How did that happen

Meeting up with Jeff Turner yesterday, one never goes away without feeling the wiser for what he's said about poems. Thus it was very good to hear him saying positive things about Romanticism. It's one thing if I'm happy with what I've done- and enough- but a tremendous bonus if someone one respects thinks so, too.

This morning, then, I had another look. Line 6 of the book. How did that happen? How many times have I read that. But, of course, an author reading one's own work knows what it's supposed to say and so sometimes that's what they see. And not every proof reader would know the genitive case of the Latin for Swan, as per the constellation.

It says, 

The name that Alpha Cyngi's better known by,  

when it should say 'Alpha Cygni'. It's taken me six months to find that having thought missing the accent off 'cortege' once while remembering it another time was my only erratum. D'oh.

But, hold on, that poem first appeared in About Larkin. Did nobody notice it then. 

No, it was fine then in issue no. 53, three years ago. So when and how did it get amended from being correct into a typo. There's only me that could have done it and I wouldn't have typed it out again, I'd have cut and pasted the text into the book from the original typescript.

I don't know. But I'm aware of instances in books by much more respected and renowned authors than me that went into print with similar mistakes in them and maybe in the same way that one's not a proper cyclist until one's fallen off a few times, one isn't a proper writer -or editor, for that matter - until that's happened.

I did once do a book in which no errors have been found yet. I think, quite fittingly, it was The Perfect Book.

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I was taken by surprise by the death of Sly Stone yesterday, 82. He was very much in the category of those I didn't think could have still been alive.

The hit parade in 1971/72 abounded with seemingly significant masterpieces, Family Affair being a paragon example, and somehow fittingly today's weekly match v. Heardle 90's, 80's, 70's, 60's was won 3-1, beginning with a tremendous opening goal on the opening bar of Everyday People by Arrested Development, a cover of Sly Stone from those far-off days when hip-hop was any good