A reporter announcing the latest news from the Philippines said, voice over the ruins of a street, "The ruined buildings lay in the street and prevent the passage of traffic." He thought he was using the present tense. Not. Lay is the past tense of lie. Doesn't anyone know that any more? LIe, lay, laid. If you use lay in the present tense it has to take an object because it's a transitive verb. People have gotten confused, that is, those who were taught to pray when little, "Now I lay me down to sleep." Me is the object of lay. If he or she wasn't taught to pray he/she could have said, "Now I lie down to sleep," because it's not a tetrameter line.

Hey, my blog is not supposed to be a grammar lesson. But it is a safe outlet for a pet peeve. No one is going to pay any attention to it or me. I have noticed that when I correct people verbally, out loud, to their face, they tend to get annoyed and defensive. When someone corrects me, I thank them. Mind you, I usually go home and check, to make sure they're right. I can tell you things I've learned from corrections, for example, the correct pronunciation of disparate, amenable, rationale and caffeine. I will not use the latter two words because I don't like their correct pronunciation. Another century ago I dropped a boy I was dating because he corrected me inaccurately. I had said something was stultifying and he told me no, the word was stullifying. There's no talking to someone like that. (SpelChek knew better than he; it just tried to correct him.) Fast forward a lot of years and you see me withdrawing a piece I had written for a magazine when an editor (they had editors in those days) put incorrect words in my copy. I sound didactic now so I'll lie low.

I was thinking about people in other times who lived and died in the narrow space allotted to them by their position in life. Most people stayed where they grew, unless they were Crusaders and then they were hellangone for a long time if not forever. The men, that is. The women stayed home and ran the castle and chafed at their chastity belts. Peasants worked the land and were lucky if they were allowed some of what they produced. I remember a schoolboy's joke about serfs who were "chained to the land" (I always wanted one). Hungry folk gathered outside the castle waiting for handouts after a feast. And that's what got me onto trenchers. I made trenchers once, for a medieval feast. I was in a gourmet club and it was my turn. I had received for Christmas a cookbook, updated for readability and edibility but based on 13th century recipes, and accompanied by a box of herbs and spices appropriate to 13th century tastes and availability. It was fascinating. No sugar; honey was the sweetener. No salt; other spices were used. No beef, as I remember; I cooked chicken. You know after a big dinner nowadays - beef, potatoes, gravy, etc. - you have a deep, meaty taste in your mouth. The aftertaste of the medieval meal was high and round. Apples, saffron, honey, hyssop, elderflowers (in a sort of cheesecake) - very different flavours for a main course than we are used to. Anyway, that's when I made trenchers, one for each dinner guest. Trenchers were a plain yeast bread that I shaped like dinner plates to hold the food I served. Apparently, trenchers carried the food for diners in those days; if a person left food on his "plate" and he/she was encouraged to do so, I think, then the trenchers, food and all, were distributed to the hungry serfs waiting in the courtyard. I'm not sure whether the phrase "a good trencherman" referred to a person who ate a lot or to a person who gave up a lot of food that others might eat. I'll tell you, I couldn't eat my trencher; it was too much food. Oh, I found appropriate wine at the liquor store. It was mead, the honey-based drink people drank in those days. Too sweet for me, but after the meal was over and my guests were analyzing the food, one couple said they loved the wine. They didn't eat their trenchers, either. Unfortunately, no one was waiting for our leftovers.