Words that get on your nerves

A flight attendant friend likes to relate this: on a flight from Johannesburg to London, a colleague of hers was presented with a child by a very haughty South African woman who said Will you change my baby? The steward (as they were then known) said Certainly, Madam … and then brought her a black baby.

He was summoned by his superior who said: You’ve got to laugh. But I have to sack you. Quite right. You still have to laugh at the haughty assumption, even though the steward no longer does.

 

Reminds me that when I was born my mother's first words were (apparently) urgh it's a hairy yellow monkey, can it change it for a nicer one.

 

Ooooh ... In the circumstance and judging from your profile pic(*), I can't tell you how glad I am that you’ve turned out so well and chirpy!

(*) it is such a nice, sunny picture, that!

 

Having reached a point where, as they say, Nothing surprises me … I am now trying for one better, aspiring to a stage where Nothing irritates me …

However:

“Vocal Fry”

Politicians (at all times but) especially when they say We need to make sure … when they haven’t the blindest intention even to consider it …

And then (zenith of meaninglessness) the phrase A little bit … which reached a climax the other day when a tennis commentator, who had just watched a player repeatedly smash his racket against the net post and then hit his knee so hard that it bled, said He is going to have to be a little bit calmer if he is going to win this match!

Prior to this, we had had to endure A little bit faster, A little bit lower, A little bit higher, A little bit slower, A little bit anxious, A little bit more confident …

Why can’t they extend their vocabulary a little bit? As (exorbitantly paid) commentators, they have now substituted a racket for a language. Why treat the latter with less respect than the former?

 

Anything a MP says.

 

That picture was taken in Agra after two weeks traipsing around the hills of North India and arriving back in Dehli at 0600hrs on the sleeper train and deciding to visit the Taj Mahal that day. Summer 2007 it was only trip to India.

 

Agra-aaah … In 1990, we were supposed to be on a direct flight to the capital, to but had to stop for an eternity in Doha. Eventually we arrived exhausted in New Deli and rushed to the station to catch the 11:15 train to Agra. We had about a minute to spare. In those days, hundreds of homeless were “living” at night on and between the platforms. Waiting in that atmosphere was heart-breaking and somewhat frightening. At 00:30, to reassure a very young and impressionable Mrs Lao, I asked a kind attendant when the train to Agra might arrive. Five minutes, he said. At about 01:45, I asked again and he said Five minutes. An hour later the train arrived. I smiled at the attendant and said Five minutes. And he said I told you.

Years later, when my children would ask when a severely delayed supper might be served, and even to this day, I put on my best Indian accent and say Five minutes.

 

When people say to me You haven’t got a mobile phone?!?! I say No, but I have a mobile wife. And Mrs Lao says What he needs is a land mine.

 

We followed you, some twenty or thirty years later. I don’t think much had changed yet in India during those decades. Will I ever again encounter such naturally generous people? Occasionally, we stopped staying in hotels, randomly accepting hospitality in spare rooms, outhouses, shacks, in exchange for treating families to copious consumption of local cuisine drowned in rivers of Kingfisher, which the exchange rate made ludicrously affordable, but seemed lavish to our hosts and, to us, utterly delicious. We exchanged our views on French involvement, Dutch interference, and the English Raj. The only area of difficulty, especially at night, was coping with the rising heat as we slowly descended south along the West coast. Sadly, our time was up when we reached Chennai; we never made it to Tamil Nadu, to my great regret as I would have liked to go to Dharasuram; that won’t happen now because we no longer enjoy such temperatures, preferring to interrupt our discontented winters with more moderate slices between 19 and 25 degrees.

 

You've hit it on the nail. I would really like to have seen it.

 

We're wimps....Goa provided everything we'd hoped for, especially the possibility to meet people from all over the sub-continent without the hassle of endless travelling We're going back for one last time in January No doubt it's changed since our last holiday there in 2004, but it's now or never! We didn't find the heat excessive at that time of year...30ishC / 18C. About the same as the more reasonable temperatures here during summer.
The prospect of tuk-tuk rides, long, involved negociations for a shalwar kamiz or a paréo, the flora and above all the wonderful food....ooooo the anticipation is nearly as good as the realisation