SCREAMING SLIPPERS

 I sometimes have these moments when I just look at something and they speak to me in an unpredictable way. So it was the other morning when I went into the bathroom, looked down at the floor and saw these slippers where they had been left.

A happy pair of festive slipper socks still being regularly worn despite the fact that we’re getting to a point of the year which is about as far removed from the festive season as it is possible for us to get.

Not, of course, that anyone seems to have told the weather…

Perhaps we’re suffering from a seasonal shift and our weather patterns are synchronizing with those of the southern hemisphere. Perhaps it is currently midwinter after all and come the winter solstice we’ll all be donning our shorts and t-shirts and slipping another shrimp on the barbie…

Now what are the chances of that…?

Well, of me being seen wearing shorts outdoors, I’d say it’s a fairly remote possibility and when it come to me having any dealings with barbie either… If I’m being totally honest I’d have to confess that I really can’t see it happening…

Anyhow, back to the slippers… Is it just me… or do they look as if they’re screaming…?

I mean, I know we’re all of us prone to a little anthropomorphising every now and again, seeing patterns and faces where there really aren’t any, but this one’s pretty blatant if you ask me. After all, you only really need to add a couple of black blobs to the white bobbles and you’ve got a couple of terrified Norwegian skiers as they might appear on “the Simpsons”…

Or again… Is that just me…?

Now, as to why a pair of slippers might have something to scream about is of course a discussion for wiser heads than mine, although I would suspect that the mere thought of having a foot shoved inside your mouth right up to the ankles is cause enough for screaming all by itself.

Anyway, I only wanted to find an excuse to use the word “anthropomorphising” in a piece of writing today, so I can finally get someone to confirm with me the whole “z” or “s” situation when it comes to my spell checker.

I don’t know why I worry so much about these sorts of things, but I obviously do. For the better part of two years, I realise, I’ve been correcting my “ise” endings away from the “ize” that my computer seems to insist upon, and I’ve come to realise that I might just have been getting it wrong for all this time, which might have been one of those little irritations that may very well have been niggling away and annoying one or two of you as we have travelled this journey together... or perhaps you never really noticed...?

The problem is that, to me, the “ize” endings always look just plain wrong, and yet both Inspector Morse and many of the books that I’ve been reading lately seem to be using it all the time to the extent that they now leap off the page and quite take me out of the moment.

So, if any of you do have a definitive answer to that particular linguistic conundrum, I’d be more than happy to hear it, otherwise I’m going to have to continue letting the slippers suffer…

And you wouldn’t want that on your conscience now, would you…?