11 December 2009

Phraseology

Exactly six months ago today, Watoosa at The Conscience Pudding asked for the catch phrases which have become part of our lives.

I had trouble thinking of them on demand but they surface in day to day life, and each time one of them does so I briefly think of going back and posting it as a comment ... but it seems a bit daft to do so after all this time ... I don't want to appear as a virtual stalker, after all ... so I put the thought aside.

This morning, as pre-dawn darkness lifts to reveal the white-out of freezing fog, one of those phrases has surfaced. It's from Kate Atkinson's Emotionally weird, or more accurately from one of the several fragmentary and nascent stories that bubble up through Kate Atkinson's Emotionally weird – a novel in which every character is writing a novel. (I highly recommend it as possibly the most hilariously laugh out loud funny books I have ever read.)

But I digress... That phrase, which has surfaced in the early morning fog and has transplanted permanently from novel to the private codebook of my partner and I, is from a fantasy novel series entitled (by its imagined author character) The chronicles of Edrakonia:

And the murk covered the land, and the dragons did flee.

OK; perhaps you have to have been there...


Addendum:

For some unknown reason, a comment left on the 12th by Ray Girvan vanished into the BitVortex. On the 13th, 24 hours late (is that a clue?), it rematerialised in its proper place. Google moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform...

Ray's contribution, for no obvious reason, reminds me of one which lingers from my childhood. Mr Wizard tells Tudor (or Tooter, Toodor, Tutor) Turtle "Always, always, I tell you, Tudor: be what you is, and not what you is not!"


  • Kate Atkinson, Emotionally Weird. London, 2000, Black Swan. 055299734X

11 comments:

watoosa said...

I need to read Emotionally Weird. It sounds hilarious.

Dr. C said...

No, no, no. You reached your apogee in:

"Oooh… I’m exceedingly dubious about that one, Grommit."

Felix said...

Ummm ... apogee ... furthest point from the centre ... are we sure we don't mean, perhaps, perigee?? [grin]

Dr. C said...

No, no, no. "When you shoot the moon" its where you go. But of course, you return to your perigee, the Josephian Campbell mythic quest, sort of like a perigen falcon (or is it pedigree falcon?)

Ray Girvan said...

I rather like "Adapt, Braithwaite, adapt", which comes from a cartoon Clare remembers (Braithwaite is a heron).

Felix said...

Dr C: Gromit suggests that we might perhaps shift metaphors slightly and use "zenith" (unless, of course, you mean "nadir"!)

Dr. C said...

Ralph, Ralph, Ralph!!

Julie Heyward said...

"Crabs are dandris."


Says it all.

Ray Girvan said...

On reflection, I have another: the whatever, whenever Clare and I have a disagreement about origin of an idea. It comes from the film of Dune:

Piter: As you instructed me, I have enlightened your nephews concerning my plan ...
Baron: My plan!
Piter: The plan ...

I'm not in the least implying Clare is the Baron Harkonnen, but I do rather identify with Piter, the "twisted Mentat" who doesn't get enough credit for his ideas.

Felix said...

[grin]

Dr. C said...

Which is from Tooter Turtle who was a contemporary of Yogi Bear who was based on Yogi Berra who said so many good things he should have won the Nobel Prize for literature. (please note WikiQuote in use)