Here comes another year…That’s 2015…or maybe you like to call it two thousand and fifteen. We called every year of the previous century 19-88 or 19-67 …or maybe 19-99, but suddenly when we hit the mighty 21st century, it was two thousand and one or two thousand and two and what have you….Well if it was good enough for the twentieth century , I think it’s good enough for the twenty-first and it’s good enough for me, so it’ll be the year 2015 for me and not two thousand and fifteen. Did you see how that happened during the last fourteen years? The media started shoving newspeak down our throats. Did you see how there was a subtle change in the language? Well I’m not having it.
This year we’ve had some bloody awful words seeping into the plaintalk. There’s been “uber” this and “uber” that. Things aren’t just big anymore .Now they are supposed to be even bigger than big. They are now “uber”.The other one I don’t like that they tried to foist on us was “weather bomb”. Now, I’ve been knocking about for some sixty two years , quite contentedly listening to weather men prattling on like modern day soothsayers, picking through the entrails and hoking at the dead bones…and usually getting their forecasts all wrong. Now they’ve come up with this new one . So who came up with “weather bomb”? It just shifted into parlance a few weeks ago when they started whining about a bit of wind that was blowing in .Sounds like Stormy Weather to me.Nothing new there .I had to repair my fence after it passed over .That’s all .I hope that’s the end of “weatherbomb”.
Hard on the heels of “Weatherbomb” we had hurtling in …”redacted”.What ? …you say .Yes that’s right “redacted”. When were you last out having a pint when the barman slipped that one into the conversation? Go on then search through your raddled memory banks for that one. ….or maybe when you were picking up a case of wine or some porridge in Sainsburys, the girl or fellow driving the till slipped it in when you were fumbling in your wallet for your Nectar points card. It means to edit or revise something when getting it ready for publication to further propel the writer’s particular viewpoint.. In the context of governments ,It’s another word for censorship, really , but it’s only to be used by proper grown-ups who don’t want the average poor illiterate bonzo to know what they are actually talking about. Redacted ….yes that’s when they scribble out bits of important documents with a black felt-tip marker , that us poor wee lambs mightn’t be fit to read or believe. Those are the same documents that governments hide away for a hundred years in case the present generation jumps up in revolution at the affront. You know ..like that one that Prince Charles isn’t really Prince Harry’s father because the lovely Lady Di had a fling with someone else .They don’t want anyone doing any DNA tests during the 21st century.Your great, great grandchildren might hear about it when you are long gone and they’ll not remember what all the fuss was about anyway.
The other buzzword of the year is “Tinder”..some of us of a certain elderly age may not have heard this one but it’s a dating “app” also used by a younger generation as a verb “to tinder” each other .That is , to hook up with a compliant “other” for a sexual relationship { to put it with a modicum of delicacy} …That one will probably run and run…..
As for the other aforementioned scattering , something tells me that someone’s been watching too many episodes of “House of Cards” or “Homeland” in the past year..I wonder what the New Year will bring.
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