Day 1,056 (Thursday) 30th April 2020
Day 45 and it wasn’t particularly sunny, can’t wait for the summer when the sun is almost guaranteed every day. Huw borrowed Aussie John’s car this morning to take his computer into Nice to be repaired. He saw Andy and Sean pretending to work in the same flat and he met John in the car park to pick up the keys. He took these rather eerie photos of an empty Nice.
The Old Port
The Promenade des Anglais
And he saw these gorgeous flowers in a park
I was very jealous that he could go – I can’t wait to go to Nice again and Antibes and Eze Village and Saint Jean Cap Ferrat and, and, and….
We saw Dom and Karen at the beginning of our walk today and we talked about having a boules tournament/picnic with them and Kevin and Angie as soon as we can and they happily agreed. It’s so ironic that we have met new people in Villefranche during lockdown; they seem to be really fun people.
I was amazed to see this enormous cactus plant coming out of such a small pot.
We walked along the seafront and got really excited to see the café Dolce Vita is open for takeaways and deliveries. When you put your order in you can have a beer while you wait for it – imagine that – having a beer somewhere other than at home – hooray!
Just for a change we walked home along Rue Obscure
I’m enjoying Bill Bryson’s ‘Mother Tongue’, it’s a little high brow at times but it’s mostly very entertaining
We have a word to describe all the work you find waiting for you when you return to work from vacation, backlog, but none to describe the work you have to do before you go. Why not forelog? And we have a large number of negative words - inept, dishevelled, incorrigible, ruthless, unkempt – for which the positive form is missing. English would be richer if we could say admiringly of a tidy person, ‘she’s so shevelled’ or praise a capable person for being full of ept or an energetic one for having heaps of ert.
In the same chapter Bryson talks about how many words in English can be used for a plethora of uses and the one that surprised me the most was the word fine.
Fine, for instance, has 14 definitions as an adjective, 6 as a noun and 2 as an adverb. In the Oxford English Dictionary it fills 2 full pages and takes 5,000 words of description. We can talk about fine art, fine gold, a fine edge, feeling fine, fine hair, and a court fine and mean quite separate things. The condition of having many meanings is known as polysemy.
Further on in the same chapter…
Sometimes, just to heighten the confusion, the same word ends up with contradictory meanings. This kind of word is called a contronym. Sanction for instance, can either signify permission to do something or a measure forbidding it to be done. Cleave can mean cut in half or stick together. A sanguine person is either hotheaded and bloodthirsty or calm and cheerful. Something that is fast is either stuck firmly or moving quickly. A door that is bolted is secure but a horse that has bolted has taken off. If you wind up a meeting you finish it; if you wind up a watch, you start it. To ravish means to rape, but equally it means to enrapture. Quinquennial describes something that lasts for five years or happens only once in five years. Trying one’s best is a good thing, but trying one’s patience is a bad thing. Occasionally when this happens the dictionary makers give us different spellings to differentiate the two meanings – as with flower and flour, discrete and discreet – but such orthological thoughtfulness is rare.
French unions call for people to demonstrate on their balconies on May Day
French unions have issued a call for the traditional May Day demonstrations to take place - on balconies.
May 1st, the workers' holiday, is usually a day of mass union-organised demonstrations in France.
But with no public gatherings allowed under the strict coronavirus lockdown conditions, unions are looking for different ways to honour the May Day spirit.
A group of seven unions have issued a joint call for 'balcony demonstrations' on May 1st, which is a public holiday in France. "Even if we are confined, let's all demonstrate on May 1st with placards, banners or by invading social networks, and give this day a real collective strength." The unions suggest hanging placards and banners from balconies as well as joining in with social media campaigns.
The theme suggested is the "invisible workers in our society" - the often low-paid key workers such as nurses, street cleaners and supermarket staff who have been shown by the lockdown to be such essential parts of any society.
"It is first and foremost all health workers who have not counted their hours and their dedication," but also employees, "often women, in commerce, food processing, paramedical, social and cleaning services, public sector workers, and more broadly those who work in the service of the population," the unions said, adding that these people were often risking their lives to continue working during the lockdown.
The unions are calling for wage increases and raising the minimum wage.
I really hope to see some of this tomorrow
My favourite joke of the day
There weren’t many videos today but this is one is OK
Comments
Post a Comment