8 September 1
What well-known phrase do we take from this little piece of history, and can you use it?
This exercise is based on NL Clay’s Advanced English Exercises (1939).
Read the following snippet from history. To which well-known saying has this tradition given rise? How might you use the phrase today?
In times past, it was customary that, after a successful hunt for deer, the venison would be divided among the huntsmen. The gentlemen would take the choice cuts, and these would be served to them at their high table upon the dais. Those of inferior rank were led to lower tables, where they were served with a pie containing the leftover entrails or umbles (a word derived from Middle French nombles).
The phrase is eat humble pie. It is a pun on ‘the umbles’ (entrails) and ‘humble’. Whoever ‘eats humble pie’ has been demoted to a lower position than the one he aspired to.
Louisa M. Alcott: Polly had a spice of girlish malice, and rather liked to see domineering Tom eat humble-pie, just enough to do him good, you know.
9 August 31
Make as many words as you can using the letters of one nine-letter word. Can you beat our score?
I have added a new Polyword to the collection.
Make as many words as you can using only the nine letters you are given below. Your words should all be four letters or more in length, and they should all contain the letter highlighted in the centre of the grid. You may not use the same letter twice. There is one nine-letter word to find.
10 August 30
Make each group of words into a lively scene.
This is adapted from an idea in Think and Speak (1929). It is an exercise not just in composition or description but also in visualisation. Choose a phrase below and expand it into a lively scene of at least one sentence. Including people or animals is a good way to impart interest and movement.
1 Van in street.
2 Bird feeder.
3 Kettle.
Try to make sure your scene helps the reader answer six questions: What? Who? Where? When (e.g. in the day, or in history)? How? Why? But remember: Show, don’t tell!
See Rudyard Kipling’s poem Six Honest Serving-Men.
11 August 30
Up-and-coming artist Benjamin Haydon did not expect much from his private viewing of the Elgin Marbles.
The Elgin Marbles are selected fragments of the Parthenon in Athens, brought to England in 1803-1812 by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin. At that time, Greece was still under the Ottoman Empire, based in Constantinople, and the ancient monument had recently suffered catastrophic damage in Turkey’s war with Venice. Neglected stones lay tumbled all around.
If a Scottish lord wanted pieces of it the Porte (shorthand for the Ottoman Empire’s government) was carelessly happy to oblige him with permits. The sensibilities of the Greeks were not of much concern.
Lord Elgin’s collection was sold to the Crown in 1816, but prior to that a favoured few managed to get invitations to a private viewing. Benjamin Haydon was one of the lucky ones, though when he visited Park Lane one day in 1808 he was not expecting quite the life-changing experience that it turned out to be.
12 August 29
Reconstruct the other side of a one-sided phone call.
One of Clay’s primary goals in writing Think and Speak (1929) was to encourage children to develop their imaginations. With that in mind, he invited one of his class of twelve-year-olds to compose dialogue for a telephone call. The chosen pupil would then read the dialogue out, but give only one side of it. The rest of the class would attempt to reconstruct the complete conversation from the clues given by words and tone of voice.
Topics could be anything from the sensational (a kidnap ransom call) to the everyday (‘How did the game go?’, ‘Are you free tonight?’ etc.).
As usual, Clay did not provide any examples, so here is mine.
A: —
B: Hello, I’m glad it’s you. John Smith here. I need a table tonight. Some very important clients are down from London and I promised them the best meal in town!
A: —
B: Four. And it needs to be early, because they are leaving on the 19.56.
A: —
B: What! Nothing at all?
A: —
B: What is special about today?
A: —
B: Oh! Er, listen. Have you a table for two? Any time — so long as it’s before midnight!
A: —
B: I won’t forget this. Must go, I’ve got an urgent call to make!
A: —
B: Who? Oh them. They can eat on the train.
13 August 28
A visitor to Newcastle docks one May in 1742 would have seen a gaping crowd and a clergyman singing psalms.
I recently added this post, As I Came Through Sandgate.
In May 1742, the Revd John Wesley, a Church of England clergyman, toured Yorkshire and the North East spreading the gospel.
His travels took him to Birstall, near Leeds, and then up the east coast to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His first enquiry was about the most suitable place for him to preach, and as usual he wanted to know which part of the town was the most utterly wretched. The reply came back ‘Sandgate’, and to Sandgate he went.
Wesley recorded what happened there in his diary, and his account of it has been paraphrased for us by John Telford, one of the Victorian era’s best-known historians of the Methodist movement.
The title I have given to this post is a nod to the Northumberland folksong The Keel Row.