Ossum

Readers over 30 years old may be surprised to hear that ‘Awesome’ (pronounced ‘Ossum’) as a term of approval is still (or is it perhaps again?) in use among young people. I was in England recently for my mother’s funeral (It’s all right: she was well into her nineties, had Alzheimer’s and needed full-time care; she would not have wished to live long in that state) and afterwards we had an unusually large number of family members, including my three teenage nephews, at my elder sister’s house for dinner. So I made an enormous prawn and mushroom curry. This the nephews duly declared ‘Ossum’. I was oddly flattered: it is not often that young people praise old ones, and  in young person’s vernacular to boot.

Sorry about the shortness and triviality of today’s very late post: I have been feeling very much under the weather lately, and this has been compounded by people first treating me badly and then being blithely indifferent to what they have done or even making it clear that they think it all my fault. A common enough occurrence in the summer season here and I hope soon to get over it and resume what passes for normal blog service.