The Write Way

22 June 2007

Raff Ticks!

Greetings,

Last Sunday, we finally got back into our normal winter routine of Sunday arvo at the local footy game. The footy in question is Rugby League), which I've been following since I met the Love of My Life when he was a lad of 17, an amateur player in the Western Suburbs Under 21s and an avid fan. It was a case of "if you can't beat 'em ..."

I know little more about the game now than I did then, despite the best intentions in the world; sadly, my mind just doesn't function in a competitive, sporty, win-at-all-costs sort of way. I have, however, learned all the appropriate comments, such as: "You can't tell the players without a program,"  "He's been doing it all day, Ref!" and my personal favourite, "You can't run without ears!"

There was a brief time in the early years of my teaching career when, because I was at a co-ed school with more women teachers than men, I was allocated a junior Rugby League team as my winter sport's commitment. The boys got used to me being there as a token figure only -- it was agreed that I'd be their supervisor, organiser, half-time orange-provider and keeper of watches, wallets, spectacles and small change, and in return they'd never expect me to know any rules.

All worked well until the fateful day when seasonal flu had taken its toll on the team, and they only had enough to fill all the playing positions ... with no-one left to referee the game. "C'mon, Miss," they cried, "you can do it! Here's the whistle." And with that, one boy thrust the whistle into my hand, they all ran onto the field then turned and looked at me for the signal to begin the game.

Girding my loins as best I could while wearing a mini-skirt and high-heels (this was the early 70s), I blew the whistle to start the game and set off at a trot to follow the play as I'd seen the refs do on telly. Do you know how fast kids that age can run?

Managing to keep up with the players was only the start of my woes, for it soon became obvious that I also had to blow the whistle for breaches of the rules. And while it's a simple enough matter to over-rule the ref when you're safe in the crowd (as numerous calls to referees around the country to "Put your glasses on, you one-eyed git!" attest), when actually confronted with the need to follow the antics of 26 players all determined to bend the rules as much as possible to their own advantage, it's a different kettle of fish entirely. 

I think I lasted about 20 minutes before the boys themselves put an end to my misery, with a diplomatic request that perhaps they could play 12-a-side, "Just for this game, Miss," thereby freeing up two of their number to act as referee and scorer.

As a result of these traumatic experiences, my role with Rugby League since has been very much as a spectator, and I have to say I really enjoy our Sundays at the game. Last week was no exception; it was one of those perfect Queensland winter days with bright sun, no wind and just enough of a chill in the air to make us appreciate the tanatalising aromas wafting up from the sausage sizzle. Regular readers will know that, "there is no Aussie event that cannot be improved by a sausage sizzle, whether it's the opening of Parliament, the launch of a new art gallery or a visit to the local hardware shop."  

So there we were, happily wiping the tomato sauce from our fingers and shaking off the surplus fried onions that always seem to accumulate in the folds of your jacket at such times, when our attention was distracted by the dulcet tones of one of the junior players, who'd seemingly been pressed into service by someone's older sister who was fund-raising in the club's Miss Rugby League contest.

As he approached, clutching a Tupperware container, a book and a pen in his chubby hands, he called out to no-one in particular, "Raff ticks! Raff ticks!"

Well may you wonder at this strange cry, but locals were unfazed, and one by one, they raised their hands to beckon over the lad who then had to continue his spiel to each and every one, "Fur price, two ticks to Stay o' Gin; seck price, sind jumpa; thur price, mee tray."

We, too, succumbed to his siren song and bought our "raff ticks," but sadly we didn't win anything ... Not the two tickets to the State of Origin game, nor the signed jumper nor even the meat tray.

The moral to this story, of course, is the importance of pronouncing words correctly if you are to have any hope of spelling them correctly. Can you imagine this little lad trying to write if this is how he thinks the words are meant to be?

There are lots of words that are misspelt (or misspelled, if you're one of our 'Murkin cousins) simply because they're routinely mispronounced, and some of the chief offenders follow:

affidavit (not affadavid)

anemone (not anenome)

Antarctica (not Antartica)

athletic (not atheletic)

familiar (not femilya)

February (not Febuary)

genealogy (not geneology)

jewelry or jewellery (not jewlery)

mischievous (not mischievious)

library (not libery)

moot (not mute)

nuclear (not nucular)

percolate (not perculate)

piano (not pianer)

prescription (not perscription)

relevant (not revelant)

sandwich (not sammitch)

stamina (not stanima) 

triathlon (not triathalon)

utmost (not upmost)

Vietnamese (not Vietmanese)

Listen out for these when in the presence of any ankle-biters of your acquaintance and be ready to administer gentle corrections.   

A well-known footballer (insert the name of your choice here) is celebrating, "Wow! 43 days, 43 days!" he shouts happily. 

His girlfriend asks him why he's celebrating, and he replies, "Well, Honey, I've done this jigsaw in only 43 days, and it says on the box 3 to 6 years!"

This week's quiz:

Match the words with their meanings: minatory, peremptory, ameliorate, inchoate, epicure, froward, exigency, pugnacious, ingenuous, salient

1. naive, young, artless, frank, honest, sincere

2. food lover, a connoisseur of food

3. prominent, protruding, conspicuous, highly relevant

4. not yet fully formed, rudimentary, elementary

5. contentious, quarrelsome, contumacious, given to fighting, belligerent

6. urgent, imperative, unchallengeable, ending debate

7. emergency, an urgent situation

8. improve, make better

9. menacing, threatening

10. intractable, not willing to yield or comply, stubborn 

And here are some comments from football reporters that surely prove something ...

Well, it's Ipswich nil, Liverpool two, and if that's the way the score stays then you've got to fancy Liverpool to win.

The winger has limped off with what looks like a shoulder injury.

There are going to be four or five teams battling for the top six spots.

If it had gone in, it would have been a goal.

Last week's quiz:

Match up these philosophical terms with their meanings:

aesthetics, determinism, antinomy, meme, apodeictic, eudaemonism, dialectic, metaphysics, existentialism, materialism

1. system of ethics which defines and enforces moral obligation by its relation to happiness or personal well-being; approach to ethics that aims at the achievement of a good life; concerned with satisfying the objective conditions of happiness rather than with pursuing the subjective experience of pleasure - EUDAEMONISM

2. the characteristic feature of any proposition that states what is necessary (or impossible), perfectly certain (or inconceivable), or demonstrably true (or false); of a proposition that it's necessarily true or logically certain - APODEICTIC

3. branch of philosophy concerned with providing a comprehensive account of the most general features of reality as a whole; the study of being as such; concerned with the existence and nature of minds, bodies, god, space, time, causality, unity, identity and the world; the philosophical study of being and knowing - METAPHYSICS

4. the branch of philosophy dealing with beauty and taste - AESTHETICS

5. a 20th-century philosophical movement; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves; emphasises the primacy of individual existence over any presumed natural essence for human beings; belief that the fact of existence as a human being entails both unqualified freedom to make of yourself whatever you will and the awesome responsibility of employing that freedom appropriately, without being driven by anxiety toward escaping into the self-deception of any conventional set of rules for behaviour, even though the entire project may turn out to be absurd  - EXISTENTIALISM

6. belief that, since each momentary state of the world entails all of its future states, it must be possible (in principle) to offer a causal explanation for everything that happens. When applied to human behavior, this belief is sometimes supposed to be incompatible with the freedom required for moral responsibility. The most extreme variety is fatalism - DETERMINISM

7. a contradiction between two statements that seem equally reasonable - ANTINOMY

8. self-replicating unit of cultural meaning, as understood by biologist Richard Dawkins. Transmitted socially among individuals of different generations, evolve through processes of mutation and natural selection. (Thus, for example, the jingles sung by children while skipping rope, the conventional standards for fashionable dress, and the notions comprising the "common-sense" view of the world are all passed on through time, gradually modifying without any deliberate guidance)  - MEME

9. belief that only physical things truly exist; claim (or promise) to explain every apparent instance of a mental phenomenon as a feature of some physical object; philosophical theory that matter is the only reality - MATERIALSIM

10. any formal system of reasoning that arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments; a contradiction of ideas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction - DIALECTIC

A Little Something Extra

Here's a t'riffic idea for those of us who sometimes run out of inspiration for things to write about ... write about your local area. No, not travel features ... 

"Local Search IS huge and growing exponentially as millions of consumers throw out their yellow pages and begin using their broadband-enabled cell phones, notebook PC's and other gadgets to surf the web to find solutions to local problems."

Read Christopher Knight's advice on how to tap into a huge market for articles. 

Word of the week: Selcouth (adj) strange; uncommon; rarely known

This useful word comes from two Old English words: seldan (seldom) and cuth (known). You'll recognise another of our words lurking here and that's uncouth, which means 'awkward, clumsy or unmannerly; crude; unrefined; awkward or clumsy; ungraceful; lacking refinement or cultivation or taste.'

And while it's not commonly used, the antonym is a real, dinky-di word, too.

Couth means 'showing or having good manners or sophistication; smooth; good manners; refinement.' And harking back to the origins of the OE root cuth, it also means 'known or acquainted with.'

dictionary.com explains that "the word was reborn 1896, with a new sense of "cultured, refined," as a back-formation from uncouth."

Oxymoron of the week: modest footballer

And this week's Latin phrase is one of those one-size-fits-all affairs:

Nunc est bibendum 

[NOONK EST bee-BAYN-doom]

(Now we must drink.)