Something Rhymes with Purple - Caput

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Today is an episode for the bookworms (and we are assuming that that will be many of you, Purple People) as Susie and Gyles will be delving into the world of books. Come (digitally) leaf through the chapter of this volume of the Purple anthology to hear what chapters and cabbages have in common, why our index finger pointed out the perfect name for the index page and why having the book thrown at you, meant you were off to prison for a very long time. Susie will share how her love of reading stemmed from ingredient labels and Gyles also has a royal surprise in store for us! A Somethin’ Else productionIf you have any questions for Gyles and Susie, please email [e-mail]. A Somethin' Else production. To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple Visit rosettastone.co.uk/podcast to find links to Rosetta Stone’s More Than Words podcast on all your favourite podcast platforms, PLUS 50% off all Rosetta Stone courses – including their lifetime subscriptions, which give access to all 24 languages offered, for life! Try 6 free issues of The Week magazine worth £23.94 today. Go to http://bit.ly/SomethingRhymeswithPurple and use your special code PURPLE to claim your 6 week free trial today. Susie's Trio Recrudescence - the recurrence of an undesirable condition. Quakebuttock - A coward Potpanion - A drinking companion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there.

Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself.

Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello and welcome to another edition of Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast about words and language and in my case, dictionaries, the very best book in the world. And I am here with my friend and my co-presenter, who's always surrounded by books, whether or not they're dictionaries, I'm not sure, Giles Brandris. Hi, Giles. I keep the dictionaries upstairs, Susie, in the dictionary and word room. The room I'm talking to you from today is my basement book room, where the acoustic, according to Gully, is better. That's why I'm down here. But also I'm surrounded by all the books I've written or been involved in. And I used to run a book packaging company, and we produced books for publishers to publish,

and a lot of celebrity books that I did over the years with famous people. And I've written a book a year, or sometimes more, for 50 years. My first book was published exactly 50 years ago. In fact, today, the day we're speaking, 27th of April, I have a book published this very day, not one that I was expecting to see published yet. It was to be a celebration of the life of the Duke of Edinburgh for his 100th birthday,

but it's turned out to be Philip the Final Portrait, and it's published today. And it's, I love books. I love reading them. I quite enjoy writing them. It's become a habit with me. I've written all sorts of books. You've written a lot of books too. How many do you think you've written? I think I have written about 16 now. So not nearly as many as you. Have you never, honestly, never missed a year? No, never missed a year. And when my children were smaller,

I did a lot of children's books. And then you could do several a year. I mean, you know, the real children's authors, people like Enid Blyton, would write dozens of books in a year because children's books can be quite short and their imagination was so rich. So I wrote a lot of children's books. And I've done novels, quite a few.

I've done about 10 novels. I enjoy those because they don't require so much research. And I've done a number of biographies, books about, I mean, I did a biography of a Victorian entertainer called Dan Lino. Have you even heard of him? Yes, but I couldn't tell you very much about him. Contemporary of Maryoyd he was once called the funniest man on earth and a hundred years ago well 120 years ago when he died he was without

doubt the most famous man in the country after the king i mean he was that famous so ranging from people like him and the actor john gilgud i read a biography right through to the royal biographies i've done with this latest one being about the Duke of Edinburgh and they're fascinating because they involve so much research and it's riveting to as it were live life through somebody else's eyes yeah and trying to get it right um I read a lot too do you read what are you reading at the moment? I do read a lot, but I have kind of periods where I don't actually dip in very much. That usually coincides when I'm writing my own book and I feel like I've been staring at print and engaging my brain in a kind of linguistic way, perhaps a little bit too much.

So I need a bit of, you know, something else. So that's when I will watch a good film or binge watch. I don't believe it you don't go to bed every night with a book before you fall asleep. Not every night particularly not when I'm writing so no but then you also have to remember that I have my nose genuinely in the Oxford English Dictionary pretty much all day every day I mean I listen to a lot of books so I you know I love audiobooks um absolutely them. So it wouldn't be true to say I never actually have a book in my head or in my life. But as for actually physically

reading something, no, not every day. If I sound a bit hoarse, it's because I've been doing the audio version of this new book. Gosh, that takes ages, doesn't it? Yes. And you know, you're in a studio for hours. And as the day wears on, your voice becomes rustier. But I couldn't go to sleep without reading. I have to, I mean, literally without reading. If I'm in a hotel and I haven't got a book, I'm literally trying to prize from the wall the soap canister so that I can read the ingredients of the soap canister.

That's how it started for me. Do you remember? It's kind of reading my love of language actually started with looking at the ingredients on bottles and then kind of took off from there. And my favourite books when I was little, where I would find, my dad didn't like central heating much and still doesn't. And I would find the warmest, sunniest place in the house, which was this little bay window. And I would squat there. I'd kind of be on my, kind of on my knees just literally lost in a book but the books would quite often be annuals like children's annuals which not such a big thing these days but they really were in those days they're a bit like graphic novels I suppose with lots and lots of different stories in them and I love graphic novels as well that's another thing that so did I talk about I still do i love tintin tintin's brilliant

and there's a fantastic pair of graphic novels by arch beagleman called mouse which is a um recreation of the second world war which is incredible so anyway that's not what i was reading when i was little i would be reading those annuals and lost in enid blighton until she was banned from our school library that yes but it all started with with ingredients the reading bug, strangely. I have to say, I'll mention briefly the book I'm reading at the moment because I think it's relevant to language.

It's a biography of the playwright John Osborne, who famously wrote Look Back in Anger in the 1950s and a number of famous and great plays, The Entertainer, which was made into a movie and starred Laurence Olivier. A great play called Inadmissible Evidence, which starred Nicol Williamson. Anyway, he wrote two volumes of autobiography, which are gripping reading, and there is this biography of him by an Anglo-American critic called John Heilpern. And in it, I came across a list of words that John Osborne had tried to learn when he was a teenager.

It fascinated me, the idea of this young man, before he was a playwright, wanting to relish the English language and I was going to see how many of these words you knew and whether you knew the origin of them because I thought, isn't this interesting? He was famous for his use of language, his invective, spectacular way he had with words, that clearly it began with him in boyhood. And he would write them out, he'd look them up in the dictionary, write them down and learn them and try to use them. And it enriched his vocabulary. So I recommend it. It's out of print. And I think it's called A Patriot for Us. And it's by John Hartburn, a biography of John Osborne. So more of that another day. But let's talk about books, because independent bookshops, all bookshops are open again. We can go in. I love a real book. I know people love Kindle, and I've just been recording my book for Kindle.

But I love the smell, the feel, the texture of a book, don't you? I absolutely do. Should we start with where book itself comes from? Please. Because we think it's related to the word beach, as in the beech tree, because it was upon beech wood tables that runes were first inscribed. And beech in German, were first inscribed. And beach in German, and we are at heart a Germanic language with English, is buche. And a book is buch. So you've got buch and buche, the beech tree and the book. So we think that's where it comes from. And what about the bits and pieces that make up a book? I don't know, the pages, you leaf through a book, I suppose. Why do you leaf through a book? Well, it's funny

i guess not for nothing do um lexicographers really talk about the roots of words because there's so many kind of references to trees really um so it's not just the beech tree and and the runes but in german in fact they also have for a letter the alphabet is called buchstabe a beach staff folio is from um which is a book of a very large size, we should say, is from the Latin for leaf. We leaf through a book, again, because they're like leaves of paper. And of course they give us paper.

And volume takes its name from volumen in Latin, which meant a roll. And that referred to the roll of papyrus manuscript that was wrapped around a spindle. And the roll of papyrus manuscript that was wrapped around a spindle. And of course, papyrus gave us paper. So the history of the book is inextricably intertwined with trees. That's intriguing. What about things that appear in a book? I don't know. The end papers are so-called because they come at the end of the book. I understand that. What about a frontispiece? Well, I suppose it's because it's a piece that comes at the front of a book.

Well, yes, except it didn't really start with piece. We changed it to piece because it sounded a bit like that, but actually it goes back to the French frontispiece, which actually goes back to the Latin frontispicium, which was frons, meaning the front, and specere, to look. So as you open the title page of a book or the illustration facing the title page of a book, which is the frontispiece, you are looking at the front. But because it sounded like the frontispiece sounded a bit like piece at the end, we changed it and we changed the spelling as well. Gosh. Well, I'm actually leafing, in my mind's eye, I'm leafing through a book and I've passed the frontispiece and I've got to something called the epigraph. And I know what it is, but tell us what it is

and why it's called an epigraph. Okay, so we have epigraph and we have epilogue, don't we? So epigraph, as you say, it's a kind of short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter. And an epigraph originally meant the heading of a document or a letter. It goes back to the Greek meaning to write upon. So it was simply, you know, something that was written upon the opening pages of the book. Whereas the epilogue, which is a speech or a section at the end, can be a final concluding act of an event, or it can be speech, as I say, at the end. That goes back to epi meaning upon upon, or in addition, and logos, meaning speech. So it's a kind of added on speech, if you like. So the epilogue obviously comes at the end. The prologue obviously comes at

the beginning and it's the same idea. As a forward comes at the beginning, like an introduction. Yes, and prologue is the same, the same as a forward it's from before and logos saying so it means exactly the same they're doublets you mentioned the word chapter where do we get the chapter from yeah gosh chapters comes from one of the the sort of really um productive should i say families in english because there's so many different well i say roots again of this word so So chapter literally means, well, in Latin it did, a capitulum. It meant a little head. So it comes from caput, meaning a head. And a capitulum was a heading as well as a division of a book. And that's what gave us our

word chapter. But if you think of that word caput, a head, it gave us captain, it gave us capital, actually gave us cabbage, which looks like a little head. It gives us lots and lots of different words in English. And the phrase chapter and verse? Chapter and verse, I think would just be when we are quoting from the Bible and being sort of referring to an absolute authority, we give chapter and verse from the particular place in the Bible where we sourced it from. Oh, very good. In my book, if it's a biography,

obviously it has an index at the back taking you to the page that refers to whatever is listed in the index. Is the index at the back of a book to do with the index finger? You're leafing through it with your index? Oh, really? It is, yeah. Because it's all about pointing to something.

So it came to mean a pointer. It also gave us indicate. So index itself is from, well, the second element is related to dicere, to say, which gave us dictator in dictionary and all sorts. But the idea is that with your finger, you are saying or pointing in the right direction. I think books are our best friends and they're the one friend you can rely on. You can take a book anywhere with you, get on the bus with you, the train, you can go to bed with a book and not wake up with a regret or a disease. And that's the joy of a book. It's totally reliable.

And it's come into the language, hasn't it? When we talk about books, there's hardly, well, there's so many phrases. Give us your favourite phrases and turns of phrase that involve books and tell us why they do. Well, I mean, just to stay with chapter and verse, if you do something by the book, you are probably doing it according to the Bible. So it's a little bit like taking an oath in a courtroom where you swear something to be true. You are doing something by that book, by that authority. If you throw the book at someone, that probably isn't the Bible. That's probably a tome of law because it's something that a judge would do. And the book was originally used to mean the maximum penalty for a

crime. So there's one novel around 1911, and it has a prisoner saying that he is doing one life jolt and two one-to-fifties, yes sir, doing the book. So it's a kind of notional legal term that judges have at their disposal and contains all possible punishments. And if they throw it at a defendant, obviously they're sentencing them as severely as possible. And if you're booking an offender, if you're a police officer booking someone, then you're referring to, again, a record

held by a law enforcer, really, where, you know, the criminal's details would be entered. What about the oldest trick in the book? The oldest trick in the book is, again, it's sort of the book is chosen here as a kind of metonym for, you know, a body of knowledge. So something that contains absolutely everything. And I think when I looked at the tribal language of magicians, I think the oldest trick in the book was the one with the three cups, I think, if you want to take it literally. But anyway, I think that's where that one comes from, just as I say, a metaphor for something that contains all the knowledge of everything. There's lots of other ones. There's being in someone's black books, which is related to being blacklisted. And there were several real black books in English history, so official books

that were literally bound in black. So the Black Book of the Exchequer recorded royal revenues in the 12th century, and you had the Black Book of the Admiralty, which was a code of rules for the navy. But the most famous black book of all recorded the monastic abuses that were the evidence for, or provided the evidence for Henry VIII when he was dissolving the monasteries in the 1530s. And by the 16th century, it had come to be used for people who faced punishment. So you never really want to be in anyone's black book, and certainly not in the days of Henry VIII. And to be blacklisted was to have your name down in that black book and to be under suspicion. And that has had lots of different applications. So a blacklist for a

while was specifically an employer's list of workers in a union that were thought to be particularly troublesome. And then you've got the little black book, which actually it's fine to be in because I don't think anyone has one of those anymore because we've all store phone numbers on our actual phones. But it, of course, was a record of telephone numbers of people you'd like to go out with, wasn't it? Did you have one? A little black book, not in that sense, but I did have. I mean, I did keep and I still have got little books where I note numbers. I'm a little bit of a Luddite still. I'm very bad at putting numbers, I write them down and then I never put them into the, I'm hopeless at that, which is why so many of my friends are still a

closed book to me. A closed book, where does that come from? Very good. Well, just again, a simple metaphor that, you know, if you close the book, you finish the story and you have no idea what's inside. So if someone's a closed book, they are very inscrutable and mysterious and unknowable. Whereas if they're an open book, they're easy to read. Exactly. If you take a leaf out of someone's book, what are you doing? You're following their example. Yes. Yes, exactly. You're imitating them. There's a turn up for the books as well. Turn up for the books goes back to horse racing, where the book this time was the record of bets laid on the race kept by a bookmaker. So when a horse performed in a really surprising way, in a way that nobody expected and most bets lost, it was something that benefited the book and so the bookmaker. So if a real outsider won, it was a turn up for the bookmaker's book.

And balancing the books is obviously from the world of accounting. Balancing the books, absolutely. Yes, as simple as that. And positive amounts will be written in black and negative amounts in red, hence in the black and in the red. My grandchildren wouldn't understand blotting your own copybook because they don't have copybooks and they don't have blotting paper, they don't have ink. Whereas I know what blotting your copybook means. Your copybook was where you learned to do your handwriting. You did your alphabet, your A, B, C along the lines and you had an inkwell and you dipped an ink in and if you made a mess of it, you blotted your copybook.

But it's an expression that goes on, even though we no longer have copybooks and blotting. Oh, gosh, I know. Well, we've talked about those, haven't we? Some people call those linguistic skeuomorphs. So where we have references to kind of, they're sort of fossilized words, if you like, in that they refer to technologies that no longer exist. And we do remember we talked about hanging up a phone, dialing a number, or I don't know, the linen cupboard, where most people don't have linen anymore, all sorts of fossilised expressions in English. And I guess blot for the copy book or blotting a copy book is one of them.

You read books professionally all day, which is why at night you are not what I am. I'm a bookworm, even at night. I am a bookworm, but just not, I would say, not every single day of the year is what I was trying to say. I absolutely adore books and I'm surrounded by books all the time, but sometimes I have to have a slight break from the actual reading. Why is it a bookworm of all things? Why isn't it a book eagle or a book wolf because you want to wolf it down? Yeah, well, there was literally, well, probably still is, a wood-boring beetle which feeds on paper and glue in books. So I guess maybe the idea was that

as these insects would bore into the pages of a book, so people who enjoy reading would do the same, albeit not in quite a parasitic way. Are you writing a book at the moment? I am writing another book. Yes. I won't tell you what it's about just yet, but I will have news of it before long. But it's a lovely thing to do, but it won't be out till next year. I've got this year, I've got a little version of my Word Perfect, the etymological diary, if you like. Well, not a diary, but it gives it offers you a word in a story for every day of the year. Can I say that's one of my bedside books. I have a lot of books on my bedside. I have you on my bedside. I always have a biography. I usually have a piece of fiction going. And I always also have a book of quotations. Because I can't go to sleep without

reading something, even if it's only a line. And do you always remember them? Oh, no. Can I say, in a moment, after we've had the people's letters, you're going to give us your three words of the week. And what frustrates me is my wife says to me on a Tuesday afternoon, oh, what were Susie's three words? And almost instantly, I've forgotten them. And that's the problem. We've got to do a book of those words of yours, because it's only if you repeat the words, I think, and put them in. It's like John Osborne. He wrote the words down, and then he tried to bring them into his conversation or his writing, because that's the way you remember it. And there's interesting research being done that I was reading about recently that shows that writing it physically with your hand, using paper and pen, will make

it easier to remember than simply typing it into a computer. Yes. So there's that. But you can type into a commuter if you want to send us a message. It's purple at something else dot com. That's something without a G. Let's take a quick break. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. Squeezing every drop out of the last day? How about a 4 p.m. late checkout? Just need a nice

place to settle in? Enjoy your room upgrade. Wherever you go, we'll go together. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card. Terms apply. Are you the friend who can recognize anime themes sampled by J. Cole, MF Doom, and The Weeknd? Don't worry. I'm Lee Alec Murray.

And I'm also that person. I'm Nick Friedman. And I'm Leah President. And we invite you to take your Sonic knowledge to the next level by listening to our show, Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. Learn about how Yeji's latest album was actually born from her own manga. I started off with not even the music. I started off by writing a fantastical story. Or how 24K Golden gets inspired by his favorite opening themes. There are certain songs that I'm like, whoa, the melodies in this are really amazing.

No idea what bro's saying at all, but I'm jacking these melodies. And you know, I hear Megan Thee Stallion is also a big anime fan. So Megan, do you want to trade AOT hot takes? We're here. Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts, and watch full episodes on Crunchyroll

or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. This is Giles Brandreth with Susie Dent, and it's Something Rhymes with Purple, which I'm happy to say is a program where we celebrate words with people from all over the world, and delightfully, they call themselves purple people. Sarah Temple has written, saying she is a purple person. She says, I'm a Brit living in Florida, and I've so enjoyed the podcast,

especially the discussions on American English, which I found fascinating while living here. While baking with my son the other day, he chose this very moment to ask what diarrhea and diabetes had in common. This led to us thinking of all the other words that start with D-I-A, which I think, says Sarah Temple, means through, like diamond, diaper, dialect. And we tried to think what they all had in common. Could you please shed some light? Yes, I'm going to start with diarrhea, I'm afraid. One of the most difficult words to spell, surely, in our language. And you know, I work on a spelling app for really tricky words for anyone who struggles with spelling.

And this is one of my favourite animations because it shows someone running for the loo. And the way to remember the spelling is you say, runny, runny, help, oops. And that will give you the R-R-H-O. Anyway, it does mean through. And actually, diarrhea goes back to the Greek for flowing through. You can leave to your imagination what exactly that is describing. But diarrhea does mean through. And then you've got the R-H-E-I-n in greek which is to flow and actually that also eventually gave us the river rhine it's all connected now diabetes is an interesting one actually i was talking to on countdown sometimes we have a doctor called dr phil hammond and i was talking to him about diabetes because literally the word means to go through again. And obviously diabetes, it kind of gives you the abnormal

metabolism of carbohydrates and elevated glucose in the blood, etc. So things are not going through properly. But there are two types. There is diabetes mellitus, which means sweet, you know, the sweet kind. And there's also diabetes insipidus, which means the tasteless ones. And in old medicine, doctors actually would taste people's urine in order to diagnose diabetes. And if it tasted sweet, they could diagnose diabetes mellitus. And if it was tasteless, it was diabetes insipidus. So there you go. That's completely riveting. What about the other dyers that she mentioned? Are they also three words like diamond, diaper, dialect? Diamond is not one of them. So diamond actually goes back to the Latin adamans. Now adamans was a gem, essentially. It was a legendary rock,

really, with many supposed properties. And one of them was hardness, which was why people sometimes identified it with what we now call diamond, because diamond is, I think, isn't it the hardest gem in the world? And anyway, the Adamans gave us adamant when you were really, really insistent on something and as hard as that legendary rock. So it actually doesn't have dia in front of it in the same way, I have to say. So that one is a kind of odd one out. What about diaper? Yeah, so diaper, yes, it's similar. So the dia here means across rather than through.

And aspros means white, because it gave us aspirin as well. So a diaper was originally a really costly, very kind of white fabric. So it was white all the way through. And eventually baby's nappies were made from that. Oh my gosh. Dialect? Dialect, yes dialect yes if you talk it's to read through if you like or to talk through it originally actually goes back to dialogue it's related to that and a dialogue is to converse

with or to speak through with someone else it's it's complicated because that dia can mean lots of different different prefixes in english but it is all connected apart from um as i say diamond well another letter now uh this is from sean o'neill i'm currently working my way through the back catalogue of something rhymes with purple and i'm now november 2019 that's a while ago and the nemophilism episode is that correctly pronounced nemophilist if you're a wood lover. Yeah. Thank you. With this episode, the wonderful word osine came up, which meant relating to songbirds. I was wondering if there's a link between the word sine and oscillation. Does oscillation have its roots in birdsong? I love the idea of that, but it doesn't seem to be, although the

Latin for mouth was os, O-S. So that you might well find in songbird if you take it back enough, because obviously they are singing these beautiful songs from their mouth. And you'll find that os in orifice, oral, and even usher, which was the Roman word for the mouth or entrance of a building. So the first ushers were kind of entrance keepers. But osculum and oscillate, this is a story and a half. So I'll try and say this very quickly. So an osculum in Roman times was a little face with a mouth. And the word was applied in Roman times to a mask, a little face on a mask of the wine god Bacchus. And you will find these masks which were hung up in vineyards essentially as good luck charms because Bacchus obviously was, you know, all about the cultivation of grapes and the drinking of

grapes as well. And the little mask would swing to and fro in the breeze. And before long, oscillum, the little face with the little mouth was turned into a verb oscillare, which meant to swing. And that's how we got oscillate, originally as a term to describe the movement of a pendulum. But it's all about a little mouth. That's charming, Susie. And so thank you, Sean O'Neill. Thank you, everybody who writes in. It's purple at somethingelse.com, something without the G.

Lucy Georges, or Lucy George, anyway, she writes to ask this. I found something I'd forgotten I had in a sewing cupboard today, and it got me thinking that there must be a word for this in at least one of the world's many languages. I've drawn a blank so far in Google searches, so I was hoping you two masters of words might have some obscure moniker for this particular situation, which I must add, seems to happen more and more frequently as the years pass by. She found something she'd forgotten in a sewing. So something you've forgotten, a word for that. Yeah, or something that you're reunited with. I want to put this out to the purple people

because I don't have the obvious answer for this one. But I did just want to mention one of my all time favourite words, which is French. And it describes a feeling that many of us will be experiencing, I hope, if not now, then very soon. And it's the joy of reuniting with someone or something that you haven't seen in a very long time. And it's the French, retrouvailles, the joy of reunion. So that's what I would like to suggest for this one, but I'm sure there's something which is a bit punnier and funnier. So if there is, let us know, purple at somethingelse.com. Retrouvailles, I do remember that word. It's been one of your three favourite words, hasn't it? Give us today's trio, would you, Susie? Okay, so this is one that doesn't go very well with retrouvailles

because it's something that we all want to avoid. And it's, I guess, a sort of, a kind of instruction to be careful because we want to avoid recrudescence. And recrudescence is the return of something bad. It can be a disease. it can be a situation it can be the resurgence usually of something bad rather than something good so that's recrudescence so let's all avoid that and just be careful as we are beginning to get our freedom so that's the first one second one is a humorously scathing word and it means a coward. So this really reminds me of some Shakespearean

characters, but a quake buttock. Oh, I love it. Quake buttock is somebody who doesn't quite have the guts to stand up to somebody else or, you know. I'm thinking of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night. I always feel the word might've been used about him, a quake buttock. I mean, literally somebody whose backside is quaking in terror. Love it. I agree. And this might have been used about him a quake buttock i mean literally somebody whose backside is quaking in terror love it i agree and this may have been one of our trio my trio at least during the drinking episode which you'll find in our archives but again it's a useful one as we all slowly make our way out and meet people again hopefully for a glass of something nice pot panion somebody with whom you share a drink, a potpanion. Oh, it's like a companion, but you're sharing a pot of ale with them. That's the origin of this.

Your potpanion. Exactly. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you in person. I haven't seen you for months. Oh, good grief. I know. Well, only on screen. On screen. But we may later in the year be doing some live shows. So everybody do look out for the live shows and look out if we do some more special screen shows as well. Just keep an eye on what we're up to. I've got a poem this week.

And because I've been writing about the past, the extraordinary past, the hundred years of the life of the Duke of Edinburgh, I've been looking back into his life. And because before that, I was working on a memoir of my own childhood, which will be my next book, I've been thinking about the past and remembering the past and how elusive it is. And that reminded me of this wonderful short poem by A.E. Hausman about how the past is there, but we can't really bring it back.

We can only live our lives in the present. Into my heart, an air that kills, from yon far country blows. What are those blue remembered hills? What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content. I see it shining plain. The happy highways where I went and cannot come again. Very wistful, very beautiful.

I love Hausmann. Shropshire lad. Thank you so much to everybody who has joined us today and who has joined us throughout our, I hate to use the word journey, but I think it's appropriate in this context when we're talking about the progression of the Purple podcast. Thank you.

And do please keep getting in touch. Purple at somethingelse.com. Good. Something rhymes with purple. Is there something else? Production produced by Lawrence Bassett with additional production from Harriet Wells, Steve Ackerman, Ella McLeod, Jay Beale,

and someone who could actually now get out and get his haircut and his beard trimmed. Why doesn't he? What's he called? He's my pop onion, Gully.