Jennieworld Today

We had snow. For once the forecasters were right, and the snow came, on schedule, and about the foreseen amount. And everyone was fine with that.

But then it snowed for a second day and chaos was let loose among us here in South Wales. To listen to the news reports you really would have thought that the next ice age had landed without warning.

However, my five year old had a day off school, and so together with me and his brother, snowfights were fought and a (small yet valiant) snowman was built.

He borrowed a hat and scarf from my younger son for the photo opportunity, and unfortunately we couldn’t find any ‘arms’ other than the very spindly twigs which you can just make out in the picture. However, fun was had, and a type of almost sadistic after-fun was enjoyed by my boys, seeing how long it took Mr Frosty to melt!

The weather has now returned to the much more familiar almost-constant-drizzle of rain which we are more used to in our Welsh winters. Oh well, if that was this winter’s snow, then we’ve had it!

Well, it’s quite chilly here in my little flat. I’m dreading the arrival of my electricity bill next month as I’ve had to use the electric heater much more recently. However, we are promised snow tonight, which I’d love to see! I can still vividly remember the big snow when I was about six or seven. We lived in London at the time, and I remember spending most of a morning making paths through the garden for my mother. She thought that I was going to use a spade and dig paths, but I had the bright idea of pulling my sledge up and down, and then just heaping the snow off the back of the sledge away from my lovely tidy paths! She was very impressed. I was always a bright child!

Anyway, the weather forecasters are getting very excited by the prospect of a couple of inches of snow that will probably have disappeared by the evening - I wonder what would happen if the Norwegians got into this much of a tizzy at the start of the snowy season!

If we get snow enough to take photos of, I will post pictures of a snowy Cardiff here for you. I’ll even get up early tomorrow to make sure that I don’t miss it!

When I was younger, I used to love finding really long words and learning them. I remember vividly being very upset when I discovered that Mary Poppins’ ’supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ is not a real word! Anyway, my mother used to (and still does) watch all the wordy game shows that there were on TV, one of which (I forget it’s name) used to involve the contestants thinking up the longest word that they could, containing a set of three letters. This word used to crop up a lot, and so I learned it. It’s in the dictionary, although the OED doesn’t make the meaning crystal clear (or at least not the edition I own). Then, after a wordy argument with some people I work with, I decided to look it up, and to my delight I found a website devoted to these sorts of words! And Floccinaucinihilipilification enjoys a page to itself, together with definition and derivation as follows!

FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION

The action or habit of judging something to be worthless.

Back in the eighteenth century, Eton College had a grammar book which listed a set of words from Latin which all meant “of little or no value”. In order, those were flocci, nauci, nihili, and pili (which sound like four of the seven dwarves, Roman version, but I digress). As a learned joke, somebody put all four of these together and then stuck –fication on the end to make a noun for the act of deciding that something is totally and absolutely valueless.

However, the discovery of this website has been bittersweet - I have discovered that there is a longer word in the English language, and as yet I’ve been unable to devote the necessary hours into memorising it and its meaning!

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Apparently this is some sort of lung disease (nice) caused by the inhalation of volcanic dust. I think I’ll stick with my original and long time favourite word! Apparently there is considerable controversy in the world of etymology about whether the pneumo-etc word should be counted as the longest word, as it was created purely to be the longest word. And so, I propose that we all get together and create a longer word, easier to remember and with a happier definition please! Answers on a postcard to the usual address!

Update: I’ve just found out that the programme that I remember so vividly from my childhood was called ‘Catchword’ and was on air roughly from 1988 until 1995 before ‘Countdown’ came on each afternoon. It was hosted by Paul Coia who (extra trivia points here!) was the first voice to be heard on Channel 4 and is married to the ex-Miss Great Britain Debbie Greenwood. I love Wikipedia!