Aphorisms

 I can’t remember how old I was when I looked up the word aphorism in the dictionary and wondered why it wasn’t a word I knew, despite living with an expert aphorist. 

My dad had a short, pithy, often witty or rhyming phrase ready for every situation. 

Most were designed to breed resilience. A quick ‘suck it up and move on’ reminder. In the face of these linguistic gems it was impossible to give up. More and more often I find myself with my Dad’s voice in my head seconds before the words erupt from my own mouth. 

“It’s not the cough that’ll carry you off. It’s the coffin they’ll carry you off in,” puzzles every child that coughs in my face. 

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” pops out often when I’m talking to colleagues that have had a bad day.  Sometimes, if everything feels hopeless I remind them that working is like being in prison and as they said in Porridge, you have to look for the little wins. And I’ll say, “Little wins, Godber, little wins.”

And it goes on. Mostly, these are phrases I aim at myself. 

“Never complain, never explain,” when I make a mistake, which is so hard when something has gone wrong. When playing the church piano has turned into the nightmare where you are actually sitting naked in front of a whole congregation looking stupid, you want to explain but, “Empty vessels make the most noise.” Then, as I start to spiral and consider setting light to the piano, “Hon i soit qui mal y pense,” and I am filled with shame for my evil thought. 

Sleepless nights, shame and embarrassment follow and I really do want to explain that a piano that suddenly refuses to play notes is a tricky beast but, “ A bad workman blames his tools.” I argue with the voice in my head. I tell it that sometimes the tool is bad which is even harder for a bad workman like me. 

“Don’t say sorry unless you mean it!” The voice says and I want to argue that I am sorry but I know therein lies a madness loop. 

“You’ll eat a bushel full of dirt before you die,” randomly appears to break the sorry cycle and I breathe waiting to start a perfectly fine day. 

Enriched Geraniums

 “But, the world”, I wrote when I started blogging again. The fact that we are still living in ‘interesting times’ should have driven me to the laptop, fingers flying across the keys in horror. This didn’t happen.

A few days before it kicked off my son emerged and said, “There’s going to be a war. They’ve closed airspace.”

The Long Suffering Husband glued himself to the news and I Pollyanna-ed my way through. To Pollyanna is a verb I use because it was how I was described as a child, someone who was eternally optimistic in the face of disaster, like the story book character, who I could be for book day dressing up without the anxiety it causes me. But that’s another story.

“Yeah, it’s fine. The west has bombed Iran before. It’ll be fine,” I reassured and when scared people in my house asked why I thought Trump was doing it, instead of saying who knows why Trump does anything, I said, “He doesn’t want them to enrich geraniums.”

No matter how hard I try to say the correct word, like someone who always says pacifically, when they are talking about a particular not a peaceful thing, I am unable to say the word uranium aloud. It always comes out as weapons grade geranium.

Now Trump is cross with us because we won’t get involved in his self-imposed chaos causing antics. He has said that Kier Starmer is no Churchill and although Starmer hasn’t bothered replying, which is sensible because madmen twist words I do wish he’d replied, “I’d rather jaw jaw than war war!” He could even have told Trump that he likes geraniums and that would have made as much sense.

Hold onto your hats folks. It looks like we are in for a wild ride, especially if they send all those ex-pats back from Dubai, as many of them will vote for our own madman, who has already described the PMs refusal to take us into a war where we look for geraniums of mass destruction as “pathetic.”

I sometimes wonder who has them now. My Nan used to grow them on her windowsill. Huge red blousy flowers and a scent that would knock you off your feet when you entered the room.