Tag: Non Fiction

In a word: Hail

Yes, you know what it is, and it can be very unpleasant when it hits – hail.

Hailstones as big as golf balls, hailstones that make small or large dents in your car, smash windows, wreck trees, and, sometimes, give the appearance that snow has just fallen.

And hail with snow equals sleet, and it’s not very pleasant to be caught in it.

Of course, there’s a different sort of hail, one that you might also not want to be subject to, that from someone across the street trying to get your attention.

Or a hail that you do want someone or something to stop; a taxi, or cab

Or a ship across the water… though I’m not sure why you, personally would want to hail a ship

Perhaps you could be praised in some way, like, he hailed from London – no, not yelled so loudly he could be heard in New York

And no, we do not go around saying, Hail Minister, or Hail Friend!  Not unless we’ve used a time machine and gone back to ancient Roman days

This is not to be confused with the word hale

Yes, it can be something you eat, and I hear it’s very good for you

Or that man is hale and hearty, which means in good health – and I have to say I’m envious because I’m anything but hale

 

In a word: Sheet

Well, we all know what a sheet is, it’s one of those things you put on a bed.  A bottom sheet, a fitted sheet, a top sheet, flannelette sheet.

It could also be a piece of paper, e.g. pass me a sheet of paper please, only to get in reply, what size?

There can be a sheet of flames, best if you see one get away as fast as you can.

Of course, that fire can be put out by rain sheeting down.

You can have a sheet map, that is one that opens out.  Funny how you can never get them folded back the same way.  And a problem when you’re in a car and open it out – hang on, I can’t see out the window!

That lake is a lovely sheet of water, very still just as the sun comes up, and then, what a reflection.  Great if you are a landscape painter.

Then there’s sheet metal, did that in school and wasn’t very good at it.

If you’re a philatelist, then there’s always a sheet of stamps, might be worth something in a hundred years’ time.

Then, if it is worth millions, you might turn white as a sheet with shock.

But the best of all, if you drink too much it is said you are ‘two sheets to the wind’.

When you’re given another chance, it is like being given a clean sheet.

And another form might be to do with sailing when you sheet a sail, which is to say you are making it either tauter or less taut.

English can be confusing sometimes, can’t it?

Sayings: Flogging a dead horse

This wouldn’t be so apt if it didn’t bring back a raft of bad memories, those days I used to go to the races, and back all of the wrong horses.

I had a knack, you see, of picking horses that fell over, or came dead last.

Perhaps that’s another of those sayings, dead last, with a very obvious meaning.  Dead!  Last!

But…

In the modern vernacular, flogging a dead horse is like spending further time on something in which the outcome is already classed as a complete waste of time.

However…

Back in the old days, the dead horse referred to the first month’s wages when working aboard a ship, usually paid for before you stepped on board the ship.  At the end of the first month, the theoretical dead horse was tossed overboard symbolically, and thereafter you were paid.

It still didn’t make sense to me that someone would tell me I was flogging a dead horse, until I realized, one day, the lesson to be learned was never to get paid in advance.

 

Sayings: Beyond the pale

I’ve often said, when espying an injustice that was so outrageously displayed that no one could miss it, as being beyond the pale.

The pale within a fence became an area of land within a boundary such as a county, and then to areas within Ireland that were held by the British. As these became smaller, those areas were deemed to be uncivilized.

This, in modern parlance, beyond the pale refers to someone’s behavior being outside the accepted norm.

 

There’s also…

In a word: Pale

Which is the color of the face of a person who is usually desperately unwell?

As distinct from a pale face, a white man is described by the American Indians. This, sadly, was learned from American westerns, motion pictures that told a rather interesting version of events between the Indians and the new settlers.

Paleface was in one movie, in particular, Bob Hope.

A pale can also be a single upright piece of wood in a fence.

Something could pale into significance, or be a pale imitation of a better quality article.

Not to be confused with a pail, which is a bucket, wooden or otherwise, that holds liquids.

The most famous of which is that which Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water, and, well, you know how that ended.

Sayings: Before you can say Jack Robinson

Once upon a time, you could have told me Jack Robinson was a jack in the box, the name meant nothing to me.

Not until Phryne Fisher came along, a rather brilliant 1920s private detective series set in the back streets of Melbourne, as well as more salubrious houses of the rich and famous.
In this series, there is a policeman, a foil for her detective moments, and a love interest that is always just beyond her grasp, a man by the name of Inspector Jack Robinson.

How coincidental.

But…

As for the saying, before you can say Jack Robinson…

It has nothing to do with Phryne Fishers Inspector.

Instead,

There is one story of a politician, Jack Robinson, in the late eighteenth century who was accused of bribery on the floor of the house of commons in England. His accuser was another MP who was asked to name the culprit, and thereby coined the term, ‘I could name him as soon as I could say Jack Robinson’.

The second was a Jack Robinson, the hero of a story written in the nineteenth century who came home to find his intended wife married to another, and to assuage the pain of it was back to the sea, ‘afore you could say Jack Robinson’.

I’m sure there’s a ton of other saying that could be attached to the name, but these seem to be the accepted reason for the term ‘before you can say Jack Robinson’.

In a word: Piece

Aside from the fact that it really means part of something else, we’ve got to remember that it is one of those ‘i before e except after c’ things.

I have a piece of the puzzle.  Well, maybe not.  You know what it’s like when you’re assembling a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  Yes, you get to the end and one piece is missing.

\You’re so angry you want to give someone a piece of your mind.

Just remember not to give too many people pieces or you will become mindless.

We might be listening to a musical piece, which can be a movement, I think, in a symphony

Or we might piece together the parts of a child’s toy, especially on that night before Christmas when everything can and will go wrong.  I’ve been there and done that far too many times.

I’ve been known to move a chess piece incorrectly, no, come think of it, I’m always doing that

Some people call a gun a piece.

This is not to be confused with the word peace, which means something else, and hopefully, everyone will put away their pieces (guns) and declare peace.

And, every Sunday, at the church, there’s always an opportunity to say to the people around you ‘peace be with you’.

I wonder if that works very well if the person standing next to you is your enemy?

Under these trees is a remarkable outdoor restaurant

This could be anywhere

Except it’s not.

It’s no more than about 15 km from where we live, in a very idyllic setting.

Since we have been restricted in where we can go for months now, it was only recently we were able to start traveling around our state again.

Of course, since the COVID 19 virus is still with us, we’ve been very reluctant to go anywhere because it seems people just don’t get the social distancing facet of the ongoing requirements to keep everyone safe.

However, we thought we’d go to Sirromet Winery, which has several vineyards, a winery, and several very classy restaurants with some of the best food I’ve had.  For years, we were acquainted with the head chef who always made our dining experiences memorable.  He has since moved on, but he has left an indelible mark on the menu.

This day, because of the restrictions, dining was outside, with the appropriate numbers and social distancing, and it was nevertheless, still a dining experience.I have yet to go on the wine tour, but that is on my to-do list.

This is the main restaurant, the wine cellar, and behind it, the winery.



 

Virtual flying

I’d like to say that I’m currently on a  Cathay Pacific flight to somewhere. but I’m not.

I was going through a lot of my old photographs on devices that have been mothballed by the march of time, this being a Samsung Galaxy Tab and at the time we were inseparable.

It has been to three separate continents and countless countries, and written far more words than there are miles to the moon and back, a rather quaint measure that get’s used a lot.

And of course now I have to and look up just how many miles that is:  238,855.

OK, then it’s more like 10 times that over the years.  And, no, I’m not going to go back over everything I’ve written since Noah launched the ark and find out.

It has now been replaced with the latest Galaxy Tab, and I haven’t yet been seduced to the dark side, and bought and Ipad, even though my other half has one.  In fact, she has the trifecta, an i-pad, an i-phone, and an i-watch.

Once, when we were in Singapore I nearly bought an i-pod, but even in the cheapest electronics store they were still as dear as they were back home.  That was where I finally realized duty-free was just two words and no basis in fact.  These days, I’ve found most things at duty-free stores can be found cheaper in a normal store.

So, my virtual flight is to Hong Kong. 

Unfortunately due to the new Chinese law over Hong Kong, and the fact the Chinese hate Australians, or so we’re told by members of their embassy here, quite intensely, there is no way I would ever go to Hong Kong again.

I’m guessing most of the 26 million potential visitors who live here will feel the same.

Good thing then the plane just turned around to come back home.  Some sort of defect, they say, with the landing gear.

Good thing then I’m located at the rear of the plane.

Does our education define us?

It’s 2am here, and I’m feeling philosophical, instead of being sleepy and going to bed.

It’s probably the problem most writers have when they’re working on a novel, a short story, or a blog post, or something else.

The other day a thought ran through my mind, whether or not my first school was still standing and if so, would it remember me?

Probably not.  I went there in 1958, I think when I was five.  I stayed there till I finished Grade six and then moved onto secondary school.

In those days, we could stay at secondary school till Form four and then, if we were 15 or over, we could leave.  I went to a technical school, i.e. one that taught a trade, rather than going to a High School which was for the more academically minded and who would go on to University.

But in my day, you had to have rich parents to get into a University, and we were decidedly poor.  It was a technical trade for me, and become a builder was to be my lot in life.

I wasn’t very good and sheet metal, the precursor to plumbing, or machine ship practice the forerunner to being a mechanic, or technical drawing, the forerunner to being a draughtsman

I could have just as easily been a farmer or gardener, it too was on the curriculum.

Where is this going?

Oh, yes.  My old primary school.  Yes, it’s still there, and it still looks like the gothic nightmare it used to.  Gothic or not, I guess those years in that school were good, and I don’t seem to have any bad memories, except,. of course, of the teachers, but that’s only natural.

secondary school, that was a nightmare, so different, and much like going to university, with different classes, different teachers, different rooms, and a lot of other kids who were older, larger, meaner, and made the navigation of early teens an annabilus horribilis four times over.

So the question did my education define me?

No.  I was a builder for a while, but my aspirations led me towards office work, the sort where you start at the bottom and languish there till you’re noticed.

Failing that, you work for a relative, then get headhunted, watch that opportunity slip away, and become an IT teacher that leads to computer programming.

But, as they say, always have a backup plan.

Yep!  Writing.  Been doing it since I was fifteen.

Now, those years I was at school have provided me with a diverse collection of people who have become characters in my stories, and I’m still waiting for the know on the door from the process server to tell me one of them finally recognized him or herself and didn’t like my impression of them.

Hasn’t happened yet.

In a word: There

Yes, the dog is over there. It’s a place somewhere other than where you are currently.

Or, you could say, there was a brave man, but he couldn’t help so there was no hope. It doesn’t refer to a place.

Or I’m taking you to the border, but from there you’re on your own.

Confused yet?

Let’s try by adding a similar word, their

It means belonging to a group as in, it was their dog that caused the damage.

Of course, this can be twisted a little, and you could say, everyone has to bring their own pack, meaning at times it could refer to one, or many,

Then just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, there’s they’re.

This is a contraction for they are, so it’s they’re not going to fo as their told.

Wow, it starts getting complicated when you use two or more of those similar words in the same sentence.

Confusing?

That’s why it always pays to have a dictionary handy.

Just in case autocorrect fails, which it seems to quite often for me. I’m not sure why.