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

[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]

:)