top o th morning to you all. except it isnt morning. oh well, its the thought that counts.

now, ive been thinking for some time on all those little idioms on which our society is built. you know, the ones your grandparents say, and make you blush when you accidentally blurt one out in a public place. yeah, you know the ones i mean.

i was thinking on these peculiar little turns of phrase, and i fell to wondering where these could possibly have come from. dickens, of course, articulates this far better than i do, in a christmas carol:

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the dearest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the similie; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done for.

anyhow, after that little literary interlude, ill get back to my point shall i.

the one that has particularly interested me for a while now is the phrase "you'll catch your death of cold" (usually uttered in fussy tones by a grandmother or similar elderly female relative). its not the cold bit that gets me, but the idea that you could catch your death. if you could catch your death, you could keep it in a jar on your mantlepiece. what a conversation opener! can you imagine? "thats a peculiar ornament marjorie" "oh yes florence, its just my death in a jar" and so on. what a wonderful world in which idioms were for once acted in their true glory!

on a completely different tangent, everybody should see showboat. while it does seem to drag on indefinately, and all the while you have to put up with the ever annoying kathryn grayson, it is a completely fantastic musical. not to mention a watershed in the genre, and the first of oscar and hammerstein to ever enjoy widespread success. some of the musical performances are breathtaking, and even that grayson woman pulls it together enough to not put the wonderful howard keel to shame. anyhow, i have probably said enough on the subject, but everyone still needs to see it.

also need to see arsnic and old lace. and who wouldnt want to watch cary grants greatest ever performance?!

anyhow, i shall stop ranting about movies you are probably too much a prduct of your generations to watch, and go try and do something productive.

love and hugs and strawberries to all

rani