Thursday 25 January 2018

I love plurals. Or is it pluri? Or is a spawn of plural?


On Wednesday,  I bought a thesaurus at the op shop. I already had a thesaurus. Now I had two. 
Did that mean that I had suddenly become an owner of two thesauruses or two thesauri
Or did it just mean that I was a dork?

My thesaurus and its mate (See how I avoided the thesauruses/thesauri dilemma?) started me thinking once more about plurals.
I love plurals.
They confuse me, but I love them.
They're one of those things that make the English language ridiculously complicated, utterly charming and downright hilarious.

Take a hippoptamus.
If he's joined by another, they become a couple of hippopotami.
If they're joined by twenty others, they become a bloat of hippopotami.
A BLOAT!
How simply marvellous. Makes my heart sing.

Or take a goose.
One goose. Two geese.
But if there are five or more, they become a gaggle.
Unless they take flight, and then they're a skein.
I get the gaggle. I can see them and hear them. They're waddling along together, gossiping: 'Gaggle-gaggle-gaggle-honk.'
But a skein? What on earth are they doing up there in the sky? Knitting?
A gaggle of geese.

A skein of geese and not a knitting needle
or crochet hook in sight.

Collective nouns always tickle my fancy. They conjure up all sorts of images and stories in my mind.
Look at these gems:
A skulk of foxes
A flap of nuns   
A prudence of vicars
A fluther of jellyfish
An unkindness of ravens
A murmuration of starlings
A spawn of umbrellas
A raffle of turkeys
A crash of rhinoceroses


Or is it a crash of rhinoceri?
I never really know.

Because some plurals get tricky and all mutliple choicey.
One octopus. 
Two octopi. 
Or two octopuses. 
Or two octopodes.
A sludge of octopodes?
And others defy the rules you think you've just learnt.
So many inconsistencies and so little time to learn them all.
One campus. Two campuses.
One virus. Two vira.
One die. Two dice. Three dices. No, not really. It's still 'dice' when there are three. 

I have one Thermos. If I buy another, do I now have Thermi, Thermoses, Thermopodes or Therma?
Maybe I should bypass the issue by saying I have two containers to keep my coffee hot.

Plurals with singular names  get my goat.
Or they get my sheep.
One sheep. Two sheep. Three sheep.
How many do there have to be before you get to tag an 's' on the end? 
Six million sheeps is surely correct.
A stupidity of sheep?
A flock of sheeps?

And then there are those singular things that have plural names - scissors, pyjamas, underpants.
What if they go singular in spelling?
Is a scissor just a knife?
Is a pyjama the top half or the bottom?
And what does an underpant look like?  The mind boggles. I bet it's uncomfortable. I'll always take my underpants in pairs, thanks.

I will never fully master plurals. 
And, really, I never ever want to.
I have decided that, from now on, I will make up my own rules. 
I will call more than one of a kind whatever strikes my fancy.

I'll eat a peach.
I'll eat two peaches. 
I'll eat a murder of peaches. (It makes sense. Just ask anyone who has over-indulged in stone fruit.)

I'm going start wearing pyjami to bed. Which isn't so strange when my husband, the Great Dane, has been wearing pyjamases for years, English being his second language. 
I'll count a gaggle of sheeps to fall asleep.

I can see myself meeting acquainti for work and a frollic of friends for lunchdates. 

I'll make a prudence of decisions.
I'll sing a skein of songs.
I'l shower huggopodes and kissopodes on those I love.
I'll have a fluther of fun.
And I'll never ever get kerfuffled about pluri again.

Saturday 20 January 2018

Long live the letter!


Three days ago, I wrote a letter.
A real, old fashioned letter.
There were two sheets of paper, a ballpoint pen, an envelope and a stamp involved.

'Good gravy!' I hear you cry. 'What possessed you? Why didn't you just text or Skype or email or phone?'

Well, the truth of the matter is, I did. 
It began with a text. 
A very short text to my son, who lives in Melbourne, reminding him of an appointment. 
And then I added a little bit of news about my tripping over on my evening walk two days ago. 
And then I told him about a new piece of furniture we had acquired.
And then I told him that I loved him.
All in the space of two dozen short words - and some gory photos of my skinned shin and bulbous blue ankle.

And then.... I shrieked in horror.

What sort of monster had I become?
Where were my words?
Where were my  manners?
How could I ever keep the world a kind, safe, refined place if I was going to whip off garbled texts interspersed with graphic foot photos instead of communicating in a measured and civilised way?

And that's when I did it.
I gathered pen, paper, envelope and stamp, sat down at my desk and wrote a letter.
To my son.
By way of apology - even though he didn't see anything amiss in our text exchange.
And so he could have a little taste of an era when we all lived life at a slower pace and thought good manners meant communicating in entire sentences.

I wrote four unedited pages with proper spelling and punctuation.
I drew a comic-type sequence of events to show The Great Ankle Spraining of 2018. 
I described my new bed and linen, then drew a picture of it. 
Hmmm, perhaps the picture was not so helpful,
but letter writing is about making do
and being authentic.
And I signed my name at the end with a flourish - well, as much of a flourish as possible when your name is Wahm. (Don't ask - nicknames have ridiculously convoluted origins in our family!)

I used to write heaps of letters. 

When I was young (read this with a geriatric shake in your voice), phone calls were expensive and email, Facebook and Skype didn't exist. 
On leaving home, I wrote to my parents every week.  And they wrote back. 

When I left uni, I was madly in love with the Great Dane. But, like doomed lovers from a gothic novel,  I was sent to the south of the state to my new teaching job and the Great Dane had to stay up north to finish his studies.  
Oh dear. Makes my heart break just thinking about it. 
But we survived the separation by writing letters - three a week each way until we married at the end of the year. Such devotion!
I recall one letter in which I wrote to my beloved, 'You are the sultanas on my Weetbix.' 
How could our love not survive with such passionate, eloquent letters fluttering from one end of the state to the other? 
Love letters!
The Great Dane and me at uni.
Before the letter writing began.

As I moved for study and work and marriage and travel, I seemed always to be saying goodbye to friends. But letters kept us connected. 

And when we lived on the other side of the world in Denmark, letters were treasure.  Even those ugly, flimsy, blue aerogrammes.

The upshot of all this is that I spent many years, from my teens onward, writing a vast number of letters to family and  friends.
It was a duty and a necessity if one wanted to keep in touch.
But, for me, it was also a joy.

I loved writing letters. 
I loved taking the time to think about the recipient. 
I loved reflecting on the past days and weeks as I shared our news and funny mishaps. 
I loved fiddling with words.
I loved finding a cartoon, photo or magazine clipping to include.
I loved the pretty stationary and choosing the perfect pen. 
I loved folding the letter and slipping it snugly into its envelope. 
I loved licking the stamp and pressing it down with the heel of my hand. (And, yes, I think lick-and-stick is the One True Way To Use Stamps. Sticker stamps just don't cut the mustard. There's no effort involved, no lingering taste of glue.)

Furthermore, I think the copious amount of letter writing  helped hone my writing skills. Any time spent writing thoughtfully is good practice.

I have several friends who still value good old fashioned letters. 
One writes twice a week to her daughter's mate who is serving in Afghanistan. The letters are the envy of every other soldier on base. 
Another continues a pen friend relationship  that has spanned five decades. 

But, sadly, on the whole, letter writing is a dying art form.
Our post office sits in the middle of a retirement village. 
How symbolic. 

So, I say, bring back the letter.
The one written on real paper that can be delivered into a real mailbox.





I, for one, am going to write regularly to my son - whether he likes it or not.
Just this morning I typed him a second letter.
Yes, typed!
The end result was a complete and utter mess but writing it was brilliant fun.  


And I'm going to write to family and friends, too. 

I'll have to buy some pretty new stationary, of course. 
And get more of those lovely felt-tip pens that are so delicious to use.
And dust off my old address book.
And somewhere, just somewhere, there might be a post office that still sells lick-and-stick stamps.

Want to join in?
Go on. Send someone a letter.

Better yet, send me a letter.
I will reply.
There will be unedited waffling.
There will be dodgy drawings and spelling mistakes and wobbly writing.
There will be coffee stains and chocolate smears.
There may even be disastrous typing.
But the letters will be written with thought and joy and a big dollop of love.

This is my address:
Katrina Nannestad
PO Box 7025
Spring Gully
Vic 3550
Australia

Friday 12 January 2018

The Great Book Nook Dilemma of 2018

How do you arrange your books?
It's an incredibly important question.
One I've spent many a sleepless hour pondering.

You see, I have a nook in my new study.
Now a nook is nothing special.
It's just a place for the useless overflow of everyday life - baskets of unfolded laundry, old tax files, bicycles with flat tyres, visiting relatives who have outstayed their welcome ...

But this week, a very exciting thing happened. 
Shelves were built and the humble nook was transformed into a book nook.
And a book nook, once stocked with the objects for which it has been designed, is a place of  whimsy and adventure, challenge and learning, comfort and delight.
A book nook is a magical place.

Ooooh. Sends tingles up and down my spine just thinking about it!

But of course, with great blessing, comes great responsibility.
I now had to place my books in the shelves.
And that involved making a Very Important Decision:
HOW WAS I GOING TO ARRANGE MY BOOKS?


HOW
             WAS I
         GOING TO
                          ARRANGE
           MY  BOOKS
                             ?????

Should I arrange them by genre or nationality?
If by genre, what would I do about the books that crossed over? Would a funny travel memoir be under Travel or Humour? Should a historical romance come under History or Romance ... or under  Light and Fluffy, depending on the author? 
If I arranged by nationality, should it be the country in which the author was born or the country in which they lived the greater part of their life? Or should it be the country in which the book is set? And what if the story takes place in multiple countries - like Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days


Russian authors.
They just had to go together.

Then I wondered about ranking my books.
I've always loved the idea of arranging my collection from best to worst.

But which book is really my favourite? 
Little Women?
Middlemarch?
The Book Thief?
Cold Comfort Farm?
The Murderers Among Us?
I could go on all day listing options for first place. And then I'd have to choose second, third, fourth.... 

And what about my own books? Is it arrogant to rank them highly? Is it bad publicity not to?

We discussed the ranking dilemma at the dinner table last night. My son said he knew how to make it really easy: 
Imagine there's a gun to your head. You have to choose your top three books. Hesitate and - BANG! - you're dead.
'Okay,' I said, rising to the challenge. 'First: Winnie the Pooh. Second: My Family and Other Animals. Third: The Little Paris Bookshop. No! Hang on! Pride and Prejudice or Emma.'
BANG!
I felt like I was living in a scene from Sophie's Choice.
Ranking, my dear friends, just cannot be done.

So in the end, I compromised. I started arranging my books, loosely, along several lines:

  • Nationality of authors - Australian, English, American and The Rest. (Apologies to The Rest, but there weren't so many of you.)
  • English text and Danish text.
  • Children's books and grown-ups' books.
  • Genre.
It wasn't perfect. There were many overlaps and ruthless decisions had to be made. 

Children's books - but this tiny
section also contains Danish,
English and Australian authors and
texts in both the English and Danish
language.


No, it was not perfect.
But it was going along quite well.
Until I decided to add knick-knacks to the shelves.

I love my knick-knacks as much as I love my books. They had to be included.
But where should they go? 

Should the old typewriters be amongst the novels? Or were they more a nuts and bolts sort of thing that should sit with dictionaries, thesauruses and compendiums of well-known lines of poetry and wise sayings?

And shoe lasts - where on earth should they sit? With a book like Tracks or The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry? With the Brothers Grimm fairy tales collection because of The Elves and the Shoemaker? Or amidst the DIY-ish books - cook books, gardening books, how to draw books?

And then there were the bird cages. It would be perverse to sit them alongside What Bird is That? Even more perverse near the fable, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.  Perhaps beside The Goldfinch would be better - marginally.

In the end, I opted for a mix of meaning and aesthetics. 
A typewriter seemed to belong alongside
the work of some great old English writers -
and the orange casing tied in sweetly with an
orange book spine or two.

The photo of my father-in-law's dart victory
 and this wooden duck have absolutely
nothing to do with Leon Uris.

At the end of two long days, I was finished. My book nook was arranged to my satisfaction. It felt logical and orderly and looked lovely.
Perfect, actually.

And then, my son came in and asked for some book recommendations ... AND TOOK THEM AWAY!!!!

And now there are gaps.

And THEN I realised that there are a few books on loan that might not fit into their appropriate place when returned.

And there are books on order.

And there will be books for birthdays and Christmases.

And suddenly, my tightly organised book nook  seemed not so cleverly organised after all.
AAAAAAAGH!


How do you organise your books?

Thursday 4 January 2018

Consulting the weather pig, Google and other experts


I have a weather pig. He's big and fat and shiny and points his snout into the wind. He looks very wise and I spend a lot of time staring at him, willing him to share the secrets he holds deep within his porky breast. 

Weird, I know. 
I do realise that inanimate objects don't talk, but I can't help standing by the the pig and waiting.
For words of wisdom.
For a pun. ('Piguliar weather we're having today.')
For titbits of gossip.
For a compliment on my stamina in mowing a firebreak around the house with a push mower in 35 degree heat.
For information about all the things I need to know, now that I am surrounded by paddocks and wide open skies.

So far, the weather pig hasn't revealed much, except for the current wind direction. 
But I live in hope. 

In the meantime, I've had to resort to Google and the friendly advice of others more knowing than me. Others more vocal than the pig.
For instance:

How fat can a blue tongue lizard get without bursting at the seams?
(Subquestion: Do blue tongue lizards have seams?)
I found a real porker in the lower paddock today. She looked more like a football than a blue tongue and was extremely sluggish. I complimented her on having a greater girth than the weather pig, then left her in peace once more.

My fat little friend.

According to Google, blue tongues grow prodigiously fat when pregnant.
And then - this astonished me - they give birth to live young.
LIVE YOUNG!
So much for the reptile-egg-laying thing I learnt in school.
Click on this link below to see a video (unless you're eating while reading this):

BLUE TONGUE GIVES BIRTH 


Is it true that blue tongue lizards keep the snakes away?
And if so, would one blue tongue lizard of prodigious girth be enough to keep 24 acres snake-free?
According to Google, no. 
And no (implied).
Same response from a friend in the environmental field.
I didn't like this, so I returned to the weather pig. But the pig just stared sagely into the wind as if to say, 'You can't pig and choose your answers to such questions.'
Darn Google.
Darn the learned friend.
And darn the pig! If he's going to make puns, surely they should be better than that! 

Do roos have loos?
The answer to this has been harder to find.
Google has taken me on a fascinating journey through the finer details of scat identification (for both fresh and fossilised poo!), but has failed to answer my question.
I suspect the answer is no, given the vast quantities of kangaroo poo scattered indiscriminately all over our land.
But I  came across an interesting sight this morning that has me still wondering - a pile of roo poo in a secluded little nook amidst the blackberries. 
If this isn't a roo loo, I don't know what is!
It's even round and the grass is flattened so it doesn't
poke uncomfortably upwards during use.

The discreet side of the roo loo.
Not even visible from this angle.

And why wouldn't a kangaroo like a bit of privacy like the rest of us?
Feel free to respond. All new knowledge and ideas gratefully received.

By the way, western grey kangaroo males have a strong curry-like smell. Just a bonus fact find I thought I'd share.


Is it stupid to poison your blackberries before the fruit has ripened?
Google doesn't know. 
According to the Great Dane, any time you can kill a blackberry bush is the right time to do it. Blackberries are noxious weeds and deserve to die.
According to my mum, all blackberries should be loved and nurtured and never ever sprayed because one of the great delights in life is to make blackberry jam and blackberry pies.
I pondered the issue before the weather pig and thought I heard a rumble from within his porky breast, then realised it was coming from my tummy. Must have been the thought of blackberry pie...
I love blackberry pie.
But I hate noxious weeds.
And so I'll have to agree with both my husband and my mother. I'll keep spraying the blackberries on our property and will pick fresh fruit in a week or two from the enormous bushes along the side of the lane.
And then I'l make pies!
Almost harvest time. What to do?


Will wedge-tailed eagles prey on a whippet?
You know what? I'm happy to stand by the weather pig and wait patiently for his reply to this one.
Because I'm scared of what Google might say... or what it might show when it takes me to YouTube.

Olive the whippet or a sitting duck?
I don't want to know so don't share your ideas on this one, thanks.
But I'm keeping her inside until those two wedge-tailed eagles that have been soaring around the hills have gone elsewhere for their dinner.