Things I once knew

 

When I look back over an increasingly long life, I am sometimes surprised by the things I once knew and which of them have stuck in my increasingly leaky brain.

Take using a theodolite, for instance. It’s the small box on a tall tripod which you see men use on footpaths around building sites (and they are always men; I wonder why). My theodolite lessons came on the first archaeological dig in which I participated, at the end of my first year at university. We were digging a very large midden under an extensive rock overhang and I think the theodolite was used to work out the height of various levels. There was no need for me to learn this rather arcane skill but the two chaps tasked with the job seemed to enjoy teaching. If I recall correctly, there was also the use of a slide rule, something which I suspect has gone the way of the dinosaur.

Now this is the extent of my memory of theodolites but there were several other things I learned that digging season which have stuck with me. For instance, if you dig a latrine in the bush, you have to pour creosote and lavender water into the trench on a regular basis to make it usable. Yes, much to the amazement of my friends, I survived four weeks of tent living and latrine use. I learned how to dress and undress inside a sleeping bag and I also learned how to make a Coolgardie Cooler, a rough substitute for a fridge based on the scientific fact that water cools as it evaporates. So you build a frame with shelves, cover it with some hessian, put a bucket on top with a tiny hole in its bottom and keep the bucket full. The slow drip of the water down the hessian evaporates and keeps your food cool. Brilliant!

I learned three other things in those four weeks. The most crucial was learning how not to get bitten by snakes as you walked through the bush. The secret is to make a loud tramping noise as you go, and always step onto logs, never over them, on the grounds that snakes often bask in the sun on the other side.

In these years before Vatican II, when the lives of Catholics were radically changed, Anglicans – my school mates – and Catholics had nothing to do with each other and whole professions were one or the other. So it shouldn’t have surprised me that, in my first meeting with a Catholic, she knew absolutely nothing about Judaism. She actually asked me if I had the same God as she did.

And the third thing was not to go in the public bar of a pub if you were female. Some lads who were giving me a lift home for the weekend took me to a pub – my very first time – and bundled me into the ladies section, to my surprise.

There is a range of other things I used to know which are spectacularly unimportant but it’s such a pleasure when my brain actually works properly so I’m going to list some of them.

For instance, I knew the longest word in the dictionary, which has now been replaced by something scientific. It was “antidisestablishmentarianism”.

I know the motto of NSW: “Orta recens quam pura nites” which more or less means “Newly rise, how brightly you shine”. I know one of Newton’s laws although I can’t remember which one. The one I know says: “A body at rest will remain at rest and a moving body will continue moving at constant speed unless acted upon by a force.”

Then there’s the opening words of Caesar’s Gallic Wars: “All Gaul is divided into three parts” or in the original Latin: “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” I admit I had to check the Latin but I’m puzzled why this particular bit of ancient writing stuck when so much else has gone. For instance, I spent a year studying Egyptian hieroglyphics and could stagger through a translation of hieroglyphic texts. Now … nothing!

I know the distance of the earth to the sun in miles: 93 mjillion. And I know that “buggerup” is the New Guinea Tok Pisin word for “broken down”. I was also told the probably apocryphal story that in Tok Pisin (New Guinea “pigeon”) the phrase for “helicopter” is “Mixmaster bilong Jesus Christ”!

These trips down memory lane may be continued next week. Stay tuned!.

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

US writer and critic Alexander Woollcott coined what is now an immortal phrase: “All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral or fattening.”

 

 French follies

 I have a penchant for anything to do with words, phrases, grammar and the like, as if you haven’t guessed so far!

Now penchant is obviously derived from the French and pronounced – if you need to know – ponchon, with a strangled “g” after the first “n”. This sent me down the particular rabbit-hole of French-derived words in common English usage. In fact they’re so common that we don’t really have to italicise them and some tend to lose their accents. Some derive from Old French, Middle French and Norman French and some are used identically in both French and English.

Many of them, as you would imagine, are words for food and dining generally. Let’s start with à la carte and bon appétit. Then there’s café, chef, hors d’oeuvre, picnic (from pique-nique), menu, éclair, aperitif, baguette and sauté. There’s champagne, gastronomy, omelette, restaurant, salad, soufflé, soup, utensil, vinaigrette and zest.

We all use en route, which Americans annoyingly pronounce en route instead of on
(with that strangled “g” again) route. We often say au revoir, we use au pair, we say beau, bouquet (especially if we’re called Hyacinthe Bucket), bureau, chauffeur, cliché, début, entrepreneur, exposé, fiancé (for men) and fiancée (for women).

One word which surprised me with its French derivation was gaffe which apart from its usual meaning of a socially embarrassing misspeak is, as gaff, also a word for boathook and for house in Ireland.

Genre has French derivation, so does impasse, queue, papier-mâché, rendezvous, souvenir (from the French for remember), voyeur, bizarre, blank (from blanc), blasé and bourgeois.

Abbey comes from the French as does arcade, boutique, cinema, garage and terrace. There’s kilogram, lacrosse, literature, machine, magnificent, massage, metabolism, metro, navy, neutral, nocturnal, novel, occasion, optimism, parasol, poetic, premiere and purify. Recipient is from French as are reservoir, ricochet, rich, ridicule, risqué, sabotage, sentiment, silhouette, solicitor, technique, television, tournament, uniform, valid and variety.

At the other end of the alphabet there are allowance, apostrophe, attaché, avant-garde, aviation, beret, ballet, bon voyage, bureau, cabaret, cadet, chauffeur, connoisseur, cul-de-sac, debris, déjà vu, delegate detour and dossier. Energy is from French, as are elite, envisage, expatriate, façade, faux-pas, gallery, gazette, heritage, homage, hotel, identity, illusion, insult irony and jubilee.

Undoubtedly there are many, many more.

In the area of grammar, I was thinking the other day about the subjunctive verb, as you do, and realised that despite years of learning Latin verbs, I have no memory of what the subjunctive was for. Ditto the pluperfect.

I am coming to terms with having lost the battle for the use when appropriate of “which” instead of “that”.

I refuse to use nouns as verbs as in “impact” the team, or “diarise” a date.

I’m not sure a country, in contradistinction to a person, can be reclusive; North Korea comes to mind.

I recently caught rather too many people saying that Charles was going to be coronated (instead of crowned).

And I cannot understand for the life of me (another weird saying) how schools can get away with using “incursion” as the opposite of “excursion”. So excursion is when the children leave the school to go somewhere and “incursion” is used when outsiders come into the school. In fact the word “incursion” means an invasion or attack and is simply wrong in the school context. Grrrrr!

And one small, strange phrase for this week: “All the corners of the globe”. Does this, I wonder, come from those marvellous old maps with “here be dragons” at the sides and no sense of the world being round? Yet globe is a word for an entirely round object. It’s a mystery.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

Former British PM Harold Wilson: “I’m an optimist, but I’m an optimist who takes his raincoat.”

 

Mooching about

 

I went up to the shops today to have a mooch around, which naturally led to my need to know the etymology of “mooch”. Google led me to Wiktionary which gave me this: “From Middle English moochen, mouchen (“to pretend poverty”), from Old French muchier, mucier, mucer (“to skulk, hide, conceal”), from Frankish *mukjan (“to hide, conceal oneself”), from Proto-Germanic *mukjaną, *mūkōną (“to hide, ambush”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mūg- *(s)mewgʰ- (“swindler, thief”).” Isn’t it fascinating that a simple word used to describe a very ordinary stroll around the local shops goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, the earliest language as far as I know to have been described, although the meaning of mooch is now innocuous.

Then I remembered the song called“Minnie the Moocher”…

She was a “lowdown hoochie coocher.”

“She messed around with a bloke named Smoky
She loved him though he was cokey.”

 

Originally a song by Cab Calloway, it was much later taken up by The Blues Brothers. Down the etymological rabbit hole I went again to find out that “hoochie coochie” was a lecherous style of belly dancing!

This again took me to a bizarre song snippet my mother used to sing (without I suspect having any idea what it meant) which I may have told you about already but I think fits nicely with Minnie the Moocher whose boyfriend apparently used cocaine.

“I’ve been from Broadway down to Maine

Looking for a guy who sells cocaine …

So honey have a (make sniffing noise) on me

Honey have a (sniff) on me”!

 

Words are such glorious things. Take antimacassar for instance. It’s a piece of fabric, sometimes ornate, which hangs over the top of a chair or sofa. Its purpose was to stop the greasy brilliantine with which men smoothed their hair staining the fabric of the armchair or sofa. So that explains the “anti”.  The other part of the word comes from macassar oil, supposedly imported from the district of Macassar on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. This product was commercially advertised from 1809 as a men's hair tonic "infallible in promoting an abundant growth and in maintaining the early hue and lustre of the HAIR to the extent of human life".

 

I came across a reference the other day to a haversack, a word I hadn’t seen or heard for a long time. We call these useful bags backpacks

The word haversack is an adaptation of the German Hafersack and also the Dutch haverzak meaning "oat sack", (which more properly describes a small cloth bag on a strap worn over one shoulder and originally referred to the bag of oats carried as horse fodder).

The French was havresac, from Low German hafersach "cavalry trooper's bag for horse provender”, literally "oat sack," from the common Germanic word ...

Haver is a German, Dutch and English surname. In Germany or England it refers to oats and is used as an occupational surname for a grower or seller of oats. In the Netherlands it is an occupational surname for a wood or stone cutter, not close at all to the oats derivation. The verb “haver” is defined as to talk in a foolish way, or to go back and forth on a decision. An example of haver is to waste time talking instead of working or to waiver back and forth on a decision, to vacillate. In Scottish English, haver (from the Scots havers (oats)) means "to maunder; to talk foolishly; to chatter"; in British English haver means "to hem and haw; to be indecisive", a slight variation of meaning.

In the course of wandering down the rabbit hole of all of these words and meanings (from Alice in Wonderland of course …), I found a series of letters to the editor from the British Guardian newspaper about the meaning and derivation of some common phrases which the correspondents thought were named after real people. In like Flynn for example, was in some mysterious way referring to Erol Flynn. Happy as Larry apparently refers to Lawrence Olivier who was extremely happy to leave Brighton after a season there. And life jackets came to be called Mae Wests after the buxom film star.

The phrase “gone to ground” presumably comes from fox hunting but “gone for a burton” is more interesting. My family used this for tripping over and falling. But apparently it’s a British WWII airforce expression for someone gone missing or dead, with the burton referring to going for a drink as most of Britain’s beer was made in Burton on Trent. So apparently the comrades of a missing or confirmed dead comrade would say “he’s gone for a burton”, meaning he’s gone off for a drink but really meaning he wasn’t coming back again.

And one more word which tickled my fancy is cagoule, in British English a lightweight, hooded, thigh-length waterproof jacket. We call them windcheaters and the Canadians use windbreakers.

And naturally, I had to look up “tickle my fancy” and got the following:

“This idiomatic expression is used when something pleases you or strongly engages your interest, though it can also be used as a euphemism for sexual pleasure or attraction. If you break down the phrase, tickle is used to mean 'to excite or stir up in a pleasing manner' (think of the smiling, laughing reaction of a person being physically tickled), and fancy as a noun that means “a notion or whim, a fantasy”. Dating at least from the late 1700s, tickle your fancy's original definition may have originally been closer to our modern euphemistic approach. After World War II, British English speakers began using it in a rhyming slang expression that associated a “nancy” (a male homosexual) with tickling your fancy (arousing you sexually or performing sexual acts with you). An alternate version is found in strike your fancy.

And a tip from my friend Carolyn from last week’s White Elephant. She checked Wikipedia and found that there really was a white elephant so the phrase also had a meaning of unique and special as well as referring to bric-a-brac.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

From US journalist Earl Wilson: “If you look like your passport photo, in all probability you need the holiday.”

 

 

 

 Winter in TV-land

Have you ever noticed that it’s always winter in TV shows set in London or Chicago or New York? I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode of my various favourite shows in which the characters aren’t wearing jackets and often scarves and beanies as well. By contrast I don’t remember the male characters in t-shirts or the females in sun-dresses.

I’m up to Season 23 in my current favourite binge-watching show, Silent Witness, set in the UK, and I think I’ve never seen the lead characters outside without their coats.

And shifting the focus somewhat, have you also noticed that the main characters in any show you’ve ever watched never have trouble finding a parking space when they’re on the prowl or on the hunt? This compares with the number of times I’ve ever had a parking spot fall in my lap, so to speak.

It also struck me recently that houses in London all appear to have mail slots in the front doors, good for poking things in or shouting through. We have post boxes instead.

British shows always have a relatively high proportion of Black African or Caribbean actors as well as those from the sub-continent – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – who are mysteriously called “Asian”. Yet 86% of the British and Northern Irish population is white-ish with only 7.5 Asian and 16.3 Black with an added 1.6 “mixed”. Incidentally only 1.1% of the population is Jewish – in Australia we’re 0.5 % and falling.

And the most interesting observation I’ve made over a year or more of binge-watching British shows is that there are only 43 actors in Britain. They keep turning up over and over again from one series to another prompting one to exclaim with recognition: “Oh, that’s the guy from Downton Abbey” or “She was in Bridgerton” or “I recognise her from Spooks”.

If your preferred streaming service doesn’t allow you to skip it, it’s fascinating to see the names of the various people who work on a TV show. My favourite is “Best Boy”. Then there’s Gaffer, Focus Puller, Clapper Loader (I think I’d like to be one of these) and Standby Props. Is that a second-best Props person? In which case what is a Dressing Props? Production Runner is a little mysterious especially as there’s also a Floor Runner. And then, of course, there’s the Grip; one must ask what it is that he/she grips.

Back to fancy phrases and loopy words which we’ve been accumulating this year. We should put “fall in my lap” (as above) on the list and there’s also “no rhyme nor reason” which I’ve come across recently, although this one is almost understandable. Then there’s the expression “white elephant”. It should mean something very unlikely to be seen; instead it’s used for bric-a-brac, another interesting phrase, like the White Elephant stall at a market.

Where does “dribs and drabs” come from? And why is everything “fine and dandy”?

More to come – from you, I hope!

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

US film director Billy Wilder on actor Cliff Osmond: “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music”.

 Aunty’s efforts

I binge-watched the Queen’s funeral, much of which came to us from the BBC or Aunty as it’s affectionately known. The pageantry was spectacular and the camera work sublime. In fact, there were so many tricky camera shots that they overwhelmed the commentary.

All in all, there were too many silly hats and too few frocks and royals.

We Colonials don’t know much about silly hats, so I’ve had to look everything up. The silly hat mob included the vastly tall black fur cylinders with gold chinstrap, worn so far down on the forehead you wonder how they can see. They’re made from the pelt of Canadian brown bears (one bear per hat) and dyed black. Then there are the helmets with white or red feathers cascading from a knob on top and the amusing hats of the Yeomen of the Guard. There are 73 of these (odd number, isn’t it?) and their job is as ceremonial bodyguards to the Monarch. They wear outfits from the Tudor period and small hats with a brim encircled by what looked like red, white and blue leis. Interestingly, their most famous duty is to ceremonially search the cellars of the Palace of Westminster prior to the State Opening of Parliament, a tradition which dates from the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament. 

Some of the uniforms were encrusted with gold braid. One man had so much gold braid on his outfit – of lions and harps “quartered” as I think the heraldic language would have it – that it’s a wonder he could stand up.

Of course, there were lots of chaps in skirts, tartan ones. The different tartans were obviously worn by different regiments but were we told which? Not that I can recall in my five and a half hours of watching.

I also don’t know why the children of the Queen, except Andrew of course, wore military uniform

We weren’t told about any of this, about who was whom and what was what until some offhanded comments way into the broadcast. I felt very cheated!

It also took more than half of the program before they told us what was on the card tucked into the floral tribute on the casket, despite the fact that the camera panned to this regularly.

During the service, the Commonwealth Secretary General and the British Prime Minister spoke from two different places. Not being a Christian and unfamiliar with the geography of a Cathedral, I was puzzled and would have liked to have known why.

At one point the commentator said, pompously I thought, that they weren’t going to tell us too much because of the solemnity of the occasion. Really? It was being broadcast to the entire world so it was hardly private and a little explanation, sotto voce, would not have hurt.

Back to the frocks and royals.

I was hoping to wallow in vision of all the royals of Europe who apparently attended.

I think I saw the King and Queen of Spain but why didn’t they show us Our Mary, who could have been there unless her mother-in-law the Danish Queen did the honours. Half or more of Europe’s royals are related to the British royal house, so were presumably there but we didn’t see them.

And where were images of the British royals outside the immediate family like Princess Alexandra, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Kent and all their successors, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. And so on and so forth … Where were the family of Princess Margaret? Where were the children of Anne and Edward? I think one of each may have been in the grandchildren’s group but what about the others?

And then there were the frocks, or absence thereof in the commentary. Now except for the lads in tartan, every other dress was black … not a surprise. But would a little bit of commentary have hurt?

Am I’m unreasonable? Perhaps, given the solemnity and great beauty of the two services – at Abbey and at Windsor – and the extraordinary precision of the parades. (Mind you, I don’t think I could be the only person to wonder what would happen if one of the casket bearers had fainted.)

But I put the BBC on notice. Come the Coronation I expect lavish commentary on the attendees, the frocks, the regiments, the gold braid brigade and the meaning of it all.

 

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

British Conservative politician William Whitelaw of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson during the 1970 General Election: “He’s going round the country stirring up apathy.”

 

 

 Old but good

With the Yamim Tovim fast approaching, I thought it was a good time to give this lovely old piece of funny business another run.

During the last holiday season, many individuals expressed concern over the seating arrangements in the synagogue. In order for us to place you in a seat which will best suit you, we ask you to complete the following questionnaire and return it to the synagogue office as soon as possible.

1.    I would prefer to sit in the... (Check one:)
___ Talking section
       No talking section

2.    If talking, which category do you prefer? (indicate order of interest:)
___ Stock market
___ Sports
___ Medicine
___ General gossip
___ Specific gossip (choose:)
___ The rabbi
___ The cantor
___ The cantor's voice
      The cantor's significant other
___ Fashion news
___ What others are wearing
___ Why they look awful
___ Your neighbours
___ Your relatives
___ Your neighbours' relatives
___ Politics (uh oh)
___ Sex (Preference:______________________
      Who's cheating on/having an affair with whom
      Other:_______________________________

3.    Which of the following would you like to be near
   for free professional advice?
___ Doctor
___ Dentist
___ Nutritionist
___ Psychiatrist
___ Child psychiatrist
      Podiatrist
___ Chiropractor
      Stockbroker
      Accountant

          Lawyer: Criminal   

          Lawyer: Civil

___                        Real estate agent
___                        Architect
___                        Plumber
___                        Buyer (Specify store:______________________ )
___                        Sexologist
                             Golf pro [tentative; we're still trying to find a Jewish one]
                             Other:____________________________

 

                       4. I want a seat located (indicate order of priority:)
                            On the aisle
                            Near the exit
                            Near the window

                            In Aruba
                            Near the bathroom
                            Near my in-laws
                            As far away from my in-laws as possible
                            As far away from my ex-in-laws as possible
                            Near the pulpit
                            Near the Kiddush table
                            Near single men
                            Near available women
                            Where no one on the bimah can see/hear me talking during services
                            Where no one will notice me sleeping during services
                            Where I can sleep during the rabbi's sermon [additional charge]

5. (Orthodox only.) I would like a seat where:
                            I can see my spouse over the mechitza
                            I cannot see my spouse over the mechitza
                            I can see my friend's spouse over the mechitza
                            My spouse cannot see me looking at my friend's spouse over the mechitza

6. Please do not place me anywhere near the
following people:
(Limit of six; if you require more space, you may wish to consider joining another congregation.)
_________________________
_________________________
_________________________

Your name:_________________________________
Building fund pledge: $________________________

Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern Quotations:

British journalist and novelist Keith Waterhouse, on Margaret Thatcher: “I cannot bring myself to vote for a woman who has been voice-trained to speak to me as though my dog has just died.”

 Vale your Majesty

 As I write this, I’m listening (well, bingeing really) to the ABC’s coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Many people are saying that most Australians have lived with no other Monarch, but I’m so old I was already eight when she made her first visit to Australia in 1954 not long after her accession. Along with what was estimated as at least half of the entire population of Sydney, my mother, my brother and I went somewhere now forgotten where we could join people lining the streets to wave little Union Jacks as her cortège drove by. 

I can’t say I remember that, but I do have a shred of memory that the day (on 3 February) was extremely hot and my mother (in the era before bottled water) knocked on a local door to ask for water for her children.

The year before, her Coronation had been marked, inter alia, by the publication of glossy picture books about the event. I remember having one of these and loving it.

Many, many years later I was honoured to be invited to a garden party with the Queen at NSW Government House. I can’t say she shook my hand, but it was quite special just to be there.

So … vale Your Majesty; as we say in the Jewish tradition, may your memory be a blessing.

And now to something a lot lighter.

My friend Manou got these word memories from a friend of hers. Some of this material is American-speak but enough is familiar.

He calls them “lost words from those of us lucky enough to have lived in the 1950s”.
“Mergatroyd! Do you remember that word? Would you believe the spell-checker did not recognize the word Mergatroyd? Heavens to Mergatroyd!The other day a not so elderly, (I say 75), lady said something to her son about driving a jalopy; and he looked at her, quizzically and said, "What the heck is a jalopy?" He had never heard of the word jalopy! She knew she was old!

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.
About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology. These phrases included “don't touch that dial, carbon copy, you sound like a broken record, hung out to dry”.

Back in the olden days, we had a lot of moxie.  We'd put on our best bib and tucker, to straighten up and fly right.

Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat, Holy moley!
We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the Duck's Tail; or spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.
We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!" or "this is a fine kettle of fish!" we discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed as omnipresent as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We blinked, and they're gone. Where have all those great phrases gone? Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It's your nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Wake up and smell the roses.

Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth ... See ya later, alligator! or after a while crocodile!
OkeyDokey. You'll notice they left out "Monkey Business" …

We are the children of the Fabulous 50s. We were given one of our most precious gifts, to live in the peaceful and comfortable times created for us by the greatest generation.”