Words
A musician colleague and I email each other frequently about pieces we are working on and we sometimes amuse ourselves by breaking the rules, to (we hope) comic effect.
Sometimes we follow the Spooner tradition of switching the first part of two words. Instead of writing ‘the tricky bit in the last line’ we would write 'the bricky tit', etc.. We invent words. We spell them phonetically and break them up, as in ‘Idaho pew-end joy jorolody’. (Have a go at that one.)
He once sent me a very long sentence written backwards. The sentence was a straightforward question to which he needed an answer. My answer was No, so, to follow his lead, I replied ‘On.’ He said it took him eighteen hours to work that one out.
Ever realised how powerful short words can be? Try to imagine Tony Blair sounding convincing if he did not plant the little words ‘I mean’ and ‘you know’ at exactly the right points. They give his propositions the confiding, the intimate sound. And the casual listener feels that here is a chap who, I mean, you know, really understands.
And sometimes you can achieve wonders without using words at all.
I was in a bus. We needed to turn left from the stem of a ‘T’ but couldn’t because another bus wanted to turn right into the road from which we were trying to emerge. The junction was tight and both roads were narrow, all three packed with stationery traffic piled up close behind. It was deadlock. And yet both bus drivers simply moved their hands at each other in various ways so that within a couple of minutes everyone was on their way with not a single word spoken. Well, perhaps just one. It was said by our own driver. It was very short and probably afforded him some relief.
Young children’s words sometimes confuse. Take the child who asked his mother for a bedtime story. She went downstairs, chose an attractive children’s book about Australia and took it up to him.
He pulled a face.
‘Mum,’ he said, ‘What did you bring that book to read from about down under up for?’
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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010
I plan to end this blog in November. If anyone has any suggestions about material for a further series, please do email me. (Click on CONTACT, home page.) I should be more than pleased to consider them.