Ravishing Calm

Road trips – don't you love them? Why do they always end up feeling like an outake from National Lampoon's European Vacation? Nine hours ... nine long hours in the car with the children yesterday visiting the pilot's parents up on the east coast. Bizarrely after the last post, dear old Jazz the cat disappeared the night before we arrived (he's sixteen and never misses a meal).

Stuck in M25 traffic near London, Plastic Bertrand came on the radio and cheered everyone up - small people pogo-ing up and down in their booster seats, bouncing the car like a lowrider. The song is about a cat who drinks whisky (maybe that's where Jazz is, propping up the bar in The Beagle). The six year old thought that was a brilliant name. 'Why couldn't you give me a proper name?' she sighed. Like Plastic Bertrand? 'No,' she tutted impatiently. 'Like my cousins.' She brandished one of the named water bottles that her grandmother had given her for the journey. 'I can never buy anything like this!' Which is a fair point for a six year old - I explained we chose her name because some of the best females artists, explorers and designers had the same name - and her godmother's namesake relation had a polo elephant, which I thought indicated a certain character to it. 'I don't want a polo elephant!' she cried. 'I want to buy stickers from Woolworths with my name on!!' She folded her arms. Cogs turned. 'Actually, can I have an elephant ..?'

Strange to think that the name you give your children will be with them for life, unless they change it. They will learn to write it, and read it thousands of time. Maybe you’re the same but I really love everything about writing (we’ve covered notebooks, stationery, but what about the letters themselves?) Does your handwriting feel like 'you'? What font do you type in? I know some manuscript submission sites advise Courier but I just don’t feel comfortable with it. Fonts, different types have personalities just like handwriting and people. Sometimes I like Century Gothic – more often than not it’s good old Times Roman.

Then there are the words themselves. I wondered what the most popular words in English are (and wonders of the internet) - here are a few to amuse you:

Top Ten Favorite Words (Not in the Merriam Webster Dictionary)

1. ginormous (adj): bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous
2. confuzzled (adj): confused and puzzled at the same time
3. woot (interj): an exclamation of joy or excitement
4. chillax (v): chill out/relax, hang out with friends
5. cognitive displaysia (n): the feeling you have before you even leave the house that you are going to forget something and not remember it until you're on the highway
6. gription (n): the purchase gained by friction: "My car needs new tires because the old ones have lost their gription."
7. phonecrastinate (v): to put off answering the phone until caller ID displays the incoming name and number
8. slickery (adj): having a surface that is wet and icy
9. snirt (n): snow that is dirty, often seen by the side of roads and parking lots that have been plowed
10. lingweenie (n): a person incapable of producing neologisms

I just have to find a way to use woot and chillax ... The spellcheck has just gone crazy.

The 2004 survey listed these as the Top Ten Favorite Words:

• defenestration
• serendipity
• onomatopoeia
• discombobulate
• plethora
• callipygian
• juxtapose
• persnickety
• kerfuffle
• flibbertigibbet

I don't know about you - (we are writers after all), but when was the last time you used callipygian in everyday parlance? Interestingly the British Council quizzed non-native speakers of English and their favourites are more instantly appealing:

1. Mother
2. Passion
3. Smile
4. Love
5. Eternity
6. Fantastic
7. Destiny
8. Freedom
9. Liberty
10. Tranquility

TODAY'S PROMPT: Rather like Proust's questionnaire for an artist that we talked about before, your top ten favourites will probably change on a daily basis. Why not take a few minutes and see which grab you today. I just came up with:

1 love
2 home
3 loll
4 frolic
5 palimpsest
6 boondoggling
7 sublime
8 ravishing
9 calm
10 eternity

I did actually use palimpsest in a sentence in the first book, and my editor put a big fat line through the whole thing. Whiff of purple around it? Sure - but I've loved it ever since reading an article in something like the Burlington or Apollo: 'Rome as Palimpsest'. Had no idea what it meant, and have loved it ever since finding out. I'll get it in a book one day ... Why not take your top ten favourites today and see if you can use them, or work a piece of writing around them - look forward to your suggestions.