‘Pistols at dawn,’ said my husband, flapping a pair of Marigold rubber gloves from the other side of the kitchen.
‘I don’t want to know what you mean by that,’ I replied, hoping not to encourage him.
‘Being challenging,’ he said, ignoring my implied request.
We had been discussing a report in the Daily Telegraph about the impenetrability of the language of the art establishment. Sir Peter Bazalgette had been complaining about this, but the examples given came from a book by Philip Hook called Breakfast at Sotheby’s. In his amusing devil’s dictionary, honest meant ‘inept’, unmediated ‘direct’, challenging ‘obscure’, and difficult one step in obscurity beyond challenging.
Challenging comes in two flavours: good and bad.
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