Beyond all reasonable doubt.

*I may well be deciding to embark upon a spurious campaign of unnecessary-but-entirely-harmless abbreviations, just to see who I can irk.

It is definitely ‘I know that they don’t know their board. I propose….’ It makes much more sense than ‘ I know that they don’t know, therefore I propose…..’. If it was the latter then, strictly speaking, the sentence needs a demonstrative pronoun. It should be ‘ I know that they don’t know that, therefore I propose…..’ which it obviously isn’t.

However, even allowing for incorrect usage I will still argue for ‘I know that they don’t know their board’, on the grounds that it is a really well crafted line. ‘He knows his board’ was a comment muttered with grudging respect during my short lived career on a pub darts team in the mid 80s. Never unfortunately delivered in my direction. A darts player who ‘knows his board’ knows all of his ‘outs’ (eg. 101 can be achieved with a checkout of Triple 17 and Bull). It therefore fits the theme of the verse which is that in Soap Opera darts ‘cheers are raised for the bull’ for no reason other than the participant has managed to hit the exact centre of the board, rather than realising that there might be some significance in that event in terms of the game. In other words he doesn’t know his board as he hasn’t realised that the bull is in fact ‘a double and an out’. The spectators are merely cheering the fact that he has hit the smallest target on the board.

Pedants, it’s over to you!

And of course there are literary quotes too. First the biblical-sounding language of iron entering people’s souls, a common saying over many centuries, but here it is in Thomas Hardy, writing about “Jude the Obscure”, in his letters, V2, 93:
“This tragedy is addressed to those whose souls the iron has entered, and entered deeply, at some point in their lives.”

But in the previous line, we’re in Aldeburgh on the Suffolk Coast, with George Crabbe (born 1754) writing hard-hitting rhymes about his local poorhouse:
“There children dwell who know no parents’ care;
Parents, who know no children’s love, dwell there!
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears,
And crippled age with more than childhood fears.”

From “The Village” (1783) by George Crabbe. A poem oft-quoted about C18 and C19 poorhouses.

[As well as Crabbe and Roy Keane, who walks his dog on the beach at Aldeburgh (as ITFC’s very own Chris Rand will doubtless attest), other notable residents of this famous historical town have included Benjamin Britten (who based “Peter Grimes” on Crabbe’s lyrics) ... and M.R. James, another favourite author of NB57. Small world.]

One of my absolute all-time favourites. I love the contrast between the drama of the music and the sheer daftness of the lyrics as it builds up at the end, and the hyperactive kid line makes me laugh every time – a line that sums up so much in such a briefly dismissive way (a bit like the “James Dean/Marilyn Monroe” one, I always think).