Rivetting

The news hasn't been making me smile much of late, but one of the comments in the online Guardian this morning did make me giggle, as the poster said that Labour and the Tories are so similar that there's not a "hare's breath" between them. I LOVE it when people make sense of things in their own head. The idea that s/he'd heard someone saying a 'hair's breadth' and thought that the breath of a hare would be, of course, so thin as to provide an ideal metaphor for similarity between two items is - if I may be forgiven for being enormously patronising - adorable. I think I may have mentioned before that my friend Eva had a charming interpretation of the lyric in Paula Abdul feat. MC Skat Kat's Opposites Attract which should be rapped, 'Nothing in common with this trust, I'm like minus, she's like a plus - one going up, one coming down but we seem to land on common ground.' Eva thought it was, 'I'm like a miner, she's like a bus,' and using the 'one going up, one coming down' moment, had made perfect sense of it all. On a different level, I used to think that it was some sort of coincidence that British judges were called Justice, and that a lot of ambitious mothers had been trying to determine their child's future by calling them appropriate names to make their CVs more likely to be selected from the pile. I also love the common slip-up 'fine toothcomb' which makes me think of very delicate people refusing to brush their teeth but instead choosing to comb them with a tiny silver implement, a bit like a miniature nit comb but, well, finer.

Much as I enjoy these linguistic nuances, I get the feeling that other people want to stab me in the eyes for my smug know-it-all-ness. And I do understand their irritation. But really, I'm only trying to help. Across the road from my office, the sign outside Bagel Mania has read 'Chilly con carne' for several months. Yesterday, I happened to walk by when a Maniac (surely the employees' name for themselves?) was cleaning the sign, so I thought I'd mention that there was a spelling mistake lower down. She looked at me as if I had just asked if she wanted to drink dog sick. "It's quite funny," I said with jollity, trying to show her that I knew it was all a bit of light-hearted banter. "You've written chilly with a y! That means it's cold! Brrrr!" As I caught myself rubbing my own upper arms in a bad charade, I knew that I must commit suicide for the benefit of society. No one likes a clever dick.

Lesson learned - but only for about 17 hours. This morning, Kate sent me an email saying she was 'rivetted' by something and I replied that it sounded like she was being fastened down with metal pins. I couldn't help myself. And I justified it too: what, I reasoned, would happen if Kate were writing to someone important and made such a terrible gaffe? But then I took a deep breath and reminded myself that no sane person gives two hoots about spelling mistakes, and that most sensible people will surely see my pedanticism as a petty little pseudo-religion which is created to make adherents feel like part of a community, cultivating a failing Other so that they can feel superior to someone. Of course, inevitably, the tiny community is full of petty-minded pseuds with nothing better to do than correct people's spelling and grammar. And I'm one of them. Urgh. I need a new hobby.

Back to the grind

Apologies to the Foreign Faithful, but here in the UK, yesterday was a Bank Holiday and I didn't get around to writing. Not that I was out gallivanting, you understand. In fact, I spent most of the day in a fug of confused efficiency, careering from one urgent project to the next in a manner that was both uncharacteristically chaotic and rather liberating. The impetus for said efficiency was the impending arrival of a new temporary flatmate, a young Berliner who will stay in my spare room for a maximum of ten nights a month in exchange for some money. I had to make space in his cupboard for his possessions, and became embarrassed anew at the fact that my clothes will not fit in the two large wardrobes in my double bedroom, even with the addition of a substantial chest of drawers, and that, shortly after moving into the flat last March, my clothing overflowed into the spare room closet, which is now completely full in the way that means that you need both arms and substantial bicep strength to insert a new item into the denseness.

So, with difficulty, I cleared a space in the cupboard, which then meant I had a surplus of items on my bed. I got rid of my second yoga mat, my old Ikea laundry basket and a large bag of old shoes via Freecycle, and was feeling very virtuous when, at approximately 5pm, Emily told me about Music Magpie. I then spent the following six hours typing in the barcodes of around 450 of my CDs, and quickly burning any I hadn't previously copied onto my hard drive. And so it came to pass that, after nearly three decades of jealously hoarding vinyl and then cassettes and finally compact discs, the age of tangible music formats has come to a close for me. It feels unbelievably sad and very wrong, but I simply never listen to them, I haven't bought a CD for years, and... well, it's done. And if the ones I am sending off make the grade, the money I get will pay for my flights to the Impending Summer Holiday Destination. Woo.

Today I feel exhausted in that way that you get when you have more wine to drink on Saturday than you can remember ever drinking before, on what was pretty much an entirely empty stomach, at your lovely friends' wedding, and then spend Sunday and Monday trying - and failing - to rehydrate. I am still very, very thirsty. And my recollection of Saturday is hazy at best, but I can say that all my memories are extremely happy. Apparently I went up to Lucy at a lateish stage in the evening and briefly danced in her vicinity before announcing that I was completely sober and that I was unable to dance due to feeling too self-conscious. This was a massive, massive untruth. At the end of the wedding, I am informed that I went into cheeky mode (which, despite hundreds of examples to the contrary, I always naively believe I can get away with), and took two gargantuan hunks of cheese and a large basket of crackers from the marquee and ran back to the outside table where a group of us were sitting, despite our host's clear desire that we would stand up, leave the cheese and go home. Later I went back to the bar, found three half full bottles thereon, collected them and took them back outside. When someone in a position of responsibility appeared to spot me, apparently I broke into a trot and said 'I'm not here, I'm not here...' accompanied by gales of giggling. Pathetic. I have no defence, I am sure it must be true - but I remember it not much. The next morning, I was feeling substantially less hilarious, and thanked my lucky stars that Justin was also at breakfast at our B&B, as our host decided that it was the time to talk about property prices and the credit crunch. I didn't really engage in the conversation, although Justin later said that I managed to disagree with pretty much everything he said, just barking 'That's not true,' at all his suggestions. Apparently it was like having breakfast with Paxman.

Now I'm back at work and struggling to get through a very busy day at work, as I think I am still recovering from my efficiency yesterday and the gallons on Saturday - but I did find five seconds to scan the papers online and must admit that I chuckled a fair bit on finding that the supermarket, Morrisson's, has been selling a spelling toy containing the word Yatch. Yacht has always been a really rubbish Y letter anyway, impossible to spell and both elitist and seaist. I think we should get rid of it. In America, I think it's more commonly Y is for Yak, although perhaps Kentucky Cous can confirm this. How about Y is for Yucca as a substitute? Or we could do a bit of subliminal healthy living stuff and do Y is for Yakult? Alternatively, we could advertise the recent buddy movie, Y is for You, Me and Dupree, although that might be a bit premature... Oooh, how about Y is for Young offender, with a cartoon of a youth behind bars as a preventative measure to deter the baby from carrying out aggressive behaviour in the future? I think it's a winning plan. Right. Must go to gym and burn off several thousand wine calories. Sigh.

Rubbish mnemonics

OK, I don't think these are mnemonics exactly because I think mnemonics are made up to help you spell things, and these are things made up to help you remember other things more easily. But whatever they're called, they're rubbish. The first one is the American 'Spring forward, fall back' which is meant to help you remember the clocks situation. And the second is to help you differentiate between stalagtites and stalagmites - and it's something to do with pulling up your tights versus holding on with all your might. My problem with both of these mnonomics is that they are both shit. In that they are both fully flexible. I can spring back or forward. In theory, of course, depending on my hangover situation. And, as illustrated by the drunk man on the escalator the other night, it is equally possible to fall in both directions. So how, pray tell, is that supposed to help me remember which goes with which?

Similarly, as far as I have been aware up to this point, tights can be pulled both up and down, and while it is of course conceivable that one might hold on with all one's might, it is also surely an option to push up with all one's might. I will concede that it is not often that I am called upon to differentiate between a stalagtite and a salagmite, and really the only time I seem to come up against them is during school trips to Wooky Hole in Wiltshire, which I'm assuming won't be happening much for me any more, since I'm 31. But the spring forward, fall back thing is frustrating, not least because even if I remember which way round it goes, it still doesn't really help me work out what the hell is going on. I mean, if the clocks have gone forward, what does that mean? What would be really useful is a mnonomic to warn us which one is the rubbish one that means getting up an hour earlier than usual. This information is at my fingertips at the moment, because it's just happened. So, I can tell you that Spring is bad for fans of sleep, while Autumn is good. OK, it's not that catchy, but at least it tells you what you need to know.

While I'm ranting, what is this about? In a development that I noticed this morning, it appears that Gmail has left every single folder heading capitalised, except 'inbox'. Now, I'm as flexible and easy going as the next person (provided that next person is highly strung to the point of physical rupture), but why not have some consistency with the labels? All lower case, while being grammatically questionable, would at least have been more attractive. But surely I have more important things to be worrying about?

You'd think so, wouldn't you? Well, what's been happening. I've been in prime self-distraction mode so as to prevent myself from moping. Friday night I met up with Emily and we bought make-up and had a fun dinner. We bumped into an old school friend in Primark at about 8pm and were mocking our own tragic lifestyles whereby the friend hadn't been hounded by anyone at all to do anything social that evening, and I made her feel better by saying that my phone had only rung once that day, about 15 minutes earlier, and it was Emily trying to find me among the vest tops. Saturday was spent repainting my kitchen in Red Stallion 2, a colour I chose approx. 76% because I liked the colour and 24% because the name was persuasive. Sunday was our choir concert which went better than expected and I enjoyed the apres-sing drinks in Shepherd's Market so heartily that I got all the way to the bus stop before realising I'd left my handbag in the pub. Last night I went to see the world premiere (not sold out) of In Search of Beethoven with my dad at the Barbican. It was good but the director made all the talking heads look into the lens, which I found disconcerting. And, as a recent Tweet revealed, I learned conclusively that I don't really like Beethoven's music - with the exception of a few adagio movements. Still, it's good to know these things. Now I'm going to buy more self-help books and then I'm off for dinner with Justin. Could be worse.

Tense times

When I was writing my 200 word review of I Am Legend yesterday, I had a quandary. I wanted to say that the film didn't quite reach its potential and my plan was to conclude by suggesting that the tense in the movie's title might have been more accurate if it had read 'I Should Have Been Legendary'. Thus, my draft sentence was something like, "A good effort, but I'd switch the film's title to the perfect conditional." However, verb tenses have never been my strong point - I am far more instinctive about syntax than my poncey style might suggest - and even after a fair bit of research, I couldn't find the correct tense for 'I should have been'. So I went onto my beloved Facebook group, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar, and asked the panel, using the noun 'ballerina' instead of 'legend' for no clear reason. Today, I received this reply from a gentleman, previously unknown to me, called Barrie:

"Jane, strictly speaking, ‘I should have been’ isn’t a tense at all, but an example of aspect. Aspect tells us about the way the speaker views an action or state in terms of the passing of time. However, forms such as ‘I have been’ are frequently known, particularly in books for foreign learners, as the present perfect tense. The sentence also includes ‘should’, a modal verb (an extra verb that tells us something about the speaker’s attitude towards the meaning contained in the main verb). ‘Should’ most frequently expresses obligation, but in your sentence it expresses an ‘unreal’ situation. The speaker wasn’t a ballerina, but she wishes she had been. So, ‘I should have been’ is the first person singular perfect aspect of ‘be’, modified by the modal verb ‘should’ to express an ‘unreal’ situation."

I mean, really. That paragraph makes me glow with happiness, encapsulating so much of what I love about the world. I adore computer geeks and the internet, the English language and grammar pedants, precision in general and random acts of kindness by strangers. And even though I didn't take Barrie's answer on board on this occasion, I hope we can all agree that the final phrase I chose for my review is a fair bit catchier than, "A good effort, but I'd switch the film's title to the third person singular aspect of 'be', with the addition of the modifier 'should' to express an 'unreal' situation (rather than an obligation)."

Monday update

Sigh… another week… A slightly heavier weekend than I’ve experienced for a wee while and the addition of my winter, 13.5 tog duvet and clean sheets to my bed meant that dragging myself from under the increased weighty warmth was even more of a repellent prospect this morning.

Still, miraculously I made it – and managed to reach my office without significant incident. Last Friday I spent the entire journey from Hammersmith to work on the tube sitting next to a large(ish) spider which was absolutely paralysing – I couldn’t pick it up and was too embarrassed to ask anyone else to move it, and it just sat there cleaning its legs and not walking very far for approximately forty minutes. Every now and then it made a start as if setting off on an expedition, at which point I would try to shuffle away from it a tad, while trying to maintain a commuter-friendly distance from the passenger to my right, but mostly it just sat there, while I sat looking at it, listening to my iPod and convinced that if I even looked away for a nano-second it would run up the sleeve of my coat and I would have a heart attack and die.

I had a delightful weekend – a few drinks post-work with Laura and a couple of others on Friday to carry on the birthday festivities, and then an evening of love on Saturday to celebrate Suzannah’s engagement to Jack. A few of us from our choir went along to croon a selection of cheesy numbers and get the party in the mood but pre-performance sight-reading is never too good for my singing ego and personally I think we might have benefited from a fraction more rehearsal. Ultimately, however, no one was really listening as they were all waiting for the rugby to start and panicking that we were going to start singing Mozart’s C Minor Mass and force them to stand up interminably.

After our songs had been sung, the choir contingent visibly relaxed, arranged ourselves by the canapé release area for the richest pickings, drank more than our fair share of Champagne and sang along noisily and (unbearably) in harmony to Uptown Girl – so strange how that always seems so funny when I’m with choir people and yet, just hours later, can send me into paroxysms of shame and regret.

After the party, I trotted back to Hammersmith to catch the last bus home but, despite my inebriation, was still stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of the station’s newest artery fattenerr. Words fail me when I look at their sign. Oven & Grilled Snack Bar? Is that like a roasted Tracker? Or have they put the entire eaterie under the grill? Or does the ‘Oven & Grilled’ not refer to the snack bar? In which case, to what is it referring? Not the coffee? Do they grill coffee now? I know I shouldn’t care. I know that I especially shouldn’t care after midnight and many glasses of Champagne. But I did, and I do, and that’s the way it is.

Yesterday I remembered what it was like to wake up the morning after drinking way, way too much alcohol. I had a very gentle day featuring a lovely lunch at Katherine’s flat and then fell asleep watching a Bob Dylan documentary on BBC4. Perfect.

Oh! The shame...

In the grammar and vocabulary stakes, I award myself a B+. I have taught English to many young people and still take pleasure in explaining away an errant apostrophe to willing students of any age - and will merrily trap unwilling students with a complicated and trademarked Superglue manoeuvre. I know the basics like I know the back of my large, yet perfectly proportioned, hand.

However, I will reluctantly concede that there are substantial gaps in my knowledge, hence my decision to deny myself the coveted A-. I still struggle with fewer vs. less and I've only recently worked out how to remember the difference between stationery and stationary. One of my proudest moments was beating an 11 year old at Scrabble by using all my tiles to play the word 'quixotic' on a triple word score. Fortunately my opponent didn't believe the word existed, so I was able to look it up in the dictionary for her, cleverly disguising the fact that I didn't know what it meant. Just this morning I was compelled to research 'febrile' and found its definition to be utterly different than I'd expected.

The blush this raised, however, was as nothing to the flush of humiliation I experienced yesterday when I found a magnificient website that details hundreds of common grammar and spelling confusions. At first glance, it was a Mecca of smugness for me as I ticked off the ones I knew already. But it wasn't long before I spied a phrase that sent a shiver of horror through my marrow: bated breath. I have spent the past few years thinking this was spelled baited breath and wondering if there were a more repellent combination of adjective and noun in our beloved language. I made just that point in an email only last week, commenting on the fact that the two words, when employed consecutively, conjure up images of maggots and tongues and should be avoided on this basis. However, as soon as I saw 'bated breath', sans 'i', on the aforelinked website, I knew I'd made an error. And sure enough, one click took me to a new page where my mistake was verified: "Although the odor of the chocolate truffle you just ate may be irresistible bait to your beloved, the proper expression is 'bated breath.' 'Bated' here means 'held, abated.' You do something with bated breath when you’re so tense you’re holding your breath."

I've tried to make myself feel better by focussing on the fact that the inverted commas at the end of the first and second quoted sentences should be within the full stops, but it's no use: I have made an humiliating error and I shall not forgive myself until lunchtime tomorrow at the absolute earliest.