonies were becoming extinct- possibly due to cell phone towers. The world's expert (and self-proclaimed author of the Wiki article the subject, no less!) has a different take on the idea:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mvanishingbees.htm
According to him, this is a centuries old, recurrent phenomenon, without any clear explanation. The honey supply does not appear to be at risk. (And before any of you ask: no I am not over my hizzy-fit with Wiki!)

[Gi]

To Kath: and perhaps you're better off while it isn't built?

[abc]

I thought the dilapidated cafe was new and the Flower Garden was old?

[Kath]

This gets better. Looking at Rupert Brooke's poem, I realise there will be work for present-day undergraduates as fauns "a-peeping through the green" though it might be best to have the naiad's "reedy head" rendered in durable plastic. The ghost of Lord Byron (swimming) might be hard to recreate but I'd like to see the "spectral dance" of (precisely) a "hundred vicars". I wonder how much the Rupert Brooke Experience will do for rural unemployment and whether people from Trumpington will be recruited to fling "worse than oaths" at paying tourists. Ditton girls will be compelled to appear "mean and dirty", which won't be much fun, but the "nameless crimes" of Coton and the Christmas Eve trip to Madingley offer an almost irrestible chance to assuage curiosiy. Cambridge people, meanwhile, will get a walk-on part so long as they correspond to Brooke's description of them as "urban, squat and packed with guile."

[dr venables preller]

Those entranced by inclusive safe eco-friendly tourism may be thinking-glass enclosed 12-seater punts (with wheelchair access), although better improvement could come from an underground Rupert Brooke Visitor Centre (with Tea Shoppe) beneath a Tesco Car Park, and far from Grantchester.

The charming faux stable clock of the adjacent grocery centre could be set at ten to three for an authentic reminder before the global honey supply is curtailed, possibly by radiation in the 2.4gHz band.

[Xjy]

At last the decaying remnants of the Old are being cleansed! The least the Conservators can do is offer to widen and dredge the river, clean up the tick- and bug-infested weeds lining it, put down a clean safe concrete riverbed, and add half-a-dozen lay-bys en route to Grantchester. Plus a decent access road along the river. Put up a Rupert Brooke memorial centre with a Ye Olde Rural Cambridge Museum & Shop & Flower Garden instead of the dilapidated cafe and raggedy old orchard there now, and a new Theme Experience will have been born!

[The Worst of Perth]

I noticed that the place was already full of punts when I was there last.

[Kath]

Obviously the next stage is a joint appeal by Tesco and the motorised punt company, guaranteeing that all deliveries will be by large eco-punt and electric bicycle, in conformity with Cambridge traditions.

I'll support any anti-Tesco campaign. They bought land where I lived and demolished anumber of buildings with character, including a very welcoming old pub, claiming that they would build a large store in competition with the two supermarkets we already have. The huge local campaign agains Tesco was brushed aside. So far no building has taken place and buildings people liked have been replaced by an expanse of bare earth.

[RichardH]

Dear Mary,

It really would be terribly sad if there were to be large motorised punts on the Granta. (Is the upper river still called the Granta? Most of the reports talk about the Cam).

I have often punted up to Granchester and back, not hard for anyone reasonably fit, and once in the vicious winter of, I think, 1954/5 skated the same route.

I accept that tourism is now important to the Cambridge economy but I have at least one unhappy memory of nearly being sunk on the lower Cam by a large tourist river bus when I was sculling in a 'phunnie' ( a very small and unstable boat as you will know) in the mid-sixties. It neither gave warning nor slowed down and was apparently oblivious to any craft so small. I can see similar events occurring on the Granta.

Fight this as hard as you can.