Category: Wednesday’s Child

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Wednesday’s Child: Tsetski-Petski

When passed by a horse and buggy, ubiquitous in the streets of Palermo, I scarcely know how to respond to Vasily’s wordless query.  Is the answer “horse”?  Or “carriage?”  Or “anachronism”?  Or “tourist attraction”?  By the same token, what am I to say about an open “door” to the balcony, which is a “window” when it is closed?  And is a cup of tea primarily “cup” or primarily “tea”?

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Wednesday’s Child: Nurse Mengele

A criminal case, expected to last for another six months, is now being heard in Manchester Crown Court.  The gentle reader may recall my fitful interest in public sensations of this kind, most recently the Depp libel trial, as these would transport me into that epoch of yellow journalism where liberty of conjecture reigned supreme, so unlike the straitjacketed press in our day.

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Wednesday’s Child: Lady Macbeth’s Legacy

Scanning the papers, I noted with interest that the Montecito house presently occupied by the British immigrant formerly known as Prince has nine bedrooms and 16 bathrooms.  The bedrooms are neither here nor there.  I’m not a Leveller or any other sort of Communist.  It’s the number of bathrooms – great enough, I should think, to serve a medium-sized airport – that got my goat.

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Wednesday’s Child: Letter from Rome

My private statistical analysis shows that the question most frequently asked of a new parent is “Does he sleep through the night?”  The true purpose of the question – in essence as rhetorical as any old “How are you?” out there – is to show the parent that his interlocutor is a person of acumen and experience who can speak of child rearing as confidently and competently as he speaks of missiles in Donbas or about vegetable gardening.