Recently I had two friends tell me separately on two separate occasions what my fault is that they don't like. One said I'm always complaining .The other said I keep being a martyr. They're two sides of the same fault, I think, and I'm trying to figure out what it is in each of my friends that responds like this. Useful for a play, I think.
Another book of words and expressions from Newfoundland, this one by Nellie Stowbridge whom I knew from several visits to Newfoundland but saw again last week at the Writers' Union AGM in Vancouver. I sat beside her at dinner one night and she told me about this book (published 2008). She calls it a collection and that it certainly is. Here are some of the highlights:
Manner of Speaking includes conversational speech, ironic sayings and oxymorons, one- or two-liners, among others. A chapter on Newfoundland Medicine covers Home Cure, Folk Cures, words associated with health and strange remedies. It goes on to Superstitions, Customs, Weather, Fish, A Way of Life, and so on, but the one I want to look at first is Words to Add to an Aficionado's Collecction. That's for me.
Members of the Union are allowed to bring their books to sell to fellow writers so I was able to buy her book - signed - and she enclosed a handmade book mark (birch bark). I also understood the title. I thought it was about a Newfoundland branch of the Chinese Mafia. Not. Tong is how tongue (lit. tung) is pronounced in Newfoundland.
I began this blog a couple of days ago but as usual my screenwriting commitment got in the way, I think the course ends this month and then I will surface and see where I'm at. The next blogs are on the tip of my tong.
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