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 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| How to Make a Spectacle of Yourself My father was always a bit longsighted and wore glasses when he had to read something. Late in life, it became so bad that his arms no longer had the length necessary to enable him to hold the newspaper at reading distance. He solved the problem by bringing home one of those big magnifying glasses with a handle that legend maintains Sherlock Holmes used so much. It served well enough for my father and he avoided an unwanted trip to the optometrist. I had the opposite problem as a youth - I was shortsighted. After holding out until my mid-twenties, I gave in and allowed myself to be measured, inspected and gauged for a pair of spectacles. They proved useful for such things as driving and watching television. For a while, I did suffer the occasional visit to be retested and, inevitably, to have new lenses, and it was during one of these occasions that my optometrist mentioned that our eyesight tends to become longer and longer sighted as we get older. This cheered me up no end. “So, in my old age, I should have perfect vision,” I suggested. He looked at me with a sour expression. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. Being who I am, I thought about this for many years afterward. It just didn’t make sense that you could be shortsighted, then get longer sighted and not end up with better vision. And, after a few more years, I had proof that the blasted optometrist had lied to me. There was no doubt about it - I needed my glasses in fewer and fewer situations. In the end I gave up wearing them altogether. They still sit forlornly on my desk, gathering dust and. perhaps, dreaming of their golden years, but they aren’t much use to me now, even if I were to wear them. My vision has changed so much that they actually make things worse, not better. About a year ago, I ran into an unexpected problem. My eyes overshot. Instead of maintaining themselves at the ideal position, they kept getting longer sighted and I was no longer able to read the small print on all sorts of items. Ingredients on food especially are printed so finely that I would have needed my father’s magnifying glass to read them. Andrea became my goto when I really needed to read something illegible (what would I do without her?) In the end, she got fed up and bought me some cheapo reading glasses. I’d always wondered how they could sell these over-the-counter, one-size-fits-all glasses. Now I discovered that they’re just small magnifying lenses. Suddenly I can read anything again and everyone is happy. It’s the little things that make one truly content with life. Word count: 461 |
| Thoughts in the Waiting Room In the last couple of years or so, i have been vaguely concerned at the state of my memory. It’s never been brilliant, understand, but lately it seems to forget words more often than I find comfortable. You might have noticed that I know and use quite a lot of them. So this growing disappearance of the exact word at inconvenient moments is not only frustrating but also slightly worrying. Is this the first sign of the ultimate decay of the old brain, I wonder. But it’s not really a matter of failing memory - it’s an instant and temporary thing. Very often it’s when I’m writing and I know the precise word that will fit the sentence when I get there. And, when I arrive and reach for the word, it’s gone. I know it was there seconds ago but now there’s no trace of it - poof, gone like the morning mist in the heat of the summer sun. It’s annoying, to say the least. But I won’t just think of a substitute that means approximately the same. I have to use the word already chosen. Usually I define the word to Andrea and she runs through all the ones I’ve thought of until she hits the right one. And I know it as soon as I hear it, of course. Sometimes Andrea isn’t immediately available and I have to sit and wrestle with the brain to squeeze the information out of it. It works occasionally and I shout out the word in relief. Which can be a bit disconcerting for anyone in earshot. But heck, I’m an old fart now and expected to be a little eccentric. My worries about this apparent omen of decay in the noggin region was somewhat lessened in the last few days. There seemed to be a spate of old heroes from the past appearing on television and, watching them, I realised that I wasn’t so bad after all. Some of them look properly decrepit now and they all have lost those strong voices I remember from my youth. There are reasons, of course. My generation had some pretty heady times in our early days and we weren’t too careful about recommended maintenance of the body. It’s really a wonder that so many of us have lasted this long at all. And I am definitely doing better than I really deserve. So enough of this depressing concern for the future. Now that I think of it, I realise that I’ve always had this tendency to forget the exact word at the precise moment I need it. The instances are a bit more frequent these days but the brain still functions well enough. And I can think of five or six acceptable substitutes in a moment. Not that I’d use ‘em, of course. Not on your sweet bippy (whatever that means). Word count: 476 |
| A Charmed Life Brad Nickel lived a charmed life. He became aware of this only gradually and it was only when he reached middle age that he began to believe it. It was true, after all, that he had suffered no absolute disasters in his life, experienced no catastrophes and not even broken a bone in an unhappy accident. Considering the terrible things that happened to other people around the world, floods, earthquakes, wild fires, falling off mountains and getting lost in endless labyrinths underground, Brad was not wrong to think himself somehow blessed with better luck. In pondering on his charmed state, Brad began to develop a theory. Retaining a somewhat sensible attitude, he decided to call it the “It Couldn’t Happen To Me Principle.” While fully aware that this central premise to his theory is probably common to everyone, Brad still felt that there was some special aspect of his case that made it particularly true for himself. There was, as anyone could see, innumerable instances of people thinking exactly those words before something did indeed happen to them. Such abrupt failure of the Principle in their cases only served to illustrate the peculiar nature of Brad’s own holding to the belief. Those few who managed to live an entire life without major misfortune or premature death must surely be gifted beyond the lot of ordinary humans. It was beginning to look like Brad was a member of this rather fortunate branch of the species that had nothing to fear from merciless fate. Naturally, Brad suffered the temptation to try out his theory in practice. He could take up sky diving, for instance. That might be a reasonable test of his continuing charmedness. Or mountain climbing. Without ropes. Dare devil riding. On a motorised monocycle. Without a helmet. He saw the trap well in advance. The test was a trick to get himself into a hopeless place before killing him off as recompense for his grandiose theory. He resolved to ignore such temptation to test the matter. No, he would carry on just as he always had, living a normal life, not risking anything unnecessarily and avoiding pointless displays of his invincibility. The theory could best be given its full expression by merely being himself and accepting that he would never find himself taken to extremes beyond endurance. At which point, one might expect to be told how Brad’s certainty was confounded by some ironic and apparently minor accident in his home or office life that developed into a huge and ultimately deadly problem for him. In only this way could Brad’s vainglorious hubris be taken to task and justice served. Yet it did not happen. Brad lived on for many long years, dying at last of natural causes, in bed, in his ninety-fourth year of a charmed life. It is entirely possible that he was right, that there are some folk who, by choice of some unimaginable fate or perhaps just happenstance, manage to live lives untroubled by serious adversity and who leave this world never having experienced what it is to be homeless or dead broke or wounded in some permanently crippling way. Life’s a funny old thing, you know. Word count: 531 |
| Reviews Go to your Portfolio and then to the Reviews tab at the top. You’ll find all your reviews there but also, as a sort of introduction, a form that you can fill in to tell people what sort of reviewer you are. I filled out mine ages ago but lately I’ve begun to wonder if I should add a warning. Something along the lines of “Warning - Reviewer is a grumpy old man and likely to tell the truth as a result.” Still pondering that one. Word count: 85 |
| The Oxford Comma Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this creature named the Oxford comma. That’s the one that you might or might not put at the end of a list. As in “flowers, plants, growths, and other monstrosities.” That comma before the “and” is the Oxford comma, apparently. The thing is, I’d never heard of such a thing before I came to America. My school education may have taken place an inordinate amount of time ago but I distinctly remember being told (and having read) that putting a comma there is not required. It seemed to me that the word “and” functioned as a warning that the end of the list was coming and that there was no need of a comma therefore. It’s all about breathing, after all, and lists contain loads of commas and opportunities for breathing as a result. In the Land of the Free, however, I kept running into people who would tell me that I needed to put a comma there (while indicating my comma-less “and” standing proudly as the penultimate word in the list). After several discussions about this, I learned that it is called the Oxford comma. And I fought it for many a year. But I have had second thoughts. It strikes me that we often do pause before saying “and” when reaching the last item in a list. And a comma is nothing if it does not indicate a pause. I took the plunge and tried using it. The world did not end. I used it a few times and still no one seemed to care. I accepted the thing. But I am not a true convert. I use the Oxford comma when it seems appropriate to me. And not otherwise. It all depends on the flow and state of the reader’s breathing as to whether I’ll throw one in or not. To me, the Oxford comma has become that most marvellous of mythical creatures, optional punctuation. So, no doubt, both sides will be shooting at me now. That’s okay - I and my amazing, disappearing Oxford comma can take it. But what I really want to know (and the reason for this whole post) is why it is called the Oxford comma. It seems odd that it should be so widespread in America but retain a name rooted in the soil and universities of my homeland. Wouldn’t it more appropriately be known as the Harvard comma? I can’t imagine that those stuffy and reactionary types fulminating on grammatical matters in the halls of Oxford U would own such a revolutionary beast as this comma. Has the name been taken in vain? Or was it some rebel from our oldest university that first postulated this alteration to the rules of punctuation? I find that hard to believe. Word count: 466 |
| Not that it matters, but elevators don't only elevate. And escalators don't actually escalate - they tend to operate at one speed only. |
| Stories Someone said something once about there being only seven stories in the world. Or maybe it was eight or even six. No matter, the point is that I find this very hard to believe. I mean, it sounds good, but then you think of all the stories that are being written around the world today. And that’s not just those that get published. They all count, even those produced by impoverished nobodies living in garrets and hobbyists in writing clubs. That must amount to millions of stories every day. And I’m supposed to believe that, in all those myriads of new stories, there’s not one that cannot be classified under the unannounced titles proposed by whoever suggested so low a limit? Sorry, but I’m not buying it. I’m even prepared to state (not bet - I’m not a gambling man) that most of us could separate our various writings into more than seven “typical” tales. And anyway, believing that there is a limit, is just a way to become discouraged that you’ll ever produce something completely original. I have to believe otherwise. Word count: 181 |
| Parents I was thinking today about that Progressive Insurance advert on the television. You know the one (if you’re American). It’s where the psychiatrist fellow trails around a bunch of middle aged people, trying to teach them how to avoid becoming like their parents. It was a bit of a shock to realise that it’s too late for me. |
| A Joke I Won't Tell Sometimes it's frustrating to have a foot on both sides of the pond. For instance, today I came up with an amusing play on words (well, I think it is anyway). It's quite simple - I ask "What do you call an old man you can see through?" And the answer is, "Crystal Geyser." No one gets it. The Brits don't get it because they don't know that Crystal Geyser is the name of a particular spring water available over here. And the Americans don't get it because they pronounce geyser as gizer (g-eye-zer). To the Brits, that word is geezer. So a minor chuckle has to be wasted. It's sad, I know. It is, however, an excellent example of the fact that explaining a joke ruins it. Plus, I get the satisfaction of knowing you sat through all this for very little return. |
| Secrets My wife, Andrea, had a revelation of the power of the ancients this morning. No matter how feeble and decrepit we fogies, wrinklies and geezers of the modern world may be, we hold the secret knowledge that will ensure that, when we go, the world will descend into savagery and chaos. I speak, of course, of that mystery to the young, the analogue clock. Since it has been decided in the halls of ignorance and decay that it is no longer necessary to initiate the latest generations into the delights of deciphering the analogue clock, few indeed are the exceptions to the general ignorance of the young. But beyond even this, we are the last survivors who can understand that doubly mysterious and magnificent construction, the analogue clock with Roman numerals. This is beyond the comprehension of even the most talented of the young. It is true indeed, oh ancient and antiquated friends, that apres nous, le deluge! |
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I've always remembered that episode and thought that was a fun idea.