One of those 'Tagarene' weeks by Hywela Lyn
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I used to have a regular 'Monday spot' on my own blog, entitled 'weird words.' My source of wisdom when it comes to all things wordly is Michael Quinion* who stated about the word 'Tagarene' which I featured some time ago -
"You're unlikely to know this word - variously spelled - unless you come from north-east England, especially the Newcastle area. But it does occasionally pop up in prose that gains a wider audience..."
"...A tagarene shop was a kind of junk shop, sometime specialising in old clothes but often carrying a much wider range of miscellaneous oddments, particularly marine scrap. The tagarene man who ran it did much of his trade with ships..."
Well my whole house, not just my desk has been like a tagarene shop this week. We're being 'converted' to gas central heating and our tiny bungalow has been turned upside down as storage heaters have been ripped out, and shiny new radiators put in, together with a new, sleek boiler, and what seems like several hundred metres of copper piping. We're still waiting for the places where the storage heaters used to be to be 'made good' and painted, before we can put the furniture back in place, and for the shelves to be replaced in the airing cupboard. (At the moment, all my clean clothes are in plastic bags in the bedroom.) None of this is helping the fact that I'm due to fly to America for the first time, in a week, to meet up with a writer friend. So as well as living in a 'tagarene' I'm desperately trying to get myself organised and make sure I don't forget anything.
What has all this to do with writing? I hear you ask. Well, to be honest, nothing much, although it's my excuse for being so late putting up my post this month, (Apologies) but it did occur to me that sometimes our writing can be a bit of a 'tagarene', with ideas whirling around in our minds with no sense or order, until we sit down at our desk and start writing them down, slowly making sense of all those ideas and whipping them into what we hope will be the perfect story, making order out of chaos.
I just hope I'll be able to restore some order to the chaos that is my little home, as well, before I leave for foreign parts!
*World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion 2012. All rights reserved The original post can be found at: http://www.worldwidewords.org/
Hywela Lyn
You can find out more about Lyn and her books on her WEBSITE
She also blogs at her own BLOG, and THE AUTHOR ROAST AND TOAST
Comments
I like the word too - although the word 'swine' keeps popping into my mind at the same time - but with the associations of pigs and sties, maybe Tagarene Swine isn't totally out of place. And probably far nicer than the Gadarene sort!
I too like weird words - and sometimes it seems as if the Blogger captcha is a source of them!
Tagarine Swine? Now thre's an interesting thought. Pigs are such delightful creatures when you get to know them. I'm sure there's a story in there somewhere!
Lee, I can recommend Michael Quinnion's site as a source for unusual words. I think I'll probably resurrect my 'weird words Monday' at some point!