Names are important and frequently problematic. There are plenty of examples in myth, religion and fiction of the power that comes with knowing the True Name of something or someone.
My own name has certainly caused me problems over the years. One of my earliest school memories is of being very distressed when the headmaster mis-spelled my name on some paperwork; he told me it didn’t matter, but it mattered to me.
Continue reading “by any other name”
One of the things I dislike most about this time of year is the fact that news sites are full of articles of highlights and honours, of lists of the best, the most read, the most popular…
To be honest, I mostly don’t care.
Even so, I am very tempted to do a ‘review of the year’ as my last post of 2018.
Continue reading “cat tale at the tail end of the year”
Yesterday I was working on a poem inspired by something I was told ages ago, which had re-surfaced in a conversation earlier in the week.
So far all I have is this:
Vanessa says,
I’ve heard tectonic plates move
at the same speed fingernails grow.
A flourish of bright acrylic tips
adds emphasis, and then: I like to think
it indicates a kind of synchronicity –
shows we’re in touch with Nature.
Although it hasn’t got to where I want it to be – which would be at least three times as long and with something actually happening in there – I was wondering what to call it. (In my own filing system it’s down as ‘tectonic nails’, but although that may help me keep track of it, I don’t think it will do for a title.)
Continue reading “the name game”
Now that, all over Spain, we’ve dutifully reflected without concentrating, and done our civic duty and voted for whoever we’ve voted for, abstained in protest, or blotted our ballots, the results are out. The Guardian website headline reads:
Which is all very well, but although popular can be correctly translated as ‘of the people’, the PP, the Partido Popular, is not what I would call a People’s party.
Continue reading “what’s in a name”
I have had plenty of trouble with my own surname over the years, so I don’t have a lot to say about this.
But I guess it does make me think of the (mostly apocryphal) stories of brand names that don’t travel between languages and cultures.
I wonder if “Mr Perdedor” drives a Chevrolet Nova when he isn’t driving his truck. (They say they didn’t sell well in países hispanohablantes as no one wanted un coche que no va.)
don't confuse the narrator 