Dinner-party wisdom

The definitive line between youth and age has been found!
— When you’re young, you don’t have to take medication, but you want to.
— When you’re old, you don’t want to take medication, but you have to.

Constabulary of Vocabulary

I distinctly remember being rapped on the knuckles by an English teacher for misusing the word ‘enormity’. It can only mean, he insisted, a terrible crime or sin. On perusal of a number of recent dictionaries, however, it now seems that ‘modern’* English allows it to mean the great or extreme scale, or seriousness, of something (such as a problem, situation or event); though not of an object (such as the Chinese population).

Accordingly, we should now be able to refer to: “the enormity of the problem of calculating the enormity of Hitler’s enormities”. Albeit at the price of multiple ambiguities.

It’s no wonder our English teacher — whose name I can’t remember; though we called him ‘Pobbles’ — wanted it left alone. Sometimes the language police have good reason for making the arrests that they do make.

[[* Now there’s a slippery word!]]

The Wolfhound of Rocky Gully

If you visit Rocky Gully,
Beware the wolfhound; she can fully
Flog your sandwich, bread and cheese
And vanish in a fog of fleas.

So savour Rocky Gully’s best
But keep your lunch close to your chest.
One minute it’s your precious snap,
The next it’s nought but wolfhound crap.

More to watch?

Check tonight’s TV pages. There’s absolutely nothing anyone with half a neuron would watch.
Click on the images to enlarge. Doing so is better than watching TV tonight. Eh?

Our hut is a very, very, very fine hut

Click to enlarge

Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac