It made you very self-conscious. . . But we couldn’t really say anything after a while – I mean after a certain age; I imagine at three I didn’t mind – but at a certain age we couldn’t speak without being aware of how we were saying something, how it was being phrased, as well as what we were saying. So if we made a sort of clumsy repetition, one of them might very well point out, sort of lightly with a smile, but it was a very language saturated household . . .

. . . my father would consider very carefully what I had said and that made me feel very insecure. I don’t know if this is a good example, but I remembered it just the other day. When he was in the nursing home – you know how you want to say the things that you don’t want to have forgotten to say . . . our family was not, as you can imagine, given to spontaneity – I said to him, “You’ve been a very good father,” I just wanted him to know that, and he said, “In what respect?”

Source: Brick Magazine

People think that the written language seen on mobile phone screens is new and alien, but all the popular beliefs about texting are wrong. Its graphic distinctiveness is not a new phenomenon, nor is its use restricted to the young. There is increasing evidence that it helps rather than hinders literacy. And only a very tiny part of it uses a distinctive orthography. A trillion text messages might seem a lot, but when we set these alongside the multi-trillion instances of standard orthography in everyday life, they appear as no more than a few ripples on the surface of the sea of language. Texting has added a new dimension to language use, but its long-term impact is negligible. It is not a disaster.

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Joan Didion’s memoir about trying to come to terms with her husband’s death became ‘the indispensable handbook to bereavement’. Then her 39-year-old daughter also died. As The Year of Magical Thinking arrives in London, David Hare describes the challenge of bringing a writer’s grief to the stage.

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Heather Christie is On Time in The Kenyon Review:

The answer to “Where do the days go?” is that they don’t. It’s just convenient to use a conceptual metaphor to take an abstraction like time and cut it into nouns that have a habit of running away. But all week I have thought “Goodbye Monday,” and “Goodbye Tuesday.” And now I am wondering what Monday is up to these days.
Nothing!
Because time is cut into nouns, it has the privilege of getting to use verbs. It elapses and expires . . .

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
The Queen will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).
Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.
A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.
1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’
Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix’-ise’.
Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).
3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize.
4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent.
Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.
6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
7. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
8. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French Fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth – see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
11. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys.
Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.
12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full Kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don’t try Rugby – the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.
13. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.
15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
God save the Queen.
Only He can.

(The above comes in different forms, one claiming to be from John Cleese. It is usually delivered via an email. We’ll probably never know where it originated.)

She read several love poems from Rapture, and others from The World’s Wife. These she wrapped in fragments from The Laughter of Stafford Girl’s High a long narrative which details the subversive effects of an outbreak of laughter at a girl’s school.

Her fictional Anne Hathaway describes Shakespeare’s touch as,

a verb dancing in the centre of a noun

while Mrs Tiresias, whose husband was turned into a woman as punishment, scoffs about his first period,

One week in bed.
Two doctors in.
Three painkillers four times a day.

And later
a letter
to the powers that be
demanding full-paid menstrual leave twelve weeks per year.

She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the east river.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a really duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

She was as easy as the TV guide crossword.

Although they are different, they are similar, these places. The Fragrant City is watered by the Barada; while this place is penetrated by the river Ouse. Both cities have long and bloody histories. But while I sit in the café window with my chips and ketchup and buttered bun and watch the people hurrying home with their bags of vegetables from the market, I am not reminded of my birthplace. These are not my people, my rivers, my memories, my vegetables. And although in The Fragrant City I am invisible, a statistic, here I have no existence at all.

I am here to collect existence. My teacher spells it out to me in verbs and vowels and nouns and capital letters. I make the strange signs on the paper, the letter A like a tent, the I like a man, the S snaking away at the head and tail of words.

And this existence of language which will ensure I can support a family when I return home, comes to me quickly. After two weeks already when I enter this café the young woman recognizes me. Although I know the words to order my chips and ketchup and buttered bun, I no longer need them.

Before I say a word she says, ‘Chips, ketchup and a buttered bun. Hold the tea till later. Right?’

And I say, ‘Yes, thank you, please, missus,’ and hand over my money and she counts the change back into my hand. She gives me the ketchup in small plastic sachets and when the chips arrive I tear the sachets open with my teeth and spread them like clotted blood. The young woman is amused by my accent, and I by hers. We both smile and have a pleasant meal, so aiding the digestion.

In the market a man has a stall rich with silk and wool for covering furniture or cushions. He has one roll of pure, figured silk, which he calls Damask. When he has a break between customers I explain to him that the word was stolen from my own language, and he listens and nods, pretending interest, but he doesn’t understand.