You know, sometimes I'll be reading an old blog post and discover that I've used a wrong word. My brain's getting tired, you see, and it's a bit embarrassing. Since I can't speak any other language than English (a fact which causes me some consternation, regret, and even guilt occasionally,) I feel I owe it to myself to at least get my own language right. And I imagine some Swede, or Spaniard, or person from South Korea thinking: 'If this dimbo can't even write his own language properly, what's the point of reading anything he writes?' It can be quite chastening.
(It is a fact, of course, that certain good writers (like Virginia Woolf) do sometimes misuse a word deliberately because they feel it serves the sense of what they want to say better than a commonplace uttering which is more technically accurate. Even I've done it, and I'm no more than moderate in the matter of meaningful diction. But I don't make excuses when I've simply used the wrong word because what's the point of lying to yourself?)
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I fear I might have to argue quite forcibly with a nurse at the GP surgery on Thursday. I don't like that because anyone who has been reading this blog over the past eight years will know that I venerate the nursing profession above all others. I can only hope she'll be one of those rare, hidebound ones who believe with religious zeal in the rightness of rules and resistance is useless. In that case it won't be any different than arguing with the wife.
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