RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30982, 11 February 1966, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

THE ENGLISH TONGUE

One of the few pleasures to lighten our dreary life is listening to a woman friend talk. She is, one might say, an animated conversationalist with vigorous ideas on this and that, and she has a delightfully bright personality: but very often, her thoughts are far ahead of her tongue, frequently with quite diverting results. She has absolute command of the maiapropism and the spoonerism. She is a woman of ex-

tremely cheerful disposition, and we have only once heard her complain about anything. That was when she had some domestic chore left to her, and not one of the family bad lifted a tap to help her. But she has no allusions about herself, and her husband has given up correcting her, but merely luxuriates in the sea of similes. She simply doesn’t care a fag about it all. In all other respects, she is a model of domestic virtue, with an extremely well-run household.

One suspects her dressmaking. however, for she is a firm believer in a stitch in nine saving time. The other day she produced one of her more memorable remarks. It was about that D’oyly Carte character, Sherlock Holmes. We said, when order had been restored, that we might like to refer to it in this column. She wondered whether we oughtn’t to use a suedeonym. We said it. wouldn't be necessary. In that case, she stated, she simply didn't give a rip.