On the way to work

[jack]

The guided busway now extends off to the horizon in both directions.

They have a sikh to wave at people when they cross. (Presumably to make sure no pedestrians wandering across, or green-lit vehicles, catastrophically intersect construction traffic going sideways.)

A guy was leading a horse, following by its foal, out of the science park. (The other day, there was a pony trap trotting round the park.)

I cycled to work and was overtaken by a learner driver. It's very sweet -- you can always tell, even if you can't see the markings, as the car always comes up, pauses, carefully pulls out, then moves past, then swings carefully in again. I always salute politely.

Comments

[simont]

A sikh? Do you actually mean a follower of the Sikh religion is employed to wave at people, or is there another meaning of the word I don't know, or is this a bizarre typo of some sort?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) I mean a friendly Indian-looking guy in a turban. I was making a guess that I was right but I did indeed mean "a follower of the Sikh religion is employed to wave at people".

I admittedly was humorously conflating the idea that he was Sikh, with the idea that he was hired as a Sikh, which I assume he wasn't. (Conceivably, the friendliness is relevant.)

[simont]

Fair enough. Somehow the word appeared in a context where I'd have expected to see some inanimate noun such as "a flag to wave at people", and combined with the lower-case s I wondered if I'd completely misunderstood.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah! I hadn't intended that reading, but you're right it fits; I was certainly being ironic writing it that way :)

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

I saw that pony trap! I was cycling home about 7pm, and it was on King's Hedges Road, heading east towards Milton Road. It had two guys in it. For some reason I found this faintly surprising, and I did a little self-analysis, and concluded that I had some kind of expectation that if I'm going to see a pony trap on a Cambridge road in 2008, I'd expect it to be occupied by a romantic (and heterosexual) couple. Which may be a fairly strange expectation.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh good! I half thought I imagined it.

I had some kind of expectation that if I'm going to see a pony trap on a Cambridge road in 2008, I'd expect it to be occupied by a romantic (and heterosexual) couple. Which may be a fairly strange expectation.

FWIW, that sounds a fairly reasonable likelihood. When I saw them, they seemed like mid-late teenage people, with a definite "look at us, woo!" vibe, where I wouldn't be at all surprised they'd like to try the cart, just that they had one to try.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Why wouldn't it have a romantic homosexual couple occupying it?

edited to use appropriate image

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Attempting to further analyse Alex's self-analysis: perhaps because you'd expect it to be used as a wedding car, and gay weddings are a recent and still fairly rare occurrence?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I can accept that it's more likely to be a heterosexual couple. It just seemed odd to specifically mention it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think Alex was commenting that it seemed strange that he expected that, in a "I saw these people, was surprised who they were, wondered why I was surprised, and discovered I seemed to be expecting blah" sort of way.

As to why that expectation might be true, or arisen if it isn't true, perhaps: women may more often have an attachment to a romantic image than men do, so it's more likely that a couple with a woman would be romantic in a pony trap; that there are simply many more heterosexual couples, especially being demonstrative in public; that maybe as a romantic cliche a pony trap is so traditional a heterosexual couple is more likely to think of it?

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Well, precisely. That was part of what I realised upon self-analysis was a strange expectation.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

You know, the idea of a pony trap being anything other than a means of dealing with an infestation of feral ponies is still very strange to me. Yes, I know, words are polysemous, but all of the other senses of trap are closely related, pony trap does strongly suggest an analogy with other sorts of animal trap, and I've never seen trap in it's cart sense outside of that collocation.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) Yeah, that reading occurred to me too, but I decided to leave it as-is. (But I think I got lost somewhere near the end of your second sentence: outside of which collocation?)

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

pony trap, of course.

BTW, I think "An Infestation of Feral Ponies" would be a good title for someone's LJ. Not mine, but there must be someone out there who has an LJ that would go well with it.

[simont]

The bookshelf that lark_ascending used to keep completely packed with My Little Ponies is springing readily to mind :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I loved that phrase :)

pony trap, of course.

Yeah, that's what I thought, but it didn't make sense to at first. I thought, surely if you only see "trap (cart)" following "pony", that would make it more likely that you'd parse "pony trap" as "pony cart". But I think you meant, as you never see "trap (cart)" used at all (apart from "pony trap"), you naturally don't expect it.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

We have little occasion to talk of traps, curricles, phaetons, landaus, gigs and barouches these days.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:)