tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25249501917259761902026-06-13T16:55:15.212+01:00The Art of WordsRamblings about words, art, books, the media and Golden Age detective stories. Buy me a kofi at: https://ko-fi.com/lucyrfisher Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.comBlogger1262125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-43695742476134861182026-05-18T22:52:27.473+01:002026-05-18T22:52:27.474+01:00George Orwell and the Passive VoiceGeorge Orwell is often accused of "telling us not to use the passive and then using it all the time". I asked @Grok to highlight all uses of the passive in his essay Politics and the English Language. @Grok speaking:Here are notable examples of passive voice from George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" (1946). (orwellfoundation.com) Orwell criticizes the passiveLucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-40791266376135819212026-03-20T16:29:00.001+00:002026-05-19T09:29:09.556+01:00Received Ideas According to George Orwell The other night a barmaid informed me that if you pour beer into a damp glass it goes flat much more quickly. She added that to dip your moustache into your beer also turns it flat. I immediately accepted this without further inquiry; in fact, as soon as I got home I clipped my moustache, which I had forgotten to do for some days.Only later did it strike me that this was probably one of Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-39075022098983660932026-03-20T15:55:00.001+00:002026-05-19T09:26:23.151+01:00Received Ideas in Dialogue"Nobody can MAKE you feel anything, YOU control your feelings" oversimplifies human emotional response and overlooks the impact of conditioning and coercion – often in the service of a fantasy that we can "control" our feelings if we just "try hard enough." (@DrDoyleSays)Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. (Eleanor Roosevelt)The French occupied the Netherlands in 1811 and Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-35851677906121137762026-03-20T14:56:00.003+00:002026-03-20T16:33:11.280+00:00Received Ideas in Quotes 41 Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. (Oscar Wilde)One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. (George Orwell)Museum curators describing literally any portrait of a woman: She boldly meets the viewer's eye, confronting our gaze. (@Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-38422075228968119082026-02-20T20:47:00.001+00:002026-05-21T15:02:26.223+01:00221B, by Vincent StarrettJohn Atkinson GrimshawHere dwell together still two men of noteWho never lived and so can never die;How very near they seem yet how remoteThat age before the worlds went all awry.But still the game's afoot for those with earsAttuned to catch the distant view-halloo;England is England yet for all our fears –Only those things the heart believes are true.A yellow fog swirls past the window paneAs Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-32229263708419723892026-02-15T09:54:00.021+00:002026-06-13T16:55:15.212+01:00Grammar: PismronunciationConfusing wormsA medieval monk substituted “mumpsimus” for “sumpsimus” in one prayer. When put straight, he replied that he had said it that way for 40 years and “I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus”. advocado: avocadoAlexander Solzeernitskin, writer of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch: SolzhenitsynAndrew Sabitsky, Andrew Sabinsky: SabiskyArtic, Antartic: Arctic,Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-92136796149926149212026-01-17T18:27:00.005+00:002026-05-21T15:19:29.252+01:00Technophobia 15 Does your desktop look like this? I admit there was a time when I didn't know you could cut and paste text
from a web page... About 1993? And for a while I didn’t know you could
pause CDs. I used to think you had to let your phone run out completely before you
charged it, and you couldn’t leave it plugged in once it was at 100%
because er er... It wasted electricity?! ButLucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-59009540948613504302025-12-26T12:23:00.008+00:002026-01-23T10:03:04.319+00:00Buzzwords of 2025 IQ of a crayonAnd trending topics. What are you going to do when you retire? I’m going to train to become a “death doula”. (Takes over from “storyteller”. But a birth doula plays a useful role protecting her client against careless and overworked staff. Perhaps death doulas do the same.)First week Jan: “learned helplessness” is popular, but nobody quite knows what it means.Breaking theLucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-69683978551174380862025-12-25T10:21:00.004+00:002026-03-01T09:53:14.672+00:00Hey, Guys, It's Nearly 2026!They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. (Andy Warhol) It’s 2025, and people still think skin colour matters. And Jesus and Mary were white.It's 2025 and people are still referring to computers as "screens".It’s nearly 2026, and in London we clean pavements by waiting for a heavy shower of rain.It's nearly 2026 and people are still whingeing about Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-8787749827165154172025-12-24T12:59:00.001+00:002026-03-01T09:55:13.852+00:00Truly Dreadful JokesTime for some dreadful old cracker jokes! Recycle them, it might save the planet.What’s this piece of music?A piece of early Handel, before he joined with Hinge and Bracket to form The Doors. (@I_am_KenBarlow)A man meets an old woman, is making conversation, and asks her where she's lived in her long life. she says, "Well, I was born in Austria-Hungary, then lived in Poland during my childhood, Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-81821452349090787142025-12-22T13:52:00.000+00:002025-12-22T13:52:16.933+00:00Predictions for 2026PuritanJournalists will write articles about:There's a crisis in masculinity we need a new way to be a man. And it’s still women’s fault.Dopamine. It's too enjoyable and you and your kids shouldn't get ANY.Society is becoming too feminised, as George Birmingham wrote in 1924. Children not learning cursive, and people not writing with Latinate words and complicated syntax. (If only they'd Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-68755284364978676322025-12-19T15:56:00.006+00:002026-05-21T15:38:53.890+01:00Technophobia 14Save your document every five minutes. Put all the files on your desktop into a folder, and move it to your hard disk. Now you can back up in the Cloud. Bookmark all your tabs and close your tabs. Curate your Facebook feed. Those are not "straight quotes", they are inch and foot marks. Set Word to use curly quotes. Now automate your job out of existence... There'll be a youtube video – or ask @Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-29223255840879857282025-11-13T08:44:00.005+00:002025-11-13T09:32:14.493+00:00Inspirational Mantras about Bullying 109Don't forget, bullies are cowards, just ignore them, they tease you because they like you and violence never solved anything.It takes a long time to believe something like that’s actually happening to you. You think things’ll change, get better.’... Being with C sort of sapped my will... With my first wife it didn’t matter – she loved me, she gave me confidence, and we had lots of friends, we Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-59699032628694906282025-11-11T10:09:00.001+00:002025-11-12T10:23:43.412+00:00Inspirational Mantras 108Comedian Robin Ince, on po-faced academic study of low culture: There is something far more joyous in scrutinising low-brow culture than in examining the high-brow. The incongruous mix of writing about post-Freudian analysis within the context of oedipal mother worship when it concerns Jess Franco’s Bare-Breasted Countess is so much more entertaining than reading another academic analysing TS Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-70060600031567726722025-11-10T11:20:00.001+00:002025-11-13T09:33:31.765+00:00Nice ReviewsThose nice people at the Clothes in Books blog (highly recommended) like my first book, Witch Way Now? (Followed by Witch Way To...?, We Three and The Fourth Door, all available at Amazon.)Here's what they said:JanW: Lucy Fisher's Witch Way Now? For me, one of the best books on late 60s teenage girl life. Clothes in Books (Moira Redmond): totally agree about Lucy's book, it is Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-10086588537850805712025-10-12T16:55:00.002+01:002025-10-12T16:56:12.016+01:00Received Ideas in Quotes 40The Emperor is naked, there is no Santa Claus, I don’t believe in fairies and I loathe Big Brother.There are no guidelines. It is perfectly ethical to ringfence parts of the discourse. There is no “evidence based” set of current ideas. There’s an official set. You can say anything apart from “human beings can’t change sex”. All minorities have a voice, everybody has a voice – apart from themLucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-40271766870224702912025-10-09T15:56:00.004+01:002026-01-23T20:57:01.373+00:00Syndromes 6: Games People Play Get simply furious because a group or a person won’t do XYZ spontaneously without being told. At the same time you don't tell them to do the thing, or explain how to do the thing, or draw up a rota, or have a meeting... But then they’d do the thing and there’d be no need for the incandescent fury, which gives you an excuse to be perfectly vile to the group or person.Annoying neighbour, on the Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-18381927623525568312025-10-08T15:29:00.002+01:002025-10-08T15:29:34.178+01:00Contradictions 14Jenrick says 'it's not about the colour of people's skin'. It's just that he didn't see a single white face. That's not even logically coherent. (@David__Osland)Tragic protagonists are funny because you have Oedipus who does everything in his power to avoid the fate which has unfortunately already been written for him but then you also have Orestes who is joining the war on generational curses onLucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-14965627511511369102025-10-08T15:19:00.003+01:002025-10-08T15:20:42.635+01:00Contradictions 13Even when unattributed, all encountered in the wild.Hey you. Be yourself. But also tone it down a little. Read the room. But also speak your mind. Be responsible with your future. But also take risks, life is short. Kindness is everything. But also you'll get nowhere if you're not fighting. Don't sell out. But also grind/hustle. (@PrinceVogel)We include everybody except people who aren’t Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-31640069531235761692025-10-05T11:51:00.001+01:002025-10-09T08:38:26.618+01:00Outdated Slang 6Don't fall behind! Learn the new jargon, but be sure to drop the old jargon.@edwest Do people not say Gordon Bennett any more? He appears in the
book I'm reading and it suddenly occurred to me I probably haven't heard
the expression since 1992.@robpalkwriter Just saw someone
complain about "litter louts" which was pleasantly nostalgic, like
"juvenile delinquents" "dolly birds" or "video Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-82979948808845296142025-09-26T11:51:00.003+01:002025-10-18T22:01:30.786+01:00The Watersplash by Patricia WentworthThe Watersplash is one of Patricia Wentworth’s mysteries starring Miss Maud Silver, a former governess, and present-day private detective. How old is she? And what year is this all happening?I assumed this was an early work, and the “the War” was World War One. Miss Silver’s flat is “Victorian”, full of curvy occasional tables, with peacock-blue curtains. “Victorian chairs with their spreading Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-70369028593248078762025-09-14T13:33:00.000+01:002025-09-14T13:33:33.600+01:00A Murder Is Announced by Agatha ChristieA Murder Is Announced gives a snapshot of life among the bourgeoisie in a small country town just after the war. Characters struggle with rationing of fuel and food, and the assistance of the local “lady help” or the temperamental cook from “Mittel Europa”.The plot centres on the inhabitants of Little Paddocks, home of elderly Letitia Blacklock; her companion Dora Bunner; two young cousins, Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-26301141551098276832025-09-02T17:42:00.013+01:002026-01-29T18:51:22.607+00:00Syndromes: When people hear the opposite...I don't know why this happens.In our old office, we had individual rooms (small). My desk faced the window, away from the door. People have the odd idea that it's deferential to be very, very quiet. They used to come in, wearing trainers on a thick carpet, and whisper "Hello". I would leap three feet in the air. So I put a notice on my door: "Please approach NOISILY". Guess what they did? In the Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-10329258408480118302025-07-10T11:26:00.001+01:002025-07-10T11:26:48.138+01:00Agatha Christie's The Rose and the Yew TreeHats for platformsOne day I'll write the Key to All Mythologies – or rather, what we can
learn about popular ideas about psychology from Golden Age mysteries.
"Self-pity" is mentioned in passing. I remember this concept from the 60s. It was
something you shouldn't "indulge" or "wallow" in, or "get stuck in a
rut" of. It made it difficult to think about your situation. And this is a book aboutLucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2524950191725976190.post-38468289762150130532025-05-16T19:10:00.000+01:002025-05-16T19:10:25.009+01:00Received Ideas in Quotes 40: the Brain, Mind, Soul, Psyche La maggior parte delle persone conduce una vita meccanica,
guidata dal’ inconscio senza nemmeno accorgersene. Per rendersi conto
della vastità del’ inconscio, il risveglio della consapevolezza è
fondamentale. (@NADYEUGENY. Most people lead mechanical lives, driven by the unconscious without even realizing it. To realize the vastness of the unconscious, the awakening of awareness is Lucy R. Fisherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.com0