Brain of Gibberish
When I’m at work, I phone my mother a lot. I mean a lot. Bordering on harassment.
Now that I’m in charge of the inventory project at work, I find myself with lists of items, searching for their real-life counterparts in various rooms. I’m currently in the dank dark depths of the uncatalogued store-room, and so encounter many items whose purpose eludes me. Also I’ve been kind of stressed, and physically exhausted. It’s gotten to the point where my brain has stopped working altogether, and I can no longer remember most of the words I once knew. This combination of ignorance and forgetfulness means that I often phone my mother to ask her what on earth it is that I have uncovered, or what it is I’m supposed to be looking for.
The problem is that I’m so utterly useless that the questions themselves are stupidly vague and often inaccurate. So it’s time for a quiz! Can you cope with randomness of my questioning? Here’s a few examples from this week.
(Answers may not be factually correct)
1. What’s the name of the metal bit that goes around a fireplace? Not the mantelpiece, but the bit around the bottom that isn’t the grate? I’ve found two and they’re really heavy!
2. What’s the proper name for a hod-d-d-d?
3. What’s an elbow chair when it’s at home?
4. What’s the name of that man who was like an inventor or something and his first name was like an adjective?
5. What’s the proper name for like a manual screwdriver where you turn a handle to make it go?
6. What’s a vinaigrette?
7. Why would you need a skirt-lifter on a chatelaine?
8. What’s a plumb bob for? Fishing?
9. What’s this?
10. What’s a custard glass?
11. What’s a fish kettle look like? Cause I’ve heard the phrase ‘a kettle of fish’.
12. Is a teapoy like a teapot but spelt wrong?
13. What’s that thing like a canoe but round and they make them in Ironbridge?
Any answers? All will be revealed soon!
January 20th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
4 Bodger?
6 Oil and vinegar dressing
7 Puhleese
8 levels
9 ?
10 serving custard in? not out of a tin or microwave?
11 You’d boil a fish in it
12 yes
13 coracle?
January 20th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
1 a fret. If it’s the bit I think it is. Mwah!
January 20th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
1. Fender?
6. Smelling salts bottle (for reviving a lady when she swoons)?
8. Finding vertical when you’re hanging wallpaper, for example.
9. A sugar caster
11. A long and narrow (fish proportions) lidded pan for steaming a whole fish.
13. Coracle?
January 20th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
1. Fender if it goes around the edge of the fireplace, fret if it’s the bit right by the grate.
2. Coal scuttle? My granny called her coal scuttle a hod. But she was Irish. And Strange.
3. An arm chair with *really* short arms?
4. Capability Brown?
5. Ratcheting screwdriver?
6. I’m going with small decorative bottle, unless there’s some oil and vinegar dressing swilling around in a drawer somewhere.
7. So that a laydee could pull up her skirt to hook it onto the chatelaine so she doesn’t trip over it while she’s working. (I was paying attention on that school trip)
8. Finding vertical
9. It’s one of those.
10. Coloured glass used to make Pretty Things. The proper stuff glows under UV light cos of its uranium content. They used to have some in the visitors’ centre at Atoms R Us.
11. Big oblong shaped saucepan type thing for cooking a fish in.
12. Three legged table. Presumably for serving tea from.
13. Coracle. That’s got to be those sneeky Welsh creeping across the border again.
January 21st, 2010 at 10:56 am
Is it any wonder my brain hurts?
The phone goes. Then it’s “just a quick question. I’ve found a thing with three legs, a sievey bit in the middle, a scalloped edge and it’s covered in an enamel pattern. Any idea what it is?”
or
“I’ve got a key with two handles. What’s it for?”
The trick is to give an answer in a confident and authoritative manner and never follow it up with “why?”.
My only concern is that many years hence, an historian may be looking at the records and puzzled as to why the collection contains a decorative stand used for rinsing croquet balls and storing mallets and also a two man key for opening frozen locks.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:19 pm
I agree with MMM.
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:08 pm
I bet your mum had some funny answers to a few of those.
January 22nd, 2010 at 2:35 pm
I just typed comedy answers for all your questions and my browser ATE THEM. Not happy.
The only good one was 3: It’s what Guy Garvey sits in.
A fish kettle is as MMM says it is above. However, the phrase ‘a kettle of fish’ is actually a corruption of ‘a kiddle of fish’, which is a type of fish basket. You can probably work out how come I know that.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:28 pm
When you get older, memory is the second thing to go.
I can’t remember the first.