Sunday, March 02, 2008

Once or twice, kite chain, no hyphen

On my way to the newagent, I catch sight of Clare on her way round the Grove, and again on my way back. Has the author of the 30-word blog http://www.oncearoundthepark.blogspot.com/ made one or two circuits? Would she have noticed something that I had not, or vice versa? I hasten to read her post for the day but it has not yet appeared.

In Calverley Park, a young woman in a smart red jacket is flying a long string of small paper kites (about six inches x 9 inches) attached to the fine yellow cord at regular intervals. Each kite has a short green tail. There must be at least 30 kites, which stretch up into the sky and sway in the wind. She doesn't have to move at all to keep the kites aloft. She is on her own. No children or other interested parties are in sight. After a while she begins to haul the kites in, stacking them neatly in one hand and allowing the cord to dangle in tidy loops below. I have always loved kites, but I've never anything like this.

It is not just old age. I have always been a bit dim. I'm more than half way through L'Oeuvre by Emile Zola, and I'm beginning to congratulate myself on how few words I am having to look up in the dictionary, when suddenly I am confronted by amabi and lité one after the other. No clue in the dictionary. I read the passage again. The context suggests that some quality is being described. I note that amabi comes at the end of one line and lité at the beginning of the next line. You will be there before me. My only excuse is that there was no hyphen linking the syllables to make the word amabilité.

2 comments:

tristan said...

i'd always assumed that amabilité was your middle name

Lucy said...

I envy the woman with the kites...