21 August 2009

Swinging 60s

Greetings,

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about my unfortunate experience with Steak Tartare, and this spurred Eileen Clark (one of our Merry Band) to share a couple of her more memorable dining experiences from the past ...

"We were invited to dinner by a local professional and his domineering wife. It was one of the very few times when we had been able to get a babysitter and get out after our son was born, and I was looking forward to an evening of good food and adult company. The other couple were considerably older than we were and much higher on the social scale ... for the first course of dinner we were confronted by jellied consommé, a bowl of cold lumps of brownish jelly with a slightly savoury taste and a horrid texture. I managed to eat it (just), having been brought up in that generation where you ate whatever was put in front of you and the rest of the dinner wasn’t too bad.

"After dinner we were shown round the house and upon entering one of the bedrooms, suggestions were made that amounted to what is politely called swinging. Somewhat flustered, we declined and made our departure as soon as we could, which meant we got home somewhat earlier than expected. Upon entering the house we found that the babysitter (the teenage daughter of an old friend) was entertaining her boyfriend in our lounge room and they were smoking ‘funny cigarettes’. We dispatched the two of them as quickly as possible and didn’t risk going out again for several years!"

Ah ... the good old days, eh?

As someone whose formative years were spent in the 60s, I feel I should be able to speak knowledgeably about such things, but I must confess that the Love of My Life and I obviously lived a very sheltered existence, because even though we grew up in the sixties, its excesses seem to have passed us by. No swinging set, no secret stashes of illegal substances, no nights spent in gaol ...

And yet they were wonderful years. As teens in the late 60s, we had the whole world at our feet; we could do anything, go anywhere, be whatever we wanted. There were jobs everywhere. (As new teachers, my friends and I used to bemoan the fact that we were contracted to work for the Department of Education for a set period before we could head overseas to work or go into another field.)

Travel was safe, and many of our friends took off on back-packing trips around the world, returning years later with hilarious and hair-raising traveller's tales that made us envious as well as glad we hadn't gone. 

Being a child-bride (ahem), meant we had our very own flat and didn't have to share a house with half a dozen others, so our place tended to be the centre for what we liked to think of as sophisticated soirées -- Cheese and Wine parties by preference, when everyone brought along a bottle or two of Something Interesting and a couple of cheeses. As hosts, our role was to supply platters of crusty bread (to help soak up the wine) and those ubiquitous things-on-sticks that were the defining face of the 60s.

But nary a funny cigarette was to be seen, in fact, very few of us smoked at all.

Falling victim to a cunning ad campaign, I once went out and bought a packet of "cool, clean Consulate," then I settled myself in a trendy coffee shop in the city, struck a pose that was supposed to look like the model in the ad, and lit up.

I puffed (but didn't inhale) and blew smoke in what I hoped was an enigmatic, mysterious woman-of-the-world way, all the time sighing as I looked to the ceiling to emphasise my ennui with the world.

And it really was so-o-o boring! Just sitting there, with a burning lump of tobacco and paper in my mouth, puffing and sighing ... Time dragged by on leaden wings and all I could think of was that I could have bought another pair of pantyhose with what I'd spent on the ciggies.

Not long after this, as part of our final year of teacher training, we were shown a film (no videos or DVDs in those days) about the health effects of smoking. One part of this showed a lung that had been taken from a smoker ... It lay there on the slab -- shrivelled and misshapen, oozing some horrid tar-like substance when the presenter poked it and looking for all the world like a dried-out kipper that had been left festering in the pan for a week. The thought of walking around with something like that inside my chest gave me the horrors, which is why I've never been able to see the appeal of cigarettes.

When our kids were teens themselves, they used to ask us about what we did at their age, and we told them. "But what about all the other stuff?" they'd ask, "Billy Blogg's dad told him how they used to ..." And we'd be privy to long-guarded family secrets about our new friends that would have horrified them had they known we knew!

However much we expatiated on the subject, our kids never believed us when we told them we hadn't tried drugs. "But you were young in the 60s!" they protested, thinking no doubt of future conversations with their peers when they'd have to own up to parents who were not only still married  -- to each other -- but also to parents who lived through the 60s and remembered them!

We feel we've let them down badly.

But isn't expatiated a lovely word?

It means 'to speak or write at length; to move or wander about intellectually, imaginatively, etc., without restraint,' and it comes from the Latin exspatiari meaning 'to wander or digress' from the prefix ex- 'out' and the verb spatiari 'to walk about', originally derived from the noun spatium 'space.'

This week's Little Something Extra has some tips on why you need a good vocabulary.

Three older women were sitting around and bragging about their children. The first one says, "You know my son, he graduated with honours from University, he's now a doctor making $250,000 a year."

The second woman says, "You know my son, he graduated first in his class from University, he's now a lawyer making half a million dollars a year."

The last woman says, "You know my son, Morris, he never did too well is school, he never went to any university but he now makes 1 million dollars a year in the city working as a sports repairman."

The other two women ask, "What's a sports repairman?"

The third woman proudly replies, "Morris fixes boxing matches, football games, tennis matches...." 

This week's quiz:

Here are some beaut words to store away for the next wedding you have to attend ...

It has recently been determined that Julius Caesar did NOT die from stab wounds by Brutus, but rather he was poisoned. At the huge banquet on that fateful Ides of March, Brutus slipped some poisonous hemlock leaves into Julius's salad. (This was the world's first Caesar salad.)

When Julius slumped over into his salad, Brutus feigned concern and asked solicitously, "My dear friend, Julius, just how many hemlock leaves have you eaten?"

Julius gasped in reply:  "Et two, Brutus."

Map of the World

I often trawl this for comments to post on my site ... so if you say something about the newsletter or site, be warned, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! Make your Mark on the World. Then stop by our Map of the World and read the messages. (Just click List) and add your mark.

Have Your Say

If you have a couple of minutes to spare this weekend, feel free to drop by and join the Write101 community and leave your comments. These new comments boxes scattered throughout the site will also be a source for me when I'm looking for comments to post on my site, so if you say something about the newsletter or site, remember, you may end up being read by one of the 2,000+ unique visitors who visit Write101 every day! You'll find the new toys on the Home Page.

Archives

Did you know that every newsletter is archived? So if you've missed anything since 1998 or want to revisit some favourites, you can do so any time!  

Don't forget to bookmark the page when you get there ... or even make it your Home Page. (For Internet Explorer, just click on Tools ... Internet Options ... General ... fill in www.write101.com/archives/index.htm and click OK. For Netscape, select Edit ... Preferences. Then select Navigator from the left menu, click Home Page and enter the URL above next to Location and click OK. For all the flash new browsers, you'll have to do a search on my mate google to find what to do. There's a search box on the archives page!)

Subscribe Here and Be Bribed!

If you've received this little missive from a friend, you can get your very own issue, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every Friday morning by clicking here: mailto:WritingTips-subscribe@yahoogrups.com And I'm even prepared to offer a shameless bribe.

Last week's quiz:

bunion, neuroma, cryptopodia, orthotics, mycetoma, pedorthics, osteomyelitis, clawfoot, hyperdactyly, sinistropedal

1. chronic, slowly progressing bacterial or fungal infection usually of the foot or leg, characterized by nodules that discharge an oily pus - MYCETOMA (Which makes you wonder why anyone would choose to be a podiatrist!)

2. an infection involving a bone - OSTEOMYELITIS

3. swelling of the lower leg and foot, covering all but the sole of the foot - CRYPTOPODIA

4. the tilting of the toe away from the mid-line of the body, usually characterised by a lump or bump that is red, swollen and/or painful on the inside of the foot in and around the big toe joint - BUNION

5. a high-arched foot with the toes hyperextended at the metatarsophalangeal joint and flexed at the distal joints - CLAWFOOT

6. irritated, swollen nerve in the ball of the foot, classically described as a pain in the ball of the foot located between the base of the third and fourth toes - NEUROMA

7. the design, manufacture, fitting, and modification of shoes and related foot appliances as prescribed for the amelioration of painful or disabling conditions of the foot and leg - PEDOTHICS

8. devices that are used to control abnormal foot function - ORTHOTICS

9. using the left foot in preference to the right - SINISTROPEDAL

10. the presence of supernumerary digits on the hand or foot - HYPERDACTYLY

Because I can't stay off the topic of food for too long, this is a little story for you from Steele Rudd's classic Dad and Dave series (for a bit of background on Steele Rudd here and here) - it should be read in a slow Aussie drawl for best effect:

Dave decided to take Mabel to the Snake Gully cafe for lunch. Dave looked at the menu and said, "They've got sheep tongues on the menu, Mabel. I think I'll have that. What about you?" 

Mabel said, "No, Dave, I couldn't eat anything that came out of an animal's mouth." 

"What would you like then, Mabel?" said Dave. 

Mabel said, "I think I'll have an egg."

A Little Something Extra

Why you need a good vocabulary 

Some good books to help with your writing  

Word of the week: Nef (n) Ornamental stand in shape of ship for holding salt or cutlery.

Go grab your nefs and let's party!

Oxymoron of the week: conservative hippy

This week's Latin phrase seems oddly apt, don't you think?

O tempora! O mores!

[O tem-POH-ra! O MOH-rays!]

(Oh, the times! Oh the morals!)