Another mixed bag of oddments for you today. Let’s start with some words I was forbidden from using yesterday:
Stooge.
Acerbic.
Claustrophobic.
Why, you ask, was I banned? Because I was putting together a chapter set in 1893, and because I am developing a sixth sense about these things. When I started on my first Victorian Mystery book, it was set in 1888, and I intended it to be in a kind of parallel universe, which is why I called Whitechapel ‘Greychurch’ and so on, and why I had characters using words like ‘Okay.’ Well, I soon discovered I wasn’t writing a standalone book, ‘Deviant Desire’, I was writing an ongoing series, and I’d better do more research than the books about Jack the Ripper I’d read. While doing so, I realised that ‘Okay’ didn’t come into popular English usage until around the 1950s, certainly not in print. By this time, I was on book four, I think, so I went back over all books in the series and took out/replaced words I shouldn’t have been using because the characters wouldn’t know them, among them were: acidic, teenager, adolescent, and homosexual. These days, I’ll be merrily writing along when I trip over a word, such as I did yesterday with ‘claustrophobia’ and I think, ‘I’d better check that,’ so I do, and there you go. Not allowed.
All this was after I’d been for a walk around the village for a mile which I did not long after sunup because it was or felt cooler than of late. That’s when today’s images were taken.
Sometimes, it’s hard to write about a snow-filled night in the alleys of Whitechapel in 1893 when it’s 35 degrees outside, and you’re living in the lap of relative luxury. But the sight of other people’s misfortunes helps with perspective. I’ve been noticing more and more refugees/immigrants over the past few months; they are sat in lines, some handcuffed, I’ve been told, in the Schengen area by the clock tower and there, they wait for the Dodecanese catamaran to take them on to wherever. I’m sure the problem wasn’t as bad this time last year, and it’s been growing more pressing in recent months. It seems it’s even reached the point of the people traffickers bringing them over in broad daylight, but dressed as tourists. I was also told that we’d lost our Frontex boats, and that, I imagine plays a big part in opening up the seas for these unscrupulous people shifters. It’s this immigration that’s sending Europe to the far right, and before long, countries will only be interested in helping themselves, and not their neighbours. One of the short stories in my short book, 1892 takes that theme, and it’s a very worrying one.
Still, that aside (because the problem is way beyond me to sort out, I still can’t even vote – I mean, I could have done in the recent UK election had my papers not arrived a week after the event), let’s pretend it’s not happening, that you know who won’t soon be back in office and caring only for the white folk of America and all that, and put our minds to having a good old jolly Thursday. This image might smooth the savage whatever:
If you were wondering, by the way, here’s what I discovered:
Stooge. 1920s
Acerbic. 1950s
Claustrophobic. 1940
(Approximate dates – and first appeared in print. They were probably in spoken use a little while before.)
