Diction.

No not that, not as in, 'I'd like you to take some dictation in my office when you are free, Miss Jones'. (No wonder there have been so many office affairs with that line readily available). No, I mean dictation as in clarity of speech. I have a complaint that things on all aural media are not clear enough. This is especially so when it comes to songs, and that is what I want to get off my chest, songs where the diction is so bad that you can't follow what is being sung about.

I'll give you an example. For years I kept hearing that David Essex song from time-to-time which was a big hit. He had a fair bit of accent he used to throw into his singing, and to my ear I was always wondering why his clothes wouldn't let him go. 'Oh, mi clothes don't let mi go'. I wondered why he wore those white jackets and wide flares if they were not working for him.

When i watch Top of the Pops, the re-runs on BBC 4, I have the subtitles on and this has brought to my attention just how much is unable to be heard properly. When I listen to the radio, say Blackburn's Pick of the Pops, there is no subtitle, of course, and i am left to try and follow and interpret. I turn my ear to the radio and screw my face up to concentrate and try to decypher the gobbldygook: 'I have a chair for you, which is why I love you'. Something along those lines. How does a chair fit in? Can that really be right? She wants him to come around and sit in her house?

Well, there just seems a lot of that kind of bad diction. Just felt i had to write it and get ity off my chest. I still think such a get-it-off-your-chest category would be a good thing, a place to have a good grumble.