Pause for Thought @the-q-continnum - Tumblr Blog

The year of words: Day 295

Today’s ‘forgotten’ offering came as a surprise to me – that is the fact that its use has dropped significantly over recent years. It’s quite often heard here at the Acreage. A new word that may bring a smile (wry or otherwise) as the fear of being without a mobile phone gets a name. I must be the very opposite of a nomophobe. To me, it sounds like a great bonus to be offline for a period of…

View On WordPress

The year of words: Day 294

Today brings the best of times and the worst of times (in my humble opinion) with today’s additions to the year of words. A beautiful and less frequently used ‘forgotten’ word which is perhaps one of the earliest examples of a portmanteau construct. Today’s modern offering is one that is likely to bring me out in a rash just reading it. Your mileage may of course vary.

View On WordPress

The year of words: Day 293

Today’s words both sound as though they’re modern in origin, but both are deceptive. The forgotten word or sense brings us fantoosh from that reliable source of beautifully evocative words, Scottish dialect. This dates back at least as far as the early eighteenth century and possible much earlier. Now considered archaic outside of Highland Scotland and even there I’d suspect you’d struggle to…

View On WordPress

The Year of words: Day 292

A logophile (lover of words) challenged by a friend to introduce an old word we should use more or a new word that may have passed us by every day for a year. That was the challenge that brings you here and saw me leave Facebook. Whether that departure is permanent or not I don’t know. I don’t have other social media accounts having binned Twitter some months before. The current thinking is that…

View On WordPress

Day 291 of the year of words

So you know why I’m here now and you know I love words and the evolution of language. Today’s example gives us two transfers from other languages – French for the old and Yiddish for the modern. I trust neither are pompier contributions and they have helped to zhuzh up your Wednesday.

View On WordPress

Day 290 of the year of words

Welcome dear reader. I use the word advisedly and with little expectation that more than the occasional stray will come across the remainder of this series. However, take pity on an refugee from Social media who is finding its absence has shot me back to the mid eighties (the best of times) when it didn’t exist and people spoke to other people and did stuff – things in the real world. I may…

View On WordPress

A very strange place to start

It may appear an odd place to start or post something that is clearly part of a series, but there is some method in my undoubted madness. I was challenged the end of 2020 to recommend a couple of words a day that people may have forgotten because they have fallen out of use or missed due to their recent addition to the dictionaries. I managed this via Facebook for 288 days before the constant…

View On WordPress

Day 400 in the Corona House: Will the real Easter bunny please stand up.

Is the Easter bunny really a man? And Green? I hope you’ll excuse the self-indulgence, but the passing of day 400 is the Corona House is one that I felt needed to be marked. Many of you will remember that Vaughan and I were in self-imposed quarantine for some time before the national lockdown started in March 2020. As a result, apart from two drive by fruitings (delivering cake to friends), a…

View On WordPress

Day 357 in the Corona House: Land down under

Day 357 shielding After a sizeable break between the last posting and this post, welcome to day 357 of shielding/self isolation.in our Covid house. When we returned from Milan and started day one of what was then a 14 day isolation, we had no idea it would stretch to last to what is now approaching a year. During the intervening three hundred and fifty six days, we have left the house once in…

View On WordPress

#Australia #news #politics #social media

Day 266 in the Corona House: Would the real Darth Vader please stand up

A short but heartfelt posting on day 266 and memories of someone I was lucky enough to meet (once) at drama school who died earlier today.

It was only when I looked back on his career and read the glowing tributes, (not Hollywood lovie glowing but genuinely sincere obituaries and commentary) that I realised David (Dave) Prowse had every right to be bitter over his career. However, in line…

View On WordPress

Day 265 in the Corona House - The sign of four

Day 265 in the Corona House – The sign of four

Paula Trewick has banjaxed my weekend.

There I was planning for a couple of days of tidying, decluttering and rearranging between baking a cake and going for a bike ride when bibbady bobbady boo, Paula Trewick kicks of fourgate and my weekend got whacked so far out of kilter it might as well be Tuesday.

For those unfamiliar with ‘fourgate‘, it started yesterday as a simple question…

View On WordPress

Still here in the Corona house

Those readers who read the blog posts I published in the first quarter of the year will be familiar with the Corona house. The place (or to be more precise) two places I’ve been shielding from Corona since Vaughan and I returned from Milan in early March. I managed to blog for the first 75 days before feeling I had less to say than might be necessary to make it 76 days. So what brings me the…

View On WordPress

Day 74 in the corona house: Let's go outside (not).

Day 74 in the corona house: Let’s go outside (not).

Day 74 and counting

I think I’m done with the sofa, I think I’m done with the hall, I think I’m done with the kichen table baby. Let’s go outside, Let’s go outside, in the sunshine, I know you want to but you can’t say yes .. (Go outside)

Somehow this deeply ironic track seems to sum up today and much of this week for me. It seems people have grown bored of Coronavirus and the call of a sunny…

View On WordPress

Day 54 in the corona house:

Well, where did that fortnight go? I had a couple of messages asking if I’d stopped blogging. The answer being yes and no. Yes, because if you haven’t seen any for a while and have to ask if I’ve stopped then at the very least there has been a hiatus.

No, well the intention is to continue, but perhaps less frequently. Since starting this isolation count I’ve lost a job and found a new one.…

View On WordPress

Day 40 in the corona house: Don't clap for me, I'm a cleaner.

Day 40 in the corona house: Don’t clap for me, I’m a cleaner.

Earlier in this series of quarantine posts, I mentioned that I have a tendency to question accepted wisdom. Some see this as being naturally contrarian, others as being a desire to tilt at windmills.

I hope it’s not default contrarianism and I don’t intentionally tilt at windmills, though I accept it may appear as such to others. There are two fundamental ‘triggers’ for me. The first is a…

View On WordPress

#Coronavirus quarantine #counter-intuitive #nhs #quaratine

Day 39 in the corona house: Working 9 till 5

Day 39 in the corona house

The past couple of days has been dominated by work one way or another.

Due to a combination of events, self-isolation, preceeded by holiday and time in lieu, it was the end of February when I last went into an office to work. The small matter of being made redundant during that time didn’t help things (that was just prior to the quarantine kicking-in). Then the…

View On WordPress

Day 36 in the corona house: You've got to be carefully taught.

Day 36 in the corona house: You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Three dozen days in quarantine

Good morning from the heart of Peckerwell, that small unrecorded parish in south east London that has at least a split personality, possibly multiple personalities and the associated disorders that go with them.

The name describes that nebulous zone in which Peckham blends with Camberwell and vice versa. Of course there is no such zone, you are either in…

View On WordPress

#Coronavirus #Easter #history #quaratine #racism

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Pause for Thought