The Write Way

29 June 2007

These Boots Were Made for Walking ...

Greetings,

You're already familiar with the little seaside town of Kiama where the Love of My Life and I lived in the early years of our marriage. I've been thinking about the area quite a lot recently since I've been without a car and have gone back to walking everywhere, as we all used to do before we became enslaved to the automobile. 

Sorry? 

What happened to my car?

Lo-o-ong story ... I'll tell you the Saga of Evil Mechanics when ... IF ... it ever ends.

But back to Kiama ... 

Kiama itself is on the coast, just over 100 km south of Sydney. It's a great spot to live because it has all the convenience of being close to the Big Cities (it's around 30 minutes' drive from Wollongong, one of the larger regional cities in NSW) while still having all the peace and quiet of a small town -- or it used to be small when we lived there.   

One of our friends in those days lived in an even smaller town called Jamberoo, which is about 10 km inland from Kiama. We took turns having have dinner parties at each other's homes (as you did in the 70s), and driving out on winter's nights when it was her and her husband's turn to play hosts, we were always amazed at how cold it was once you got just a short distance away from the coast.

The female half of this couple was a local girl whose family had been in Jamberoo for four generations, and her parents lived in the old family home -- a fabulous two-storey colonial with big verandahs across the front and back. Her dad used to tell us stories about what it was like when he was a lad and his mother would rouse the whole family (of six or seven kids) every Sunday for their walk (yes walk!) into Kiama for church.

He said they thought nothing of walking the 10 km there and back, and as long as they didn't dawdle too much, they'd be home in time for their mother to serve up the Sunday roast at lunchtime. 

I couldn't help but feel for their mother. Just imagine every Sunday having to get a brood of kids up and dressed in their Sunday best, prepare the veggies and roast for lunch, get that all into the oven, then walk 10 km into town, keep the kids quiet in church, round them all up for the walk home, then try to stop them getting their best shoes scuffed as they ran and played 10 km along the dirt roads!

It's the stuff of nightmares, eh?

Or maybe not. It actually sounds pretty idyllic, doesn't it?

All that time spent with your family in one of those wonderful weekly rituals that no-one would ever think of missing ... all that healthy fresh air and exercise ... 

So that's why I'm back to walking everywhere now. It began as a way of looking for the positive in a situation that was rapidly threatening to become an obsession. I thought, no, I'm not going to let this become a way of adding more wealth to our doctor's already fat purse ... I'm not going to stress about it. If the mechanics can't find what's wrong with the car this week, they'll find it next week, and meanwhile, I have to walk if I want to get to the library or the shops or morning coffee with friends.

Thus it is that for the past three and a half months since we put our car into the garage for a regular service and it stopped working (yes, you heard correctly), I can be seen hither and thither around the area, trailing my mum's little green shopper on wheels as I head down to the shops three or four times a week to top up our food supplies (no more huge weekly shop for this little black duck ... I'm into slow shopping as well as slow cooking these days!), jauntily stepping it out as I head to the library with just a couple of books each time instead of a carload and wandering along the waterfront walkway on my way to coffee with the girls instead of circling for a parking spot. 

You can see why I enjoy walking along the Redcliffe waterfront.  This is the route I take every time I walk to the shops, to the library and to coffee-with-friends

While I really want the car back, I'm enjoying walking so much, peradventure I'm going to feel guilty having a second car sitting unused in the driveway. 

Mmmm ... it is an odd sort of word, isn't it? 

Peradventure comes (and I know you won't even blink an eye when you hear this) from the Latin prefix per- (through) and adventurus (future participle of advenire meaning 'to arrive').

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English explains that its use as a noun "is archaic, but ... occurs occasionally in elevated, pretentious, or whimsical use, usually with beyond or occasionally with without, in an idiomatic use with either doubt or chance: Beyond any peradventure of doubt [or chance], he will win the election. Without peradventure of doubt [or chance], our leaders will prevail."

When used, as this week, as an adverb, it means "perhaps or possibly." ('Through will arrive' ... 'sometime in the future' get it?)

So there's another good word to bandy around this weekend ... peradventure.

And a short tale about eating out ...

Waiter: "Tea or coffee, ladies?" 

First customer: "I'll have tea."

Second customer: "Me, too. And be sure the cup is clean!" 

(Waiter exits, returns) Waiter: "Two teas. Who asked for the clean cup?" 

This week's quiz:

Match each word with its antonym:

A city slicker was driving through the country when he spotted a horse standing in a field. He was quite taken with the animal and so pulled over to ask the farmer if it was for sale.

"Afraid not," said the farmer.

"I'll give you a thousand dollars!" said the city bloke.

"I can't sell you that horse. He don't look too good," replied the farmer.

"I know horses and he looks fine. I'll give you two thousand!"

"Well, all right, if you want him so bad."

The next day, the man returned the horse, screaming that he had been tricked, "You sold me a blind horse!"

"Well," said the farmer, "I told you he didn't look too good."

Last week's quiz:

minatory, peremptory, ameliorate, inchoate, epicure, froward, exigency, pugnacious, ingenuous, salient,

A Little Something Extra

This week's LSE will be of great interest to those of you who have written (or are planning to write) articles to submit to directories. It's a study conducted by writer, Yuwanda Black, to find out how effective this whole "article marketing" concept is. Read all about it now.  

Word of the week: Pococurante when used as an adjective, this week's word means 'indifferent, apathetic, nonchalant.' It can also be used as a noun to refer to a careless or indifferent person.

This is another of our words that comes from Latin -- this one is from curare (to care, to cure) which also gives us curate, curator.

The poco part is from an Italian word that means 'little.'

Oxymoron of the week: helpful mechanic

Let's hope none of us have to use this week's Latin phrase ...

Amici, diem perdidi

[ah-MEE-KEE DEE-em payr-DEE-dee]

(Friends, I lost a day)