Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Spring cleaning







I was searching for a photo which might illustrate my piece about pothering yesterday.

The nearest I could find was this, from Spaarnestad Photo in the Netherlands. It shows "Huisvrouw met mattenklopper".

Mattenklopper - a much nicer word than carpet beater. A check on the translation of the word klopper (I wouldn’t like to start using it & being inadvertently indecent) inspired me to look for a Dutch translation of pother. Good heavens, there it is – or rather they are.

Which led in turn to the glorious word opschudding of which I shall be making very good use.

It has become a mission to reduce the amount of stress being suffered by the very simple expedient of calling it something else – preferably colourful enough to make you laugh & snap out of it.

So, get in a pother, have a tizz, or have kittens or kick the cat (OK, not that one). Or have conniptions. Get in a flap, or even a flapdoodle. Be a bit mardy if you must. Go in for some opschudding.

But forget stress, it’s not good for you.

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Tactile paving