For The Love of English

You have to admire the nuances of the english language. One can convey a multitude of words through a simple phrase. 'I ate something that disagreed with me'. A simple sentence that means 'I spent the night awake gripping the edges of my toilet while suffering from a bout of explosive diahorrea due to a delayed reaction following the ingestion of a piece of undercooked sausage.' Do not panic dear reader, I am not suffering from such a minor inconvenience at this time, it is merely an example of how 'overshare' can be transformed into the bearable. We all know you spent the night on the loo, we just don't want to really know.

We can sugar coat our communication with words that make the otherwise unpleasant a whole bunch more palatable. 'He is at rest now, he's better off, we can all move on with our lives'='the old geezer copped it last week,it was a messy end with much trauma but he he's out the way and we don't have to go throught the blasted agony of homebased care.' Again an example,I am not demeaning anyones personal pain.

I went to a funeral recently where ,as is often the case, everyone spoke about the deceased in glowing terms. Personally,I wondered if I was attending the right funeral as the person concerned could be a cantankerous old bat with some really nasty habits. Still person after person painted a gorgeous picture of love and serenity while I inwardly groaned at the duplicity. It quite simply was not true. After the funeral I went up to the grieving family, looked them in their reddened, tear soaked eyes and after a moments thought, with the sweetest intention said 'It was a lovely service, a beautiful send off.' Somethings, methinks,are better unsaid.