Monday, October the 17th, 2005
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“I am going to be prolix in a jiffy,” said the prolix person, preparing the ground for his prolixity. When I say “preparing the ground”, I do not mean that he took a spade or a hoe, or some other gardening implement. I mean that the prolix person prepared his audience for his imminent prolixity. There were those who lived in a fool's paradise who thought that the prolix person had abandoned prolixity in favour of its opposite, which might be said to be snappiness. Some even harboured the idea that the prolix person had taken to trading in that most lamentable of usages, the “soundbite”. By preparing the ground for his prolixity, the prolix person was alerting those assembled to the fact that he was going to talk at them for at least three hours, effusively, in a long-winded and wordy way that would have them scratching their heads as they tried to wring some sense from what he said. Perhaps it was unfair of him to give them only a jiffy to so prepare themselves.
For myself—for I was one of those there that day—I have to say that a jiffy's worth of preparedness was better than no preparedness at all. So what preparations did I make in that jiffy, you may ask. Well, I removed my boots and socks and plunged my feet into a basin of cold water in which ice cubes tinkled. Think of it as a little scale model of the Arctic Ocean. Before the jiffy was up, I took out my feet and wrapped them in a big lavender towel, picked up the basin and upended it over my head.
Brrrrrr! Now I was cold, as cold as one of the animals native to the Arctic Ocean. I was also wide awake, where only moments before I had been dozing off, ready for a nap. Had the prolix person not given me that jiffy in which to prepare myself for his prolixity I may well have been far, far away in the Land of Nod by the time he began his deadly-dull prolix oration, the subject of which was either curls, curlicues, curling or curlews, or even all four. So wide awake was I following the opportunity I took in the jiffy to recreate in miniature a plunge into the Arctic Ocean that I took out my biddybook and a pencil and made notes of the prolix person's prating.
Alas! So soaking wet was I that water drizzled from my hair onto the pages of my biddybook and smudged all the notes I made. I have had to rely on my memory to recall curls, curlicues, curling and curlews, and my memory is a puny thing. It used to be superb. As a tot, I could recite a list of all the credits of every single film in the Bing Crosby canon. But now I have difficulty remembering what I ate for breakfast, on the days when I bother with breakfast at all.. You see, last week I was taking a stroll along the towpath of the old dismal canal, and I banged my head against a barge. I banged my head against a barge, I banged my head against a barge.