One of the less-discussed advantages of e-books

[commodorified]

Is that when reading on a tablet one may easily look slightly puzzling things up as curiosity strikes, rather than being entirely dependent on working them out from whatever context is available.

I do not say that I have lost anything much over the last thirty years by supposing, from time to time and while reading novels set in the UK, that The Pink 'Un was a periodical concerned with the raising and marketing of pigs, which I worked out contained also, perhaps, humourous essays and some cartoons, but I am pleased to report that I am now, at least on this minor point, Enlightened, even as I gently mourn my innocent, imaginary monthly porcine publication, and the cheery cover illustrations I had mentally provided it with.

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

The Norwich football magazine isn't in fact the famous "Pink 'Un", but was named after it. The one mentioned in literature is the Sporting Times, a specialist sports (and especially horse-racing) newspaper published from 1865 to 1932.

[perennialanna]

And that has cleared up my own confusion as to the relationship between the Norwich magazine I see on sale every time I need bigger shops than Yarmouth or Lowestoft have to offer, and the Pink 'Un my father explained to me when I was curious about the book on his shelves called A Pink 'Un And A Pelican.

[commodorified]

Ah, gotcha!

Still no pigs, though? Still no pigs.

[oursin]

Except that 'sporting' in this context had a rather broader connotation of man about town, or at least wannabe. I.e. I have on occasion found it a periodical useful for my research.

[commodorified]

Oooh.....

[oursin]

Ads for Parisian art postcards and massage services...

[nenya_kanadka]

Just from the name, this is the sort of thing I would have assumed the entire publication to be about--but then, I may have a dirty mind. :)

[legionseagle]

Which may have been reflected in the title of "Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour", enquiring minds wish to know?

[oursin]

I'm not sure about that one, which I haven't read, but from my recollection of the Surtees I have read, 'sporting' isn't just about the gee-gees.

[legionseagle]

It certainly can't be; note the severity with which Harriet Vane admonishes Reggie Pomfret for using the adjective to apply to Miss Cattermole.

[legionseagle]

I am heartbroken! It should so definitely have been so. With an occasional indignant Letter to the Editor signed "Emsworth".

[commodorified]

The covers were especially splendid, in my imagination. As if Gillivray and Hogarth had been fascinated by actual, rather than metaphorical, swine.

[legionseagle]

If Wikipedia is to be believed, this is how the original Pink 'Un reviewed Ulysses:

[It] appears to have been written by a perverted lunatic who has made a speciality of the literature of the latrine... I have no stomach for Ulysses... James Joyce is a writer of talent, but in Ulysses he has ruled out all the elementary decencies of life and dwells appreciatively on things that sniggering louts of schoolboys guffaw about. In addition to this stupid glorification of mere filth, the book suffers from being written in the manner of a demented George Meredith. There are whole chapters of it without any punctuation or other guide to what the writer is really getting at. Two-thirds of it is incoherent, and the passages that are plainly written are devoid of wit, displaying only a coarse salacrity [sic] intended for humour.

If you add the line, "I would not allow my Gloucester Old Spots to have their troughs wiped out with this filth" it would fit very nicely into your Platonic Ideal Pig Pink 'Un.

[wordweaverlynn]

Your comment makes me unreasonably happy.

[clanwilliam]

I am enchanted at the idea of the Pink Un as a porcine periodical and, remembering a mention in one of the Holmes stories, am now convinced that pig farmers are all hardened gamblers.

[legionseagle]

Goes with the territory. One of my colleagues had a case once which was all about a specialist pig breeder who had accidentally introduced a very highly-strung strain into his pigs, and the legal fallout from this was unbelievable.

[clanwilliam]

Not to mention the fact that getting stroppy sows drunk is the usual way of getting them to actually nurse their piglets. It's not just James Heriot - I've read a few accounts from other sources as well.

[legionseagle]

I loved the idea that scene - it was the Sporting Life not the Sporting Times, of course - was translated almost verbatim into Hounds of Baskerville.

[glinda]

I hadn't previously encountered it, but I too would have greatly preferred a gentle periodical about pigs with occassional humourous essays and some slightly ribald cartoons...