My Sydney trip: Part II (The best bit)

So...on with the rest of my Sydney visit then. No more messing about! Mark Forsyth's show Around the World in 80 Etymologies was an enjoyable etymological jaunt from England to Sydney, with a brief stop in Melbourne to consider the glory that is Batmania. Much to my delight, of course.  

For those who don't know, Melbourne was once briefly known as Batmania, after one of its founding fathers, John Batman. The settlement was eventually named after William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, some poncey English bloke who'd never even visited the place.  

The mention of Batmania was my favourite part of the event. I would share some other snippets with you except that my fatigue and migraine had severely diminished my brain's capacity to retain any information. 

Oh, I just remembered (go, brain!) that when asked to nominate his favourite etymological connection, Mark mentioned that 'shit' and 'science' have a common word ancestor. Don't tell that to the climate change deniers, OK? Don't ask me to explain it either. 

After we'd been around the world in 80 etymologies, I nipped downstairs and nabbed a spot  right at the front of the book signing queue. *fist pump* I had Mark sign The Etymlogicon  "To Jayne from Batmania...". Naturally. 

At around this point Miss Jane (fellow Melburnian and word-nerd blogger at Six Degrees of Sir Thomas Urquhart, who was also in Sydney for the Writers' Festival) tweeted me and invited me to come for a drink with Mark after the book signing. She's a friend of Mark's you see. *gulp* I was going to decline since I was already thrilled to have my book signed and because I had started to entertain the idea of catching an earlier flight home on account of feeling quite rubbish, but in the end, I thought, "Ah, what the hell. You've been to work feeling worse than this dozens of times! Harden up! To the bar!" 

So, off I went to hang out with Jane and her mother, Mark and a few other friends, fans and associates. We whiled away a few pleasant hours sitting in a nearby waterfront bar, sipping on champagne as the sun set (and developing a raging face full of rosacea if you were me. Mental note: No. More. Champagne. Again. Ever.)  

I didn't have much of a chance to chat to Mark, but I didn't mind because I probably would have been rendered completely dull merely from being in his presence -  or my pounding head would have actually exploded from the awesomeness of it all. He was apologetic about not having had a chance to talk to me, which is rather lovely, isn't it?  

I did have a chance to chat with an older Irish gentlemen in our party. As a tall ship sailed past us, he told me he once used to work at sea. I commented that it must have been a hard life, but he said it wasn't and told me that he once saw the captain have a poop overboard. 

I only realised later - as in half an hour ago, by accident when I was looking at the Sydney Writer's Festival site - that he is Dermot Healy. The festival guide introduces him thus:

Described by Roddy Doyle as Ireland's greatest writer, the poet, novelist and playwright Dermot Healy is an unconventional and original storyteller and a master of character.

Oopsie.  I'm a philistine. 

Oh, by the way, Mark has another book in the works. Hurrah! 

I headed back to Circular Quay a little before 6.00 to get a train to the airport. I was just in time to see the kick-off of the Vivid Festival, Sydney's festival of light, music and ideas, which lit up the Opera House and buildings around the Quay. It was very pretty, but I didn't linger. I was desperate to get home to bed. 

I slept long and well that night. 

My Sydney trip: Part I

I've been very slack blogger the past week or so...actually,  a very tired blogger to be precise. But tonight I'm going to push through the fatigue. Lots of gleeful stuff has happened and I want to get it out there. 

First up, my much-anticipated day trip to Sydney to see Mark Forsyth, author of The Etymologicon, at the Sydney Writer's Festival.  I arrived in sunny Sydney at around 11.00am, giving me 3.5 hours to fill before seeing Mark.  I had originally planned an inner city ghost sign hunt, but I was exhausted (partly due to excitement-induced insomnia) and my head was aching quite badly (confounded noggin!) so I just um...wondered around the city for hours instead.

I did find one ghost sign in the city, on George Street, if I recall correctly. Well, a tiny bit of a ghost sign. 

Life?

I also came across the graveyard of a demolished building like the one in the Carlton Gardens in Melbourne where fragments of the Colonial Mutual Life Building now lie. I couldn't find anything on site to say what this Sydney building once was. Anyone?

 Thanks to Luke's googling, I now know these things, 

usually found at the top of columns, are called 'capitals'

An old YWCA building?

I eventually made my way to Walsh Bay, nestled near the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I even knew where I was going since I'd wandered about the area when I was in Sydney in  December. 

There's something about this woman that makes me 

suspect she came up from Melbourne too  

Sorry, but I'm going to leave this here without telling you about the Inky Fool event because it's taken me ages to write this and now my brain is worn out. Next time... 

I'm going to Sydney!

I'm off to Sydney to see the Inky Fool! Just booked my ticket and flights before. I contemplated staying Saturday night as well to see Cheryl Strayed (author of the memoir Wild and writer of the Dear Sugar advice column on The Rumpus), but the return fare for the Sunday was significantly more expensive, and I'm supposed to be saving money for a trip to the UK with Luke in August. 

I'm still pretty excited about it though. I've never flown anywhere just for a day before. I must remember to take my copy of The Etymologicon with me in case I have an opportunity for Mark to sign it.  (Incidentally, Mark doesn't look the way I imagined. I expected an older, fusty man, perhaps with a bit of ear hair, but no.)

Speaking of Cheryl Strayed, when I read Wild on my Christmas holidays, I made a note of a quote from it that resonated with me and reminded me of the George Bernard Shaw quote in the sidebar of Gleeful, but I forgot to mention it. Now seems like the time to do bring it up.
  
Wild recounts the story of Cheryl's physically and emotionally gruelling solo trek of more than 1,000 miles up the west coast of the US four years after the death of her mother and breakdown of her marriage. She was a novice hiker lugging a pack almost as heavy as herself on long distances nearly every day for months, in ill-fitting boots that caused painful blisters and the loss of several toenails. Add to that the risks of encountering big cats and strange men and dealing with extreme weather (including snow)... Anyway, she wrote:

"In the moments among my various agonies, I noticed the beauty that surrounded me, the wonder of things both small and large: the colour of a desert flower that brushed against me on the trail or the grand sweep of the sky as the sun faded over the mountains."

Life wasn't meant to be easy...but it can also be delightful.


Fancy some cow facts?

Someone I follow on Twitter tweeted a link to a story on the Top 10 facts about cows. My favourites: 

• In Moscow circuses cows have been trained to play football. Circus cows! Playing football! 
• A group of 10 or more cows is called a 'flink'. 
• In 1983, a Czechoslovakian was refused Swedish citizenship because of his dislike of cowbells, which showed he hadn't assimilated successfully despite living there for 14 years. The Swedish citizenship forms must be quite a read.  

Ghost sign and word nerd glee

Walking home tonight

Remember the ghost sign seminar I went to last month? The one that I haven't got around to blogging about? Well, I finally sat down yesterday with my notes and googled some of the names that came up at the seminar. 

The first speaker, Sam Roberts from the UK, started his talk by mentioning some of the pioneers of the ghost sign movement (I think I can call it a movement). One is William Stage, an American journalist, author and street photographer who published Ghost Signs: Brick Wall Signs in America in 1989.

Another is Frank H Jump, also American, who started photographing vintage signs in New York City in the late 1990s and maintains the Fading Ad Blog. Yesterday I liked the Fading Ad Facebook page and also followed Frank on Twitter. I mention all of this so I can tell you that he sent a request to follow me back and I'm a little bit chuffed. I'd better start tweeting more about my ghost sign finds.

I'm not going to write much else about the seminar now, but I've included a bunch of links if you want to find out more. I haven't had a good look at them yet myself.

Another gem from Let's Bring Back...The Lost Language Edition: quockerwodger, literally a marionette, but figuratively, a term for someone - a politician - whose strings are being pulled by someone else.

Ooh! I just remembered! The Inky Fool (author of The Etymologicon) is coming to Australia! Yay! But he's heading for Sydney for the Sydney Writer's Festival, not to Melbourne. Boo! I'm contemplating flying up there to see him at his Saturday afternoon gig. Return flights and the ticket would cost about $150... I think I'll sleep on it.

Exciting news, monkeys and donkeys

I'm practically* dancing a gleeful jig around my loungeroom as I type this (I'm a woman; multitasking is what we do). Why, you ask? I just this minute found out via Facebook that Mark Forsyth, the author of The Etymologicon, has a new book coming out on 1 November. I got goosebumps when I read that. Really! 

The book is called The Horologicon: A Day's Jaunt Through The Lost Words of the English Language. Forsyth describes it thusly on his blog, Inky Fool:

A horoscope is a look (scope) at the hour (horo) that you were born. It's related tohorology, which is the study of clocks, and to a horologicon, which is a book of hours, and, much more importantly, the title of my new book which comes out on November the first.

The Horologicon will not, I confess, address all, or even any, or the burning questions of horology. Instead, it is a book of strange and wonderful words that I've found cavorting at the back of the dictionary. However, unlike most books of strange and wonderful words, these are arranged in a useful manner. They are arranged by the hour of the day when you're most likely to need them.

So if, for example, you have ever woken up before dawn and lain abed worrying, The Horologicon tells you in chapter one (6am-7) that you are suffering from what the Old English called uhtceare, or anxiety experienced just before dawn.

Needless to say, I'm counting down the days.

* I left out one of the Cs in 'practically' when I first typed it, and Blogger's spellcheck suggested 'piratically' as the top alternative. That works too. Yarrrrrr! 

Monkeh magic

A couple of months ago Luke brought home an amigurumi toy version of the PG Tips monkey from work. I'd never heard of PG Tips tea or their spokesmonkey, but after seeing this ad on YouTube, I'm a fan (of the ads, not the tea).

The monkey and Johnny Vegas appear in other ads for PG Tips in which Johnny addresses his little sidekick in his English accent simply as "monkeh" . It makes me laugh when Luke  imitates him. 

Me: Say "monkeh"!
Luke: Monkeh
Me: Say "donkeh"! 
Luke: Donkeh
Me: Say "the monkeh is riding a donkeh"!

And so on. 

Speaking of donkeys (not a segue that will get much use), look at this video of an adorable baby donkey called Primrose. She was born prematurely with bowed front legs, so vets put her legs in bright pink plaster casts. So cute. 

Etymologicon lovers unite!

Another Jane who lives in Melbourne found my blog while looking for fellow lovers of The Etymologicon! Honestly, I'm starting to think there should be a fan club. Jane also reminded me that I've forgotten to visit the author's website, Inky Fool. What an oversight. I know what I'll be doing this weekend...

You know what else is good about today? It's Friday, that's what. Only about 15 hours until my creaky body is on that massage table.