The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
It’s all verbal gymnastics at the Winter Olympics... and it’s making me goofy
Language is an ever-changing, ever-moving, ever-developing medium, as we all know even as we shout at the telly at those perpetrating what people (aka pedants) of my generation see as “the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue”.
But a lot of it, in fact (apart from the split infinitive, which I cannot thole), is usually and colourfully adding greatly to the gaiety of this nation and most others.
Especially if the commentary on some of the snowboarding and other esoteric sports on the Winter Olympics coverage is anything to go by.
I don’t mean the horrors of “podiuming” and “medalling” which should have any right-thinking person reaching for the remote in a frenzy of spluttering fury.
Nope – it’s the highly enthusiastic, not to say frantic, use of what are obviously technical terms that has given me hours of endless fun.
I don’t understand a word of it – or at least, I didn’t, when I first accidentally tuned in to BBC2’S programming of the China Games while I was actually searching for the obscure channel that offers my daily dose of Castle.
I quickly discovered that I was absolutely riveted by these daring young people on the flying sandwich laminated constructions (the most expensive, labourintensive method of board construction, for lightest weight and liveliest flex. So there.).
Now, I’m getting down with the terminology, too.
No longer is “goofy” the snaggle-toothed sidekick of a cute, large-eared mouse.
It means the opposite of “regular” as a stance before you launch yourself down a humungous slope and execute the kind of mid-air moves that would make the Red Arrows green with envy.
Then there’s “huck”, “big air”, “nindie”, “napon”, and “nute”, not to mention “piste” (almost familiar!), “park” (not what you think) and “pow”.
And all while you’re “shredding the gnar”.
I tell you, it’s a whole new word world. Who knew that “backside” and “tailpoke” could take on significance not related to the #Metoo movement?
My favourites, however, are “nollie front shove” which sounds more like a Norwegian competitor in the double luge, “zeech” not dissimilar to the sound I make getting out of a comfy chair and, last but not least, “shifty air”, a term more often associated with one B Johnson Esq.
It’ll never hit the mainstream? It already has…
Meanwhile, in America, Republican Congresswoman and all-round strange individual Marjorie Taylor Greene has been giving her – presumably unintentional – impersonation of Mrs Malaprop, that celebrated literary word-mangler, in a particularly magnificent way that puts even her former boss, The Donald, firmly in the shade when it comes to making no sense at all.
Fulminating about the powers-that-be allegedly abusing said powers, she accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of deploying forces to spy on members of Congress, their staff and on American citizens generally. Along the way, she referred to the agents of law and order in her great nation as the “gazpacho police”. Gazpacho? Gestapo?
Tomayto? Tomahto?
As they say in these parts: “Let’s creh the hale thing aff.”
Having got herself into such culinary and historical hot water (I am not going to say “in the soup” – that would be too bleedin’ obvious even for me), she also alluded to “the DC jail which is the DC gulag”. One can only be surprised that she didn’t call it the goulash, but there you go.
Obviously, she has no notion of what truly demonstrates wonton destruction.
It couldn’t happen here? Imagine the havoc Nadine Dorries could wreak with a sharply aimed tin of Heinz Cream of Tomato. The now obviously diluted influence of water-cressida Dick is probably reaching a bit, though…
Liz Truss in her Russia “negotiations” is going to have to keep a weather eye out for Vladimir Putin’s Borscht Brigade, against whom no sanction is safe.
And what about the security of our hardwon Brexit sovereignty?
Let us not even contemplate the mayhem potentially occasioned by the Mulligatawny Mafia or the Secret Stracciatella Service.
Freedom undermined by Italian minestrone masters or those French bouillabaisse bullies with a carefully deployed crouton?
Doesn’t bear thinking about. Personally, with the independence debate still trickling on, I think this is a superb opportunity for Scotland to increase its influence abroad.
Even having read quite recently that Nicola Sturgeon sent Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-cortez home to think again, clutching the gift of a case of Irn Bru, it is probably just as well that British exports to the US of A are currently in a state of flux.
Think how much worse things could have been if Ms Taylor Greene, hereafter forever referred to as the clanger-dropping Soup Dragon, had been presented with a commemorative vat of Cullen skink?
Anyway, with great Scottish traditions firmly to the fore, the Baxters’ back catalogue is surely already making its presence felt in our own national life with the latest upwardly mobile moves by the Duchess of Cornwall (aka Queen Consort) in the great Royal Game.
And in our current climate, it cannot be denied that many a politician and public figure has been brought low by their unseemly addiction to cockaleekie.
The frantic use of technical terms has given me endless fun