To all my forumates I wish a very happy Christmas, and a prosperous New Year. Thanks to you all for the laughs, the information and the fun.
I really hope that 2009 proves to be a great year for us all. If it doesn't, we can at least come here to the forum and have a good moan.
Special thanks to Alan for making all these friendships possible. Goodonyermate!

I was forcibly reminded of this yesterday, when my great-niece arrived to stay with us. We hadn't seen her for 5 years. Back then, she was a shy 14 year-old, with long, silky blonde hair and a clear, beautiful complexion. Imagine the my shock when she arrived yesterday.....I'm informed that she is an "emo" (look it up!). My first thought was "Goth". Dearly Beloved thought "Punk rocker/bikie". Whatever the label, she now sports jet black locks, tattoos, masses of makeup, and strange black clothing. After the initial double take, we discovered that she is still the same gentle, clever, witty and loveable girl that she was 5 years ago. It was particularly fascinating to watch this apparition playing happily and unselfconsciously with Holly and Simon. I really MUST remember not to judge by appearances!

I must admit that I was gobsmacked by the common word I missed yesterday. Scrod ? SCROD ?? A young cod? Gimme a break !!

My dear hags, haglets and assorted devils - it is here ! The month we have waited for has finally arrived. In honour of the occasion I offer you a small taste of what is to come......

I am undoubtedly showing my ignorance, but until 2 minutes ago, I had never come across this word. I'm familiar with lots of examples of it, though!

"A paraprosdokian (from Greek "παρα-", meaning "beyond" and "προσδοκία", meaning "expectation") is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists."   (Wikipedia)

Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
Generally speaking, women are.
The car stopped on a dime, which unfortunately was in a pedestrian's pocket.

SAG  You can be the Big Bad Wolf, Farmor, and I'll be the little pig.

RAG  OK.  Little pig, Little Pig, let me come in !

SAG  Yes, sure...come in !

RAG !!!!!

I thought this article (from the Daily Mail, rather surprisingly) might interest and amuse.

"We have heard little of late from the AAAA (Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe).
Not that this excellent organisation (Life President: K. Waterhouse) has shut up shop.
Far from it. But ever since Lynne Truss published her brainstorming bestseller, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, attacking erring apostrophes wherever she encountered them, the AAAA has been content to rest on its laurels,or laurel’s, as lapsed members are inclined to put it.
Instead, we have become more of a social outfit, hanging around the clubhouse scoffing banana’s, orange’s and apple’s confiscated in dawn raids on greengrocer’s stall’s, and playing draught’s purloined from a backsliding game’s shop.
But in this perpetual war of the words, you cannot lower your guard for two minutes.
Out of the etymological undergrowth appears the figure of Professor John Wells, demanding widespread reform in the way we choose to spell our words, and in the apostrophes with which we pepper them.
To tackle spelling first. Prof. Wells’s case is that we should write the way we speak — phonetically.
But which ‘we’? Cockneys? Scots? Etonians? Yobs? Yuppies?
By way of example, the professor gives us there, they’re and their — all of which he contends should be spelled the same.
I see. So ‘They’re over there with their children’ should read: ‘There over there with there children.’ Go figure.
But all this is outside the remit of the AAAA. Our field is the misuse of the apostrophe — and it is here where our interfering academic barges back in.
Prof. Wells wants us to abolish the apostrophe, no less.
This we did not bargain for.
At the AAAA, we were so preoccupied with keeping the apostrophe out of the banana’s that we were not prepared for this second front, an invading army hell-bent on exterminating the apostrophe altogether.
Well, we shall fight them on the beache’s, we shall fight in the field’s and in the street’s; we shall never surrender.
Prof. Wells sees the day when it’s, meaning it is or it has, and its, meaning belonging to it, are indistinguishable.
So pick the bones out of this: ‘Its a shame, its hurt its paw.’
At an emergency meeting of the AAAA last night, a hot-headed member proposed changing the association’s name in order to accommodate its opposition to apostrophe abolition.
Pointing out that in that case, the AAAA would be obliged to call itself the AAAAAA, the Life President said this would be unfair to other organisations such as the Automobile Association and Alcoholics Anonymous, which were entitled to their own share of the first letter of the alphabet.
In conclusion, the Life President reminded the membership that the AAAA was not hostile to change for the sake of sticking stubbornly to its old ways.
He would cite the example of Tennyson who, in 1854, wrote: ‘Their’s not to reason why’ — with an apostrophe that would nowadays be regarded as a misprint.
But Tennyson was a poet and not a greengrocer.
The apostrophe was finally dropped from ‘their’s’ because it became unnecessary, cumbersome and unsightly to the modern reader."

I was slightly taken aback to find that "elven" was rejected. I thought it was an acceptable alternative to "elfin". Is it really only used in fake mythology ?