An ordinary copper, who's patrolling his beat...

[venta]

Last night, walking through the railway station, I overhead part of a mobile phone conversation.

"And then, he proceeded to..."

That was all. The speaker's voice was fairly expressionless.

But it made me think: only two kinds of people in the world "proceed". One, policemen. Two, people you're pissed off with.

No one says, casually, in a narrative "... and then he proceeded to go to Waitrose, and bought me some flowers. Wasn't that nice?"

No, it's always "... and then he proceeded to go to Waitrose, can you believe the cheek of it?"

Presumably people just do nice things; but they proceed to do bad things.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Heh.

I think it's because 'proceed' implies causality - i.e. you are doing this thing (buying flowers from Waitrose) because you have previously done another thing (shagged her sister).

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah! Yes. That too. I hadn't thought of that.

[venta.livejournal.com]

As a narrative device, it's slightly filed in the same place in my head as making people turn round before they speak.

"I did this, so she turns round and says '...'"

I saw my uncle on Tuesday, and in his world people appear to be constantly revolving.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

I remember some writer saying that there are two forms of this - the whirling dervish (as you have described) and the morris dancer as in
'So she came up to me and said... so I went up to him and said' (I may not have got the phrasing right as I am more familiar with the dervish idiom).

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Ah, I live in South London, where nobody ever 'says' anything - they 'chat at'. As in, "he was like chattin at me, so I chatted back at him, and he chatted back at me..."

Which just conjures a rather endearing image of urban 'yoot' sitting down for a good old natter over a cup of tea and a digestive.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

That's still something that has more than a whiff of scandal about it, though, isn't it?

I mean, that sentence starts with something like "He downed three pints of scrumpy and a large Lagavullin within half an hour....", clearly. You wouldn't say,
"She sat quietly in the corner for half an hour, at which point she proceeded to have a ham sandwich and a cup of tea".

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Yes - this was my first thought on readIng the post. E.g. I tied him up and proceeded to do incredibly rude things to him. And then turned round and made a nice cup of tea.

[trail-of-fire.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I don't think I'd turn round and make a cup of tea! I might turn round and leave him tied to the bed for the rest of the day while I went out to work, though.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I think you have hit upon a fundamental reason people look at me funny, because I say things like that all the time...oh dear

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

'proceeding' is surely well past due being turned into a piece of youth slang meaning something completely different.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

There's a lubricant (used by couple trying to conceive) called ProSeed.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Ew.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Is it different in written narrative?

'She set the bags on the table and proceeded to make a cup of tea.'

There's more decisiveness, or something, in that than if she just made the tea without proceeding, but it's not *outrageous* :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Would you write that, though? Can you point me to a text (that isn't Twilight) in which anyone 'proceeds' to undertake mundane tasks?

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Proceed seems to me to be used to report something, putting an extra bit of distance between the person reporting and the subject of the report. It's more measured and less immediate, I think.

OTOH I'm pre coffee, and my be waffling half-remembered, pretentious English Lit nonsense...