Words, Words, Words...

I've just found a great blog in the Blogspot system... Book Dirt. Beautifully written and, at this very moment giving 25 reasons why books (the printed versions) will survive.

Grammar finally abandoned me at the end of my zealous post there. I'm sure they'll work it out...

Gobbledegook

The "wicket gream" for "wicked gleam" in the last post may as well be let stand as is.

A nod to one of my favourite writers, Lewis Carroll.

Innate Grammar, How Are You...

If innate grammer actually exists, I think it may have passed me by.

English is my mother tongue, even if the Hiberno version I speak sometimes brings a wicket gream of amusement into the eye of some shopkeepers on what is delightfully known to some as "The Mainland". Enthusiastic declamations of "I will indeed" when "I shall" would suffice, look as if overkill has been achieved. However, since to use "shall" in parts of Ireland is to join the linguistic equivalent of "les precieuses ridicules" I very rarely use it in speech and rarely in writing.

France is always a joy (if the government changes there there might be some chance I'll muster enough courage to visit again) as most people think I speak like a true Britannique and subject me to their enjoyable foibles, depending on how they view our damp little islands... that is, if they manage to see them at all, lost as we are in the linguistic mists beyond La Francophonie.

There has been a certain relief in knowing that the work of James Joyce has been released from copyright bondage at last. I no longer have to think about quoting his work without fear of punishment.
Also some of his bizarre characters who thought that speaking the language of the invader was some foible can now be put into a measured historical perspective, perhaps.

Most people these days write and speak in acronyms. I need a decoder, not a linguist.
br> However, grammarians, an eternal force, not unlike intellectual gardeners, are always welcome...

Chins Above Water, As Usual

I find myself thanking my blessings, despite the gales that are raging through the British Isles, sending trees and electrical wires crashing.

A year ago we were snowbound and although I know that much of Europe has months of frost and snow every year, I find a sort of comfort in knowing that the Gulf Stream continues to warm our shores and give a sense of well-being.

Anybody who has described an average Winter in New York has ensured I have never been tempted to go there. Yesterday's post about staying home was based on experience, not fear of the unknown, btw. It is sizzling hot in Melbourne as I write and I have met many people there in the past who craved a brisk breeze after months of what I experienced as enviable warmth. Having never spent more than four months in a warm climate, I don't know when the desire for cold weather would actually have begun. A trip to Australia was punctuated, in every sense of the word, by a visit to Tasmania's Cradle Mountain, an experience that could not top the fear that Mont Blanc struck into my heart, but which came a close second. I share with every sensible person who lived up to the time of the drug fuelled Romantics, a healthy respect for mountains. Mostly I like them to be placed picturesquely at a very safe distance, but if compelled to visit closely, being at the bottom rather than half way up in the sleet and snow would always be a personal preference. Having given my ski gloves to a friend who wanted to wander around Dove Lake, I spent a strange day muttering to myself as I tried to get warm, bonded with the only living creature out of doors, a very photogenic member of the crow family and sat in the only place offering lunch and felt a strange sense of longing for Europe in the company of a Spanish artist. We hardly spoke, but he interpreted the unmissable belled and whistling plastic gew gaw that heralded the arrival of our food while I surprised him by picking out his accent from a thousand possibilities and getting it right. He drew in a small pad. I examined my photos with over zealous scrutiny, as there wasn't much else to do.

One of the more terrifying images, to my eye, of the great mountain, were Explored on Flickr, which has never happened much since, showing that struggle is part of true art. However, I'm happy to stay home and make dreamy black and white film images with my new Canon EOS RT, a camera that had a short lived success in 1989 and which seems set to become a classic, if those of us who possess the calm its pellicle mirror system sports manage to master it and it finds a wider audience. So here's to mystery, romance and flat terrain for 2012.