L— was away for most of the week at a conference in Vienna and then taking a long route back on trains via Zurich and Paris. I entertained myself by cooking unreasonably spicy food and attempting to render some of Bashō’s haiku into English while still being haiku (according to an English concept of syllables). Some were more successful than others.

物いへば　唇寒し　秋の風
You might say it— but
your lips feel suddenly chilled
by the autumn breeze.

It was a novelty to have so much time to myself, but even though I lived alone before, after seven years I’ve rather become accustomed to having someone else around.

I sold my Dymo LabelWriter thermal printer (on eBay) for the same price as I bought it eleven years ago (used, on eBay). I originally bought it to make shipping labels less onerous, but now that all the companies have standardised on 4×6 inch labels, it’s too narrow. I replaced it with a cheap Chinese clone of a Zebra printer that can print the wider labels, so it’s now completely redundant. I waited for an “80% off seller fees” promotional weekend to pop up on eBay, listed it, and it sold within hours. Perhaps I priced it too low, but I can’t complain at getting my money back after a decade of use.

There was some unhappy but not entirely unexpected news about the Hatch workspace in Peckham. After the previous operators of the Levels went into administration, it was taken over by a company whose core business is running workspaces, but with all the existing tenants in place. However, it’s now been announced that they’ll be running the workspace from November. It’s not surprising that they’d rather not subcontract that to someone else, but it’s a shame when the current operator is doing such a good job of making it a friendly, enjoyable place to work.

Separated by a common language I: An American friend living in London described a toe he had broken as his “small toe”. I assumed that he had tried to express “pinky toe” in the local vernacular, but instead of the intended “little toe”, he came out with “small toe”. So close, but it doesn’t carry the same specific meaning.

(It could be worse: some literal synonyms mean very different things: “booty call” vs “butt dial”.)

For a long time, I thought that the word “pinky” was at best childish and at worst displayed some unfortunate assumptions about skin colour, but I was wrong. It’s just from Dutch pinkje, the diminutive form of a word for little finger that has absolutely nothing to do with the colour pink beyond the superficial fact that it’s spelled the same.

In fact, it’s not even really an American term, as it was Scottish before it was ever exported there.

Separate by a common language II: Our neighbours a couple of doors away are also American. One of them described another house as “catty corner” (diagonally opposite). I got it, but I only learned that phrase a few years ago, and then only because I saw it as an English translation of a phrase in French I actually understood.

As it happens, the etymology of the US expression is French: quatre (“four”) → cater (“diagonal”) → cater-corner → catty-corner.

Our shutters have landed in Tilbury but it will still take a few weeks for them to be unloaded, cleared, and transported onward. Perhaps by the end of the month we’ll have them.

An engineer came to look at our boiler to service it and work out what’s causing it to drip when the central heating is on. The good news is that apart from the drip (which is due to a leaking connection to the pressure gauge) it’s working fine. The part isn’t even expensive to replace, but the labour to do so will cost rather more. He has ordered the parts we need, and apart from one day the weather hasn’t been cold enough to worry yet. I hope we can get it sorted before that happens.

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