English – Page 2 – don't confuse the narrator

worthless opinions

When I paid for my shopping at the supermarket check-out the other day, the assistant rejected one of the coins, telling me it was foreign.

She was wrong: it wasn’t foreign, it was old. Somehow this had got into in my purse:

I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I’d handed it over thinking it was a tuppenny piece. It seems my two penn’orth is only worth a ha’penny.

biscuits and other ambiguities

When I’ve quoted Sandburg – “poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits” – in the past, I have always felt the biscuits were there to represent the everyday, functional side of life: I’ve always assumed he meant Rich Tea, not Hobnobs.

But apparently yesterday was National Biscuit Day, which set me thinking: as I am not really sure which nation was celebrating, I don’t know whether the biscuits in question are the ones you eat with morning coffee or with gravy. And even if it were definitely a British celebration, they might be cheesy biscuits rather than gingersnaps.

Now I am wondering whether Sandberg was thinking of American biscuits – the plain scones eaten with thick sausage gravy – with all the social and regional connotations that they bring to bear. Suddenly hyacinths have become the clear and unambiguous aspect of the quote: a natural Truth alongside the unnecessarily complex human view of things.
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iberianismos

As I understand it, air traffic control operations are conducted either in English or in the local language, making good English a required skill for international pilots. It always worries me, then, when a pilot’s accent is so strong that his announcements are incomprehensible.
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sole-destroying

I hate it when previously comfortable shoes get rough on the inside and start to rub blisters. But if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post, so I guess there’s a silver lining. Or perhaps a latex or leather one.

insoles package label. Spanish / English

Before I went on my last trip I bought insoles at the local todo a cien**. How could I resist a product described as:

ventilative, bibulous and can avoid foot stink and ache.

Personally, I much prefer “ventilative” to the more common “breathable”. After all, air is breathable, which is quite a different quality to that of the materials insoles are made of.
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of kiwis and poetry

(Click here for a picture of male and female kiwi flowers)

We are gradually trying to replace our old grape vine with a kiwi vine. Our reasoning is mainly that the old vine is not very healthy and produces huge quantities of wasp-attracting fruit that gets mildew and moulders on a grand scale each year.

Since there’s some sixty square metres of trellis, it’s probably not surprising there’s more fruit than we can deal with. Kiwis seem as if they might be rather more controllable.

The photo shows a sucker on one of the kiwis we planted a couple of years ago. The vivid vermilion of these new shoots, and the furriness of the stalks and young leaves, never ceases to amaze me.
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