Monday
My goodness, is it time for the Cambridge Dictionary’s annual release of the new words that have made it into its hallowed listings already! It seems to come round quicker every year. Possibly that should be “more quickly”. Their grammarian splinter group will let me know.
Far more so than birthdays or adventures in HRT, this event is a great measure of how functionally old you are. How much of the world do you, quite literally, still understand? I have heard of, and indeed enjoy though have never personally deployed, “delulu” – a play on “delusional”. “Tradwife”, too – which is the practice of monetising all the most boring bits of motherhood and domesticity on Instagram, under the guise of upholding conservative tradition. I like to think that among tradwives themselves it also carries the meaning of “socking all the proceeds away in a secret bank account and taking off for Costa Rica the minute the last child turns 18”, but I have yet to confirm.
Then things get harder. “Mouse jiggler” is more innocuous than I first feared and just about inferable (software that makes it look like you are still working if you are not in the office but likely to be remotely observed) but “skibidi” defeated me. It’s a YouTuber’s coinage, and seems to mean everything and nothing. Only those born to the skibidi can use it properly. And that is as it should be. The words “bath chair”, “tartan rug” and “Werther’s Originals” remain for the rest of us.
Tuesday
Spare a thought for the poor Prince and Princess of Wales, soon to be up to their eyes in packing tape and cardboard boxes as they prepare to move from Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Great Park estate to Forest Lodge on … the Windsor Great Park estate.
Nothing says “I live a life unimaginably distant from yours” than a) the ability to move house at whim and b) to one that’s essentially in the same garden. Yes, there’s an extra four bedrooms in it for them (otherwise it’d just be another cottage, not a lodge, duh!), but imagine a normal doing the equivalent and going to all the expense and stress to move a few doors up the road. Although take away the stamp duty, the unreliable movers, the crippling solicitor’s fees, the dealing with utility companies and estate agents – oh, and the sale price, which I didn’t so much forget as find myself unable to conceive of living a life without – and the whole thing becomes instantly feasible. Who knew? Who knew?
Wednesday
Another new word is upon us! What a week we’re having! This time it is “otrovert”. I thought at first it might be something to do with non-innocuous mouse-jiggling, but no. It is a term coined by the American psychiatrist Rami Kaminski for people “whose fundamental orientation is defined by the fact that it is rarely the same direction that anyone else is facing”. (He’s written a book about them.) Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s mostly just your common-or-garden introvert in a world that’s largely extrovert and they’re just facing into a book – leave them alone. The remainder are simple contrarians, the most wearisome people in the world. They see a received opinion and immediately set themselves mindlessly up against it.
Thursday
Speaking of Jungian archetypes as we tangentially were, researchers are claiming that almost every activity is more enjoyable in company – even reading. Which is just more blatant propaganda from Big Extrovert bent on destroying the last havens of peace for those who don’t follow their busy, cacophonous lead.
We have to start pushing back at this point. We can attack the new contention on any number of grounds. On the practical: is farting better in company? It’s funnier, sure, at least for the farter – but beyond that? And even for the detonator, the law of diminishing returns sets in pretty quickly. On the philosophical: can masturbation, for example, truly be said to be taking place in company? Does it not become subsumed within exhibitionism? And on the methodological: this study was carried out using only American subjects, citizens of the most extrovert, camera-ready nation on earth. To take them as representative samples of humanity is a very great mistake.
Friday
Common sense and a small understanding of probability theory tells us it is technically possible – but still. No one really thinks they will live to experience it but on the way back from Edinburgh, where I’d been talking about my new book (Bookish – available in all good bookshops and maybe some bad ones too, if there is such a thing), I did. I had a perfect train journey.
No, honestly. I’ve no reason to lie. I thought all my travel luck had been used up when the 11.05 arrived on time. But then I got on and reservation screens were working and my seat had not been taken. The lady next to me was a reader and knitter. We smiled at each other as I sat down, and that was the full extent of our interaction over the next three and a half hours. During which: nobody yelled into a phone; the few children there played quietly together at their tables; the air conditioning worked and kept us at a comfortable instead of sub-arctic temperature. And the buffet was open.
This really happened. I feel I am going to pay for it somehow in the next few days – I am constantly checking the cats for signs of illness and my bank account for fraud – but until then, I shall revere the memory.
