Hi again!

2020 Hindsight

I love sitting on my garden patio in the sunshine tapping away at my laptop, letting my subconscious pour my characters’ surprising adventures onto the screen. (Yes, I’m a “discovery writer”, or “pantser”.)

But no more sunshine.

After a long, dry, blazing summer in Luxembourg, the autumn equinox arrived. Within days, the rain hit. Days and days of it. Noah would be pleased. Ah, well. It’s good for the plants and forests, though it drove me indoors.

Anyway, it’s just one more “special feature” to add to the 2020 list of upheavals and changes. A new year hurtles towards us: I do hope it will be less stressful and we can move on towards “normalcy” (whatever that is – I’ve almost forgotten). I’ll be so pleased to see the whole year consigned to the history books – books I will never read.

Language

Something that always annoyed me was the way people pluralized “octopus” as “octopuses“. It sounds terrible.

Everyone knows the plural is “octopi”. Or is it?

Well, it used to be. I recently learned that replacing “us” with “i” is a Roman Latin way of pluralizing, but “octopus” is a Greek word. So… we should now use the horrible “octopuses” version. Sigh…

However, this does re-spark a thought that’s been haunting the dark side of my mind for a long time. So in future posts, I’ll highlight misuses of the English language, one grave fault at a time.

I hope you’ll enjoy it.