Sometime in late 1968, Charles Manson was listening to "The Beatles," to use the proper name of what's most often called the White Album, and decided that "Helter Skelter," an upbeat rocker about a roller coaster at an English amusement park, was a call to black insurrection in America, to be set off by the brutal murders of an actress, a hairdresser, a coffee heiress, and several other innocents.
Nine months before the Ashes series gets under way in Cardiff, Cameron White gave plenty of amusement to English watchers yesterday when he speared a delivery so far down the leg-side that it made Steve Harmison's infamous series opener in 2006 look like a model of line-and-length bowling.
Last summer with him included camping trips, outings to the English seaside and visits to amusement parks.
The pier, one of the town's chief tourist attractions, was a celebrated part of English seaside tradition of promenades, amusement rides and fish and chips.
The author Luigi Barzini quotes with amusement an old English lady, long resident in the peninsula, who used to wag her finger at him and say: 'There is some Cagliostro and some Casanova in every Italian, even in those you'd suspect the least.' In Berlusconi's case the zeal of Casanova seems safely channelled into the output of his television shows.
The swagger of highfalutin English is a source of constant amusement to Bennett.
In his preface he writes: "from an apprehension that botany in an English dress would become a favourite amusement with the ladies,... it was thought proper to drop the sexual distinctions in the titles to the Classes and Orders".
The Museum of Fine Arts, other museums, the Budapest Zoo, the renowned city circus, and an amusement ground (which was once called the "English Park") are all found nearby.
It was a moment of pure, succinct English wit at its most economical which caused much amusement, the pleasure of which remains to this day.
This is one of the oldest calculator words in the book and the source of endless amusement for 13 year-olds across the English speaking world.
When they entered a song in English at this year's Eurovision song contest, it provoked wry amusement abroad, but indifference at home.
