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.

Words and wheels: rapid progress by the grandchildren

It’s hardly an original observation, but one of the most striking aspects of young children is how quickly they develop. Something of a commonplace, you might feel. And you’d be right, but that doesn’t stop me being bowled over every time I see the grandkids achieving some new breakthrough.

With Elliott, now on his way to two and a half, it’s mostly in the field of language. He talks and talks, which keeps me well amused, though no doubt in a few years it’ll also drive me round the bend. It’s ironic how we spend so much time hoping for our kids to start talking and then, once they do, desperately praying that they might occasionally shut up.

With Elliott, some of the words aren’t formed with the strictest accuracy, and that can sometimes make it hard to understand what he means. Take the other day, when he insisted to me that what he really, really wanted was something by one of the masters of surrealism. 

I kid you not.

“Dali?” I checked with him. “I don’t think we have anything by Dali.”

I wish we had an original Dali, I have to admit, but to be honest, we don’t even have any prints. Besides, was he after any old Dali, or something specific? You know, melting watch faces, a crucifixion from above, or a portrait of his sister by an open window? Which would he like?

Dali’s sister, by an open window
Not, it turns out, what Elliott was really after

Elliott cut through all this idle speculation.

“Dali! Dali!” he insisted.

He was pointing at the fridge so I began to suspect it might not be a purely aesthetic craving that he was hoping to satisfy.

“Dali! Dali!”

He grasped the fridge door and pulled it open. Yep, that’s another development. He knows how to open the fridge, though he hasn’t quite grasped the notion of closing it afterwards. Still, to be fair to him, his father who really ought to know better hasn’t mastered that skill either, so it may be a genetic problem.

I came over to look where he was pointing. I followed the direction of his imperious finger. It clearly wasn’t indicating the butter or the cheese or any vegetables.

“Jelly!” I cried, “you want Jelly!”

“Yes,” he agreed, relief clear from his voice, now that I’d at last emerged from my obtuseness and grasped his meaning, “Dali.”

Elliott enjoying his Dali

Matilda, who is celebrating her fourth birthday as I type, also likes jelly. But she expresses herself differently. I hesitate to say more correctly, as that seems unfair to Elliott, but I have to admit that I understand her better.

“I want some jelly,” she informed me the other day.

“Did you ask your mother and did she say yes?” I replied. 

I’ve been trained, you see.

“Yes,” she assured me, but there was something about the way she was looking at me that left me less than convinced that this was the unvarnished truth.

Suddenly, she ran off. Next, I heard her talking to her Mum.

“Can I have a jelly?” she was asking. 

“Yes,” was the answer.

Matilda ran back.

“My Mummy says ‘yes’,” she told me.

She got her jelly.

I don’t know whether she felt bad about the untruth and decided to set it right in hindsight, asking her mother after telling me she already had. Or maybe she felt it was an error to be economical with the truth on a matter so easy to check. Either way, whether she was uncomfortable about an untruth generally, or uncomfortable about an untruth so easily exposed, she’s clearly in a significantly higher moral class than, say, Donald Trump. A low bar, I know. But, hey, she’s four and he’s 77.  

Both Elliott and Matilda have what I think are called balance bikes. They have no pedals, but no stabilisers either. Instead, they’re driven along by kids pushing with their feet on the ground. One of the great benefits is that this teaches them to learn to balance on their bikes, since once they have a bit of speed up they can let the bikes coast, which allows them to get their feet off the ground.

Elliott, who’s always keen on doing anything that Matilda can do, is a committed cyclist, just as she is. Sometimes, however, he gets a little tired. Now one option is for him to get up on my shoulders, but that leaves me carrying him around my neck holding him with one hand, while hauling his bike in the other, which I find a trifle tiring. I’ve found, however, that he’ll consent to keep riding his bike as long as I push him and sing a song to accompany the process.

The song in question is an invention of mine and he seems to appreciate it despite its complex and sophisticated lyrics. It’s sung to the tune of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’. The words, which you’re welcome to learn for yourself if you don’t mind the strain of studying them, and use with another kid on condition you change one key word to match the child’s name, are:

Push, push, push, push, push, push, push
Push, push, push, push, Elly, push, push

Repeat until home or Elly’s attention is distracted by something more interesting.

Matilda marks completion of her fourth trip around the Sun

Talking about bikes and Matilda’s birthday takes me on to another great breakthrough of this visit.

To celebrate her reaching the ripe old age of four, Matilda has a new bike, with pedals. But still without stabilisers. And the philosophy of training kids on balance bikes seems to be entirely confirmed by her experience. It took her twenty minutes to learn to zap along the pavement outside, pedalling away, and staying upright the entire time. 

Or almost.

Off, off and away
Matilda speeds away from her pit crew,
encouraged by Luci

She still needs some shepherding, if only to make sure she doesn’t stray into the road, and to help her get started again when she stops. That means following along behind her. And let me tell you, she’s mastered this sport to an impressive degree. It left me breathless and exhausted trying to keep up with her. I thought my running days were over but, apparently, they’re not.

I hadn’t allowed for yet another type of impact grandchildren could have on my life.

Correction: Sheena, my daughter-in-law and Matilda and Elliott's mother, who is seldom wrong on these matters, points out to me that Nicky isn’t the only adult who leaves the fridge door open. Since that seems to be her tactful way of telling me that I do it too, I can only say that this only proves my contention. If I do it, and my son Nicky does it, and his son Elliott does it too, doesn't that rather strengthen the idea that the problem is genetic?

The words to say it. Though they sometimes don't

Today I had some grapes that, unlike most of those sold these days, weren’t seedless. I wondered what to call them. Seeded? Hardly. Seedful? I’m not sure there’s such a word. Or ought to be. Seedy? Seems unfair. They were rather good.

Words aren’t always there when you need them. Expressions, too, can be slippery. The elephant in the room? Who has rooms that big? 

OK, some people do have rooms big enough~
but most of them, I suspect, are short of pachyderms

I always love “at the end of the day”. The one thing you can be sure of at the end of the day is that it gets dark. And don’t you admire people who say “if I’m completely honest”? Does that mean anything they tell you without that preface isn’t to be believed?

I once worked with colleagues who used to tell me, when they wanted a report or some other material written, “it doesn’t have to be War and Peace.”

Just as well. I’m not sure if I could bring the Battle of Borodino to life like Tolstoy. And in any case I suspect most of my colleagues would have found one of the films or TV series far more up their street than any War and Peace presentation I could have produced.

Then there’s an expression I use a lot. It helps me get started on jobs that are going to take a long time, and any job that’s tedious is long. I say, sometimes to myself, “I’ll just break the back of it.”

Gratuitously cruel, isn’t it? I mean, breaking a back? It’s a horrible thought.

But just think if the job’s particularly hard. If it’s back-breaking, say. Then I’d be breaking the back of a job’s that’s breaking mine. Where does that get any of us? You remember Gandhi? “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Breaking the back of the back breaking only leaves more of us crippled.

Like I said. Slippery things, words. And expressions.

Thoughts spun, words mangled

It’s wonderful how the human mind can twist its thoughts to meet its wishes.

My wife has just finished her first week in a new post. Interestingly, she’s taken a job in the same line as our eldest son, neatly reversing the tradition of children following parents into their chosen professions. 

The stress of taking up a new position makes it perfectly comprehensible that this morning, a Saturday, she slept in a little.

But me? I had no such excuse.

The result of waking late was that, when I decided that the minor badminton injury I’m still carrying meant I shouldn’t play today, and that we could go for a swim instead, it was perilously close to the 10:00 end of the session at our local pool. In the end, we had only 25 minutes in the water, an embarrassingly short swim.

“Ah well,” I said to myself, “it’s best to start gently again after a week off for an injury. Gradually ramp back up.”

Now I know that’s just a variant on the sour grapes story: presenting the effects of laziness as an apparent instance of judicious thinking on my part.

Still, in the French version of the Fox and the Grapes story, La Fontaine finishes by asking whether the disappointed animal didn’t do better by writing off the unreachable grapes as undesirable, rather than living with his regret. “Didn’t he do better than to complain?” the poet asks.

The Fox and the Grapes:
La Fontaine gave a new twist to Aesop's fable

I think my gentle – how shall I put this? – readjustment of the reasons for the shortness of the swim, admirably fits that approach to life. It’s spin, of course, a key tool of us marketing types, and boy, is it useful. As any politician or other advertiser can testify.

The visit to the pool provided other lessons too. The Brits complain of the Germans’ devious use of beach towels to book sun loungers by hotel swimming pools, or deck chairs on the beach (odd term that, isn’t it? What deck are they on?) This is something my compatriots consider both deplorable and risible.

So it was amusing to find that a lot of the swimmers this morning had left their outdoor clothes and other kit in the changing cubicles, thereby booking them for their own private use. 

A secondary effect is that it avoids them the expenditure of 20 pence on a locker. There must be things you can still buy for 20p, but I can’t think of an example off hand. And certainly nothing particularly desirable. Many of these cubicle occupiers are children on swimming courses that cost their parents significant sums; it’s hard to imagine that 20p more would make much of a difference.

The habit’s particularly irritating when sheer numbers of people mean there are no other cubicles free, as was the case today. The solution was obvious, and we adopted it: we used the cubicles anyway. Telling kids frantically knocking on the door that the cubicles weren’t theirs to book was as satisfying as piling a bunch of beach towels onto one deck chair, to use the others.

Private booking of public amenities
Irritating but by no means confined to the Germans

Not that the kids will have learnt anything. Words are far less powerful than one likes to believe. But then, we misuse them so often. I recently reminded a colleague that others were waiting for him to complete a task, and he replied:

“Ah, yes, sorry, that still requires an action on my behalf.”

My view was that the only action required on his behalf was a well-placed but metaphorical boot up the backside. That might get him to do what was needed on his part.

But perhaps I’m being unfair, inferring more from his statement than he was implying. Or, as he would no doubt express it, the other way round.

Ah, words, words. How we misuse them. Back in the pool, I got to thinking about the word “cool”. I suppose its positive connotation comes from a certain ideal of calm and self-control. There are, however, plenty of things it’s not particularly cool to have cool: a bath, a coffee, a reception.

Come to that, the pool’s pretty cool. Which is one of the least cool things about it.

Skim-read to reach out to curious headless martyrs

In the beginning, I’m assured on excellent authority, was the word. And just as well, I say. Because ever since words have provided us with excellent entertainment.

For instance, I continue to be enchanted by the expression ‘reach out’ with the meaning of ‘talk’, as in ‘please reach out to him and find out what the hell he thinks he’s playing at.’

The nice thing about ‘reach out’ is that it covers such a range of meaning. It can be used neutrally, as just a synonym for ‘speak’. Positively, it might suggest catching someone falling, providing crucial help when it’s needed. Negatively, it could be something that ends in strangulation, when the person reached out to has been more than usually obnoxious.

In the old parlance, that might have led to a good ‘talking to’. These days I suppose it would have to be a good ‘reaching out for’.

Equally, where governments used boringly to indulge in talks, now they can have meaningful reachings out. And in the preparatory phase, they would presumably have constructive reachings out about reachings out.

And then there’s another expression I’ve come to enjoy: ‘skim-reading’. This is a great euphemism for ‘not reading.’

Here’s the scenario. You write a key document. You distribute it to everyone. You wait a week or two. You hear nothing. So finally you ask, ‘Have you read my proposal?’

‘I’ve only skim-read it so far,’ you’re told. And you realise they haven’t even opened it.

It’s enough to make you want to reach out to them.

Fortunately, there are other words around that make up for this kind of experience, providing the light relief which is just the tonic we need.

Today I enjoyed reading about the Mars explorer that’s just landed on the red planet. It rejoices in the imaginative name ‘Curiosity’ and my paper informed me that ‘Curiosity has a robotic arm, with a scoop and drill.’

Interesting idea, isn’t it? I suppose curiosity can grab hold of you with all the power of a machine and then refuse to let you go. The scoop would be there to lap up all the random facts, and more frequently fictions, that curiosity harvests from gossip; the drill is for boring more deeply, as Curiosity likes to, leaving her victims painfully bored.

That thinking carried me through a London Underground journey, always one of the more purgatorial experiences, where a little gentle entertainment is particularly welcome.

Then I emerged from the station to hear a voice bawling ‘St Pancras, use the stairs.’

Later a headless saint, but today
he used his head to be less saintly

I looked everywhere for the martyr, but couldn’t see him. Certainly not on the stairs. It reminded me of William Hughes Mearns: 

Yesterday upon the stair 
I met a man who wasn’t there 
He wasn’t there again today 
Oh, how I wish he’d go away

My saint, like his man, wasn’t there. Even in the station he’s called after. Had he perhaps decided to be less saintly and cheat by using the escalator? If so, he clearly knew how to use his head. Which is remarkable since his head was removed from his shoulders when he was only 14. 

Which I for one find curious. And doesn’t that show how curiosity can scoop up any old string of words and derive whatever nonsense it likes from them?

Putting words in their place

In these posts, I return with regularity, some might say monotonous regularity, to the theme of words. It’s a subject that constantly attracts my attention, because I feel that communication through words is a key element of what it means to be human.

So it was an edifying to find myself in one of those situations this week when they are completely unnecessary.

It was during my stay in Kharkov. It often happens to me when I’m travelling that I feel an overwhelming desire to eat some fruit. I’d put it down to a sharpened need for vitamins while I’m away from home, except that exactly the same thing happens at home too.

In a country where you don’t speak the language – I have perhaps 20 words of Russian, the main language in Kharkov (even though it’s a Ukrainian city) – buying fruit isn’t as simple as it sounds. This isn’t like Western Europe: maybe after the European Cup brings thousands of foreigners to Kharkov next year there’ll be a bigger incentive to learn the lingua franca of football and of tourism generally, but for the moment English isn’t much spoken in the streets, cafés or shops.

My first problem was to find a shop that sold fruit. I tried a couple of shops, including one marke

‘Producty’, an interesting name in itself – common, I’m told, in the Russian-speaking world, presumably to distinguish those shops from others that sell non-products. At least it means that if ever I want a non-product, I’ll know not to go to one of them.

My particular ‘Producty’ shop didn’t sell fruit.

I was beginning to get a little desperate, to be honest, when I suddenly saw just what I needed, in the form of a non-verbal announcement of the availability of fruit for sale: a shop front plastered with pictures of fruit and, indeed, vegetables.

No words but no uncertainty

There was a delightfully friendly and helpful middle-aged woman behind the counter. She kept up a steady flow of words throughout the ten minutes I was there, not one of which I understood. But the tone was unmistakeable and it was obvious she was being kind and obliging, so why would I complain?

I took things off shelves and handed them to her – a few bananas (she was kind enough to split three of a bigger bunch for me) – some peaches, some cherries. At one point, she waved a plastic bag at me and I was able to place on of my few Russian words, pozhalusta (please). The one-sided conversation (not entirely one-sided: I did a lot of smiling) continued, and then she looked at me slightly more intensely and pronounced a stream of more pointed syllables in my direction.

‘Aha,’ I thought, ‘the price.’

I smiled again and shook my head. She turned to a calculator, typed in the numbers and showed me the result. I gave her a note and she gave me my change. I collected my bag and placed another of my previous stock of words – ‘spasibo’ (thanks) to which she replied ‘pozhalusta’ – the courteous Russian response to ‘thanks’ is ‘please’.

The shopkeeper had made a little money, I had my fruit. The whole transaction had taken place in an atmosphere of goodwill and politeness. But apart from ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, there had been absolutely no verbal communication.

Words really aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Not all I tend to crack them up to be. In fact, there are occasions when they’re completely superfluous.

A chastening experience which will no doubt be good for my soul.

Corporate words

It’s funny how organisations develop their own particular variants of language.

Where I’m working now, we don’t phone or write to people, we ‘reach out’ to them, as in ‘could you reach out to her to find out how she wants to take this suggestion forward?’ Naturally, we never act on ideas or apply them, we take them forward, unlike our competitors who presumably take them backwards.

‘Reaching out’ is an odd phrase. The most attractive aspect of my present outfit is the strength of its products. In other companies, I frequently had to talk fast in presentations to skate over weak areas, but here we can let the products speak for themselves. Yet ‘reaching out’ has a supplicant quality, as though we’re begging for attention, even perhaps for rescue.

Reaching out may work for God, but surely he wouldn't have
given us mortals mobiles if he hadn't wanted us to use them?

Then yesterday I received the instruction to ‘take the lead’ on a job which involved looking up some information. It’s a one-person job, so who am I going to be leading? It reminds me of that line in The West Wing: ‘without followers, a leader is just a guy taking a walk.’

But I suppose that ‘taking the lead’ on something is just the new company synonym for getting it done.

When it comes to odd ways of saying things, some of the best examples come in translations. So I’m impressed that the announcement at St Pancras station correctly translates ‘arrived’, for a train, by the French ‘est en gare’ (is in the station). That is what station announcements actually say in France.

By way of a contrast, in the days when I regularly had to use the car park at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I would always smile over the injunction to pay for the car park before ‘regaining’ my vehicle, a great word-for-word rendering of ‘regagner’, which actually means ‘returning’. It seemed to me that ‘regain’ suggested something much more exciting than the usual car park experience – I might find myself tryng to win back a car I’d previously lost in some kind of dangerous roulette game.

At Strasbourg station, the announcement told us that we were at the ‘end station’ and included the injunction ‘all passengers please leave the train’. Perfectly correct, of course, but entirely foreign – in Britain we're told that ‘this train terminates here’ and ‘all change please’. It’s true that ‘all change’ is a strange expression itself, suggesting that you ‘change’ from train to foot, in the same way as you change from one train to another. Still, that is the way we say it.

Obviously, there’s no reason for French station staff to know that. Unless they actually bothered to ask, as to their credit the people at St Pancras clearly have.

Or do I mean that they’ve reached out?