These Words for Wednesday were the strangest words ever, and those
requiring most use of a dictionary. For possible Danish readers I kept
the translations of all the words I had to look up to be certain of
their meaning. Even now I'm not sure, I used 'vindicate' right.
The one
responsible for these words is Mark Koopmans, and his words is posted at Elephant's Child's blog every Wednesday in March.
We know the persons from Unicorn Farm, but there's only hints of magic in this. Mark's words are not vehicles of magic for me.
Granulate (smuldre)
Trial (test, retssag)
Serenade
Billiards (billiardspil)
Cuss (Bande, bandeord)
Avuncular (onkel-, onkelagtig)
And/Or
Vindicate (give oprejsning, bekræfte)
Hotelier (hotelejer)
Junkie
Metronome
Questionnaire (spørgeskema)
Exemplify
Susan
sat in the small room in the attic, she was impatient, Linda sat at the
other chair in the room, alternately granulating an old biscuit and
playing with the mocha cups on the table. The small cups belonged to
Susan, but they were kept up here to keep Persephone the ghost in good
temper, and everybody had forgotten that the cups were really Susan's.
They were given to her by the old aunt, Cleo, who told people's fortunes
and had a gigantic cat. She had been visiting her aunt together with
one of her cousins, whose aunt it also was. And they had drunk coffee -
more milk than coffee and lots of sugar - from those beautiful, semi
translucent cups, stroking the cat, and generally putting on their best
manners. Aunt Cleo was a rather avuncular woman, big-boned with coarse
hair, cheroot-smoking and apt to cuss over happenings and people not to
her liking. She loved having the cousins visiting her and on some
occasions she gifted them with the cups from which they had drunk. She
regularly gave away things, she said that she loved to see people's joy
over receiving the gift, and she would not see this when she had died.
Susan was a bit afraid of aunt Cleo, but at the same time she was
fascinated by her. She was self reliant in the extreme, fed her cat
chocolate from a chipped plate, held her husband, sons and nephews -
Susan was not quite clear on who of the gangling young men were her sons
and who were other relatives, but aunt Cleo could handle them all, even
at family gatherings, where everybody were boisterous and loud, Aunt
Cleo could make them stop their prancing and sit down and eat. She was a
great, if a tad intimidating, lady, Susan thought to herself.
Susan
awoke from her reverie by an outcry from inside the big room, where her
father and some guests played billiards. A pair of the guests were a
local hotelier and his exotic wife, they were both good at billiards,
and used to winning.
Susan gave up: "Come on, Linda, let's go
down again. They're not going to leave that billiards table before it's
too late for us to see anything up there."
They got up and left
the small room, and went down two flights of stairs, first the narrow,
steep attic one, then through the old door, then down the winding stairs
to the living rooms. They went into the spacious living room, Susan
turned on the Television, but the programme was boring. A German murder
mystery, with lots of people talking, interrupting and coming and
leaving the court room, and in the end an angry junkie interrupting the
trial, and vindicating the detective. She turned off the television
again, and Linda sat down at the piano. She began playing, and Susan
grabbed a guitar and accompanied her. "I always wanted a metronome for
this piece," Linda said, it's hard keeping time, and even if you're good
at it, it's still not good enough."
"No, I agree," Susan said
3/8 are hard to play. We need more practice. Let's try the serenade
instead. It is in sensible 3/4 time."
They played for some time
until it was getting late and Susan remembered that she had some
homework for the next day. "Oh, man!" she exclaimed, I still miss that
stupid homework. We have to look through a questionnaire, and exemplify
different groups of respondents. I just hate statistics!"
