While gardening at this time of year I frequently hear the two-tone peeping of a great tit. I usually look but cannot see it even though the leaves are not yet out. Then today I spot the bird and manage to snap it among the willow buds.It took me a long time to recognise a high five, the greeting or gesture of triumph, common originally on the streets of The USA, where one person raises an open hand and another raises his or hers in response to make contact with a clap of palms in mid air. It has been going for years, even Britain. It is a sort of joyous handshake substitute but in my view much better. People of my generation don't do it. Pity. I have long wanted to find someone of my age or thereabouts who understands the procedure. Perhaps I should place an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph.
February 29. It is leap year when women are suppose to propose to men. Nowadays I suppose the more like termly would be proposition. But they do that anyway regardless of the date by all accounts. Today I learn that the French word for leap year is anneé bissextile, while today's date would be described as journeé bissextile. I thought that sex might come into it somewhere.
2 comments:
You are very funny today, Plutarch. A virtual high five to you - I've never done that either.
Once a high five involved genuine gracefulness, young athletes combining their hand-slaps with a huge leap off the ground. There is no reason why more leaden-footed individuals should be denied this expression but it has to be said that greater social democracy has removed much of the spectacle. I suppose the same thing happened a thousand years before (or whenever) when hand-shaking was no longer confined to those who had been trained to do it properly and the common herd began their shuffling and embarrassments. Leaving the hand-shakers-by-birth eagerly anticipating the birth of DT several centuries hence.
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