They were pretty lucky with the weather. It was showery, as it was here, but they managed always to be inside when it was raining. The children were very excited and told us about it all. They also brought me some Cheddar cheese – the capital because it really is Cheddar from Cheddar, rather than cheddar from anywhere else in the world. It is very good. It was matured in the caves. Al said that they were able to see the cheese being made and then went to a cheese tasting – yes, I know, but honestly, they really did and now I rather want to do it too. He said it was interesting how different the cheese tasted when it had been stored in a cave rather than in, er, whatever a cheese is usually matured in. A room. A more complex flavour altogether.

Tomorrow, I have a morning engagement in Norwich, then I’m going to see Weeza and Zerlina. z (little z, that is) is growing well now and sleeping well too. Weeza is putting it all down to the hypnobirthing experience, that she’s so calm and well-behaved. She really doesn’t cry much and has already, once, slept through the night. Usually she wakes once. To start with, she didn’t like her Moses basket but now the nights are cooler and she can be wrapped more snugly in a blanket, she is fine.

Later in the afternoon, I’m coming home again to look after Squiffany and Pugsley as their mother will be out. Dilly will be teaching part-time for the next year and her dad, Al and I will share the babysitting.

Did I mention that it was Phil’s birthday last Friday? Dilly, Phil and I all have our birthdays within a few days of each other, which makes for a deal of mutual congratulation.

I’m going to take Dave’s advice and go to sleep this afternoon. Having woken up unnecessarily early at 6.45 and having a sleep deficit of at least 2 hours a night over the past week, I am now very tired.

I have added to this post though, just a few more items for your amusement. I like the oddities of English spelling and pronunciation, myself. If you accept them and look for the reasons, it can be very interesting. I like it that English has always accommodated words from other tongues so willingly. And many spellings have rules, if they were only taught – if you know the rule and learn the occasional exception, it all becomes much more straightforward.

Anyway, I’m going to remove my contact lens, curl up with the Sunday paper and not read it for more than five minutes.

Have a good afternoon, darlings.

The Sage’s head appeared out of the bedroom window as I clambered heavily onto the saddle. He offered to come and help put up the heavy outdoor shelving. I said, insincerely, that I could manage, but when he repeated the offer I accepted. He was at the shop before I was and I looked after him enviously when he passed me in the car. He’s older than I am, by the way and it would not be reasonable to expect him to start cycling everywhere.

It was a lovely morning, until about 11 o’clock when the showers started. They were heavy, accompanied by squalls of wind and it was, frankly, annoying and tiring to have to keep checking what was being wetted by the wind that time – yesterday’s rain came straight down so that things under cover did not get wet. I brought in the peaches, which should not get wet at all, and put Victoria plums in their place; later I put them in shallow boxes lined with paper to give them a chance to dry out and not rot. I did the same with the local Worcester Pearmain apples, which were picked yesterday and on sale within half an hour of being on the tree.

The Sage brought in spinach, peppers and tomatoes from our garden. I rescued most of the Black Russian tomatoes which are too delicious to let go.

It has not exactly been a high-earning week and I took about £150 less today than I did last Saturday. But that was not unexpected; last weekend was the last of the summer holidays and people were probably enjoying special meals; isn’t it good that they include lovely fruit and vegetables in that? I’ve had to throw away a lot of mushrooms, funnily enough, as people just haven’t been buying them as usual. It is an awful waste but there is little point in reducing prices as everyone wants everything to be perfect and when it isn’t, you might as well chuck it away. They will sometimes buy soft tomatoes or ripe bananas cheaply, but not otherwise. I gave away some apples, each of which just had a bruised spot, as they were going to be cut up for cooking with red cabbage for Tom’s 21st birthday on Monday. Happy birthday, Tom. Mind you, it seems a lot but the actual loss was probably about £10. I didn’t make any major mistakes and things have gone pretty well.

Al and family have just arrived home, safe, sound and happy. They are coming through for dinner in a while; I’m cooking roast chicken, sausages, roast potatoes and parsnips, carrots, broccoli and spinach out of the garden. Then there will be raspberries; the final two punnets from the shop – I’d had three left yesterday which were still fine today after a night in the fridge, so I did sell today’s two boxes plus one; I also had left half a punnet of strawberries which I brought home. He needs to sell 13 out of 16 to break even (I reduced the price at his suggestion, the margin isn’t usually this tight) so 15 1/2 does mean a small profit (before staff and other expenses) so I haven’t lost him money there.

Excuse me sounding a bit obsessive here, I will wind down, eventually.

An extra little snippet, which amused me mightily – Ro received a leaflet from Auntie Wink which she wants him to add to a website. It is splashed with what are, unmistakably, red wine stains.

That’s my big sister…

The Sage gave me a lift in yesterday because rain was forecast and after 11 hours on my feet, I didn’t want the prospect of staggering home on the bike in the rain. In fact, it had cleared up by 7 pm, but I was still glad to come back in the car.

Today, rain is forecast again. But I’ve left it as late as I can and the Sage is still asleep. Sadly, I’m too polite to wake him.

*Sigh*

On my bike, then. See you later.

The shop will be open today from 8 am to 7 pm so I have no great expectation of feeling like doing anything when I get home. So I’ve looked this rhyme out to entertain you for today. Enjoy, darlings.

“The Chaos”

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Pray console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear sew it.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

by Gerald Nolst Trenite’ a.k.a. “Charivarius” 1870 – 1946 – a Dutch observer of English.

Another, in similar vein –

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.
Well don’t! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both as in bother, nor broth as in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose–
Just look them up–and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful Language? Why man alive!
I learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five.

I found this on the English Teachers Network (sic), ETNI, who I think should brush up on the correct use of the apostrophe before they call themselves English teachers.

This site gives more in similar vein.

Ooh, there’s a lovely new stall on the market. It will be my downfall. Thank goodness it is only there once a week. It’s mainly a cheese stall, but also has olives, pâtés, salami and bread – it’s a little pocket deli, in short. The bread does not contain yeast – sourdough starter or similar I suppose; the making process takes three days. There are cheeses I’ve never heard of, including local ones. I bought 2 loaves of bread, a Basque blue cheese, a Norfolk smoked cheddar-type cheese (actually smoked, not injected with smoke flavour), various olives stuffed with nuts, sun-dried tomatoes or feta cheese and a slice of chicken liver pâté and spent £13-something, which was less than my excited brain had expected. There is a very good local deli in fact and I go in there once in a while but it’s too tempting – everything is so delicious that I spend too much and then eat too much.

Cheese is my downfall.

I ate bits of everything for lunch and, in the end, had to resort to eating jelly babies to take the taste of cheese from my taste-buds. After a while, I ate some dry bread to remove the taste of jelly babies (which I bought for the churchwardens’ meeting tonight). Then I found myself eating more cheese.

For supper, as I’m going out in a short time, I’m having more of the same. Not the jelly babies, the rest. I will also take Maltesers and grapes to the meeting, so as to satisfy all tastes.

Ro and the Sage will have fish. Wild sea bass. I will have my share another day. Well, tomorrow. But tomorrow is another day, after all.

It was a quiet day at the shop. I popped across the road to the bakers during the morning to get my lunch and met friends on the opposite pavement. They asked if I had time for coffee – I went back to check with Tim and said I’d be 20 minutes. I returned, eventually, and apologised for being half an hour or so. “Hm, and the rest” he said, checking the clock.

Wednesday afternoon is traditionally early closing day and, although not many shops do still close, it’s still the least busy afternoon of the week. I sat and read the paper in between serving customers. Nina came in. She is elderly and depressed, and a ten minute conversation dampened my spirits considerably.

Later, I caught a movement out of the window (there is shelving outside which means I can see out better than others see in, but the view is partly obscured). A little girl had been by the outside display and was running across the road to a car. She handed two objects in through the open window; two hands accepted them and then reached out again to help her in the window. I stalked out and across the road, looking rather more carefully than the child had. “Excuse me?” I demanded. “Did that little girl take some apples?” The apples were thrust into my hands by a child whose face went from a smile to shock in an instant. I told her that she should not encourage her little sister to behave so badly and said other suitably telling-off things. I marched back over the road and told a customer who had just entered the shop about it. We grumbled to each other and then I went back to the car. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to tell your mother or father about this when they get back to the car” I said. “It wasn’t me, I didn’t tell her to do it, I didn’t know” said the child, who was about 10. “You were smiling when she came back and you took the apples,” I accused.

I did, too. I told her sympathetically and made it clear that it wasn’t the apples, but that I felt she should know. I’m afraid those little girls will have got a rocket. Not only was their mum horrified (how embarrassing, I was so sorry for her) at what had happened, but she had left a child old enough to be responsible for her little brother and sister for a very short time while she popped into a shop, and the 7 year old had got out of the car and crossed the road, when she had told them to stay in the car.

You know, if that older kid had been brave enough and honest enough to say she was sorry, but she had dared the little one and she would take responsibility, I’d have given her a gentle ticking-off and probably even given them the apples (local Worcesters, probably worth about 24p), it was trying to dump the blame on the child that annoyed me.

Anyway. The takings were £100 down on yesterday, but that’s how Wednesdays are. Tomorrow is market day (yes, a large fruit & veg stall) so the town will be a lot more lively.

Oh, and this week, after a gap of some 30 years, Boots the Chemist has returned to Yagnub. MacDaniells had been our chemist for years and years, until Mr Mac retired and sold out; the people who bought it already owned a small chain of fairly local chemists, but it’s never been so good. Now they have sold out too. Boots used to have a shop here, which they rather strangely sited next to Mr Mac’s; evidently trying to squeeze him out of business, but it backfired. Locals didn’t care for this behaviour and pretty well boycotted the shop. All at least 30 years ago, now. Apart from the Co-op, now outside the town centre, and the newsagent, this is the first and only national chain store in Yagnub.

Coming back to the phonetic alphabet, here are a few versions, which can be used to help or not, according to circumstances. They are all, I think, far better than the accepted versions.

And Happy Birthday Dilly!

Gordie came up with this one:

A for Horses
B for Chicken
C for Yourself / C for Miles
D for Kate / D for estation
E for Brick at ‘im
F for Vescent
G for Indians / G for Inspector
H for Consent /Concern / Drinking
I for Big ‘Un / The Engine
J for Cakes
K for Sutherland
L for Betty Spaghetti / Leather
M for Sis / for Mation
N for Lopes
O for Goodness’ Sake / the Wings of a Dove
P for Drugs Test
Q for the Toilet
R for Minute/ R for Ransome
S for Rantzen
T for Two / Gums / On Edge
U for Coffee /U for Me
V for Espana
W for Money
X for Breakfast
Y for Girlfriend

and, how to finish this off?

Zee for Cider
Zed for Zodiac Mark I
Zed for the Greek god of the wind

Ephelba suggested a Misleading Alphabet. A few gaps here, can you help? – and scope for improvement with others.

A – Aestivate
B –
C – Czar
D – Djinn
E – Effing
F – Floccinaucinihilipilification
G – Gnome
H – Honour
I –
J –
K – Knight or Kew
L – Llanelli or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
M – Mnemonic
N – Neurosis
O – Other
P – Pneumatic
Q – Qatar
R – Rigoletto
S – Scythe
T – Tzatziki
U –
V – Verisimilitude
W – Wriggling or writhe
X – Xylem or Xavier
Y – Ypres (pronounced correctly or as ‘Wipers’, each works)
Z – Bed

Caitlin suggested the Drinking Woman’s Alphabet (men are welcome to join us). I gave up on a few and looked up cocktails; if you have better ideas please let me know.

A – Amaretto
B – Baileys
C – Cointreau
D – Drambuie
E – Eiswein
F – Frascati
G – Gin
H – Hock
I – Imbibe
J – Jack Daniels
K – Kirsch
L – Limoncello
M – Margarita
N – Newcastle Brown ale
O – Ouzo
P – Port
Q – Quagmyre (nah, don’t fancy it)
R – Rum
S – Schnapps
T – Tequila
U – Urbinos (this sounds quite interesting; white wine, cognac and raspberry liqueur)
V – Vodka
W – Whisky
X – Xaviera (no, I’ve never tried it, I shirk cocktails that have whipped cream in)
Y – Yucka (now, this sounds delicious. Vodka, lemon, lime and sugar)
Z – Zinfandel

And I suggest one to confuse and mildly embarrass the charming young gentleman at the other end of the telephone:

A – Adore
B – Bottom
C – Charming
D – Delightful
E – Entrancing
F – Fondle
G – Gorgeous
H – Handle
I – Invite
J – Jerk
K – Kiss
L – Love
M – Messing
N – Naughty
O – Organ
P – Pants
Q – Quiescent
R – Respectable
S – Snot
T – Teasing
U – Urge
V – Vivacity
W – Writhe (too like Ephelba’s idea, but such a nice word)
X -Xenophilia
Y -Yum
Z – Zestfulness

Another list, this time from Dandelion. I could not get away with using this, I’d sound quite off-colour. You have to be young enough (but not too young) or really quite old and I’m still in those in-between years.

A – Arousal
B – Breasts
C – Clitoris
D – Dildo
E – Erection
F – Foreplay
G – G-spot, Groping
H – Hanky Panky
I – Intercourse
J – Juicy
K – Kissing
L – Labia
M – Making Love
N – Nipples
O – Orgasm
P – Penetration
Q – Quim
R – Roleplaying
S – Sexy
T – Tampons, Titillate, Thrusting
U – Uterus
V – Vagina
W – Womanhood
X – X-static
Y – Yoiks, YesYesYes!
Z – Zip

Oh blimey. Home for a few hours as Tim is in the shop until 4.30 (it doesn’t need two people in the afternoon), I’m printing out the stuff I need for the meeting tomorrow. The membership secretary emailed me (she’s just learned to attach documents) the revised membership list, asking me to print it out for the committee as she can’t make it include emails, which are newly added this year. I set it all up and then, fortunately, looked closer before printing. Many of the addresses have gone all random, with villages in the wrong place (against the address that is, they haven’t physically moved from one part of Norfolk to another).

I realise what she’s done, after a few bewildered minutes, for it’s not the new members (some of whom are on the list and some not) whose addresses have been changed. She doesn’t know how to put them in alphabetical order, so she’s done it physically, one by one, but not changed each and every cell. She’d have been in trouble if she had tried to put them in alphabetical order in fact, as she’s been a bit random as to where she started typing the surname, with sometimes a space in front and sometimes not, so they’d have been sorted by that first.

Now I’m having to go through all 381 of them to check and amend. It’s unbelievably tricky and quite a strain on the eyes, as I go from last year’s correct list on the screen to this one’s totally screwed one. I can’t be annoyed, when I think of all the hours the dear woman must have spent patiently changing the list when it would have been so easy to do it the right way (apart from all those misplaced spaces). She is in her late 70s, still plays tennis, golf and bridge and, like many of us, muddles through pretty effectively with her computer – most of the time.