Just thought I’d get a head start on Shoesday! Found these in the local op-shop, never worn, $4! Red, Rosered, Red! That makes 4 pairs of red shoes in the last 2 months or so, a personal record! So why on earth am I wearing my aging green crocs today? I have no idea. Excuse me while I change!
The 7 things challenge reached a bit of a crescendo this weekend! I’ll put in my updates tomorrow – but a large chunk of the weekend was spent unwrapping stuff, looking at it and re-wrapping it and placing in boxes for the white elephant stall. I even managed to part with some books – more next weekend, I hope.
I have difficulty parting with books – even books I don’t like. The 2 exceptions to this were ‘Chung Quo’ which was so sexist and violent that I heaved it into a bin and the first Traci Harding book which I felt was lazy, poorly proofed and badly edited. That got heaved into a bin somewhere in Ireland (so disappointing when you hate your holiday reading). While backpacking through South East Asia in the 1980s I used to take James Clavell books – weighty, but a high swap value – and interesting to read. However, I met 2 favourite books in Singapore and refused to part with them – Mark Helprin’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’ and Raymond Feist’s ‘Magician’ – about 3 months before it reached Australia. I refused to part with them and carted them through Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
However, today’s post is not really about books. It’s really about collective nouns. I am a great collector of collective nouns – I love them. They’re a peculiarly English language thing, and a great drunken party game. You’ll remember some:
A gaggle of geese
A dabble of ducks
A murder of crows
A bumble of bears
An exaltation of larks
An unkindness of ravens
A shrewdness of apes
A sulk of foxes
A pride of lions, and so on.
The Princess's school diary has a whole page of these things – and I just love them. There are hundreds of these, and a favourite game after a few drinks is to invent new ones. (Yes, we are nerdy, Arabella, but someone has to be.)
Some of ours are
A corruption of politicians (sometimes changed to a headline of politicians)
An argument of lawyers
A plunger of plumbers
A shortness of jockeys
A rate of councillors
An investigation of police
A perseverance of farmers, and so on
Invent your own. A fun game for the whole family! Costs nothing!
So what are we? A tinking of knitters? A purl of knitters? Please not a frog of knitters? A whoredom of stashers? A spindle of dyers? A niddy noddy of spinners? A colour of dyers? What do you think?
Thinking of the lucky ducks that went for a road trip to Waratah fibres got me thinking about this. That and the fact that I still haven’t finished the mystery sock!
6 comments:
I made up "an abandonment of shopping trolleys" while working next to a very shallow river near a busy shopping strip.
Well done on the 7 things. Book removal is a difficult thing but once begun brings a catharsis like no other (and it frees up shelf space for other books).
A stash of knitters, or perhaps a ravel?
Oooh, I vote for a stash of knitters too!!
Nice go on the shoe shopping! I have new shoes too, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for those!!
Yep, a stash of knitters. There's no other serious contender.
Ok, maybe a tinking. I like that.
But stash wins.
Definately a stash of knitters! It sprang straight into my mind.
A batt of spinners?
Books are so repcious, I find it very difficult to cull. I tried about 2 years ago, but the pile stayed on the floor beside the bookshelf, then got re-absorbed when we moved!
Hmmm... I know that it's a 'clowder' of cats...but otherwise...
A 'prodigal' of stashers?
A revel of ravellers?
A niddy-noddy of knitters?
A ewe of woolers?
M...I think a stash of knitters is best after all...
Oh - I'm never clever enough at these to come up with my own on the fly.... stash make sense, but I like tinking!
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