winter – Page 16 – don't confuse the narrator

the right word

Dr Oetker's silver balls — ballsing up the language

We were talking about traditional British celebratory cakes – proper rich fruit cakes with home-made almond paste, white royal icing and piped rosettes with silver dragées – and I was disappointed to find that confectionery suppliers in the UK are dumbing down: apparently they aren’t ‘dragées’ at all any more, but ‘silver balls’.

Why are we simplifying things when we have perfectly good and accurate words? A ‘silver ball’ could be any size and made of anything. A ‘silver dragée’ is far more precisely defined.
Continue reading “the right word”

Boxing Day

on a foreign shore: icing-tipped waves
toss tinsel into the clear air. We play
at Wenceslas in the sand, taking it in turns
to be the page. We look for sea holly and sing
carols under the curious gaze
of a parrot in a palm tree.

happy hollydays

Yesterday was the solstice, the shortest day, and, officially, the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere.

When I get back to the village, maybe we’ll burn a yule log to encourage the sun to return.

snow’ku

Snowfall in the suburbs:
commuter cars
wear Father Christmas beards.

Yes, it deserves an accompanying photo, but there has been so much talk recently about using cameras in public places that I was hesitant to take one. In central London yesterday there was little more than:

A silent scampering of snow

but half way through the afternoon, when I headed west on a train from Paddington, it was still apparent that there had been far more snow outside the capital.