Monday 17 July 2017

Chaff Time


With me, a time to leave for an appointment is a deadline - something that's inviolable, a law. For Hay it's seen as a suggestion or general guidance that can be ignored and the actual time of leaving can be 15 minutes later with no consequences. Causes no end of arguments when I'm sitting there tutting and swinging the car keys on my finger and she's obviously at least another 5 minutes away from being ready. Needless to say, I get the blame for her delay and it's obviously occasioned by something I've omitted to do.


Nearly  choked to death yesterday. The weekend before this one just gone, we went for a long walk which involved skirting a wheat field. I put a few ears of wheat in my shorts pocket in order to scatter them at the top of our field (probably totally pointless, as the chances are they're sterile hybrids). Anyway, yesterday we went to see my daughter in her new home and while there I had cause to use my Ventolin inhaler. I put it to my mouth, squeezed and inhaled - a mouthful of wheat chaff blasted down my throat, much to the amusement of all. It was not pleasant.

We say 'they're' as shorthand for 'they are', but not for 'they were' - possibly due to the accepted use of the apostrophe being to replace just one letter, not two. Perfectly acceptable, to me, though. They''re, perhaps?


3 comments:

Geo. said...

You"ll have to start doing that then, or y'all might confuse folks.

Chairman Bill said...

Excellent example.

Chairman Bill said...

They'll is another where the apostrophe replaces two letters.