Saying it simply, sliding to a fall and getting home quickly

Because English is a Germanic language that has absorbed a huge number of words of Latin origin, often via French, it contains quite a few pairs of words meaning roughly the same thing, each from a different root. As often as not, the Latin-derived one is longer and more learned, making it feel more pompous, than the other, simpler Anglo-Saxon term. 

You can describe someone as parsimonious, a fine term of Latin root, or simply say he’s mean, which is simpler, shorter and means pretty much the same.

You can observe things if you want to make sure we understand that what you were doing was intense and possibly research-oriented, otherwise you might simply say you watched them. 

You might feel that someone else (though never yourself, of course) is mendacious, rather than describing him as lying. To express myself (or say things) in a more demotic (or everyday) way, I might say he’s a lying git. That’s how a Londoner (and I’m the son of a Cockney and an adopted Londoner myself) might characterise (or simply call) such a person. Now ‘lying git’ is just as long as ‘mendacious’ in syllables, though it’s shorter in letters and a lot more colourful.

For that matter, take policemen. In Britain, some of them tell us that they go out on foot patrol and proceed along various thoroughfares. We, on the other hand, might think of them as bobbies on the beat, walking down the street (which even has the merit of rhyming).

I’ve been suffering from an earache for some time now. Eventually my general practitioner (or family doctor) decided I needed to see a specialist. This being Spain, that meant having to visit a department of Otorrinolaringología. That can be abbreviated, as it is in French, to ORL, but I noticed that everywhere I saw the specialty displayed – say on signs directing me to my destination (necessarily quite long signs) – it was written out in full. 

To be honest, I find it almost impossible to pronounce that mouthful. Not just in Spanish, come to that. Oto-rhino-laryngology exists in English too. I’m glad to say, though, that the term is generally only used in technical jargon. In England, I’d have gone to see an ENT specialist.

That’s someone who deals with disorders of the Ear, Nose or Throat.

Even a mug can understand the problem

The visit itself went quite well. The doctor prescribed a new treatment which (I hardly dare say this) may actually be working. He commented on my surname – Beeson – which he rightly identified as not particularly Italian in origin, which is surprising for someone born in Rome. I was impressed not only by the lighthearted way he was talking to me – which I welcomed – but with the thoroughness with which he’d read my record. No other doctor has ever commented on my Italian birth, probably because they hadn’t noticed.

Indeed, the only setback, or rather downside, literally, of the whole experience came on the way to the appointment. We’ve had a lot of rain here recently and I can state, from experience, that a heck of a lot of the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. Also it creates a lot of mud.

I was cycling quite quickly along a cycle path and didn’t notice the patch of mud ahead until I hit it, on a curve which I’d already started to take before I realised what was about to happen. What was about to happen then happened. The wheels slid out from under me, and I found myself horizontal when I should have been vertical. And splattered in mud when I should have been clean.

This kind of fall has happened to me rather a lot in recent months, which is a lot more than most other people I know who use their bikes regularly. Each time I think it’s down to my misfortune (or perhaps I should say bad luck), but I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m just accident-prone.

Anyway, the result was that I turned up or my appointment with a grazed knee and elbow and mud on my shorts and shirt. I decided not to mention the mud, and neither did the doctor or his assistant, which struck me as not just tactful but much the least stressful way of dealing with the issue.

On the way back, I asked Google to find me a route and display it on my phone. Now, there were moments along the route when I was in known territory and realised that there were better ways to go than it was suggesting. That might be only because they avoided travelling along motorways surrounded by traffic doing 120 km an hour or more (including lorries). However, and I appreciate that this is undoubtedly merely a subjective reaction of my own, when I take a different route from the one suggested by Google, I always have the sense that it’s somehow offended. Even when, to be fair, it really ought to know better. Indeed, even when it turns out that it really did know better.

At one time, when I turned away from the Google route, I could almost hear it saying to me, ‘oh right, you’ve decided not to take my recommendation that would get you home in 40 minutes, have you? On your head be it. Let me just recalculate. Your route, smartarse, will take you a full 32 minutes.”

Honestly. My route was quicker than what it had suggested. And it knew.

So here’s my question: if it knew that all along, why didn’t it recommend the quicker route in the first place?

Still, at least I got home in one piece and with no further falls. Which was fortuitous. Or, as we say in plain Anglo-Saxon, bloody lucky.