Weekend 1

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Is this a sentence in English?

Will they not have been being seen?

Well, yes it is. It's a Past Perfect Progressive Negative Interrogative sentence.

Start off with the Present Simple sentence "They see". Put it into the future - "They will see". Now make it negative - "They will not see". And switch over to the passive voice - "They will not be seen".

Change from the Simple aspect to the Perfect aspect - "They will not have been seen". And (the difficult bit) make it a progressive perfect aspect - "They will not have been being seen". This is the passive voice version of "They will not have been seeing".

Now swap around the subject with the future auxiliary verb ("Will" to his friends), to turn the statement into a question, and you get "Will they not have been being seen?"

Good eh? As you may have guessed, I've spent my Saturday looking at verbs, or rather their tenses, aspects, moods and inflexions.

I wonder if "I hadding been seen" or "I wasing Beed" might be incomprehensible forms created when aliens landed on earth and tried to translate their own language into English. I'm sure there's a short story in there.

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My old friends haven't forgotten me. Nice texts from Gareth E and Paul T, and calls from John M (saying he'd be standing for Respect if there was a snap general election) and Simon M (saying Gordon Brown had decided not to call an election after all).

H invited me to a party next friday - I could just about go to it, taking a detour on to way to visiting my parents next weekend, but it's not really feasible. Unfortunate, because it was his advice that finally got me to sign up for this course.

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Sunday has become my day of rest - relatively speaking. A nice lie in bed till 10:30 (during which I dreamed I was taking part in a bank heist with the pope driving the getaway car - not sure what that means), followed by leasurely shower and breakfast, and a casual read about learner testing typology while munching chocolate from Lidl.

I think I know how they make it one third the price of most supermarkets - it has the same rich taste and melt-in-the-mouth quality as the cardboard wrapping.

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Sunday lunch with my hosts and their friend Carol, psychiatric nurse and christian socialist. That is, someone who believes that someday enough people will open up their lives to God, and in doing so eradicate capitalism (by slightly unclear means).

There's a lot of people who (IMO correctly) identify the values of the best socialists with those of the best christians, but instead of jettisoning their faith, try to make it the bedrock of their politics. But they can only do this by jettisoning all theology, leaving behind only a sense of "being infused with something undefinable".

After lunch, a pleasant walk in the park with my hosts. There was a large family of hasidic jews there, all the men with broad brimmed hats or skullcaps, and curly locks hanging from their temples. All this, combined with ordinary casual clothes, and riding around laughing on BMX bikes.

Big cities give you juxtapositions like that, and London seems to give many.

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I'm not exactly homesick - home is only on the other end of a phoneline - but there is that odd sadness that comes from being in a place that is comfortable and has become familliar, but which you would never think of calling home.

People who spend their lives traveling between conferences and hotel rooms must feel this way a lot.

I don't miss TV, though I look forward to the large pile of DVD recordings (mostly science fiction) waiting for me when I get home. I don't especially miss a constant internet connection, though it would be very useful for research.

I miss my parents (or, to be honest, my mother), and the dogs (though not the parrots). I miss my comrades (and their entanglements). I miss C (who is on his own life-changing course).

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