Enough clever

It's hard being an occasionally pedantic grammar freak.

Driving to Zac's last night I was listening to Rod Stewart singing from The Great American Songbook: I love all those sort of songs.

Rod'd just sung, 'It seems so right ...' and I knew what was coming next and before he can say it I'm screaming at the CD, 'NO! NO! NO!'

But he carries on regardless, 'holding you tight.'

'NO! NO! NO! Hold is a doing word; it needs an adverb to describe it. Holding you tightLY. Tightly. Please.'

I'm not blaming Rod; Cole Porter - whose music I love - in the little introduction to Every Time We Say Goodbye wrote the lyrics,

'We love each other so deeply that I ask you this, sweetheart:

why should we quarrel ever,

why can't we be enough clever

never to part?'

Enough clever? Enough clever? You'd think he was Welsh.