Sunday, November 22, 2009

umbrella, dandruff, organised

Posted by PicasaTriangles.
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A new farm produce shop in the High Street is being stocked ready to open next week. In the doorway a man is cutting a plank of wood with a power saw. Pale dust rises in a cloud. A girl moving cartons through the door says: "Hey, you're covering me in dandruff". A notice in the window explains that the staff will be new to the equipment (which includes a juicer behind the bar) and to the products, and asks for the forbearance of customers.
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Another BBC weather forecast phrase to enjoy this morning refers to "organised bands of showers". If I am not mistaken I have in the past heard a forecaster speak of "showers marching across from the West."

2 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

Again the tendency is to suggest there's a subversive at work there, more interested in felicitous prose than in meteorology. But then you look (or listen) a second time and the chosen word or phrase becomes inescapable. It's the sort of thing that might drive a supervisor mad, trying to decide whether elegance somehow undermines the stern purposes of this service.

Unknown said...

I don't object to this sort of language. I suppose the object is to create a vivid image in a context which can be boring. If it does that and at the same time, retains some logical relationship to what it is describing, so much the better.