Saturday 16 June 2007


scrapyard, charcoal





HOW would you rather be described:
as unpleasant or as untalented?

Just read some review in the Times on Saturday about some bloke whose mother was 'artistic but untalented' who decides anyway?

UNTALENTED: a very cutting epithet.. just a minute; epithet? lets see: elephant, epigram, entomology (the study of ents) epithet; yes it does mean what I thought it meant, but one carnt be sure till they check.

My love of words stems from my childhood when we couldn't afford toilet paper in our very dark, cold outside toilet (or lavatory if you prefer-they're all euphomisms aren't they?) where spiders live (that is where I also aquired my mild anachraphobia-fear of spiders biting you on the eye!) but we did have this big old dictionary, my father being an educated man insisted that before we tore out and used a page we commited its conmtents to memory first. Hence my amater intrest in filology: the study of or perhaps random picking up of the meaning of words.
I once had an interesting lunchtime with a greek student discussing english words which had greek routes such a sarcophagus from greek for flesh and eat, in that limestone coffins were thought to eat the flesh of the corpses laid therin, fascinating.

Anyway back to the concept of talent whcih I assume comes from Jesus' story about the talents, being sums of money doled out to someone's servants to see what they would do with them. This I presume has been used ... mmm...........Im getting bored with this ..so shall.... self terminate..............................now!






2 comments:

Ian Dyer said...

If you like words, try reading a book called "The Loom of Language", I'll let you know the author later. It's the book I would say that I would take if anyone ever asked me to go on Desert Island discs. There's a thought! What are your ten tunes?

dave said...

thanks
re tunes i'll have to think