Dulled and devastated by The Donald, I turn to trivia and pedantry. But funnily enough, with third novel in the making, second out on subs and waiting…waiting….and all writing about (well okay with plenty of black humour) mental illness and incarceration and the role of the storyteller in preserving our sanity in a mordant world and a Welsh reworking of Great Expectations, with lots of dead people and mermaids, well I thought I might quickly write a little book – just a trifle; a frivolous thing – and call it,

THINGS THAT GET ON MY TITS

Ergo (I bet you’re thinking, ‘Something that really gets on my tits is when someone begins a sentence with Latin’), here we go but don’t take it too seriously.

‘Up’ prefix. We’ve had upselling, upcycling and upskilling but I just encountered -KILL ME NOW- ‘upreading’. From a school. Because I am down with the kids in the work I do, I am aware of ‘up’ being used as a suffix in phrasal verbs. For some reason, this does not bother me at all. SEARCH IT UP! But the prefix annoys me. It seems to mangle a perfectly good word, or stop you using a nicer one. Anyway, it’s the parents you have to worry about. If we’d let teenagers vote in Brexit, we wouldn’t be in this almighty mess right now. But I digress.

Core values. I sniff out a tautology here. You see this all over. But what ARE core values? Are they, like, the important values as opposed to satellite value fuckery that you don’t regularly take to your heart? If I can be bothered values?

Apostrophes. Yes, again. Splashed all over, wherever there’s an ‘s’. There used to be a local shop called ‘Butterfly’s and bee’s’. It’s possible I misunderstood it, but the sign put me off going in. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what that shop sold. Now I feel horrible. I am churlish. AND YET AND YET. And what about hers, its, theirs, ours, whose (which I saw as who’s -indicating possession- in both Harper Collins and Ebury books – I’ll hide this bit later because you never know; I’m already a poor commercial prospect)? No apostrophe, man.

Swearing. I love swearing. I always have. I like learning about invective in different languages. Knowing its history and context. There are limits. Racist; misogynist: get your coat. But something that evokes a sort of rebellious joy, curse on. I’ve wondered if the meanest people I’ve met are those who consider the well chosen swear word beneath them. Maybe. What do you think?

Literal and physical. ‘I can literally do that for you right now.’ Do you usually perform only through an intricate web of the figurative, then? ‘I cannot physically help you.’ Why? Were you gored by a bull just now?’ I realise this does not reflect well on me.

‘I am a good listener’ generally means to me, ‘I might like listening but I am actually a bit of a twat who isn’t really very self aware and I am going to give you a shit load of unsolicited advice.’

‘I am an empath’ (which makes me snort) or ‘I am so empathic’. See above and, also, this sounds like bragging, doesn’t it? I’ve noticed that sometimes people who say such things cry when Bambi’s mother gets shot but don’t bewail a hideous case of social injustice. Perhaps those who are most observant of the delicacies of others tend not to broadcast – at least not on this frequency?

Better get on with some actual work.

Anna xxxx