R U?

[callmemadam]

I am taking a well earned break from toiling in the garden . Not pleasant, plant-type toils but more the outdoor housework sort. I am wishing I were one of those characters in a novel who has a gardener or failing that, the kind of friend who says, 'You shouldn't be doing that. I'll send Higgs round.'


Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh are nattering so much in their letters about Noblesse Oblige that I thought I should read it again. Very silly. Waugh called it The Book of Shame and Mitford wrote, 'I didn't know they were going to say edited by, nor did I edit it, or even see it in proof...Rather naughty I think.'


If you think no one cares any more, just check out these book titles:
Class, Jilly Cooper 1979
The Sloane Ranger's Handbook 1982
Alan Titchmarsh’s Avant Gardening 1994
Yew & Non Yew, James Bartholomew 1996


We all have our little things. I don't like 'toilet' but that's a lost battle. What really bugs me these days is people I've never met calling me by my Christian name. This applies especially to businesses like Marks & Spencer and Ocado, which send cheery emails saying 'Hello - ' as if the message came from your best chum and not a robot.
What is your pet hate?

Comments

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

My pet hates are the same as yours (I flinch if somebody says toilet), but with one extra, being the word everybody seems to use for what in our family are known variously as plops, turds or monsters.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

!
When I was a child it was 'big' or 'little'.

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

Same in our family. In fact I had to translate for Mother, this week. Little do her nurses know ...

[hartleyhare.livejournal.com]

This is funny - I don't bat an eyelid at the word you hate, but really dislike the word 'turd' (which, when I was a child, was viewed as being much ruder than the alternative, and certainly not something children should say!) How odd.

Lots of my pet hates are basically mispronunciations - 'pacifically' for 'specifically' ia a bit of a bugbear.

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

We were, rather oddly, encouraged to use turd (Anglo Saxon) or crap, or bog, or anything that sounded rude because the alternative would be too common! I had a strange upbringing. I am still unravelling it ...

[land-girl.livejournal.com]

I've been worrying away in a corner about how rude I must have sounded here.

Poor Mum had a real fear of sounding common which went back to her days at boarding school; the other girls were destined to be debutantes, but her parents were fairly poor (and their relatives certainly were). I think she had to be very careful not to betray her working class roots, hence the horror of certain words, and the careless use of others which would seem shocking to most people ... it all seems quite silly today. Certainly I don't know why I worry : )

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I've seen 'slither' used where 'sliver' was meant twice in a week, so that's my pet hate of the moment,

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I saw 'interned' used where the writer meant 'interred'. Made me quite cross for a while.

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

Principle/principal. Gets on my nerves, that. Oh, and people mispronouncing/misspelling my name. Call me 'John Brearley' and die.

(Mind you, since Claire never changed her maiden name, I've answered to 'Mr. Mallett' before now).

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I'd be tempted to call you Nigel :-)