Something Rhymes with Purple - Diva

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Dive into the linguistic tapestry of English on this week's episode as we unravel the captivating Italian influences that have woven their way into our language. Susie and Gyles go on a journey through time and words, exploring the rich etymological connections that bridge Italy and English. From culinary delights to artistic expressions, discover the hidden threads that have shaped the way we communicate today."   We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms'   Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com    Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:    Beamish: Beaming with happiness, optimism, or anticipation.   Ataraxy: Freedom from disturbance of mind or passion; stoical indifference.   Copacetic: In excellent order.    Gyles' poem this week was 'Long Beach California' by Roger Harvey   A Sony Music Entertainment production.     Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts      To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Hello and welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple with me, Susie Dent, and my co-host, Giles Brandes. And Giles, although I am no longer in my little tiny pokey study in Oxford, I'm actually in a studio. You're not here. We never quite managed to go inside, but I can see you beautifully on my screen. But it's a meeting of minds. That's what matters. That's very true. We can have this relationship.

It's a Zoom relationship. And I can only get into your space excessively by getting into your ears and speaking too much. At least I can't, as it were, impose myself on you unnecessarily. I say that because I've had an interesting 24 hours squashed up quite closely with a lot of other people because I have been returning from Italy. And I have been very lucky because I don't know if you've flown recently, but it can be quite crowded.

And coming back from Italy, every other plane except ours was either delayed for hours or cancelled. And there were people at the airport who were having literally to stay there overnight. It was all drama, trauma, and crushed up bodies. But I was so lucky I got onto my aeroplane. And though we were sitting there on the ground for an hour before we took off, because of air traffic control people in Brussels. We eventually left Venice and we landed at Heathrow and I've come rushing here and I'm full of the sunshine of Italy, which I think is what we're going to talk about today, isn't it? English language words that have an Italian origin or invaded Italian words that we now use without realising that they are Italian. You've teased us so much,

just tell us a little bit.. Just tell us a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about Venice? I can tell you a lot about Venice, but I mustn't speak excessively because people write in to complain. They say, we tune in to Something Rides With Purple because we want to learn about the English language and Susie Dent knows everything.

Instead, you blather on, Giles, with your stories, mostly about people who died 100 years ago and we'd never heard of them anyway. But the people I'm going to celebrate today are alive and well and young. I went to Venice with my wife and all of my family and 150 or so of my daughter's friends. I have a son and two daughters, and the elder of these two daughters, Saithrid, S-A-E-T-H-R-Y-D. Much fun was made of her name in a nice way by one of the people who spoke at her wedding, because we were there for Scythrid's wedding. Amazing. My daughter Scythrid got married to her now husband, Mark, who is a former Coldstream Guards officer, wrote a very interesting book called Code Black about his time in Afghanistan.

And since leaving the army, he started a charity called Waterloo Uncovered, where he and his co-founder and the team, they get together with service people who have been damaged either physically or mentally through war. And they go back to the field of the Battle of Waterloo, 1815. And they do archaeology there. And somehow this doing of archaeology together, actually getting down on their hands and knees and sifting through the earth, is restorative in all sorts of ways, mentally and physically, for the former soldiers. And also they are doing wonderful archaeology,

discovering things that people didn't know about the Battle of Waterloo. So he's a great guy. My daughter is a great guy. And they invited, as young people seem to do now, they persuaded 150 friends. It's quite expensive, to put it mildly, going to Venice, even if you're, you know, staying at the cheapest B&B you can find. And there are not very many cheap ones, I can tell you.

Is there still the tradition, and you can only tell me this in the loosest of terms because I don't want this to get into any kind of family argument, but is it still expected that the father of the bride will fund the wedding? The father of the bride is still expected to make a contribution, and I was happy and proud to do so. But the parents of the groom also made, I think, quite a substantial contribution, and everybody was happy to pile in generously.

What was wonderful? It was wonderful in all sorts of ways. And I mustn't bang on, but it was wonderful in all sorts of ways. It was a civil wedding in the Palazzo Cavalli, which is like a town hall in Venice on the Grand Canal, conducted by a registrar, I suppose, a person dressed like a mayor, you know, with a sash, the colours of the Italian flag across their front, a wonderful woman who spoke in Italian, but there was an English translator as required, and read to us from the Italian civil code, several chunky paragraphs

about the obligations of matrimony. And this was both stirring stuff and serious stuff. And I have to say, I'm going to get copies of this. In fact, I said to the bride and groom, I want copies of this, I want it printed up, I want it framed and in your kitchen, please, to remind you of what you've signed up to. But also, I think it should have greater currency. It was a very clear, well thought through of the obligations, commitments, requirements in terms of you and your partner and who does what at home and at work, including housework as being part of the family work and the obligations towards your children, the lifetime obligations towards the family. It was really interesting.

So we had that. And then we all went down the Grand Canal in boats and we ended up at this wonderful place where there was the afternoon. And because he was a soldier, he had soldiers there who had swords. Have you seen those pictures? Well, imagine the challenge of getting British Coldstream Guards officers

allowed to get overseas with their swords because swords count as weapons of war. They had to get permission from the Ministry of Defence and from the Italian Ministry of Defence. And then also, apparently, you cannot wear your uniform if you're a military person in another country. Because, of course, people might think, gosh, we suddenly saw a lot of Italians in soldiers, in uniform, in London. We might think, oh, what's going on here? Have they invaded? So, you have to get clearance for that. So, we had these guys marching about in their uniforms with their swords in Venice. And then we had a wonderful... So the point is, it was wonderful. And there was music,

there was food, there was wine, there was laughter. And we hope there will be years of contentment. Congratulations to them. It sounds absolutely gorgeous. Yeah. And how is your italian before we we talk about italian words that have become naturalized in our language can you speak any i can tell you that um it was a bravura wedding it came to a crescendo there were no diminuendos during it um but these are words of course they come from music and maybe they're they maybe they are latin words not italian i speak apart from tiramisu

which i love i'm now going to go on a very strict diet to work all that weight off i am not very good on italian though i love italy very much means though right uh something a kiss or something to remind me what it means pull me up up. Oh, tiramisu. It has actually lots of caffeine in it, doesn't it? It's got coffee. So it's pulling me up. I love that. It is a real pick me up after pudding.

And if you're like me and you indulge in it a little bit too late, you then can't sleep for the entire night. But it is worth it. It's absolutely beautiful. But you're right to point out the influence of Italian upon music because it is absolutely everywhere it is the language of music really and you mentioned bravura which is the great technical skill actually goes back to the Italian meaning bold so it's I love the idea of a sort of boldness being connected with skill because you have the

courage to kind of learn it bravo of course at the end of a performance that also means bold quite literally you know you were courageous enough to deliver this incredible performance you mentioned diminuendo and crescendo we have a dad joe and what where do they where do those three words come from well crescendo is you're right so some of these do ultimately go back to the Latin, to crescendo, means growing. It's actually linked to croissant, believe it or not, because a croissant is shaped a little bit like a crescent moon. And it does almost look like it's kind of growing in shape, which is lovely. Diminuendo is a sibling of diminish. So it's kind of reducing.

Concerto is from the Italianian but ultimately latin meaning to harmonize which is quite lovely you gave us adagio what's that adagio is slow time and that is from the italian ad agio at ease which is exactly the opposite of how you listen to our podcast as you've told everybody because you listen to it at twice the speed or one and a half times? One and a half times, but I don't know how or why. I just put on, I listen to our podcast through my mobile phone, and I just go to Apple or Spotify, whatever it is, and press Something Rises Purple, latest episode, and up it comes. And we're talking quite fast. And I rather like that. But it's a bit like the subtitles on the television. My wife and I, we have subtitles on our television now, which is marvellous because it helps us understand what's

going on when we're watching an old murder mystery. But we'd like to get the subtitles down now and again. But the relevant grandchild is never available to come and help us to show how just to do that. And I think I need to show my mobile phone to a grandchild too, to see if they can help me sort that out. And it's sorted. Now, back to Italy and back to these Italian terms. Give us some more of your favorites. Well, I quite like diva because it's brought me, more than doubt, isn't it, into much wider use now where you just say, well, you're such a diva.

But, of course, a diva originally, and in its purest sense, is a famous female singer. And it actually goes back to a word meaning goddess, which I think is quite beautiful and always reminds me, and I think we mentioned this when we were talking about mistakes in English and acorns and things, of a sort of adjunct to diva, which is prima donna. But does prima donna simply mean first lady, donna being female? Exactly. But do you remember I was talking about

being in a school WhatsApp group and someone was complaining about a child in our kids' class who was just a little bit difficult. I think the mom was thinking she was quite high maintenance and she put down the trouble is she's such a prima donna. And she wrote prima donna as in pre, pre before and Madonna the pop star which I love oh that's very good pre-Madonna I love that if anybody before Madonna came along with such a diva um is diva also then connected with its goddess with divine it is absolutely and Madrigal is a

lovely one actually and this is a bit of a surprising one. So in Italian, it's madrigale. And it's a part song for several voices, particularly during the Renaissance. Usually unaccompanied, isn't it? A madrigal. But this actually goes back to, well, first of all, the Latin carmen matricale, a simple song. But that simple bit is a little bit, it hides more of a story because it goes back to matricalis, which meant maternal, as well as kind of simple, almost primitive. You know, you're talking about the sort of something which is totally innate and ingrained and fundamental to humans.

And it's linked to matrix. So matrix was a womb originally. So I love the fact that the magical is all about mothers and wombs and that kind of basic simplicity, a fundamental aspect of life, which is quite gorgeous. I'm going to tell you something,

sotto voce, which means sotto, well, voce is voice, isn't it? What is sotto? Under your voice almost. So you're sort of saying it in a whisper. Sotto voce. And that's a phrase that actually has come into the English language.

People say that without knowing its origin at all, don't they? Absolutely, yeah. Sotto voce. I can tell you I put on a lot of weight. Oh, did you in Venice? Yeah, in Venice. Put on a great deal of weight because I just sort of ate happily everything. Great food.

But somebody told me that the word baguette is Italian in origin, whereas I think it was a French word. Am I right or wrong? Well, it's a bit of an Italian twist. So remember that a lot of words have travelled through so many different languages to get to English. And quite often, you know, they will come from Italy and then go to France or vice versa. So one of the sources of baguette, which of course we would normally associate with is French,

and that it means a little stick. But it did have a bit of a lifetime in Italy as well. And it all actually goes back to the Latin bacillus, which means again a stick, but that is behind the bacillum that gave us bacteria as well, because under a microscope, bacteria look like tiny little sticks. So that's all linked to... I did so much in Venice.

I ate too much bruschetta and all sorts of cheeses. We can come on to those words in a moment. I wanted to go to the opera, but there wasn't time. There's a lovely opera house called La Fenice, which I imagine means the phoenix. I think it's been burnt down occasionally, so that's an appropriate title. Does Fenice mean phenix. Oh, lovely. I think it's been burnt down occasionally, so that's an appropriate title. Does Fenice mean phoenix?

It probably does. I think it probably does, depending how you're spelling it. I'm spelling it F-E-N-I-C-E. Oh, it sounds like it. La Fenice. Anyway, it's a beautiful opera house. I've been in it before, but I didn't go this time. But opera, opera obviously means work, doesn't it, in Latin?

Yes. Is there an interesting story there? Well, no, I just find it strange, as I say, given the poetry of Madrigal, that actually something as elevated and beautiful as opera actually goes back to the Latin opus, which means labour. And again, it's all about that sort of the work that you put in. But opera and operetta, they sound so gorgeous,

but actually are quite basic beginnings really which is interesting you talked about prima donna we talk about it ain't over till the fat lady sings which is said to be an allusion to the shall we say stereotypically well-endowed diva at the end of a performance who usually breaks into quite impressive song. But back to Italian, we have, well, we have instruments as well. We have the piccolo, which means small. And we did a whole episode, didn't we, on musical instruments. We have the pianoforte, which means soft and loud, piano e forte, which is beautiful. We have solo, which means alone. We have soprano. We have scherzo. I'm not sure if it's scherzo or scherzo, actually.

Scherzo. I'd say scherzo in English. Very good. So that's a kind of quite a playful composition, isn't it? Sort of quite vigorous, usually a movement in a symphony or sonata. But in Italian, the reason I love it is it means a joke. It's actually linked to a scherzo in German, which means the same thing, a joke. There's that idea of kind of tripping, playful movement, which is fun.

Before we go to the break, can I get you onto some of the food? That's what I'm really obsessed with. I mean, I mentioned bruschetta. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right. And that ciabatta, mozzarella. Take us through some of these words. Well, first of all, you are pronouncing it correctly with bruschetta. A lot of people say bruschetta, but actually it is a hard case. So I think that governs the scherzo as well, as you said. So, well, we have artichoke, which is, you would probably never, it sounds so English, doesn't it, an artichoke,

but you'd never associate that with Italian, but actually it is from the Northern Italian. But ultimately, again, another example of how English words travel so much, it came to Italian from Spanish and before then it was from Arabic, which is quite wonderful. What other things did you,

I mean, famously lasagna, which I love because we could talk about pasta till the cows come home and we have talked about pasta shapes before, but lasagna, if you remember, Gilesiles originally meant a chamber pot oh yes i do remember i'm glad i don't remember when i'm ordering it because i never order it because who wants a plate of chamber pot exactly all their content yeah it's strange i mentioned mozzarella yes which i think is is correctly spelt pronounced mozza because it's two zeds not mozza but what

is is mozzarella i mean i love it but what is the origin of the word yes there's a kind of cheese it's actually from the italian meaning cut off i guess because you cut these sort of little slices of cheese a gorgonzola too strong for me but that's from a place um in italy gorgonzola because quite often they uh as we know are toponyms um what else did you try i tried well while i was there i had because i'm a vegetarian mostly i had artichoke i had broccoli i had cauliflower are these italian words well artichoke you've touched on what about broccoli and cauliflower broccoli you could probably if you look at that li ending you could probably guess

that it goes back to italian and it's a plural of broccolo, which means a sprout or almost like a cabbage sprout. But ultimately, it goes back to a word meaning projecting because they kind of stick out. One of the hardest words to spell, isn't it, broccoli? I think if you imagine a head of broccoli and imagine those sort of floret shapes, you can almost see the two Cs there, which will give you a clue. But it is always quite difficult. Now cauliflower, I don't think you would ever associate with Italian, but actually it probably is from the Italian cavoli, which we still have in cavoli nero,

black, black kind of cabbage. Cavoli fiore, and that fiore means flowered. So it's really a flowered cabbage, a cauliflower. Do you know Mark Twain's famous line about the cauliflower? No. He described a cauliflower as simply a cabbage with a college education. I love that. Well, I wish that we had kept the cavoli because it sounds exotic, but the reason we changed it to collie is because of cole, C-O-L-E,

which is an old word for cabbage, essentially. One of the Italian words that I see almost every day in England, because I go to a lot of coffee shops, is the word barista. Now, a barista is nothing to do with somebody who appears in a court of law wearing, in this country, a wig and a gown. That's a barrister.

But what is a barista, and why so-called? So-called simply from the italian meaning barman um essentially came into english in the um 80s but yes we have talked about coffee haven't we because of course italy is the home of coffee and most of the you know the drinks that we enjoy being served from a barista do come from italian which is uh which is lovely and i am sipping one as we speak. Well done you. While you sip, should we take a quick break? Let's do that.

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and we've gone to italy where well lots of words from the italian language are now ones that we use we've been talking about music and food but there is a darker side to some aspects of italian life particularly in sicily this is historic but maybe to some aspects of Italian life, particularly in Sicily. This is historic, but maybe it's also in the present. I read in the newspaper the other day that a famous mafia boss had recently died. And there was a big, well, lots of coverage of that. The word mafia has become universal. It is, I assume, an Italian word. What does it mean? has become universal. It is, I assume, an Italian word.

What does it mean? Yeah, it actually goes back to a Sicilian dialect word meaning bragging. So the idea is of a blusterer, you know, possibly a hectoring blusterer, sort of a bit of a bully. But yeah, it's all about somebody who, you know, struts the stage and is extremely confident. So yes, you're right. And there was a very, very interesting piece that I listened to on Radio 4 from my own correspondent. So people who are outside Britain

may not know this, but it's an absolutely excellent series of little spoken articles from some of the BBC correspondents from across the world. And they were talking about how much of Italy is still in the pockets of the mafia, although the police are making huge inroads, there is still so much locked up in that world. Well, you'd meet the banditti. Is the word bandit, does it come from banditti? Is it an Italian word again? Yeah, they're all linked, all part of the same family.

So yes, the bandito, as you say. And to go with that, we have quite a lot of sort of martial vocabulary. So as you know, I always quite like the fact that the alarm clock that might wake us up nowadays, usually on our phone, goes back to the Latin, alla armi, to arms. And it was used to rouse sleeping soldiers and warning them of imminent attack. And similarly, alert is from the Italian, allaerte, to the watchtower. In other words, be on guard, which is really interesting. And yeah, also assassin actually came to us, an assassination,

via the Italian assassino, assassino. And the first person to introduce that to us was Shakespeare, actually, in Macbeth. But you have to go back very famously, it's one of the most famous etymologies, really, to the Arabic hashashin, which shares its etymological roots with hashish. And it's a long and complicated story, which we quite often oversimplify. But it was Shakespeare who introduced this to the idea of assassination, or at least the word. Who would you regard as the Italian Shakespeare? Obviously, Dante is the great Italian poet.

Well, I'll tell you who mine is, only because I visited his birthplace this last week. Carlo Goldoni. Okay, tell me. Fascinating figure. last week. Carlo Goldoni. Okay, tell me. Fascinating figure. And his birthplace, he lived, he was born in Venice and grew up there, though he spent a lot of time in France. And he wrote literally hundreds of plays, the most famous of which that we now know, recently revived under the title The Servant of Two Masters, or Two, what's it, One Governor. Anyway, it was done recently, revived recently

at the National Theatre and was a big success in London and I think on Broadway as well. He wrote lots of plays. And there's a wonderful statue of him in Venice and his house is there. And I've got a little book of his quotations, which I often dip into. He said, he who never leaves his country

is full of prejudices. And he also said, the world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it. But my wife's favorite quotation by Goldoni is this one. He who talks much cannot talk well. She's often quoting that to me. Oh, well, yeah, that's probably largely true, but not of you. The only thing I want to say about Goldoni, and then I will shut up, is this. Goldoni, who I think was later than Shakespeare, born 1707, died 1793, hugely prolific and brilliant and a genius.

And I saw one, funny enough, I saw another of his plays in English at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. in English at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. But what I want to say, this, and then I will shut up about Venice, is that people say, oh, Venice, it's smelly. The streets are full of water. Well, they are, but it's not smelly as it used to be. It's much cleaner than it used to be. And the joy is that while the main streets are indeed filled with people, I think there are only about 49,000 actual Venetians, but there are a million people a day in Venice because the streets are full of tourists. But go into some of the galleries and the museums and you can be quietly on your own. We went to the birthplace of Goldoni, right in the center of Venice, and my wife and I were the only two visitors there. The only two people in this beautiful house, a million people outside.

So I recommend going to Venice, even though it can seem to be overwhelmingly crowded at times. It can, but if you do need an escape from Venice, I always recommend Padua, which is one of my favourite places. It's just beautiful. Spelled in Italian, P-A-D-O-V-A, do you understand that? Yes, Padua, and we have anglicised it to Padua. No, it's just an absolutely beautiful, beautiful place. Well, maybe people will write to us

and tell us what their favourite Italian city is and their favourite Italian word. Well, absolutely. And speaking of which, if you ask me for my favourite Italian word, the only reason I choose it is because of its etymology. Well, there's two. Do you remember what calzone means,

which is that kind of stuffed pizza? Calzone. Yes. Something like a wallet. Is it trouser leg? Trouser leg, a calzone. something like a wallet trouser leg trouser leg calzone and ciabatta ciabatta ciabatta i and i love i'm off it at the moment because i'm on my low carb diet till christmas but ciabatta tell me about that it means slipper again because it looks a bit like a slipper doesn't it yeah we didn't talk about bread actually focaccia is a nice one

as well because focaccia goes back to um the italian for the bread of the hearth because we've talked before about the hearth as being the sort of the central focus of a household and indeed focus goes back to the latin for hearth as just foyer we've we talked about how hearts and fires were so important yeah so the focaccia was the bread that was that was baked on the hearth and was a sort of Italian staple. But we must return to Italy because it's actually, it's kind of transported me there a little bit in my head, which is a lovely place to go. But we have some correspondence to get to. Let's get to that correspondence. Who's been in touch this week?

Well, our first one comes from Ian. Hello, Susie and Giles. My wife is from Derby in England and she said the other day that she had just thrown the apple cog away and was surprised when I said, what? We actually confirmed with her dad, who's also from Derby, that he and his friends would fight for apple cogs during World War Two. A quick search of the Internet and some of my old dictionaries revealed no cogs with this meaning. The only possible connection was I found that wooden carts, wheels and wooden cogs were often made of applewood. Can you help? Many thanks and just to let you know that your podcast is the highlight of my morning runs. Thank you, Ian.

That is nice, Ian. I hope we're accompanying you now as you pant away. Yes, it's an unfortunate phrase, my morning runs, but I think we know what he means. He's actually out there jogging through the Derbyshire Hills. Yeah, that is impressive. And Ian, I don't want to make you stop in your tracks through sheer frustration, but I have done quite a lot of digging with this one and I can come up as exactly like you with absolutely nothing. I checked in the English dialect dictionary, there was nothing there. There were lots of different senses of cogs, but no references to apple cores. Similarly in the OED. And the only thing I can think is

that it is like, you know, the sort of central, well, core part of something around which everything else revolves. That's the only thing I can think of. But the reason I thought it would be lovely to keep this question in is that it just shows how much has yet to be discovered and how much particularly of dialect has yet to be recorded in dictionaries because it is such a spoken tradition. So I have passed this on to the Oxford English Dictionary so that they can investigate it too. So I'm sorry I don't have an answer, but it did set me off on a lovely trail and it's one that I hope will continue. Very good. Our next message comes from Massachusetts, Melrose, Massachusetts, which apparently is not far from Boston. And I think we've got a voice note for this one as well.

Dear Giles and Susie, a friend just posted a photo of himself smiling with hands aloft out on the rocks at Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. As I have a photo from five years ago of myself doing the exact same thing at that exact same spot, I replied to his post with my photo and one word, copycat. But that made me wonder, where and how did that word originate? All the best, Frank Wright, Melrose, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Boston. I've been, have you been to the Giant's Causeway? I have, no. Oh, it's fantastic. It really is fantastic. Yeah. Anyway, tell us all about a copycat. So first reference to a copycat is 1896, where it is a derogatory term for somebody who copies

another, just as it is now a copycat. I don't think it's ever particularly positive, although maybe you send me affectionately, I think. So this first reference, I ain't heard of a copycat this great many years. It was a favorite term of my grandmother's. So again, it seems likely that it was in circulation well before 1896. But the reason we use cat here is for two reasons. One is the obvious alliteration. It works well. But also cat has, sadly for allurophiles like me and Giles, is a term of contempt for a human being and has been since the 13th century because the idea is somebody who scratches like a cat or who is it was particularly applied to spiteful or backbiting women it was quite misogynistic from that point of view so it's picking up on those negative connotations of cat and implying that it's

somebody really that, just to use another animal metaphor, piggybacks on the work of someone else. Very intriguing. Well, thanks for that. And do please keep in touch. Send us any queries you like, and Susie will attempt to answer them.

Our address is a new one. It's purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. Now,.com. Purple people at somethingrhymes.com. Now, Susie, a trio of interesting words, please. Yes. Okay, well, I'm going to start with a very jolly and positive one. You probably will have heard it, but it's beamish. Oh, yes.

It's a Lewis Carroll word, isn't it? Beamish, come to my arms, my beamish boy. Oh, it's quite possibly. I don't know whether he, it doesn't sound like it was one of his portmanteau, but it's lovely nonetheless. It means beaming with happiness, optimism or anticipation. It's a lovely word. And we must check out, I think it might well be a word invented by Lewis Carroll.

I can check while you're doing your poem because I can check it in the OED. Then the next one is something to which we all aspire. Ataraxy, A-T-A-R-A-X-Y, freedom from disturbance of mind. So it can be a liberation and a feeling that you don't have anything to worry about, which is for most of us quite a rare thing, I imagine. But it can also be a sort of stoical indifference. So from that point of view, there's a little bit perhaps of apathy involved in there too. But I like to think of it as a nice state where you are unperturbed and tranquil and my third one is copacetic do you know this one c-o-p-n-c-e-t-i-c and it's a rather a complicated term for another positive thing it

means in excellent order so early 20th century don't know where it comes from but give you an example he said to tell you G, that everything is copacetic. In other words, everything is as it should be. I like that. There is a charm about saying things very simply like, everything is as it should be. I agree. So, you do your poem. I am going to look up Beamish, and then we can meet again at the end.

Lovely. Well, the poem I'm going to do today, I was thinking maybe I should do an Italian poem, and I looked up the various translations of Dante that I've got here, and it all seemed a bit complicated. And then I was leafing through a new book that's just come my way called How Happy Were the Mornings. It's the collected poems of a writer called Roger Harvey, born in the 1950s, very popular writer here and in the United States particularly. And anyway, I love his work. I find it easy

and accessible, but also thought-provoking. And one of the things that pleased me when I went to Venice just this recently was to see that there weren't the huge transatlantic liners. There used to be huge cruise ships, mighty ships that came and rather ruined the view of the Grand Canal because they were these great ships. And they no longer seem to have them. I think they managed to keep them at bay. And then I came across this poem about the mighty ship called the Queen Mary, which,

of course, was a transatlantic liner, but which retired from service and is now moored, I think, as a hotel, a conference center, and a tourist attraction at Long Beach in California. And of course, there's a Venice in California too. Anyway, this is a poem by Roger Harvey about the RMS Queen Mary, Long Beach, California. This is the world of blue and white, a world of absolutes, of clarity, of clean white rails, a world seen only on the glass blue days, where it is good to go to sea and drop below the edges of the lives we know, where emptiness matters and the muddles are entirely left on either shore. The drowned, reflected world of mid-Atlantic, beached and hurried over.

Crowds of people, as out of their depth as the great old ship is out of hers, in this puddle of a harbour. Is this nothing but a crystal dream, a reading from the poetry of adventure? Here, in foreign waters, far from those that saw her birth, I learn it is no shame for ships to sink, and that we are embedded in an epoch that possesses nothing but the past, and that seen only on the glass blue days. Intriguing poem, isn't it?

About a mighty ship that once crossed the Atlantic and is now moored somewhere. Anyway, I'm going to come back to Roger Harvey because I think he's rather fun. I love that too. What is his name? Roger Hargreaves? No, Roger Harvey. Oh, Rodney.

Roger Harvey. Roger Hargreaves wrote The Hung Roger Harvey. Oh, Rodney. Roger Harvey. Roger Hargreaves wrote The Hungry Caterpillar. Yes. Oh, he was great fun. No, Roger Harvey is a different sort of creature. I think he taught English, history, drama, and then he became established as a writer. And I think he was the first poet ever to read on BBC Radio 1. Oh.

And, yeah, anyway, I recommend his poems. I'm going to read one next week if I may from his travels in America there's some very funny poems there now tell me about Beamish was I right was I wrong yeah no we were we were both wrong it does mean shining brightly or radiant but it is first recorded in 1530 but Lewis Carroll did use it in 1871. And actually, in terms of the quotations given in the dictionary, he was one of the very few users of it. So you are forgiven for thinking it came from him. Yeah, so well remembered. So he popularised it, I think. It's the poem Jabberwocky that appears at the beginning of Alice's, Alice's Looking Glass.

Alice's Looking Glass, exactly. Yeah. Good. Well, that was was lovely I really loved hopping over to Italy and reminiscing about your recent trip to Venice thank you Giles and thank you to

everybody who who joined us too it's really lovely to have your company and particularly those who have been loyal to us for so long

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with additional production from Naomi Oiku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Jen Mistry, and, oh, he is remarkable. It's Richie. Ciao, Richie. Richie's the new guy.