It is a truth universally acknowledged that although using a tired Jane Austen pastiche is a terrible way to start a bog blog post, if the alternative is to help one's mother download apps to her phone after having consumed three or possibly more gin and tonics, then frankly my dear, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times and one more chlamydia joke will definitely not kill you.
Having got that off our chest, we feel an urgent need to acknowledge the power and brilliance of Intellectual Friend's latest philological analysis, which landed in our lucky, lucky inbox the other day. It was a tour de force of intellectual vigour, if that's not mixing metaphors with the abandon with which Our Mum mixes drinks, and although we will not be quoting from said philological analysis, as it was very long and very complex and we're definitely not sober enough to divide it into digestible chunks for our regular readers, believe us when we say that it was a thing of beauty.
Other beautiful objects have turned up on our metaphorical doorstep, as it were in several temporal dimensions at once, which linguistic stratagem is an attempt to gloss over the fact that we're too lazy and disorganised to for instance publish the photos of a cool thing that Italian Friend (who, for reasons lost in time and/or alcohol, doesn't have her own label, but who has been mentioned for instance here and here) sent us in 2019.
Here is, at any rate, an amusing sign from whichever part of Asia that Feisty French Friend is currently gracing with her presence and which demonstrates the universally acknowledged truth that on this subject, there is only one possible position, morally as well as intellectually.
Now, down to brass tacks. Italian Friend, visiting a book fair in Boston in 2019, saw this curious object, apparently called The Pouch, and, in her kindness and generosity of spirit, thought of us. In response to our hypothesis that the object of the object is for people to put their possessions in it hygienically, Italian Friend said:
Yes!! 😂 they have a hook on the door and then this thing that you can you use to put your jacket or bag in. They say it’s clean and secure, I thought was very handy!
We find the reference to kangaroos sympathetic, but otherwise remain baffled.
There was mention, some weeks ago, of petrol stations. Tudor Friend, at some point in time that remains unidentified, sent us this helpful link to an article about how service station toilets used to be clean, and now aren't, and which makes a thrilling reference to venereal disease, which may or may not surprise you.
Jonny, that loveable rogue, has outdone himself and sent us pictures of his handsome self in no fewer than three different outfits, one of which involves a moustache. We are weak-kneed from a feeling we have identified, with eighty percent certainty, as gratitude.
Jonny says, with his usual charm and effervescence:
Erm, Peak and Pods in Settle
Really lovely place
Would we really be so cruel as to deprive you of Intellectual Friend's philological musings? Of course not. Grab a glass or four of whatever alcoholic beverage is accessible to you, and join us on this rollicking journey on the roaring seas of etymological musings! (Please note that this is a short extract from a very long series of linked and thrillingly intertwined reflections.)
From there of course I sprang to check what the situation might have been 4,000 years before, in Proto-Indo-European. But I'd dabbled with PIE paradigms before, so I had a wild surmise. And there it was. Back then already, in the hunting and gathering wilds of the Stone Age, when folk had all the space and time in the world to chat in long and complex and variously specific and crazily inflected words, with subtly or unsubtly different endings by the myriad, back then already in our proto-language, in the nominative/vocative, THE NEUTER PLURAL OF ADJECTIVES WAS THE SAME AS THEIR FEMININE SINGULAR!!! (Well, at least in the relevant declension type; but that's the one that would elbow the others out and over time spread everywhere. And so this weird thing got passed on to Latin, and separately to Old Norse as well, so that Icelanders are actually affected too, by the same thing in the same way.)
WHY???
And was that a good thing or bad, anyway?
The key to retaining some minute shred of sanity, we find, is to give up all attempts at finding answers to impossible questions and instead focusing on imbibing as much gin as possible while the world burns.
Today's Festive Video suggests itself to us by virtue of its relation to time zones, ghosts, caffeine, and Oscar Wilde's mother.
All posts featuring Our Mum
All posts featuring Feisty French Friend
All posts featuring Jonny
All posts featuring Tudor Friend
All posts featuring Intellectual Friend
If musings on Proto-Indo-European are your thing, here's your chance to really let yourself go: Moving Heaven and Earth: Polarisation and Proto-Indo-Europeans
Should you have an inexplicable fondness for petrol stations, here's another one: At Your Service
