new shoes and old words.

saturday was new shoes day. the shoes are my wife's, but the shoe buying processing was definitely for the two of us. mrs hope has recently been in hospital, and as a result has had a sore tummy. i was on hand (luckily enough!) to help out with the trying on of various possible purchases, and able to offer great advice on what looked best. i even did the thing that sales assistants used to do when i was a wee lad buying school shoes, and pinched around the toes and measured the width of the shoe to make sure they fitted properly without pinching (the reason why the last pair of new shoes were rejected and a new set of new shoes was required).

to give you an idea of how seriously mrs hope takes the purchase of new shoes, i think i can just about get away with revealing she does in fact dream about them. by way of background, i should explain that my wife esteems the art communication so highly, and indeed is so proficient in it, that she is able to maintain a conversation whilst asleep. and so it was that at 1am this morning, she asked me where her new shoes were. i replied, with slightly less coherence but as much dignity as i could muster, that they were where she had left them (pretty good reasoning on my part i think, considering i hadn't the faintest idea of where they might be). she seemed satisfied with my answer, as she ought to have been and fell silent for a while (after all, i was using one of her own favourite phrases on her, and even i have never arrived at a suitable reply despite repeated exposure to it). sometime later, as we practised sharing the bedclothes once again, i was minded to ask what prompted her question in the first place. she sighed, and said as long as they weren't being sold to someone else it should be okay, but somehow i felt she feared the worst. needless to say, she was very glad to see them again this morning.

sunday was a day for gardening, specifically planting our first crop of sweetcorn and some sunflowers. whilst getting grubby, and uprooting various unwanted plants, i was able to think about my favourite gardening words, and here are my current top three:

1) Tilth

Main Entry: tilth
Pronunciation: 'tilth
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, from tilian to till
1 : cultivated land : TILLAGE
2 : the state of aggregation of a soil especially in relation to its suitability for crop growth

2) worm

Main Entry: 1 worm
Pronunciation: 'w&rm
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English wyrm serpent, worm; akin to Old High German wurm serpent, worm, Latin vermis worm
1 a : EARTHWORM; broadly : an annelid worm b : any of numerous relatively small elongated usually naked and soft-bodied animals: as (1) : an insect larva; especially : one that is a destructive grub, caterpillar, or maggot (2) : SHIPWORM (3) : BLINDWORM
2 a : a human being who is an object of contempt, loathing, or pity : WRETCH b : something that torments or devours from within
3 archaic : SNAKE, SERPENT
4 : HELMINTHIASIS -- usually used in plural
5 : something (as a mechanical device) spiral or vermiculate in form or appearance: as a : the thread of a screw b : a short revolving screw whose threads gear with the teeth of a worm wheel or a rack c : a spiral condensing tube used in distilling d : ARCHIMEDES' screw; also : a conveyor working on the principle of such a screw
6 : a usually small self-contained computer program that invades computers on a network and usually performs a malicious action
- worm·like /-"lIk/ adjective

3) spade

Main Entry: 1 spade
Pronunciation: 'spAd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English spadu; akin to Greek spathE blade of a sword or oar
1 : a digging implement adapted for being pushed into the ground with the foot
2 : a spade-shaped instrument
- spade·ful /-"ful/ noun
- call a spade a spade 1 : to call a thing by its right name however coarse 2 : to speak frankly

all anglo-saxon words - what a great language for mucking about in the dirt with! i think they sound best if you put on a slight scottish accent as well...