A frustrating day for both Lois and me. We're expecting our daughter Sarah and her 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica to arrive at our new-build home in Malvern at about 6:30 pm from their home in Alcester 20 miles or so away. They want to spend the night here and then go home tomorrow morning.
Lois and I have a plan - (1) to spend the morning converting our little house-for-two-old-codgers temporarily to a house-for-five, and (2) then have a rest in the afternoon. The morning goes well, with all the cleaning, dusting and vacuuming and the moving of stuff from our 2 guest bedrooms into our own bedroom - you know the kind of thing! A bit superficial, but I expect you've done some superficial "tidying" yourselves haven't you!!!
First we try to make the guest bedrooms look not too cluttered as regards my so-called "office" papers and reference books etc, only cluttered with children's toys and books, which is nice:
we tidy up Bedroom 3, and get the double bed
ready for the twins to share
a surprise present for the twins - my cousin Susan from Monument, Colorado,
has now returned home to the US, leaving me with two copies of her book "The Christmas Camel"
flashback to earlier this month: a photo of me and 6 of my 30-or-so
cousins on my mother's side, plus Lois and cousin Jeanette's husband Alan (right),
an occasion held at Beaconsfield, Bucks: Susan is in the centre, 5th from left
Susan is in her 70's now, but she was long ago a London University foreign languages graduate with a degree in French and German, and she had dreams about becoming a writer for a living. Well, I think there are a lot of people like that around aren't there, and sadly most of them never get to realize even a little part of their ambitions, so Susan's doing well on that count. Susan once told me she was writing a whodunnit crime novel, but I'm not sure what happened to that, or whether she even finished it.
Nevertheless she's still doing what she can to keep the dream alive, which is nice. She was at one time the Restaurant Reviewer - what a great job! - for a local newspaper, the Boulder Daily Camera. And apart from this "Christmas Camel" book, I know she also wrote one of the go-to guides to eating out "ethnically" in Denver, Colorado, if you're interested. It was published by the local Garlic Press in 1993, so go on, sample it if you can get hold of a copy!!!!
11:00 Also this morning Lois and I convert the dining-table in our tiny kitchen-diner to accommodate 5 diners, two of them small ones, instead of just Lois and me.
we convert our dining-table from a cosy "table for two"
to a busy "table for five, including 2 small persons"
And to make it even more frustrating, here we are, straining not to miss hearing the sound of the door-bell all afternoon, but nobody actually comes - what a crazy world we live in! And at 4 pm, we find that Bradley has gone home early, so we'll just have to contact him again on Monday.
18:30 Sarah and the twins arrive, and our quiet lives are instantly turned upside-down as always, which is so nice, isn't it. You'll know what I mean, if you've got grandchildren, I'm sure.
What a madness it all is !!!!
Bradley, the builders' regional Customer Care Manager up there
in the West Midlands, manages to sabotage our afternoon,
although unintentionally of course - he means well, bless him !!!!!
While we're in bed, we do at least manage to learn, or re-learn, a word we had both forgotten: "metathesis".
And we're delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits on the quora forum website, General American (GA) speaker Ben Waggoner, has been weighing in on the vexed topic of "When people say 'axed' instead of 'asked' or 'nucular' instead of 'nuclear', should it be treated as a variation of dialect or is it incorrect pronunciation?"
Ben writes: Swapping the order of sounds or syllables is known as metathesis, and it’s just one of those things that languages do. It’s how Old English beorht, wæps, and bridd became modern English bright, wasp, and bird. (And it happened in other languages: it’s how Latin miraculum and periculum became Spanish milagro and peligro, for example.) Both ask and ax were widely used in Old and Middle English, and it’s only in the past 300 years or so that ask has become the established standard.
“Ax” and “nucular” are both dialectical variants, perfectly acceptable within the communities that speak those dialects. The only way you could call them “incorrect” is in a situation where you’re expected to speak with a standard pronunciation, like RP in Britain or General American “newscaster English” in the US.
Lois and I have a favourite metathesis, one which we sadly rarely get a chance to bring up in conversation nowadays because it all sounds a bit dated. Do you remember when comedienne Victoria Wood, in her 1990's sitcom "Dinnerladies", used to talk about the coming "minnellium" ?
Tremendous fun !!!!!
Lois goes out and greets our daughter Sarah
and her 10-year-old twin daughters on their arrival from Alcester
And what expressions Jessica uses! She's a voracious reader and can devour a Harry Potter book in a day. "I'm very partial to a piece of pizza!" is one of the expressions she uses today. She's what my mother would have called "so old-fashioned". You know what I mean, don't you!
And soon, little Lily is "knocking up" some of her ad-hoc clothing items, like this stylish hat:
our daughter Sarah, with Lily showcasing
her latest clothing creation - a stylish hat
Jessica tries on Lily's hat
Lily showcases more of her artwork...
... and a fetching hat for Teddy
Jessica entertains us on the piano with
"When the Saints Go Marching In"
21:45 Lois and I grab a few minutes to look at the puzzles in next week's Radio Times.
It's a bumper issue this time, because this week the magazine is celebrating its centenary. The BBC first started broadcasting in London - radio only - in 1922, when it was initially called "Station 2LO", and then subsequently the British Broadcasting Company. And the guide to its programmes, "Radio Times" was first published in September 1923. The BBC's TV service didn't start till 1936, and, although the magazine then started to include TV listings, it decided to keep its original title of 'Radio Times', which is nice.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment