Dictionaries, telephone directories and rail timetables

When I've had a really stressful day I will often turn to the dictionary for comfort.  Now, I know it's a bit unusual to find a dictionary comforting but when you think about it you can never read anything that upsets you.  They are just words and meanings and if you find a word you don't like you can just chose not to use it.  This love started quite early.  I can clearly remember looking up the word 'virgin' when I was in the first year of  junior school.  I had been very upset as I been called a virgin by a group of kids in my class and when I told my mum she laughed and said that being a virgin wasn't a bad thing.  She refused to explain why, though and that's when the dictionary became my friend. I think the majority of my early sex education was courtesy of a dictionary.  My favourite bedtime reading at the age of 8 was a book called, "Professor Branstawm's Dictionary".  It was filled with such gems as Catastophe = Cat  wins a prize (cat has trophy).

At the end of the day today I sat in the staffroom browsing my dictionary on my phone and I came across the word 'Shmumbling', which means singing, or humming along to a song that you don't really know the words to.  Such a good word to describe what so many children in my classes are masters at.  There was some surprise from a colleague that I'd been reading a dictionary and I confessed to also enjoying a telephone directory.  He suggested that I'd be reading rail timetables next.  I'm not sure I'd ever go quite that far!

My Dad was a telephone engineer and I think that is partly the reason I like telephone directories.  He used to take us with him when he went on 'emergencies' and we could sit on the operator's swivel chair and look at the directories and ring the speaking clock.  On the way home he'd stop at the pub and we'd sit in the car with a bottle of coke and a packet of crisps.  I love names too.  I had an unusual surname and  22 cousins and so everyone in the phone book with my surname was a relative. I found that intriguing.  You can't beat a funny name either.  My dad used to work with a man called Don Kibbles and my sister and I loved ringing Dad at work to hear this man answer the phone with his name! (Say it quickly!)

There is a word for when you hear something slightly wrong.  I found it a little while ago when browsing the dictionary.  It's Mondegreen, from mishearing the line of a song that should have been "and laid him on the green" as "and Lady Mondegreen"  This last week has been full of Mondegreens.  At the adult choir we are singing Super Trooper by Abba and when I did it with a choir a few years ago they used to sing Pooper Scooper.  I'm sure they did it on purpose but it's somehow stuck with me.  I'm taking a choir to sing at the Royal Albert Hall in November and today I was teaching Land of Hope and Glory.  I had to chuckle when most of the choir sang, "how can we scold thee?"  With the four year olds we were doing Nursery Rhymes and I wasn't surprised that the dog no longer has the measles - it seems to be the weasles now! And my absolute favourite was when teaching Jean Petit Qui Danser the children changed the words to "I'm a cheeky dancer"

With only 73 sleeps until Christmas, I can't wait for Olive the Other Reindeer, Get Dressed You Married Gentleman, O Come let us Ignore him, Jeff's Nut's Roasting on an Open Fire, Round John Virgin and He's making a list of Chicken and Rice.