Skip to main content

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.






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Curlews, summer skies and walking in circles.

Summer skies over the Yorkshire Dales and my mind is set to rest mode. But that rest is not totally restful; there is a niggle ... a memory, a hint of childhood, something that unsettles slightly - a light brush stroke of discomfort; a gossamer breath of discombobulation and a 'Woah! Wait a moment!' moment of 'that's-not-right!' - we're about as far from the sea as it is possible to be in middle Britain and yet, I can hear the distinctive Peep! Peep! of oystercatchers and the piercing cry of curlew. Here -  in the blue skies of the North Yorkshire dales and along the footpaths - and above the endless miles of drystone walls are birds that should be at the coast.  Oystercatchers, with their distinctive red pliers attached to their heads feed on - you've guessed it - oyster beds. All along the coastline of the British Isles, their distinctive cry is the call of summer. Drowned out somewhat by the banter of seagulls but sharp and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Heaven clearly can't wait. Ranting and screaming inside. Growing old and lecturing ... myself, mostly.

What follows should come with a warning - it is a preachy rant. Stop now if you're not in the mood for a lecture. Or, if you're into procrasti-reading, read on and (hopefully) enjoy my latest piece of procrasti-writing. Apologies too for the reference to elderly leakages. And farts. And now, for being deeply irreverent. Sorry. Heaven  can't  wait. Meatloaf was wrong. Clearly the 'band of Angels' is impatiently putting together a gig. There's a party happening which we haven't been invited to. Yet. What a terrible year 2016 has been, so far. And we are barely dipping our winter-wrapped toes into Spring. Is it that the roll-call of those summoned to a higher place grows ever more poignant as we age? Prince was but a few years older than me. Victoria Wood, a meaningless number of years older still. Meaningless because what does age mean astride the long plateau of middle age before the eventual slide into decrepitude? A few years here, a few there - we...
Post a Comment
Read more