Saturday 20 January 2007

De-livery and de-hearty

In honour of my much vaunted impending migration, I was having dealings yesterday with the delivery people (so called because their prices, in internal organ terms, are the rough equivalent of a liver replacement). After clearly pronouncing and spelling my name to Wayne on the telephone, I received this email:
Good Morning Mrs Johnson,

Please find attached below a blank inventory form for you to complete and return to me.

Thanks,
Wayne

"Lexicon Harlot", "Mrs Johnson": a perfectly obvious phonetic confusion. As it happens, I rather fancy "Mrs Johnson". I'd have to stick rhinestones to the corners of my glasses, and sport one of those precarious 1950s beehive hairdos, but I really think I could pull this one off.

In other close encounters with the wonderful world of commerce: I, Mrs Johnson, was walking past the jeweller's yesterday, when I chanced upon this advertisement:

Valentine's Day Special
If you can't say it, why not engrave it?

I have often thought this myself. Words that confound even the most eloquent tongue always go down wonderfully well chiseled into a slab of pewter. I can see it now, romantics the nation over exchanging tokens of speech impediment, bracelets engraved with all the things we find so difficult to say in moments of deep passion, like "A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk", or "Six thick thistle sticks, six thick thistles stick".

Ah, young love.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mrs Johnson,

I like it!!!

I think you've hit upon a potential new career path, should the wilds of academia ever lose their lustre: the rhinestone-engraving profession.

As one long practised in the arts of recycled sweet nothinghood, may I proffer for your consideration such unoriginal standby endearments as

Irish wristwatch Irish wristwatch Irish wristwatch;
Six slim slick slender saplings;
and that ol' time favourite rhetorical question,
Does your shirt shop stock short socks with spots?

Anonymous said...

Dear Mrs Johnson,

Bring back the Doctor we all know and admire forthwith, ye rhinestoned beehived harlot!

I hear also that the best Delivery guys are in fact Jewish - they tend all to do a capital line in the chopped variety (although one must provide one's own onions and garlic, lest a surcharge be incurred, or a madamecharge, if one is of the fairer sex).

As for the engraving of sweet nothings for ones' beloved, I must make urgent inquiries to see if it's true that She sells sea shells by the sea shore - after all, what better medium to bestow my finest upon (with a tip o' the Tyrol hat to the local engravistas). If one has an especially pithy bon mot prepared for the occasion, could it, perhaps, be considered to be engravitas?

Nottlesby

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Mrs Johnson and I have come to an amicable arrangement: she will only be appearing on Tuesdays and Saturday afternoons.

St John, we don't generally keep kosher in the Leichhardt Ladies' Hostel, although I have, for some time, been agitating for the separation of the goat from his mother's milk. Serious rabbinical reform will be in order when I move to Melbourg.

TimT said...

As I recall it, Norman Bates attempted to come to an amicable relationship with Mother Bates, but it all ended in tears. As Mel Brooks put it, "The servant waits while the Master Bates." (Cue much meaningful rolling of the eyes, et cetera.)

What is thunking? Is it an intellectual activity? One can drink and one can be drunk, but can one think and be thunk?

Maybe it's a type of intellectual activity designed for bodybuilders: ie, how do you make a hunk thunk? Give it a cup of t...

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Ah, good old Mel Brooks. Humour at its classiest. Rest assured, neither Mrs Johnson nor I will be appearing in any Hitchcock redactions, although this dual personality thang could go anywhere.