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]

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