gripe

[Dennis Jones]

        For no apparent reason I suddenly spliced in a memory of my own 
first reading of GR. Back then a mere windy boy and a bit, I was lapping up 
that lovely passage in the evensong section -"Hullplates swing in the sky, 
like great iron leaves, on cables that creak in splinters of sound" usw - 
which ends in the oft quoted lines -"Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? 
Which do you want it to be?" (p.131,Picador edition). Gas? I recognised a 
loaded line when I saw one, but 'gas'? It took two cups of tea and a visit 
to the ty bach, but the penny finally dropped (so to speak). Wind! "... or 
is it just wind?". Ah yes! All became clear. Odd though that TP had chosen 
to revert (if that's the right word) to American English in a piece embedded 
in a British section`. Maybe that's why it threw me. OK, yes Bethlehem's 
there too, but the man was elsewhere  fairly scrupulous in keeping his 
autumns and falls in there right place. A slip I suppose. After all, he does 
spell 'Cymry'(the Welsh people) with an 'i' on the end (p.170) but that's 
quite another matter.      
                      D.J

P.S.  Can anybody tell a newcomer what originally sparked the great IJ schism?
  DENNIS E. JONES
  DRAGON COMMUNICATIONS
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