It was cold yesterday, so Daughter 1 dressed up Granddaughter as a Arctic teddy bear ...
... and we went off to the museum.
Grandson knows where he's going now.
The trains! Come on, you two, he urges.
It's such a serious thing: you have to press the buttons...
... and watch...
... the wheels go round. And then press them again and again and again and again.
I wondered the other day, as I wrote that I could "reach the catch fine", whether "fine" in this sentence was a particularly Scottish usage. Probably. I thought about language again today at the supermarket when I passed the frozen aisle which was offering "jackets": potatoes baked in their skins (and frozen - though I can't quite see why anyone would buy these - it's not exactly difficult to bake a potato). This "jackets" expression is not one we'd use here - the potatoes were packaged by an English firm. In fact we realise that we're in England when we get down the motorway to a service station where these delicacies referred to by the staff as "jackets" rather than what we'd say, which is "baked potatoes". Since I'm a vegetarian, a baked potato is often what I'll choose in such an establishment and I'm always amused by being asked, "Do you want cheese on your jacket?"
Daughter 2, in London, was surprised recently to find that English people don't use the phrase "the back of (eg) nine", as in "I'll be there the back of nine". She conducted a minor Twitter survey as to her friends' interpretation of this. As any Scot would know, it means "just after nine o'clock" - aiming for nine but probably arriving a few minutes after.
One word that I don't use myself, but my granny often did, is "forenoon" - for the morning. I wonder why that's died out in even Scottish standard English, when "afternoon" remains? I wonder this too about "sennight" (week), which you find in Shakespeare but I've never heard in modern use, though British people say "fortnight" all the time. I believe Americans don't, though. Do Australians?
And then there's "woobie". Dianne of "A Month of Sundays" http://whatisstarbucking.blogspot.co.uk/ has extremely kindly made a woobie for Granddaughter and it's on its way to me. I had to ask for a translation. (Is it just me?) Meanwhile, Granddaughter is snuggled under, in the top picture here, the afghan (again, not what we'd call it) that Dianne equally kindly sent to Grandson - and she also sent a lovely green and blue cot quilt (not shown).
Ah, the mysteries of language. It's amazing how any of us manages to learn it. But we do!
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