Authors Electric

The Silly Season is upon us. Indeed, some might say it began early this year... but that’s enough about the state of the UK government.  Since the heatwave has filled my mind with thistledown, this will be a post all about trivia. Verbal trivia, that is. Specifically, some of the proverbial metaphors we pepper our speech with every day (see what I did there?).  Recently, when describing a sudden realisation I’d had to a friend, I used the phrase, ‘the scales fell from my eyes.’  I like that image. My friend knew exactly what I meant.  Fish scales. Odd to have them covering your eyes. Photo by Engin Akyurt: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ close-up-of-fish-scales-with-natural-texture-33654489/ It was only, some time later, it occurred to me to wonder… what did I mean? Scales? Eyes? Why would there be scales on my eyes in the first place, and what kind of scales? Fish scales? Piano scales? A weighing machine?  These kitchen scales would give 'heavy-eyed' a whole new ...

Ever since I first heard it, the Flanders and Swann song entitled 'The Gas Man Cometh' has struck a chord with me and I've found myself applying it to all kinds of situations.  For anyone who doesn't yet know it, the lyrics are here:  https://genius.com/Flanders-and-swann-the-gas-man-cometh-lyrics (for some reason the live link doesn't always work but if you are really keen to see the lyrics then you can always copy it into the search bar) The first time I found it relevant was when we had someone from British Telecom round to install a second telephone line. Yes, this was some time ago when we still had landlines. In this case we needed it because my husband had complained to his then employers, who were in fact British Telecom, that I had had to go downstairs to answer the phone in the middle of the night when alone in the house with a small baby only to find that nobody in the family had died after all, but that my husband, who was in fact away from home on a re...