De-noelification has occurred. (And don't bother looking that one up; it's home-made). None of this 'The decorations stay up until twelfth night' business; not chez Knowles. The old year was be-tinselled (another roll-up, I'm afraid). But it is a Knowles tradition that New Year's Day is marked by the removal of all signs of merry-making, accompanied by the New Year's Day Concert from Vienna. The lion's share (lioness's share, come to think of it) of the removal was done by MrsK, but it fell to me to disentangle the two strings of lights after their hasty (and somewhat unscientific, if you ask me) removal from the tree.
<autobiographical-note type ="rant">
It was the work of minutes to separate the two, apart from one loop; so it should have been a simple matter of removing one end of the wire from the plug and passing it through the loop. But I reckoned without the Health and Safety Executive. There was a 'safety plug' (a sealed unit, un-unscrewable), so I had to either cut one wire and then join it together again (how would the HSE like that?) or cut the idiot-proof plug off and replace it with a proper (i.e. serviceable, no really, serviceable) one.I opted for the latter, not without a searing sense of annoyance at having to waste half an hour doing the thing properly, because of being taken for a numpty. Just because a few idiots can't be trusted to wire a plug safely the rest of us have to waste time on workarounds for things that shouldn't need to be worked around. But I digress.
</autobiographical-note>
Monday's job was the dismemberment of the Christmas tree (the stripping of the tree, I suppose, neatly book-ending the process that started with the dressing of the tree). And I was struck again by a question that doesn't occur to the blissfully uncluttered minds of those who know the song only in the English version:
But the Tannenbaum, to give it its due, isn't like that at all:
<tangent type="Aha, not thought of that in a while">
In both German and English, the words for 'leaf' and 'sheet of paper' are the same. Another Germanic language, Norwegian, has the famous periodical (originally a 'daily [news]-sheet', though now it's a tabloid) Dagbladet. Latin too, though I'd guess the Romans didn't have much cause to talk about sheets of paper, pre-Gutenberg. Etymonline makes the English usage a borrowing from Late Latin:</tangent>
Two recent memories
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| Sign salvaged from the ABC Forum, Easling |
- A TV repeat of Zulu on New Year's Eve reminded me of the guilt that prevented me enjoying the latter part of the film when I first saw it, aged 12, at the ABC Forum in Ealing (since its redevelopment in 1975, commemorated chiefly in this sign, shown here):
Egged on by my middle brother (a Bad Influence, RIP), we paid for the 1/9s (that's just under 9p) and moved, via the gents, to the half-crown seats (12½p). I was sure for the rest of the film that we were going to be called out as juvenile delinquents. - Hugh Bonneville, interviewed on a post-Christmas Newscast filler, recalled what to some listeners must have seemed an improbably violent attack made on his sister with a sledgehammer because she had stuck her tongue out at him. Sisters sticking their tongues out can inspire acts of improbable violence in the most peaceful of boys. In my case it was half a brick, rather than a sledgehammer.
She (I'm not sure she was alone, but I'm pretty sure my middle sister was the tongue-protruder) was retreating up a fire escape leading to the habitable part of the house.. The missile fell far short of its target, between two treads (there were no risers), and smashed the window of the semi-basement's bathroom (newly refurbished as a self-contained flat), chipping the newly installed bath.
I remember no repercussions. Daddy (who died the day before my 10 birthday, so he's still 'Daddy') was probably abroad at the time, and my mother (whom saints preserve and they better had) understood how annoying older sisters can be.
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