Reading etc.

A certain amount of mockery has made me aware that the following terms appear to have fallen out of use:

Tradesmen: Not in common use since the 1950s, I am informed. I do not find this credible.

Pr̩cis Рmeaning summary: I have discovered that any Irish person over 45 knows exactly what this means and younger people think I am describing a press release in my own weird argot.

Maiden Aunt: Not since the early 1900s, I am told. Again, I do not find this credible but yet, the levels of mockery makes me think that perhaps it may have fallen out of favour before most people I know were born.

Updated to add: I am informed by herself that précis is spelt thus with an acute accent, we have checked Chambers dictionary and found she is correct. I have amended the text to reflect this. Do you think we pedants are born or made?

I’ve given up on Twitter for a bit. I found that I was spending a lot of time looking at it and I have many other things to read.

In our house we get the following in print:

• The Irish Times (most days, sometimes two copies due to an annoying inability to co-ordinate)
• The Economist (weekly, bloody Hell)
• The Dublin Inquirer (weekly)
• Le Canard Enchaîné (weekly, notiony)
• The Phoenix (fortnightly)
• The London Review of Books (fortnightly, aspirationally – my friend D says she is waiting anxiously for delivery, the prospect of delivery makes me anxious)

I also have an email subscription to the Browser which I really love but which arrives daily. The horror.

Are we reading all this material? Are we even close to reading it all? We are not. I cannot be spending hours on Twitter looking at Brexit, cycling, art and sarky Irish people when I have a mountain of print to get through. Not to mention the hours of podcasting awaiting my attention in the phone.

And I do like to read a book as well.

I also quite fancy the idea of my media being a bit less social.

In case you were wondering.

Admire the swish new interface of this blog, if you will.

This man has redone it for me so that it looks new and beautiful. I can recommend his services.

I trust my ongoing problems with Twitter links, elongated pictures and RSS feeds are now resolved. If not, let me know and I will talk further to my helpful tech support.

The theme of this year’s National Gallery of Ireland calendar which I have hanging in my office appears to be “animals – alive and dead”. So you have Landseer King Charles Spaniels gazing adoringly at you one month and dead hares hanging by the hind legs drawn by some Dutch artist the next. I’m not sure that this is an entirely successful approach.

For the first time since November 2006, I forgot that November was national blog posting month. We’ve had a lot on. Maybe I’ll try to keep it going from here on out so it will be almost NaBloPoMo.

I haven’t got a lot to offer this evening. I was listening to a podcast (words which make my entire family roll their eyes) and they were talking about fairies and Irish. Síofra is a very popular Irish girls name for the cohort about 10 years younger than me and below. Sí is the Irish for fairy and I knew it was fairy related in some way but hadn’t really given it a lot of thought. “Do you know what it means?” the presenter asked, “It means changeling.” I felt the hairs rising on the back of my neck. A belated happy Hallowe’en to you too.

Hang on to your hats out there for more startling insights all the way to the end of the month.