"We get eggs as small as peas and we also get enormous ones, bigger than tennis balls, and they're all wrinkled. It's due to stress," says Bill, who's complained to the Ministry of Defence about this situation without much success.When it first happened, the story of Bill's eggs was reported by the local press. Finally, five years ago, he achieved his ambition when he started his very own chicken farm just outside Clacton. But it wasn't long before Bill realised that he had a bit of a problem. The first he knew of it was one morning when three RAF Tornado fighters blasted over his farm 250ft above the ground.
"My hens went up in the air like flamingoes," he says in his broad Cockney twang. "We've got 6,500 birds and 900 of them ended up in the road." Bill's problem, as he was later to discover, was that he'd built his chicken houses directly in line with a Ministry of Defence flightpath used by military aircraft. Bill Brown grew up in the East End of London and during the War he was evacuated to the countryside, which he grew to love. "I used to say, 'One day I'm going to have a farm'," says Bill, who's now a sprightly 65.
"And people would say, 'What, an East End boy? Don't be silly'." He was a barrow boy in London for a while, then he moved out to Essex. He'd buy shops, do them up and make them a success, then sell them. This is a weird one and it just gets weirder, so maybe we should start at the beginning. Robert Burchfield in his New Fowler's English Usage classes it with certain other back-formations of which he says that "for many people" they are "as tasteless as withered violets." Burchfield is keen not to sound prescriptive, so he writes "for many people", by which he probably means "in my opinion" Anyway, he can count me in.Nicholas Bagnall. We are also used to people donating blood, a clinical term almost. I don't think any blood money passed between Mr Blair and Mr Ecclestone. It was clearly a back-formation from the much older "donation", which originally meant not a gift but the act of giving, so there was some point in "donation", but I see none in "donate".