A Bit of Singing and Dancing

by S. Hill

I

t was February. It was a cold evening. As far as she could see, the beach and the sea and the sky were all grey, merging into one another in the distance. On the day of her mother’s funeral it had been blowing a gale, with sleet, she had looked round at all their lifeless, pinched faces under the black hats and thought, this is right, this is fitting, that we should all of us seem bowed and old and disconsolate. Her mother had a right to a proper grief, a proper mourning.

            She wanted to leave the beach and walk back, her hands were stiff with cold inside the pockets of her navy-blue coat—navy, she thought, was the correct first step away from black. She wanted to go back and toast scones and eat them with too much butter, of which her mother would have strongly disapproved. “We never had it, we never allowed to indulge ourselves in rich foods, and besides, they’ve never been discovering more about heart disease in relation to butter, haven’t you read that in the newspapers, Esme? I’m surprised you don’t pay attention to these things. I don’t believe in butter at every meal—butter on this, butter with that.

            Every morning, her mother had read two newspapers from cover to cover—the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, and marked out with a green ball point pen news items in which she thought that her daughter ought to take an interest. She said: “I like to see both sides of every question.” And also, whichever side her daughter or some visitor took, on some issue of the day, she was informed enough by both her newspapers to take the opposing view. An argument, she had said, sharpened the mind.

            “I do not intend to become a cabbage, Esme, just because I am forced to be bedridden.”

NOTES AND EXERCISES:

1.   Silent “e” is usually omitted from the present participle form of verbs: dance—dancing etc. but is preserved if the omission would bring about confusion: singe—singeing (to differentiate it from sing—singing). Final “e” is preserved, too, in the 3^rd person singular forms of the following verbs: merge, leave, love, like, rage, oblige, rescue, owe, hope, starve.

2.   The following words have the prefix “dis–”. Remember that this prefix leads to doubling of the letter “s” in cases where the root morpheme begins with an “s”:

disapprove	disaster	disperse	dissect	dissolution
discover	disease	disarmament	dissent	dissension
disdain	disgrace	distraction	dissuade	disseminate
disorder	distort	disagree	dissimilar	dissatisfaction

3.   Memorize the spelling of the following words spelt with “bb”:

cabbage	babble	ribbon	robber	hobble
abbot	scribble	rabble	rubber	bobbin
abbess	pebble	cobble	rubbish	robbery
abbey	rabbit	gobbler	shabby	snobbery
abbreviate	gobble	scribbler	hobby	snobbish

4.   The adjective grey has an alternative spelling gray.

5.   Be careful not to confuse the noun mourning with the homonymous morning (as in Good morning!). Mourning means “grief for a dead person” (to go into mourning, to be in mourning—to wear black clothes as a sign of grief).

6.   Word study:

scone         UK [skon], US [skoun]—a soft, flat cake of barley meal or wheat flour baked quickly

cabbage     (colloq.) a person without ambition or interests

bedridden  confined to bed by weakness or old age

7.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

stiff with cold, a stiff arm, to be frozen stiff, to feel stiff in the joints, stiff hair, stiff denial, to keep a stiff upper lip, a stiff bow, a stiff climb;

argument sharpens the mind, theatre-minded people, the book-minded public, to be in one’s right mind, to be out of one’s mind, it has gone clear out of my mind, of sound mind, absence of mind, presence of mind, frame of mind, to have something in one’s mind, times out of mind, to be easy in one’s mind, to keep one’s mind on something, strength of mind, peace of mind, state of mind, turn of mind, the minds of men were roused, to find something to one’s mind, to be of the same mind as someone, to be in two minds, to change one’s mind, to make up one’s mind, to have half a mind to, to have a good mind to, to take something in mind, to my mind (in my opinion), to bear/keep in mind, Bear that in mind!, to bring/call/recall something to someone’s mind, to call something to mind, to pass out of mind, to mind one’s business, mind over matter, to mind rules, Mind you!, to mind the child, to mind the paint, Mind you’re not late!, You ought to mind your elders!, Do you mind my smoking?, Would you mind opening the windows?, I don’t mind, I don’t mind the cold, I shouldn’t mind a cup of tea, never mind, never mind him, never mind the remainder, Will you have some cheese?—I don’t mind if I do, Who minds what he says?