Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 19 April 2003

A Lexicographer writes

issue 19 April 2003

‘What do you mean, “gapering”?’ asked my husband during a pause from shouting at the television. ‘Is it like capering?’

He wasn’t following, because he had been busy excoriating a television reporter for invoking global warming on the local news. (Local news means uninteresting things that have happened near you. It is even worse in London, since a lot of real news happens there, so the criterion is to save the chaff for the local bulletin. I only have it on while waiting for the weather forecast.)

Before picking up my husband’s dropped stitch, I’d like to apologise to Dr Christopher Heneghan, the anaesthetist barrister, for spelling his name wrong. Secondly I’d like to show off a card from Sir John Keegan, which is now pasted in my autograph album. ‘Fire storms cannot be deliberately created,’ he says (Mind your language, 29 March).

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