Turkish delights and birthday cake

Apart from this ' :-) ' how do you write a grin?

Smiles come in all shapes, sizes and motivations. There's the barely there, I mustn't smile, demur, hinted-at smile. The embarrassed I-have-no-idea-why-I'm-smiling-but-I-am-and-I-can't-stop smile. The forced I-should-be-smiling-because-everyone-else-finds-this-funny-even-if-I-don't smile. The I love you smile between adults which is very different from the I-would-starve/cut-off-my-arm/go-without-chocolate-for-the-rest-o-my-life-if-only-I-could-see-your-smile-every-day-and-keep-you-safe-for-ever smile between a mother and her child. Then there's the I'm happy, just simply, overwhelmingly happy smile sometimes accompanied by a humm-ful tune. Proper smiles involve your eyes. Sad, forced and embarrassed smiles do not.

So what about grins. Are they perhaps just very big smiles?

Is a grin a smile on a grand scale? The Sydney Opera House of smiles. A smile as deep in feeling as the Grand Canyon and as wide as any ocean. It radiates, infects and consumes. And spreads faster than fire, if whipped up by laughter. You could experiment with this in an open crowded space - stand and grin and start to laugh - you might feel like a wally-banana (Littlest's latest expression) but you'll quickly get noticed and make others laugh. And quite probably - as long as you're not arrested - have a jolly time.

It's perhaps obvious, but different things make different people smile. Grinning is no exception. Your emotional state and physical well-being have a role to play too. Recovering from an interview rejection or suffering from a bout of flu are not scenarios usually associated with grinning - unless a friend discloses that the job was not right for you, for lots of reasons, including that after 3 months they would ask you to go to China and you don't speak Chinese and you don't like rice and then the same friend spends the next five minutes making elephant noises with your packet of paper hankies.

I grin fairly frequently. As witnessed by all the lines on my face - I think they're called smile lines. Okay, technically they're age lines but I call them smile lines. Yesterday, I smiled as I shared a Turkish feast from a local Take-Away restaurant. I smiled a slightly inebriated smile as we shared fizz, then wine, then heavenly, orange muscat. I smiled at one of the best cakes I have ever eaten. And scoring my smile lines a little deeper, I grinned, as nine of the loveliest people in my world stood, waved their arms in the air and hollered happy birthday. At me.

Thank you.

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Bollockworts

Ah, spelling! Or more accurately mis-spelling. And in particular, my near mis-spelling of the title above. As AA Milne said with the voice of Pooh, or Piglet, or maybe wOl, 'My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.' He went on to say that 'spelling isn't everything.' But ... Mark Twain said that 'anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word lacks imagination.' But ... hmm ... Unfortunately, I can think of two ways to spell the title of this blog - the homonym for wort would create a major Wobble and would turn an innocent blog about plants - yes; plants ... you have the homonym in your head, don't you? ... to something entirely different; unpleasant skin eruptions in unspeakable places. All entirely ... still stuck in your mind? ... yes, entirely unintended. Yes, un-in-ten-ded. Absolutely. Not a w- a -rt in sight. Bollocks on the other hand. You didn't see that comin...

Walking The Dog

Search This Blog