Sunday Salad

I’m showing off now – three posts, and the final one is about salad. Can’t generally stand the stuff, which is for girls, rabbits and Liberals, but now and again I do feel like a salad, particularly as I have been filling up on stodge this week, so it was time for a salad to give my stomach a break.

It wasn’t too bad.I started with rocket, then added slices of pear, a scatter of red peppers, home-grown red and yellow tomatoes, shop-bought coleslaw (I was feeling lazy), a fig, crumbled Stilton and some sweet potato pakora (also bought).

I always feel guilty about shop-bought coleslaw, but do I really want to be elbow deep in sliced cabbage and grated carrot or do I want to pass Β over 85 pence?

I meant to add sliced mushrooms and balsamic vinegar but I forgot.

Looking at the picture, it seems that you can see a lot of plate through the salad, but I assure you, it was filling.

I had to face an unpalatable fact this afternoon, and I don’t mean the salad. I’m just not very good at writing fact-filled posts. I spent several hours researching a post and trying to write it and so far, have come up with six hundred works of seriously soporific pap. It’s fortunate I’m not in full alliteration mode…

Sometimes I get it right, but more often than not I end up droning on with increasing pomposity as I cull facts from Wikipedia.

I’m much better at lightweight pieces about salad, or talking about my plums.

Or making puerile plum puns with potentially perplexing polysemy.

(Apologies if polysemy isn’t quite the right word, but I needed something beginning with p, knew that poly was a promising start and Googled the rest. If I’m wrong I will have to endure the vilification of lexicographers, but I can’t see that being much of a problem).

 

17 thoughts on “Sunday Salad

  1. Pingback: Thoughts on writing | quercuscommunity

  2. tootlepedal

    I read the article on polysemy and I was so exhausted and enraged by it that I had to leave the room in a flood of tears and a bath chair. I used zeugma in a recent post but never realised that it was related to polysemy. This was becuase I have never heard of polysemy. I will move on to metonymy in a future post just to keep my hand in.

    Reply
    1. quercuscommunity

      Until I looked it up I hadn’t heard of it either. Fortunately I reacquainted myself with zeugma while I was there (having last heard of it at school) so I was able to recognise it when I saw it next. :-).

      I’m alarmed by the number of complicated words that exist for things I don’t think twice about. This is particularly true when I read the explanation three times and still can’t understand it.

      Reply
      1. tootlepedal

        There are a lot of people with time hanging heavy on their hands who find these things not just interesting but useful. I am not among their number…..though grammar does haunt me at times.

      2. quercuscommunity

        I’m always concious of the fact I come from that generation where it was not seen as necessary to teach us grammar. We had a couple of lessons from a rebellious English teacher who broke down and confessed that he would feel uncomfortable if he didn’t at least teach us the rudiments of old-fashioned grammar.

      3. tootlepedal

        The trouble with grammar is that it can;t cope with me saying that I’ve went to the shop three times already today, perfectly acceptable to me but a terrible mistake to others. I might not write it being a bit toffee nosed but I can say it without mentally ticking myself off. Now I’ll get my coat and go back whence I came or perhaps to where I came from.

      4. quercuscommunity

        I’m more concerned with your inability to write a shopping list than I am about your grammar.

        I was pulled up about my use of the subjunctive by an editor last year and realised with a shock that I’d completely forgotten about it. I seem to be able to get by without it…

Leave a Reply to quercuscommunityCancel reply