Two of my regular readers , Percy and Patricia Pumpkin, of 357 Acacia Mansions, Widnes, have asked me to write more about rubbish indexes/indices ... and luckily I have got some fresh index-related criticism to .....er .... entertain them, and, of course, you lot. But first, you should have a gander at some of my previous award-winning articules about them. Not Percy and Patricia ... indexes. Especially duff ones. Or silly ones. So...here's links to some of them ... 101-toads-swifts-binoculars-all-human-life-is-here.html -134-that-index-and-a-better-one.html 232-kerwacky-wack-twit-pee-oo-etc.html 491-more-index-fun.html 789-yet-another-index.html 830-a-mystery-index-from-the-distant-past.html Plenty of top reading there then ... now here's a really crap index for you to cherish .... here's a tiny selection of this gormless feat of indexing from that book up there ... Canary p156 Well, you turn to page 156, and what do you find ? No Canary .. no. Instead, we eventually find " the Canaries" under the entry for Trumpeter Finch. What sort of nit would put that in an index ? Martin, Sand. p100, 104 All you find on page 100 is the useful fact that Alpine Swifts have upper parts similar in shade to those of a Sand Martin. Moorhen, Common p31,54,93. Rather a strange entry ,it's not exactly rare. and neither was Sand Martin for that matter. When you go to p31 , all you find is the very useful fact that Little Bitterns are "about the size of a Common Moorhen." Terrific ! Maybe the indexer knows bog all about birds. Magpie, Black-billed p95. The only two entries on p95 are Black-billed Cuckoo and Yellow-billed Cuckoo. It does get a mention under Gt. Sp. Cuckoo , with the fascinating fact that its main host species are the Carrion Crow and, at last, the Black-billed Magpie. I really must write that down in my "useful facts" book. Hooded Merganser, p177 There's no proper entry for it ..all you see on p. 177 is a list of "Species for which no photographs of the live wild birds that were seen in Britain and Ireland exist or can be traced." So ... all that tells us is that Hooded Merganser isn't in the blasted book anywhere. By the time I'd looked them up I got the feeling that the proof-reader was down at the pub rather than doing his/her job. Linnet, Common p.156 All it gets on p156 is actually under the Trumpeter Finch, where it tells us lucky readers that "it is similar in size to a "Common Linnet." Vital news !! .... and it goes on and on ... a relentlessly crap index .."World Class Ineptitude" .... on the plus side, the photographs are quite good! And, the Common Moorhen, which is of course astonishingly rare, gets three (3) entries on pages 31,54 and 93. p31 is about the Little Bittern p54 is about the American Coot. p93 is about Pallas's Sandgrouse. I bet you can't wait to buy the book and find out why on earth "The Common Moorhen" turns up in those three accounts. Here's a possible set of scenarios .. A Little Bittern was cooked and eaten by Shakespeare's mum's pet Moorhen An American Coot attacked Lee Evans as he was watching a Moorhen. Boris Johnson's pet Pallas's Sandgrouse slowly turned into a Moorhen in 148 days. BUT NOW ... the music ... 'tis "Roy Harper Week" ..... "Forever" ... which, of course, we aren't.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
|