Something Rhymes with Purple - Curglaff

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

A very special episode of the show this week as we bring you highlights of the first live show of our 2021/2022 tour.  We’re in Bath where, appropriately, we were discussing the language of baths and bathing.  Discover the equestrian links to a bidet and the unpleasant origin of ‘bumf’ in a show full of Eureka moments… just make sure you get out before you become quibbled.  A Somethin' Else production.  To buy SRWP mugs and more head to.... https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  If you would like to sign up to Apple Subs please follow this link https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823 and make sure that you are running the most up-to-date IOS on your computer/device otherwise it won’t work.  If you would like to see Gyles and Susie LIVE and in person on our Something Rhymes With Purple UK Tour then please go to https://www.tiltedco.com/somethingrhymeswithpurple for tickets and more information. Susie’s Trio: Omninescience - knowing nothing at all Nodcrafty - nodding your head with authority even though you’ve zoned out of the conversation Hypnopompic - to be in the state of consciousness before you become completely awake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Something else. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Welcome to a special edition of Something Rhymes with Purple. There are people here, Susie Dent. This is extraordinary. We are live. This is a live podcast, a special edition of our weekly podcast. I'm Giles Brandreth,

and normally I'm in the basement of my home in London talking via the World Wide Web or some apparatus to Susie Dent, who's in her home in Oxford. But today we are together. Where are we, Susie? We are in the beautiful, beautiful Forum Theatre in Bath. It was built in the 1930s as an art deco cinema, the Bath Forum. Over the years, it's been used as a cinema, as a theatre, as a place of worship, as a gathering place of different kinds. Thanks to a piece of legislation that I introduced in the

1990s, the 1994 Marriage Act, you can get married here at the Bath Forum. Great stand-ups come here. They welcome people of all sorts, and today they've welcomed us into our live podcast. And what's thrilling for us is that hundreds of lovely purple people have turned up from all over are you all from somerset oh are you from avon oh a few from avon where the hell are you from Wiltshire! Oh! Wiltshire! Are we in Wiltshire? Oh, I see they've crossed the border.

This is truly an international event. People have crossed borders to be with us here today. Well, it's very exciting to be here, live and in person. And thank you very much indeed, Bath people, for turning up. It's called Bath Spa. When I got off the train, it said Bath Spa. What is the origin of the word bath? We should just say that actually

that's what we've picked as our subject today. Because we're in Bath, we thought that we would look at the fascinating world of bathing. So, shall I kick off with spa? Kick off with spa and then I want you to give me bath. Give me bath, not run. Well, spa and then i want you to give me bath okay give me bath not

run um well spa has got a lovely history to it because for ages people thought that spa was an acronym for sanitas per aquem health through water which would make total sense but actually it goes back to the bel town of Spa, which is beautiful. It's in the Ardennes Mountains, and it has wonderful thermal springs. And going right back to the first century, you will find references to these beautiful bubbling waters and their restorative remedies.

So they were thought to be good for kidney stones, as a purgative. This dates back to ancient times that people believed, and still do, that they were incredibly restorative. So Spa was a place. Yes. And it's still a place? It is still a place, but it was almost a victim of its own success because it became a real destination for A-list celebrities. So you found the wife of Henry IV go there, Charles II went there during his exile. Casanova went there in the 19th century.

And there's this brilliant account of how he was spooked by the advances of some woman and then made a quick getaway and then just basically said he couldn't see what all the fuss was about. But because it was such a destination for the stars and celebrities of the day, as I say, it almost became too destination for the stars and celebrities of the day, as I say, it almost became too big for its own boots. But other cities copied. So it's the first spa. And then other places where they had natural spring waters became known as spa towns.

Yes. The persons is the word. So we're not talking about the first place that actually offered their thermal springs. I'm sure that predates that. But in terms of them being called spa. Very good. Yeah. And bath, do we know why this city is called bath? I mean, a bath is what you sit in, but what's the origin of the word bath? Well, bath also, it's a Germanic word, because as I always say, we're a Germanic language at heart. So baden is, in German, is a bath, and we are a sibling of that. Bath is a sibling of that and obviously renowned for its Roman baths. So Baden, as in Baden, Baden, the place, which is also a spa.

Yes. Baden means bath. It means spa as well. So it's as a sort of double life. So Bath Spa is actually Spa Spa. Yes. Or indeed, Bar Bath. Bar Bath, no, it's Bath Bath.

Bath Bath. And of course here, it's bath bath. Bath bath. And of course, here we have the lovely springs. Exactly. And over the years, many distinguished, interesting, and terrible people as well have come and taken advantage of the spa waters. Exactly. Well, tell us lots more about this whole world. I mean, you go to get healthy, but also you go into a bath to get clean. What's the origin of getting clean and being cleansed?

Well, clean and cleansed, often people say, what's the difference? And there isn't much, I don't think. I think you generally have a good clean around the house. Now, Giles, what is my favourite word for having a mad dash around the house and tidying up quickly before guests arrive? Oh, no, yes. Give me a clue. I do know this one. A couple of people will know this one, I think.

Give me the... It begins with an S. Scurry fun. Scurry fun. Scurry fun. Thank you, people. We're calling it out. Scurry fun.

So scurry funging is going around having a mad clean up before guests arrive. But the difference between clean and cleanse, I think, is simply that we cleanse ourselves of impurities. And if you cleanse something, there's definitely the idea that you were getting rid of sort of toxins almost uh whereas clean you can just sort of use much more generally but essentially they're pretty much the same are you a bath or a shower person incidentally well I will tell you what I am oh dear this is going to be a whole story isn't it well yes yeah well I can tell you the first interesting person I shared a bath with. Oh, okay.

I have shared a bath. I've never met anybody else who has done this. I've shared a bath with an Oscar winner. Does Michelle need to block her ears at this point? No, she's got the photographs. Okay. And she's got the photographs because they're in my childhood album. When I was a little boy, my parents lived in a flat below

the house where Julian Fellows the creative fellow created Downton Abbey where his parents lived and so Julian and I were of an age so when we were two years old our mothers were friends and we used to share an occasional bath so I have a picture of me in a bath with Julian Fellows who has won an Oscar so I've shared a bath with an Oscar winner. The Oscar winners with whom I've shared a shower is a different story for a different kind of show. But I'd be intrigued to know. So what I do is usually Monday, Wednesday, Thursday.

No, Monday, Wednesday, Friday are shower nights. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday are bath nights. Sunday, I toss for it. So, can we take a vote on this? If you are a shower person overall, say shower! If you are a bath person

overall, say bath. I think marginally the shower people have it, yeah. Are you a shower person? Yeah, there's something about sort of just sitting for a long time. Well, you know what I'm like? Because, yes, I cannot. The skin getting old.

That's my phobia. For anybody who's seen 8 Out of 10 Cats Just Countdown, I talk about this a lot with Jimmy Carr. That is my big phobia, is getting wrinkly fingers. So when I go swimming with my kids, my hands are like this above the water all the time.

I just, even now, the thought of it is just, and there's no word for that phobia. Is there not? Not that I know of. Is there a word for wrinkly fingers? Yes, they are quabbled. Quabbled. It's an old Wiltshire dialect actually, quabbled.

So it's quabblephobia. Quabbled fingers. Yeah, it doesn't quite work. Well, it does. You'd think you'd need Greek for the phobia bit, wouldn't you? But anyway. So quabbled is your fingers and then all, after you've been in the bath for too long, your skin

becomes quabbled. Prunidigitophobia is what I call it. What? Prunidigitophobia. Prunidigitophobia. I think that's very good. That's very good. Now, I'm with you on the bath thing. I used to love a bath, and I've got some expensive blue stuff that Michelle kindly got me, and I put a little cap of it, and it

fills it full of bubbles. Is it Radox? If they're ready to advertise during the commercial break, Radox, it certainly can be. But anyway, I sometimes feel, actually, I've been sitting here too long, it's getting a bit cold, what's the point? And a shower, you can get on with it. And also, I learn poetry in the shower,

and I sing in the shower. What about ablution, doing your ablutions? Is that an interesting word? Yes, ablutions. I sing in the shower. What about ablution, doing your ablutions? Is that an interesting word? Yes, ablutions. I think in some military base, I don't know if we've got any military personnel here today, but I think ablutions are actual sort of rooms where you go and wash, I think, bathing facilities.

But ablution, I think, has quite a religious feel. It all goes back to the Latin abluere, I think, which was to to cleanse yourself. And that could also mean expiating your sins and that kind of thing. Yes, it's a Latin root. We have the Romans to thank for that. Yes.

But if you say I'm going to perform my ablutions, is that a euphemism for going to the loo? No. No, okay. It's actually going, it means I'm going to wash and scrub up. Okay. And do you use soap?

Oh, yeah. I like an old-fashioned bar that gets lost in the bath. There's all that fun game of trying to grab hold of it. Oh, there should be a word for that, definitely. Soap, I think, is related, again, to German Seife. So I think that's where it came from. I'm not sure what it's called. Seife. I'm not quite sure why it got the hard P.

The soap opera. The soap opera is because soap manufacturers used to advertise during these long-running series. And it began in the... Soap operas began in America in the 1930s on the radio. They were hugely popular. And I remember as a child, actually, before I got this bubble bath,

there was something called, I think, Dreft. Little flakes. Yes, there's some older people too in the audience they are in a green box and it was washing powder it was washing powder and I put the flakes into the bath oh no oh no and it came up all bubbly and fun yeah what's your skin like afterwards wobbly wobbly is it probably cobbled cobbled skin was quabbled, but I didn't mind. Okay. So I like a shower. I like a bath.

I like soap. I like to ablute. Who was it who was supposed to be in the bath and had that eureka moment? Archimedes. Archimedes, yes. Yes, eureka. Means this bath's too hot for me in greek uh no so the story was that he was asked by the king to find out whether his golden crown was actually made of real gold or whether it's made of some cheap alloy and he

couldn't he just couldn't suss out archimedes how to you know how to work this out and so the story is that he was having a bath and it overflowed. And he thought, I know what I will do. I will measure how much a bath overflows with real gold and see if the same volume goes over the edge with the crown. And then he would be able to test. So he came up with a theory, and I'm not a scientist, but basically it's all about the displacement. The volume that's displaced should be equal in both cases and that's not the strict formula. Did he cry Eureka? Apparently he ran

through the streets I don't know if he was naked had a towel on or quite at what point he did this but yes Eureka I have seen. I have seen? Yes. It means I have seen. Yes or I have found. Do you remember a politician called Anne Widdicombe? Yes, she came on Countdown. She was at university with me and indeed my wife, and she later became a politician. And she's very keen – I think she may be a Catholic convert – anyway, she's very keen Christian, and she wrote a little pamphlet called On Christian Principles. And I remember going to Maidstone with her one day,

and she was going to speak at a meeting. And she was planning to sell her pamphlet afterwards, or distribute it afterwards. Anyway, we parked the car in the car park. We got to the hall where she was going to speak, and she suddenly realized she'd forgotten the box of these leaflets. So I saw her running through the streets of Maidstone, shouting out,

I've lost my Christian principles! I have to remind you now of the origin of pamphlet. I mean, no one gets excited about a pamphlet, apart from maybe Anne Woodcombe. But in the sort of earliest days, a pamphlet was the most exciting thing ever because it was a little pamphilus. And pamphilus and pamphilus

was a story uh part of a story anyway the hero um which was essentially the the 50 shades of grey of its time it was really racy slightly controversial actually but it was all about this man pursuing this poor girl who was trying to resist his advances as far as i can tell i've never read the original anyway it was so successful and so popular that it was reprinted over and over in these little booklets that were called little pamphiluses pamphilettes and eventually the name was given to the booklet rather than the content and so pamphilette became pamphlet but it was all back to this hero and pamphilus means loved by all pamphilus means loved by all. This is why I love Something Rhymes with Purple. You know, I did not know that at the beginning of the day.

And given my memory, I will not know it at the end of the day. But because I live in the moment, I'm relishing it knowing it now. Yeah, it's a brilliant story. We're in the bathroom, Susie Dent, you and I. And I want to know about some of the stuff we're looking at. The basin. I call it a basin. Do the Americans call it a sink?

I know they call a tap a faucet. Yeah, a tap is a faucet. Is there a difference between a basin and a sink? I think they're the same. You can ask me what the difference is. Yeah, what is the difference? I think the sink is the whole paraphernalia, the whole kit and caboodle,

whereas the basin, I think, is literally just a little... It comes from the French bassin and bassinet. You've got to give us paraphernalia and kitten caboodle now. I mean, almost every word one wants to know more about. Paraphernalia? Paraphernalia used to be the belongings of a woman that she was allowed to retain when she married. Everything else she gave to her husband.

And it comes from the Greek for outside. So this was her private personal dowry that she could keep, like her jewellery and and things and then it became associated with little bits and pieces because she wasn't really allowed to keep very much that's paraphernalia and all the accoutrements. Kit and caboodle I think is from Dutch where boedel is your belongings and we put a k on it to make it alliterative so it was your kit and your boodle, and then we thought kit and kaboodle. Gosh.

Yeah. So just to make the language handier. Yeah, when we do that all the time. Tap and faucet? Yeah. Sometimes my tap is so stiff I have to force it. But actually a faucet is F-A-U-C-E-T. Yes, and that's from French, and do you know,

I don't know why it's called a tap. Isn't it terrible? Because I guess we're tapping the ground, aren't we? We're sort of, that's from French. And do you know, I don't know why it's called a tap. Isn't this terrible? Because I guess we're tapping the ground, aren't we? We're sort of, that's the idea. Back to washing. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Go on.

Has anybody ever had this email that does the rounds all the time and it's called Life in the 1500s? No. Have you not seen that? It used to just do the rounds all the time, as I say, and it was just full of these brilliant stories about the origins of the English language and they were all rubbish but they were absolutely brilliant and very compelling in this particular email you would find that to throw the baby out with the bath water goes back to the time when water was very precious it still is and so many people would use the same bath. And the idea was that by the end, the bath would be so murky

that you literally would not see your baby being chucked out with the bathwater. It's absolute B. Because actually, it goes back to a German phrase, which is, das Kind nicht mit dem Wasser ausschütten, I think. Which just means, it was always a metaphor. And the idea is that don't throw away something valuable with things that are not so valuable.

So it goes back to the German. A couple more things in the bathroom. We've had the shower, we've had the bath, we've had the basin. What about the bidet? I come from a generation where people had bidets in their bathroom. Usually a rather nice avocado colour. Yes, I haven't seen a bidet for ages. I think when I was little we had a bidet.

I love bidet as an origin because it goes back to the French for a little pony because you sit astride it. I mean, who looking at a bidet ever knew what to do with it? I definitely didn't. No. It was just such a weird thing that you just sit there and, yeah, anyway. You know the famous story about the film director. He directed Some Like It Hot, great American film director.

Anyone remember his name? Billy Wilder, thank you very much. Billy Wilder made Some Like It Hot in the 1950s when the BDA was becoming very fashionable. And they were just... They were all over Europe. They hadn't yet got to America. And Billy were just, they were all over Europe. They hadn't yet got to America. And Billy Wilder came to Europe to make a film. It may have been Irma Ladewes. Anyway, he came to Europe to make a film. And his wife was very keen to have a B-Day

in Hollywood. She wanted to have the first B-Day in Hollywood. So she said to Billy Wilder, when you're in Paris, make sure you get a bidet. And so he went. He was in Paris. He got a day off. Thought, oh, I'd better get the bidet for the wife. And so he went out to find a bidet. But unfortunately, bidets proved so popular, he couldn't find a bidet anywhere.

Looked high and low for a bidet. So eventually, failing to find a bidet, he sent his wife a telegram, a wire, which simply read, unable find bidet, suggest headstand in shower. I love that. That reminds me, when you were saying, talking about the showrooms, Thomas Crapper's showroom. Thomas Crapper did not invent the first flushing toilet, it has to be said. He did not give us the word crap. That goes back to an old English word

meaning the husks of grain that were kind of thrown away, so the unnecessary bits. Anyway, but what he did have is the first showroom, I think it was in the King's Road, it was in Chelsea anyway, and he displayed sanitary wear, i.e. loos, and apparently women particularly would faint at the sight of the sanitary wear because nobody had actually sort of, you know, the people used chamber pots up until then.

Well, now you've come up with it. We did, I think, a whole programme on euphemisms for the toilet or the lavatory. But we might just see if people here have got favourite euphemisms for that. Can I throw mine in? Can I throw my one in? Throw your one in. Into the loo. This is for going to the loo, going to the toilet, visiting the crapper. What is yours?

It's an old Victorian one, and it's visiting the Spice Islands. Which just means absolutely nothing, but that's what they used to say. Oh, I'm going off to visit the Spice Islands. I love it. And they also gave us Bumf. Do you remember Bumf being short for bumfodder, which was toilet paper? I do remember people talking about Bumf. I didn't realize that. Bumfodder. Bumf, bumfodder.

Bumfodder, sure. Slang for Leroy in the military. Well, actually, talking of this, I may need a break myself. Okay. Actually, I don't need a break because as some of you will know, if you watch ITV3 of an afternoon, and a lot of people do now, thanks to working from home, I'm the voice of one of their commercials. I'm now the voice of the Tenor Flex Plus Supersoft incontinence pad.

Does that come on before Countdown, doesn't it? It does. It comes on before Countdown. So the viewers never need to miss a moment of Countdown. It means I don't need to take a break, but we're going to take a break. We'll see you in 15 minutes. Thank you. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars,

like Ed O'Neill, who had limited prospects outside of acting. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom. Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you.

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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. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple, where we are talking about baths and showers and everything to do with cleansing. And Giles, baths and showers and everything to do with cleansing. And Giles, I introduced you to the word quabbles, which describes those horrible wrinkly fingers that you get from overexposure to the water. But do you know what a kerglaf is? Who?

A kerglaf. Now, how would you spell it? C-U-R-G-L-A-F-F. Kerglaf. Yes. No idea. Ker as in dog, wild animal? No. It's actually very, it would be very hard to unpick this one.

It's from an old Scots dictionary, and it is the shock of cold water as you plunge into it. Ooh. Which is brilliant, isn't it? A ker-glaf. I keep reading that it's good for you to get into cold water. Yes. And I can't believe it. I'm convinced I'm going to have a heart attack, if not a stroke. It's the Wim Hof method. It is supposed to really raise your immunity. I do try

turning the dial down in the shower, but I can only get it a certain way. That's a keglaf. That's a keglaf. That's the naked truth and the skinny. What's that? Have you heard that phrase? The naked truth. Oh, a naked truth. We know about the naked truth. Do you know where it comes from, though?

Oh, no. Okay, it sounds like a very obvious metaphor, and it is really, but it goes back to an old fable, not Aesop this time, but one that was related in Horace. Truth and falsehood go swimming. They go bathing.

And falsehood gets out first and steals truth's clothes. But because truth will never accept lies, truth goes around naked rather than taking falsehood's clothes. Oh. Isn't that nice? And so the skinny is a bit of a riff on that, really. Very good. Yeah.

Do you know the phrase, I knew it in the bath? Is that just an actor saying, oh, I knew what I was saying in the bath? Exactly, when you dry, when you forget your lines. It's like winging it, isn't it? That's another theatrical expression where you're just learning your lines in the wings. Actors do dry. Have I got time to share this story?

Because a little bit of name-dropping is allowed. We are in a theatrical setting. This is a story about drying, losing your lines, forgetting your lines. Almost the first time I went to the theatre, in the 1950s, my mother was a huge admirer of the work of Noel Coward. He wrote a play called Waiting in the Wings,

and it was about an old actor's home, home really for retired actresses. And the leading actress in it was Dame Sybil Thorndike. And I was taken by my mother to see a matinee of this, about 1957, I was a very small boy. And I was taken by my mother to see a matinee of this, about 1957. I was a very small boy. And I only remembered it because somebody, as it were, forgot their lines.

They dried. Awful, awkward moment when somebody forgets their lines. But it didn't matter because in the wings was the prompter. And the prompter knew the lines, had the book there, and so read out the line quite clearly. Certainly clearly enough for us in the audience to hear it, but not apparently for this group of old ladies on stage to pick up on it. So the prompter then repeated the line from the wings more loudly and more clearly still. Still, none of the old actresses on stage appeared to hear the line. So the prompter

for the third and final time actually put her head around the edge of the proscenium arch and repeated the line for the third and final time very loudly and very clearly indeed at which point dame sybil thorndike looked at her and said we know the line dear we just can't remember whichever says it i love that um as always we get the most fantastic emails in from the purple people asking us all sorts of questions about the English language many of which I've never even considered before and I have an example I don't know if you've got that in front of you from Chris Wilson Ferry love the podcast it's a bit like Steve Wright isn't it love the show especially enjoy listening whilst having a good bubble bath and as it happens happens, I have a bathroom-related question.

I'm glad it's a bubble bath he was having. I was wondering about the word flush. I know you can flush the toilet, feel flushed, be flushed with cash, have something flush with the wall or win with a royal flush. How did the word come to have so many different meanings and where did it start? Oh, let's flush out the answers to this. Okay.

Well, it all starts with the idea of quick movement. So there are a lot of words in English that begin with FL that signify sort of a scurrying, as I say, a quick movement. Say you've got fleet, you've got flutter, you've got flitter, you've got flibberty gibbet. And flush is another one of those. So when you blush, it's almost like a blend of flash and blush, you've got a quick reddening of your cheeks. And when a river

runs flush so that it runs very very quickly and it is almost up to the height of its banks, the height of its banks would then be considered flush, it's so full but it's of that level. o'i bach, byddai'n cael ei chyfrif yn ymwneud â'i llwyr. Mae'n llawer o ffwrdd, ond mae'n o'r lefel hwnnw. Felly, rydym yn meddwl bod hynny'n lleoli'r llwyr ar lefel. Mae llwyr yn y toaleta, yn unig, yn ymwneud â ddwylo. Felly, mae'r holl hyn yn mynd yn ôl i'r ddynol flwere, i ddwylo. Ac mae llwyr arweinol yn y syniad o ddyn, mae'n debyg i fod yn rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i fod yn rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan, mae'n debyg i'r rhan like a run we also say in card games don't we um it's almost like a sort of a flow of similar cards of the same suit i think that's what a flush is so they all we think go back to the same idea except that last one the flush may go back to a different latin root but ultimately the same ancestor what have you got for your trio this week as i often say to you giles we tend to linger on the sort of negative side of things and lose the positive so I'm often saying

that you know we can no longer be gruntled or couth or wieldy or ruly and ruth etc this is an example of where the negative fell away and the positive remained only so we talk about omniscience which is when you know everything and that's made up of omni all and then science because science originally meant knowledge and your conscience was your inner knowledge, etc. So omniscience is knowing everything. And then there's also omninescience, which is knowing nothing at all. Oh, I love it. Omninescience.

Omninescience. Yes. People who know absolutely bugger all are omniscient. Omninescient. Omninescient. Yes. Knowing nothing. They are completely ignorant.

This one, I hope, doesn't describe what our audience has been doing today. I tweeted this one quite recently because I was sitting in a Zoom meeting and I was doing exactly this. To be nod-crafty in the 17th century was to have the knack of nodding your head with an air of great wisdom when you actually tuned out a very long time ago. Very good. That's to be nod-crafty. And the third one, now, I think I may have told you

that Richard Osman brilliantly calls this buffering, which I think is actually better than the real thing. Hypnopompic is to be in the state of consciousness before you become completely awake. That's to be hypnopompic. You're in a hypnopompic state. Hypno is Greek for sleep? Yes, from the greek god hypnos

uh but as i say richard osman calls it buffering which is i think just hang on a minute i'm buffering i think is excellent uh so those are my three do you have a poem for us there are three three lovely new words well old words but new to me yes the poem i do a poem every regular listeners will know that every week I offer a little poem. And somebody said, how do you choose the poems? Well, normally I choose them during the podcast itself because I try to make them spring from the conversation that we're having. And I've been thinking today while we were doing this, what poem can I offer today that's relevant to water?

Because we've been talking about having baths and getting wet. And I remember a lovely poem by Paul Jennings called Galoshes. I wonder if people know what galoshes are. Do you know what galoshes are? People know what galoshes are. Do they? Yes, I think so. They're overshoes.

Yes. They're made of rubber. And quite often they come up quite high, no? I don't know if they come up high. It's the people who used to wear them. And this poem goes like this. I'm having a rapprochement with goloshes, And some would say this heralds middle age. Yes, sneering they would say, does he also wear pince-nez?

Old Josses wore goloshes when women's hats were cloches. Ha! Woollen combinations are this dodderer's next stage. Well, let the people snigger. Just because my feet look bigger, when women's hats were cloches. Ha! Woollen combinations are this dodderer's next stage. Well, let the people snigger. Just because my feet look bigger, for colossaling gloches, they are dry among the sploches. A story that won't wash is this story that gloches, so dry at slushy crossings, make a man a sloppy figure. Oh, crossly and still crosslier, I bought shoes even costlier.

I utterly refuse the expression overshoes. To make galoshes smarter, I would scorn this feeble ruse. Charles Brander. So this has been a live podcast. We're doing more. We are going quite soon to Birmingham, to the Town Hall there. I'm excited about that

because interesting people have been going there since Victorian times. Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, among them. We're going to Newcastle, to Northern Stages. And we're going to the Cadogan Hall in London. Those are next year. We've got lots more live podcasts to come and we hope lots more ordinary.

I say ordinary. Thanks to Susie, every podcast is extraordinary. But it's been huge fun being here at the Bath Forum. So our thanks to the Bath Forum but particularly our thanks to the wonderful purple people who showed up in Bath today.

Thank you for being with us. Join us again when we next have a session of playing with words. Susie Dent, Giles Brown, something rhymes with purple. Thank you.