Here we are back in Delph. It may be raining today but at least the snowdrops are there in the garden to cheer things up. We arrived in Manchester in the sunshine yesterday. Blue sky and brightness. Very nice. We even managed to catch one of the few buses at does a direct run from Manchester to Delph. Perhaps it was a mistake as it seemed to take forever to reach its destination. Perhaps it was just rush hour. And the driver was grumpy. This was a limited-stop bus, which seemed to mean that the driver could choose where he wanted to stop. On one occasion he warned the passenger who rang the bell that his next stop was at such and such a distance down the road. And someone wanted the stop before ours, the stop where she said she always got off, but he sailed on to the next stop, disregarding her polite protestation. Granted that stop was only just around the corner but even so his manner was far from courteous.
Travel is a funny thing. Phil and I followed exactly the same itinerary for our return journey from Spain. We just did it on different day. I travelled on Thursday and Phil on Monday. My journey went like clockwork: the plane departed exactly on time and even arrived a little early at London Gatwick, I made my way, albeit lengthily, to the railway station, caught a train within five minutes of getting there and made good connections to tube trains for the rest of the journey. Phil's plane was late arriving at Oporto and, naturally, was late leaving. It made up time during the journey but never really caught up with itself. Consequently, he did not catch the early train into London. And then there had been some kind of incident which caused signal failures all over the London network, his train was held up for ten minutes outside its final station, all the tube trains were disrupted, delayed and disappointingly full. All in all, a nightmare journey that took a good two hours longer than mine had. What a difference the day makes!
We travelled separately because Phil was playing chess on Saturday while I was booked in to babysit the youngest grandchild. So I have spent the last few days watching said youngest grandchild working hard at learning to walk and talk. The walking has come on fine, a few steps here and there. Next time I see her she will no doubt be running everywhere and running everyone else ragged. The talking developed into extended babble with some new noises. Her proud parents are convinced that she has a number of "real" words, among which is "owl". However, this seems to be less the specific name for a type of bird and more a general term to use when she wants to draw attention to something. Still, progress is being made in the fascinating field of language acquisition.
In other areas, it would seem that words are disappearing. I was reading an article by someone called Robert MacFarlane, a nature writer who has been collecting words for landscapes and natural phenomena - from aquabob to zawn, whatever they are. Anyway, some time ago he came across a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary and had discovered that a whole range of words connected with nature had been culled, deemed no longer relevant to modern childhood. The deletions included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow. How will they m anage without these words? The words taking their places in the new edition included attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail. Children no longer need to know what a blackberry (lower case b) is because there is a greater need to be aware that a Blackberry (upper case B) exists and know how to use one.
How very sad! Surely technology is supposed to enrich our world, not reduce it, enhance our vocabulary not impoverish it. Or am I just old-fashioned in my outlook?
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