Immeasurably More

English pronunciation is not exact. How many of us have been caught out by pilates? One of the words I've learned to pronounce since coming to England is pasty. Either PASTEy: resembling paste in color or PAH-stee: a kind of meat and potato turnover. During our weekend trip to Bath, TIRMa and I were discussing these pronunciations and related spellings. TIRMa insisted that "pastie" is an incorrect spelling which led to analysis of the correct "y" to "ie" conversion for plurals (eg. "pasties"). And I agreed with her. And then she said "But the Americans do it wrong with 'happiness'." "What?" I said, confused. "Don't you spell it with a 'y', like in 'The Pursuit of Happyness'?" Me, appalled, "No! That's the whole point. Will Smith has a go at the nursery school woman because it's spelled wrong!" TIRMa, nonchalant, "Oh. We just think it's another examp...

I went to dinner with American friends last night, one of whom ordered a pint of tea. I know what you're thinking. Tea comes in pots not pints. Unless it's Traditional English Ale . I tried it myself, just for the pleasure of ordering "a half of tea".

Salsify is a perfect word for the game Balderdash.* My definition would be something like this: Salsify: verb. pronounced "saul-si-fI". Often used in Mexican cookbooks as in, "Start by salsifying the tomato, onion and chilies." You would be very wrong to vote for this definition, though. A saul-si-fee is a root vegetable that looks like a skinny parsnip. (This is someone else's idea of a good description. A picture is worth a thousand parsnips: salsify image .) I had the pleasure of trying salsify gratin at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club this past week. If I hadn't known that it wasn't potato, I would have thought it was potato. But supposedly it tastes like oysters. I'm going to pretend that I was distracted by the music. ~~LeAn *If you've never played Balderdash, contestants submit definitions for unusual words and then choose what they believe to be the correct definition from among the submissions. You get a point for submitting or choo...

England, like many other places around the world, has been experiencing unusually heavy snowfall this winter. Which means there's a lot of work for the gritters, those invaluable machines which distribute grit onto icy surfaces. Note: I'm still not sure of the exact useage here. Can a person be a gritter? Can you grow up to be a gritter driver? If you work really hard, could you become a Greater Gritter?

This morning over breakfast I read a section of the paper dedicated to an overview of the last decade. They referred repeatedly to the Noughties , and I thought, "who are these people?" I googled it. Noughties as in nought as in zero as in 00,01,02,etc. Somehow, I can not picture myself on Dec. 31 popping the cork on a bottle of champagne and cheering "I survived the noughties !" Everyone will just think I have rambunctious and undisciplined toddlers at home. What's the decade going by in the states?