I went to Fishguard this afternoon. It was showery and windy but I passed a crab apple tree, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, making the small fruits shine like enamel.
John Constable, the 19th century artist, writing of a day in September, called it 'silvery, windy and delicious'.
Often, autumn appears to be about over-ripe fruit and fallen plums infested by bees, wasps and various insects, but Constable transforms the feeling of decay into an image of crispness.
'Silvery, windy and delicious' brings the taste of fresh spring water, crisp slices of cool cucumber, grass rustling in the breeze. Torpor is replaced by an invigorating buoyancy
Speech can make the day sparkle and how sad it is that cliches are often used as form of short hand, to save the speaker from using original thought.
'Happy in my skin' is meant to convey that one is, if not smug, at least fairly contented. (I believe this idiom is originally a French invention). What is wrong with saying 'I am happy with my life'. A cliche delivers the speaker from the need to probe too deeply into how she is really feeling.
Someone confided they were going to explain to an acquaintance where she was going wrong. 'Not that I want to take the moral high ground' the speaker claimed.
'On the contrary', I wanted to say, 'you are merely disguising your moral superiority as a good intention and this makes you a hypocrite'.
In a newspaper letter, a young person (who we can perhaps excuse on the grounds of youth but not self- centered smugness), said she had done some volunteering and 'for her sins' had been offered a job. There! She elevated her volunteering by calling it sinful when she knew it was praise-worthy, but she was being ever so coy (and cloying).
So this is a plea for plain speaking. Not only will it exercise our brains but enrich the language, too.
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