Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)’s Comments (group member since Sep 20, 2013)

Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all)’s comments from the Net Work Book Club group.

Anna wrote: "Being a loveable Womble, Orinoco, you live underground, don't you? With friends and relations? Sensibly safe. Although, come to think of it, aren't most murders committed by someone the victim know..."

Thank you my dear. ;) That's my day made...

mrbooks wrote: "I don't know, that would be annoying to me "be Safe" what am I going to do be dangerous. We don't set out to do anything dangerous, OK I don't set out to do anything dangerous so why tell me to be..."

Because the personwho says it is aware that going outside can be dangerous enough, in some areas. I think of people hit by stray bullets in drive-bys that have nothing to do with them, hit-and-run drivers, stand and deliver crimes, etc.

The person who says it (usually) really cares about my safety.

Not only that but here in Spain nurses tend to use "we-speak" even when off duty. I guess it becomes a habit. One I knew would call me and say, "Are we too busy to talk?" I dunno about her, but I often was...

Oh yes.
Like "How are we today?" said by nurses.
I usually reply, "I don't know how you are. I'm fine (or not, as the case may be."

"Easy open"--biggest lie in the packaging industry. Or indeed the world.

B.L. wrote: "I'm finding the discussion revolving around the series interesting. Mine is a series, but each book (I hope) can stand alone and does not repeat everything from previous books.

I know sometimes y..."

Or in the case of Number Two of the Yellow Rose mysteries (A Wedding to Die For)...I picked it up and read the first chapter...the authoress gave a recap of the first volume (Pick Your Poison) which effectively ruined it for anyone who hadn't read it! Told all about who, what, why and how of Vol 1. Silly--or did she think that book had vanished without a trace?

Series is one thing, but when it degenerates into formula fiction (same bones, different details) it's noticeable.

My mother (b. 1924) used "up for grabs" to mean "who knows how it will turn out."

I was amused to read in Nella Last's Peace: The Post-War Diaries Of Housewife, 49 (I think, or maybe the War one) Nella's criticism of one of her sisters-in-law; as her MIL aged and became less responsible, she would give her daughter ration coupons, money, clothing etc and then wonder where it all went. Nella says of the selfish sister-in-law who took whatever was going, "X always was a grab."

So getting back to the original reason for this thread, which is about words or phrases that annoy us...i guess the reason some of them are annoying is misuse...like when people say "on the floor" instead of "on the ground." If you're outside it's the ground. I suppose it could be said that we have become so urbanized that many don't know the difference, but it does sound odd to hear a policeman on the street tell someone to "get down on the floor!"

Another reason we come to dislike certain phrases is certainly overkill--when a phrase becomes almost a verbal tic. I'm guilty of it myself, apparently my overkill word in class is "Exactly!" Some of my students know I'm going to say it before I do, and say it with me. So we all do it.

One of the phrases that is being ridden to death in some areas of the US (don't know if it's reached the UK) is "like no other." Everything is "like no other." I guess it's better than the 90s, when everything was "awesome"...

Just finished A Carrion Death which was OK but as other reviewers have said, about 150 pages too long. Kind of Wilbur Smith meets Alexander McCall Smith. Too many characters, too many changes of place and time and POV. And what was the deal with beginning every chapter with a Shakespeare quote? While Kubu loves opera, no one even mentions Onkel Willy.

Yet another novel series. What ever happened to the stand-alone book?

Hello all. After a bad nights sleep, yesterday was...interesting. Lost one of my amethyst earrings...rats, it was a present...could be in the house but I doubt it very much. Went to buy some gift wrap for a present, bought what I thought was a very wide tube of shiny paper. Thought it was done up in plastic. Tried to remove the plastic and it turned out to be one of those party-popper things that's full of shiny confetti. Wasted 2 Euros on a cardboard tube full of confetti--and still don't have any giftwrap! Aaargh. And had class till 9.30 PM. Fortunately all my folks are pleasant enough, by the end of the night I was just off the gibber. (I don't suppose they noticed...LOL)

I'm coming up 32 years married on the 20th. Married at 20, he was 37. Never looked back or even considered "stopping". Yeah we've had our rough patches but we weathered them because we got married to be together, not to serve ourselves individually.

Kipling's been dead for a long time. It's an edition that includes the parts not in the standard 1929 edition. I have to say, having read most of the missing bits, that I do understand why they were cut for the 1929 version; they're not all that gripping except for the first story of how Stalky became called so.

Some of the footnotes are helpful; the front matter (intro, preface and etc) needed editing for glaring punctuation errors, some of which found their way into the text!

Nuit blanche here. Again. I've read so much I don' wanna read no more.
Sigh.
And I only had tea at breakfast and a cup of mate tea at about 10 AM, so it's not caffiene overkill.
I just can't sleep no more.

It's not really chapters, in the sense of a unified narrative. Each chapter is an anecdote, a story within the story. The first chapter was not in the old edition, for a start, which explains how Stalky got his name.

And currently reading The Complete Stalky and Co. which I ordered from Aunty Az...I've read Stalky and Co. for years; what was my surprise to discover that there are 4 chapters missing from it!

There's a whole website about it called "Damn You Autocorrect". Some of them are pretty funny.

Emma wrote: "Morning everyone :) I'm off to a Halloween party dressed as a witch tonight, although some people would probably say that's not very halloweeny for me! :)"


Your tagline could be: "You call me a witch like that's a bad thing!" LOL

Morning all.

BTW I don't know what's in the air here but you can hear people all over the courtyard from inside their flats sneezing their heads off. Glad to know it's not just me.

Afternoon all, got some good sleep till a student rang at 9,30 AM (yeah, shoulda been up by then, so no matter) to tell me she has to stop the class. Apparently her life has turned into a soap opera--2 serious ops on elderly parents/in laws, plus her brother left his wife in charge of their 3 kids, youngest just turned a year, for a much younger girl. Nice. And poor old Asun gets to try to take up the slack for all and sundry. She said, "But remember, you can call me whenever you want." Translation: please do! I will. She's nice, and it's her way of saying, "I don't want to lose contact."

Golly my life looks better these days. Even though, after a good night's sleep, I'm still kinda dozy. And yeah, I've lost a few hours of class but I really did have too many and I was feeling overstretched. So it all works out in the end.