Random Notes

 Lately, for obvious reasons, I've been having more telephone conversations than is healthy with estate agents, solicitors and the like. This is irksome enough in itself, but what makes it worse is that every single call from one such begins with an apparently serious inquiry into whether I am all right/well. I dismiss these as fast as I can, rather than regaling them with my latest symptoms, but the caller at the other end always sound faintly disappointed, as if I've failed to keep up my end of the conversation. At the conclusion of the call, when we have got through whatever tedious business needed to be got through, I am invariably urged to have a 'lovely' day/afternoon/weekend, but at least this is easier to deal with than the 'Are you well/ all right?' The English used to have the perfect greeting – 'How do you do', which was emphatically not a question, and to which the answer was another 'How do you do', and then down to business. 

While we're on the subject of this strange modern world – the other day, a sunny one, I was startled to see the Rector of our parish striding through the village clad in a black clerical vest with clerical collar and, heaven help us all, a matching pair of black shorts. Are these now standard clerical issue? If so, the world has surely gone to the dogs. I remember a previous Rector, from not so many years ago, who knew how to dress the part (he was very 'High'), swanning around the village in his long, flowing cassock, wearing or carrying his biretta. I believe he even had buckled shoes. He would certainly not have been seen dead wearing a clerical vest with shorts. 

And finally – a new word: 'spuddling'. This verb, long obsolete but surely due for revival, means to work with every sign of busyness but feebly and ineffectively. I've seen a good deal of spuddling in my time (and done some too) and I'm sure there is still plenty of it going on. (The root meaning is to dig up stubble and weeds after a harvest, hence to shallowly dig or stir up in an unsystematic manner.)