Category: Musings

  • Brown Bread

    Apparently, cockney rhyming slang is dead (brown bread) or at least taking its last breath. Rather sad if that is the case although I suspect some of it is deeply entrenched in most people’s language, such that they don’t even realise it emanates from cockney slang. The fun comes from the fact that the actual […]

  • LM Alcott

    A friend recently sent me a newspaper article about Louisa May Alcott, the author of  ‘Little Women.’ I would have been interested anyway but more particularly now as I have just visited Concord, half an hour outside Boston, Massachusetts. LMA was the purpose of the visit. I wanted to go to Orchard House which is […]

  • Originality

    It is very difficult to be original don’t you think? Original thought is exceedingly rare. It is not surprising that everything in one way or another is derivative because we are all made up of our own set of life experiences and our encounters with others. I was discussing this topic with a bookseller recently. […]

  • Shakespeare Day

    Who knew that Shakespeare Day was November 8th? Definitely not me. If asked I would have gone for 23rd April, his birthday and possibly also the date of his death. Anyway, this has been an enjoyable education for me and I now know lots about the First Folio that I certainly didn’t know before. Yesterday’s […]

  • Merchant of Venice 1936

    I saw a production of this play recently at my local theatre. It was unusual in that Shylock was played by a woman and the setting was Cable Street in the East End of London in 1936, the time of fascism, Moseley and the Black Shirts. Actually nothing was very usual about the matinee I […]

  • I could have been a lexicologist

    I have enjoyed my teaching career but I might have also enjoyed other ways of earning a living. Careers advice at my school was abysmal. Nursing and the police force were represented I remember … and, well, very little else. I might have been happy working in publishing. I still don’t entirely understand all the […]

  • Fitzcarraldo

    This is not a name with which I was familiar until a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have read about it in several publications. Fitzcarraldo is the name of a small, independent publishing house that is creating a lot of surprise in the industry. Jacques Testard is the one with the vision and […]

  • Sitting or Sat?

    I remember listening in the staff room to somebody who said: ‘And there they were, all sat at their desks ready for the lesson.’  This sounded quite foreign to me and not something I would ever have said. My version would have replaced ‘sat’ with ‘sitting.’ ‘ He was sat at the front,’ sounds even […]

  • Books to read before you die

    Over a cup of coffee I rather randomly looked at lists of 50 or 100 books that one ought to read before the end is nigh. There are obviously many versions put out by different publishers etc but as you might expect there was a great deal of commonality. Pride and Prejudice was in every […]

  • Got

    I have a friend who despises the word ‘nice’ and strongly encouraged the children she taught not to use it. I quite like it actually. It makes me think of tea in thin china cups and pretty tablecloths. My personal bête noir is the word ‘got.’ I suspect this dislike comes from early primary school […]