Ronnie By The Sea

If there is one thing I love, it is words: I love their sounds, their meanings, their double and triple meanings, and their etymology, which is just a classy way of saying “their derivation!” But I have discovered the word that describes me: logophile, from the Greek logos meaning “speech”, and the ending – phile meaning friend or lover. I don’t know that I’d go quite as far as to claim “epeolatry”, the worship of words, first coined by American Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1860. Literarian? … an educated or lettered person? … maybe. I hope I usually give an opinion only on things I know about, rather than be accused of ultracrepidarianism! And yes, I love books, am therefore a bibliophile, but not necessarily book-bosomed, because I don’t carry a book at all times. Am I a bibliobibuli? Mary would need to answer whether I read too much. Reading a few books at a time, as I sometimes do, would render me a bibliophagist! But I’m sure I am not the only one who is bibliosmiac – surely the...

We are not supposed to tell jokes about ethnically-grouped people, people of faith (any faith), persons of other gender or sexual orientation etc etc etc. A comedian asked the audience if there were any Irish in the audience. Hands went up, and he said he wouldn’t tell any Irish jokes.  He asked if there were any Jews in the audience and hands went up again, so no Jewish jokes.  Similarly, no Polish jokes, Catholic jokes, Canadian jokes, blonde jokes, trans-sexual jokes etc, etc, etc, and so on ... Finally, when no further hands were raised, the comedian was able to say, “Two Etruscans walked into a bar ....!” … and so, a blonde joke which, I’m sure you will agree is acceptable: A blonde walks into a big city bank and asks for the loans officer. She says she’s going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for the loan, so the blonde hands over the keys to a brand new, hot-red Porsche...

Marjie and I have twice seen “We Will Rock You”, the musical based on the songs of the British rock band Queen, with a book by Ben Elton.  The musical tells the story of a group of Bohemians who struggle to restore the free exchange of thoughts, fashion, and live music in a distant future where everyone dresses, thinks and acts the same.  Musical instruments are forbidden, and rock music is all but unknown. Similar themes are explored in “The Hunger Games”, where the citizens of Panem are ruled by a totalitarian regime in The Capitol. Creativity, at its core, is the productive activity of the human mind that cannot be completely formalised. The piece which follows reminds me how creativity can be subtly stifled, and soon become conformity. Once a little boy went to school. He was quite a little boy, and it was quite a big school, but the little boy found that he could go to his room by walking right in from the door outside. He was happy, and school did n...

I am attached to words. I especially dote on witticism, conundrums (conundra?) double meanings, aphorisms (aphora?), word play, quips and puns. I heard this story when I was about 13 … Chairs in the Ceiling There once was a King of a tribe in Africa. He lived in a huge, round house made of grass, typical of all the others in the village, except that his was the largest. By day he sat on the stump of a tree, which had been brought into his hut, and covered with animal skins. Everyone else sat on the floor, some on skins, some on the dirt. No one sat on anything which raised them higher than the King. One day, an English explorer chanced upon the village. The explorer was carried aloft by a group of bearers. He sat on a small bentwood chair, which sat upon a light platform which the bearers carried on poles on their shoulders. This enabled the explorer to see across the landscape, above the tall grass. As the group entered the village, there was much consternation. Who was th...

How many times in a day do you hold a pen or pencil in your hand? Despite all the technology at our disposal, we still need to write, even if it’s just a jot, or a note, or a quick list or a phone number.  In our home, I guess we have hundreds of pens and pencils.  Some we have bought, like the beautiful set of Derwent coloured pencils with the initials “MnR” inscribed in gold.  Some we have picked up in hotels, or banks, or doctors’ surgeries, or have received, unsolicited, in the mail from fundraisers.  From time to time we will rummage in the various containers – small bins, pots, pen holders, pencil cases – and try out every pen, and chuck out the ones which have dried out, and put aside the pencils for sharpening.  I am handwriting this at Yealand Conyers in England – Mary will type it – with a Columbia Exam clutch pencil.  The leads are a nice soft 2B, and are rectangular, 1.2mm x .6mm.  They are marketed as “exam...

Big Ben struck the first stroke of eleven o’clock. A cannon boomed somewhere behind Horse Guards Parade. A bugler commenced the mournful Last Post.  Traffic stopped.  A great silence came over Whitehall in London.  Heads bowed.  We joined some thousands of people in an act of remembrance.  The seconds ticked silently by.  The jackhammers just up the road were quiet.  Pedestrians stopped.  People in cafes stood silently in their places.  Two minutes passed.  The cannon boomed again.  The bugler played The Rouse.  Movement started once again ... except where we were, at the London Cenotaph.  A dozen or so wreaths were laid, a couple placed by small children.  Some elderly folk laid flowers on the stones steps.  Some service people placed wreaths, and saluted.  A chap in a wheelchair was wheeled forward to toss his wreath on the stair....

How many graduation speeches have you heard, heard about, or even given? Every single one has aimed to inspire and enthuse, rouse and motivate, and will contain words of advice, words of wisdom, lessons learned, ideas on success, insights into happiness, or a combination of them all, designed to explain what really matters in life blah, blah, blah … Type into a Google search “You are not special”; you will be flooded with links to a speech, which went viral in 2012. A no-nonsense Pulitzer prize-winning historian, David McCullough, told Wellesley High School's "pampered" and "bubble-wrapped" graduating class that they were not exceptional and that they should come to terms with it … "Capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counselled you, encouraged you, consoled you, and encouraged you again. But do no...

We often hear the words “only in America” when we hear of some weird or wonderful event that’s happened there. Well, here is an “only in England” story. In the years we have travelled to the UK, we have observed a crazy belief that a sign will fix the problem. There are signs everywhere, seeking to advise/caution/define/warn/threaten/direct.  We have also observed the rise and rise of Political Correctness, the latest example recorded in The Times this morning. In 2009, a London council banned parents from supervising their own children in two playgrounds because they had not undergone criminal record checks.  Only a handful of council-vetted rangers would be allowed to assist children at the adventure playparks.  Parents were forced to watch their children from outside the perimeter fence.  Parents said that the ban amounted to the council labelling them “potential paedophiles.”  However the Council claimed it was only following O...

Marjie and I watched a movie about the Challenger disaster, when the space shuttle exploded over Cape Canaveral, Florida, just seventy-three seconds after lift-off, on 28th January 1986. All seven crew were killed. “Here was no sacrifice for the sake of knowledge or science; they were lives expendable in a tale of political ambition and corporate greed” (TV Scene, the Sunday Mail, 29th April 1990.)  The movie looked at the physical and emotional demands of Astronaut training, the arguments over safety standards, and critical decisions made in the lead up to the 1986 Challenger mission. Challenger did not actually “explode”, rather, it broke apart.  Disintegration of the vehicle began after an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at lift-off.  The O-ring was not designed to fly under unusual conditions such as in this launch. Its failure caused a breach in the SRB joint it sealed, allowing pressurised burning gas from within the...

Throbbing, crushing, excruciating pain … Typically associated with lifestyle excesses, usually food and drink, there are other contributing factors: genetic disposition, metabolism and, even race. Gout is an “attack” disease, a form of inflammatory arthritis characterised by recurrent assaults of a red, tender, hot, and swollen joint.  Pain typically comes on rapidly in less than twelve hours. The joint at the base of the big toe is affected in about half of the cases. Feet, ankles, wrists, knees and elbows can also be affected. Gout has been known since antiquity, first documented in Egypt in 2,600 BC in a description of arthritis of the big toe.   In 1683, Thomas Sydenham, an English physician, described its occurrence in the early hours of the morning and its predilection for older males: The victim goes to bed and sleeps in good health. About two o'clock in the morning he is awakened by a severe pain in the great toe.  The pain...

Suppose you have this Scrabble board in front of you, and these letters on your rack: This could be your move, and score 62, (8 for “tonneau” [the cover on your ute] and 2 each for “it” and “no,” plus 50 for using all your tiles.) Well done! The next player’s rack looks like this: “Quin” scores 13. (Ok … “queen,” and “equine” would have been better … but that would spoil my story!!!) The next player’s rack looks like this: Yuk!!! … but lookee lookee … “Zyxt” - double letter for the Z, 20+4+8+1 = 33, times 3 for triple letter score = 99, plus 14 times 3 for triple letter score for “quint” = 42, plus 99 = 141. Very well done. But “quint”? and “zyxt”??? Quint is a run of five cards in the game of piquet, a French card game in the 16th century. Zyxt is the last word in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is an obsolete word from Kent in England meaning, when you drill deeply down into the etymology, “to see,” for example, suppose you wanted to say “Can you se...

In 2005, Marjie and I visited Lake Argyle near Kununurra in north west Australia. The earth-filled Ord River Dam, completed in 1971, is 335 metres long and 98 metres high. In 1996, the spillway was raised by 5 metres to double the dam’s capacity to 10,763 gigalitres, or 21½ times the volume of Sydney Harbour. With a surface area of about 1000 square kilometres, it is the largest reservoir in Australia. Originally built to irrigate rice crops for export to China, the plan was scuttled: magpie geese ate the rice shoots quicker than they could be planted! The waters of the dam flooded parts of a number of pastoral properties owned by the Durack family. Durack Homestead on “Argyle Downs” was the centre of a vibrant social life in the surrounding area. Given that the homestead would be flooded, the main building was dismantled, and later rebuilt above the waterline as a museum. These words were penned by a woman of the Malngin people, displaced by the flooding of her country ...

We often have sunset drinks on our upper balcony, overlooking the beautiful waters of Moreton Bay. A passer-by remarked how lovely it must be having drinks “up there on the poop deck.” WE knew what she meant, but our neighbour queried, “is that the part of the ship where the toilet is?”  Of course, the toilets are actually elsewhere. The poop deck is the part where the Captain stands, with his officers, to observe the goings-on on board! But officially …. According to my 20 volume Oxford Dictionary, the “poop” is “the aftermost part of a ship; the stern; also, the aftermost and highest deck, often forming the roof of the cabin built on the stern.”  It derives from similar sounding words in Old French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Latin.  Its first recorded English usage is in William Caxton’s “The Book of the Faytes of Armes and Chivalrye” in 1489: “The pouppe whiche is the hindermost partye of the shippe.” Caxton is said to have brought the firs...

Penguin Random House is now the world’s largest trade book publisher, employing more than 10,000 people globally. Each year, over 15,000 new titles, and 800 million print, audio and eBooks are sold. Their publishing lists include more than 60 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors. In 1935, the then Managing Director of book publishers Bodley Head, visited Agatha Christie in Devon, no doubt with a view to publishing some of her work. Returning to London, he was standing on the platform of Exeter Station, wishing he had something to read on the journey. The station kiosk had lots of popular magazines, and poor quality paper-backs, the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, very few of whom could have afforded hard-backed books. As he waited for the train to appear, Allen Lane’s disappointment at the small range of books generally available, soon turned to anger, and then to a firm resolve to remedy the situatio...