As all the farmery types say around here, we needed the rain, but this much rain? I don’t think so. This moment in the year when everything suddenly turns green, the buttercups arrive in their millions and you start being unable to see the cria because the grass is so long reminds me of my friend – the beautiful Hilary. Every time she comes to the country she shudders because of the excessive green and longs for pavements. I know how she feels, will we all be consumed by Triffid like plants and weeds?
My sister Elaine reminded me that it is Chas’s birthday on Wednesday, oh gawd, I had forgotten but on to the case now. Thank goodness she keeps a proper diary. We have reached the stage where we tend to give each other tickets for something or a sumptuous dinner. It is not that we have everything but just that we cannot for the life of us recall what it is we did want.
I was asked yesterday what is meant by a pandemic. Well it turns out that according to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (two volumes) it is not a noun at all but an adjective meaning widespread as in ‘the disease is pandemic in Africa’, clearly a conspiracy between the quacks and the hacks to abuse the language…again.
lesley beazer –
so your buttercups are PANDEMIC ?
Josh –
shit.. Chas’ birthday, good point.
Josh –
By the way I think pandemic is more scientific jargon rather than quacks and hacks jargon, preseumably there wasn’t a lot of use for a word beyond epidemic in the past before air travel took off.
jo –
The only way to get a good seat on the plane…..sneeze!!