Something Rhymes with Purple - Emovere

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Starting point is 00:01:24 and the purple community. I'm Susie Dent and with me, the Purple People and the Purple community, I'm Susie Dent, and with me, as ever, is the wonderful Giles Brandreth. Hi, Giles. It's good to be with you again, Susie. Well, likewise, I want to ask you, how do you feel, Giles? Can I tell you candidly how I feel today? I feel bonny.

Starting point is 00:01:39 I feel brilliant. I feel bumptious. I feel full of the bubbling joys of life. And that makes my friends, my family sigh. They think, oh, no. Oh, goodness, how exhausting it is. You're a giggle mug. As somebody who is permanently cheery and optimistic, and so actually gets on the nerves of other people. Maybe you're not permanently, but it's a great Victorian phrase. I think I'm very lucky. I get up in the morning and I do see the glass half full.

Starting point is 00:02:06 And today, because we were doing the podcast, I thought, oh, it's wonderful in a world where, you know, if you do turn on the television or the radio and you listen to the news or read the newspaper, there's so much grim that is going on. And then I think, oh, no, I can escape into the world of words today with my friend Susie Dent.

Starting point is 00:02:24 It is an oasis, isn't it? It is. So I feel very jolly and I feel doubly jolly because a jiffy bag, is it called a jiffy bag when it's a padded bag? Yes, no one knows why it's called a jiffy bag. Oh, really? You certainly can't open them in a jiffy, can you? You can't.

Starting point is 00:02:41 But anyway, a jiffy bag arrived and inside it was a new book by you. And I thought, yay, Christmas is coming. I've now got the present I'm going to give to everybody. Tell me about the new book. And are you feeling bonny about it? Well, as you will remember from my last book called Word Perfect, the advanced copy was not such a pleasant experience for me because I received it on publication day because it was published during COVID. And so the lead times were incredibly short, so short that I generally didn't get a copy in advance. So it was a slight misnomer and opened it up. And then, as you will remember, discovered loads of typos

Starting point is 00:03:20 that was actually very much Word Imperfect. That was not the case this time, I'm glad to say. And for me, I still get the same buzz. I mean, I've written lots of books, starting even before you. How many actually? Because Jimmy Carr would tease you mercilessly because on the comedy show that I work on, he's just always, you know, calling them a form of euthanasia or belonging in a charity shop, etc. How many have you actually written? I don't know how many I've written, but I have written a lot because when my children were small, I wrote a lot of children's books. So I did lots of extra books for them. And I've done novels and I've done books about words and language, and I've done biographies and autobiographies. But I do still remember my very first book published in the early 1970s, so 50 years ago, called Created in Captivity.

Starting point is 00:04:07 Long since out of print. I don't think even Abe books might supply you with a copy. It was a book about people in prison. It was about the creative work of people in prison. A serious book based on my interest in prison and prison reform and the use of art and creativity to help prisoners become, in some cases, educated. I would love to think that we have some in prison amongst the purple community, actually.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Be lovely. Do write in if you are. Please write in. One of the great challenges for many people in prison is literacy. My wife has been a teacher in prisons, teaching people to read and to write and, first of all, to tell the time. I mean, language is so important, communicating, and being able to write and to read. And so that was what my first book was about. But the point is, when the first box of books arrived, and I tore it open, that thrill of seeing it there, taking off the dust jacket, looking at the spine, smelling the paper. It was fantastic. And I still, 50 years later, when I have a new book coming out, and I feel

Starting point is 00:05:14 that thrill. So I hope you are feeling thrilled. There should be a word that is not in the dictionary, because it's a dictionary of emotions. It's a word for as many feelings that I could describe, as I could define, I suppose, and as many as I could find. There are linguistic gaps, obviously, and we've just found one, which is the thrill of seeing a book that you've just written for the first time. So is that what your book is called, A Dictionary of Emotions? It's called An Emotional Dictionary, and I call it An Emotional Dictionary because it is quite idiosyncratic. It's not written as an objective piece of lexicography. It's written as my collection of words that I found interesting, that sang to me, that made me smile, or that I related to in some way.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Given that I know we have five-year-olds listening, because one of them wrote to us, or his mother did last week, what does idiosyncratic mean and why? did last week. What does idiosyncratic mean and why? So idiosyncratic is sort of individual, possibly quite quirky, a very sort of personal and not necessarily predictable course or state of affairs, really. So if something is idiosyncratic, it might be a little bit quirky. And the word emotion, what's the difference between motion and emotion? Emoting takes it around that. Not a lot, actually, because they're all to do with movement. And so motion is obviously to do with movement. And an emotion is something that stirs or moves you in some way. Great.

Starting point is 00:06:37 So this is about emotions, feelings, how we are. Very good. And I am going to give you some of my absolute favorites to see whether you can relate to them whether you've ever experienced them and how you feel about them and maybe you can find a scenario in which you could use them how wonderful so these will be unusual words yes some of them from other languages so they're not all english i should say so some of them are the the famous untranslatables the perfect words from other languages. Oh, how interesting. So this won't include, as it were, happiness as an emotion? Oh, yes, it does. It started off, actually, as a collection of words that I loved, that I had

Starting point is 00:07:13 found in historical dictionaries, because, as you know, that's what I love doing. And then we realised that I couldn't call it an emotional dictionary if I didn't also give the sort of standard emotions, like love, like jealousy, like envy, like greed, like angst. So I've covered those as well, not in a kind of particularly historical philosophical sense, but more in a kind of linguistic sense, really. This is going to be fun. Give me the title again. It's called An Emotional Dictionary, and the subtitle is Real Words for How You Feel, From Angst to Zwada.

Starting point is 00:07:43 Angst to Zwada. Well, you've got to explain both of those in a moment. But do you want to play your game first? It's not really a game. It's just some of my favourites, as I say, mostly because I think a lot of these, we probably didn't realise that there was a name for this particular emotion. I'm going to start with a Japanese word,

Starting point is 00:07:59 age otori. Age otori. It means looking worse when you leave the hairdressers than when you went in. Oh, I think that's completely wonderful. You know that feeling where you are looking in the mirror and the hairdresser has the mirror and say, what do you think? And you are dying a little inside, but you still say, oh, it's great. Thank you. This happened to my wife only yesterday.

Starting point is 00:08:25 She came back from the hairdresser. It's not cheap nowadays because we were going to a special dinner for some people. It was their 50th wedding anniversary. She wanted to look. She came back and the person she'd hoped to have do her hair wasn't available, was away. So she got somebody else who seemed very nice. But as she said, her hair looked like dead rat's tails. That's what she felt it was like.

Starting point is 00:08:48 And she thought, oh gosh, I've got to pay all this money. Then I've got to give her a tip. And it's awful. In fact, it was quite nice. I think it was very nice. But she felt agé autore. Agé autore, exactly. And I have to say, I had this experience as an au pair in Germany.

Starting point is 00:09:05 I'm sure I told you about this, where I went in for a perm and I kept this in the 90s and they clearly weren't very experienced at giving me perms and they actually burnt a piece of hair off my scalp. Oh my gosh. I had to wear a bandana for a month afterwards until the hair grew back. So I definitely was Argue or Tori.

Starting point is 00:09:24 I was last Argue or Torori in a bad way in 1966. I can remember it so vividly because I went for my gap year to the United States of America, where I discovered there was Beatlemania everywhere. I was British, I had an English accent, and they wanted me to look like the Beatles. But unfortunately, my parents had said, you better get your haircut before you go. So I had a virtually a crew cut. All my hair was cut off my head. And I looked, before I went to America, a little bit like a mop-topped Beatle. I had long hair. But when I arrived in America, I looked like some military recruit. Like a pudding bowl. I had a pudding bowl.

Starting point is 00:10:09 Like the sort of monkeys. Well, no, not as good as that. Not as nice. No, I had virtually no hair at all. It was all taken off. It was all shaved off my head. So I came out of the hairdresser suffering from profound agi otori. We both have experiences of that, right? The second one is two foreign words.

Starting point is 00:10:24 They're not all foreign words in the dictionary, but I do love these ones. Shinrinnyoku, you might have heard of this. It's Japanese for forest bathing. But I know it more as a German word, Wald-Einsamkeit, which means the spiritual feeling of being alone in a forest. As we've said very often, I love trees.'m a dendrophile i absolutely adore trees so finding yourself between a canopy of trees on your own is something so special and actually research is being done now that shows a bit like swearing it lowers cortisol levels and your blood

Starting point is 00:10:59 pressure and it increases serotonin so it's that kind of spiritual response to trees. And I think I felt that all my life. I'm very interested in this. We're going to another day, I want to argue through this thing about the swearing and its effect, because I just so hate swearing. And I don't like doing it. And I don't like people who do it. No, it's a very personal thing. And I'm so I'm distressed to find that it does people good good but tell me what you do if you if you really hurt yourself if you really stub your toe badly and you're hopping around what what kind of thing do you say or do you not say anything what i well i say things like jiminy cricket i use euphemisms of different kinds yeah but what i have learned from experience and recently as you know i a month or so ago, I broke my arm. Yes. Fell over my big fat feet and broke my arm.

Starting point is 00:11:46 It has been very painful indeed. I know. But I have discovered, better than the painkillers, lying in bed, being as still as possible. And that calms me down. Okay. And so cursing about it, swearing about it, is not good for me. But your Shinrin Yoku, is that right it is?

Starting point is 00:12:06 Yes, Shinrin Yoku, or Vogue and Songkak. It's a beautiful feeling, is it? Yes. Because I'm not good at being alone in a wood. Oh, aren't you? I've got the Hansel and Gretel syndrome. I'm not a country person. Okay.

Starting point is 00:12:17 I like the idea of a little sort of, you know, primrose glade, even going into a wood and finding lovely, you know, purple flowers there. That's charming in a way, but on my own, cracking the bracken with my feet, what's coming for me behind, who's lurking behind that tree? No, no, no, no. The big bad bear.

Starting point is 00:12:39 Oh, I absolutely love it. As you can probably hear, there's my cat probably, although I don't take forest walks with her, but she's meowing heavily. Can you hear her for some food? So she's slightly broken the spud of the woods for me. She'll probably keep meowing for food. No, but I love being with a cat.

Starting point is 00:12:55 I'd feel much better in the woods with my cat or my dog. But I don't think I'm going to have the Shinrin Yoku experience. Okay. Well, this might be one for you. Again, I'm not sure you feel this. I promise I'm going to have the Shinrin Yoku experience. Okay. Well, this might be one for you. Again, I'm not sure you feel this. I promise I'm going to stop with the German words in a minute. As you know, German was my absolute first love. But you work non-stop.

Starting point is 00:13:15 And I don't think you feel what I'm about to describe, because I think actually for you, if you stop, you feel awful, as I do sometimes. But there is a German word, Eilekrankheit, which is basically, it means hurry sickness. And it's the anxieties induced by always rushing around, by always, your heart's beating fast because you're always rushing for a deadline. And in the book, I say, you know, T.S. Eliot spoke of measuring out his life with coffee spoons. But then he didn't anticipate school runs, Zoom calls and dental appointments, as well as all our kind of work deadlines. And I thought it was ironic that it was the Germans who came up with this word for the stress of rushing about because their national stereotype is built on efficiency,

Starting point is 00:13:58 isn't it? But I think it probably describes a lot of us. But like you, I do also feel quite ill when I just stop everything because my body's just not used to it. Where I think the word is useful is it describes that thing where there's too much going on, where there's the pressure. You've got so many things to think about. And the advent of email has made that worse. You've got emails, you've got texts, you've got WhatsApp, all trying to get in touch with you. And what actually you want to do is get on with your book. I am now trying to finish another book, a new book. I find working exhilarating. My wife tells me, oh, it's rather sad, Giles. You're one of these men who is defined by your work. You think you have no value unless you are working. No, but I don't think that is

Starting point is 00:14:39 sad. Well, no, you also go to the theatre, you go to films. It's not that you are constantly, constantly turned to your desk at all. In fact, you're rarely at your desk. And we go to the theatre, you go to films. It's not that you are constantly, constantly turned to your desk at all. In fact, you're rarely at your desk. And we go to the pub to have supper in order not to be in the house with the children. You know the next word on my list very well, because I've spoken about it often on the pod, and that is confelicity. It's one of your favourite words. It is. It is pleasure in someone else's happiness.

Starting point is 00:15:05 Finding joy, you know, completely unselfish joy in somebody else being happy. And I think there's no better expression of that, really, than seeing the joy on a child's face, is there, when they're sort of opening their Christmas stocking or see that Santa has come. I love that. I love it so much. I wrote a murder mystery once, one of my Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Victorian murder mysteries, when I discovered that there is some evidence that it's impossible to look at a photograph or picture of a happy child and not smile yourself. That is the natural reaction. And that there is something, as it were, wrong with you if you don't show that emotion.

Starting point is 00:15:46 were wrong with you if you don't show that emotion. And I used that as a way of sort of working out who the psychopathic killer might be. That's really interesting. I think the converse is true too, that actually the sound of a child crying goes right through you, doesn't it? It's almost intolerable. It certainly does when you're on a train. Or a plane, yeah. Yeah, exactly. They're in the next row. But I love it. So con felicity is con as in sharing, felicity as in happiness. Exactly. Yes.

Starting point is 00:16:13 The next one, before we take a break, I'm going to give you one, which is, let me just ask you, have you ever done something knowing that you're going to regret it? Most days. I got better at it. Okay. As you you speak as the words come out of your mouth you know why am i doing this why am i making this mistake this happens all the time so what is this word well there's two words actually but i'll start

Starting point is 00:16:37 with the formal more sophisticated one it's from greek and it's kakowethes which is the irresistible desire to do something unwise it was one of my trio once actually kakowethes which is the irresistible desire to do something unwise it was one of my trio once actually kakowethes and you know that any word beginning with kak whether it's c-a-c or k-a-k is bad because it is from the greek for bad so you have kakophony you have a kakistocracy the worst kind of government um and kakowethes is an ill habit or an itch. It's that kind of itch to do something in a knee jerk kind of way when you know that actually you should just stop and think. And I think emails are the perfect example of that. You know, you might be really riled by an email and just immediately draft a rather sort of sharp reply when actually if you'd taken an hour, you would

Starting point is 00:17:21 just laugh at yourself. But we never do take an hour. Do you know the three most important words in the English language, other than don't dabble, focus, are far better not. Yes. Far better not. Yes. It was a phrase made popular by a Victorian politician. I don't know if he became prime minister or not. But when young officials would give him ideas and produce papers,

Starting point is 00:17:44 he would simply say, far better not. Just leave well alone. Good. So this word is kakouitis. Kakouitis. And if you want something which is slightly easier to say, there is a modern blend for doing something you already know is a mistake, and that's pre-gret. Oh, that's brilliant. Yes.

Starting point is 00:18:02 Oh, can we do some more of these after the break? Yes, please. Stay tuned. You won't pre-gret it., that's brilliant. Yes. Oh, can we do some more of these after the break? Yes, please. Stay tuned. You won't pre-Gret it. You'll be thrilled. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic.

Starting point is 00:18:15 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. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast

Starting point is 00:18:43 Dinners on Me. I take some of my favorite people out to dinner, including, yes, my Modern Family co-stars, like Ed O'Neill. I had friends in organized crime. Sofia Vergara. Why do you want to be comfortable? Julie Bowen. I used to be the crier. And Aubrey Anderson-Emmons. I was so down bad for the middle of Miranda when I was like eight.

Starting point is 00:19:02 You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. I'm bad for the middle Miranda when I was like eight. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple. You can see us on stage, by the way. We've had one show so far. We do a live podcast, don't we, at the Fortune Theatre. And we've done one in Oxford.

Starting point is 00:19:24 And our next show is going to be on the 16th of October in London at the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden. And all the live shows, they're different. And we like to meet as many purple people as possible. So come along. And will you be signing your new book, maybe? I hope I will. I'll definitely have Word Perfect, hopefully some of these as well. Yes. For tickets for these live shows, info, go to somethingrhymeswithpurple.com

Starting point is 00:19:39 or follow us on social media at Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook or at Something Rhymes with on Instagram. So you are taking me through some of the amusing, interesting, real words in your... An Emotional Dictionary. An Emotional Dictionary by Susie Dent. What's the subtitle? It is Real Words for How You Feel from Angst to Zwada. Oh, I want to know about angst and zwada so angst i think normally angst comes prefaced by teen doesn't it because we see it as a kind of rite of passage

Starting point is 00:20:11 in uh in puberty but i think also it's also true that a lot of us have felt angst which of course comes from german directly in our lifetimes but i'm not a great philosophical historian but i do know it was central to the work of Soren Kierkegaard. And he argued that we only really become aware of our potential through angst because he thought that whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate, which is really interesting. And he also thought that if you look over a cliff's edge, that sort of vertiginous moment of looking down from a cliff, you fear falling, but you also have what the French call l'appel du vide, which is the call of the void, the call of emptiness, the kind of the opportunity to jump.

Starting point is 00:20:54 But luckily, very few of us kind of act that out. So lots and lots of kind of philosophical exploration has been done on angst, but it's kind of broadened out a little bit to mean sort of general kind of anxiety so we have angst rock the music genre which focuses on frustration and despair and also i think there was a lovely quote from the actor jim broadbent because you know a lot of us will kind of perhaps using a bit of hyperbole talk about feeling angst quite often he says you can't be angsty all day or else it becomes a sort of pale angst which is quite fun i'm one of those people who believes in a little a little dutch of anxiety does you good really yes i would like to be free from it for a while i think i don't know i think a little tension you know people say you don't want to be totally stress-free keeps you on

Starting point is 00:21:41 your toes okay but i think you've got to get the balance. You don't want to be stomach churning all day long. No, and there was a great, I think it was George Bernard Shaw said, didn't he? A lifetime of happiness. No man could bear it. It would be hell on earth. Oh, I love that. There's another lovely word in the dictionary that I put in the book, which is merry-go-sorry.

Starting point is 00:22:00 Do you remember that? To be merry-go-sorry. Well, life is merry-go-sorry because sometimes it's really happy and then sorrow comes around and then it will turn around what is swadda swadda swadda sounds german it's not actually dutch no it began with a dialect english dialect word swadda with his s which is to grow weary with drinking weirdly but now swadda is sort of languorous laziness really it's a drowsy, stupid state of body and mind. That's how it's defined in the English dialect dictionary. So it's just the kind of snooziness that you feel on a hot summer's day, really, I like to think. Yes, do you like

Starting point is 00:22:35 that sensation? Well, as I say, I'm not very good at it, but I need to get better at it. I am determined that I am actually going to get to go on a holiday where I just sit still. I think I really need it. I think my body needs it now. It's fatal to go on holiday. I've worked this out. Well, I'd been on no holiday at all since before COVID. And then a month ago, my wife said, we were going away. I had to go and meet somebody for research for a book I'm writing in Scotland. My wife said, you've got to go to that meeting in Scotland. Let's take a long weekend. And it was a bank holiday weekend. And so we thought we'd go to Scotland. We arrived where we were due to go, Anstruther. You go via Edinburgh to Lucas, and then you take a taxi to Anstruther. It seems to me to be the middle of nowhere.

Starting point is 00:23:18 We arrived at 5.15. We checked into the B&B at 6.15. We're walking down the road to the Harbour Bistro when I fall over my big, fat, flat feet. I thought it was your umbrella. No. Well, yes, that's what I thought. But my wife has decided it was my big, fat feet. I was carrying an umbrella, you're right. And I fell and hitting a wall as I fell. And I think it was the wall now.

Starting point is 00:23:43 Anyway, that's why I broke my humerus in two places. Breaking your humerus is not funny. Not funny. I'm still at all. So this is the point. We go for a four, no go on holiday. It's a killer. You fall over in the street, you break your arm.

Starting point is 00:23:57 Oh, you did meet some lovely NHS people, let's be fair. We did. NHS Fife, they came to the rescue. If you want to have an accident, do it in Fife. Do it in Anstruther. No, no, I do understand that. For me, it's just maybe sitting still and reading lots of books. Oh, that's lovely. That is lovely. I agree. That I do like. It's the svoda that I'm not quite sure about. I know what you mean. It sounds like the sort of linguistic equivalent of falling asleep, having a daytime nap and napping for too

Starting point is 00:24:25 long and wake up feeling like hell on earth. I understand where you're coming from with that. Let me give you, I'll give you two more. Good. And then we must move to correspondence. And again, the first one you'll be able to decode, I think, if you're ill willy. Ill willy, that sounds a bit unfortunate. Is this some awful sexually transmitted disease? I'm suffering from ill willy. What is it? When we did our live show on happiness, I think we covered good willy and ill willy is the opposite, malevolent, wishing bad luck upon others. And there is actually a well willy and also an evil willy, the most extreme of the willies. And that's somebody who, you know, has real malevolence and

Starting point is 00:25:02 spite, well willy. There's also the well woulder, W-E-U-L-D, the Well Wooder. And that's somebody who is really happy for your success as long as it's not more success than they have, conditional sort of happiness or well wishes. That relates to my favourite Chinese proverb. There is no pleasure so great as seeing a good friend fall off the roof. Oh my goodness, that's harsh. Anyway, ill willy.

Starting point is 00:25:28 So it's to do with ill will, not to do with willies. Yes, exactly that. There's a great German word, which I put in the dictionary as well, which is fremdscham, which is stranger shame. And that's that kind of slightly cringy humiliation that you feel on someone else's behalf. But there is that whole feeling of,

Starting point is 00:25:44 oh, well, it could have been me and the sort of delight that it isn't. So it's a very kind of complex emotion, I think. What does schadenfreude mean? Is that a kind of emotion? Yeah, so schadenfreude, probably the most well known, the most familiar German emotion, I think. And schadenfreude literally means harm, joy. And it is joy in someone else's misfortune. So it's almost the opposite of complicity, not quite so sort of near opposite, really. But Germans do those kind of emotions very, very well. In English, I have to say we do melancholy quite well. And in our bonus episodes, I'm going to tell you the story of melancholy, because that's quite something. But let's,

Starting point is 00:26:18 shall we move to our correspondence and then cover? We will, but before we do, can I say this book sounds completely wonderful. People can hear more about it in our bonus episode, which is available if you belong to our little club, which is fun because if you want to add free versions of the show, you can find out all about that by investigating further. But I love the sound of the book and it sounds like a perfect book to give, frankly, to give family and friends at Christmas. So I'm going to try and negotiate with my local independent bookshop. I love an independent bookshop. We're not done with emotions

Starting point is 00:26:50 yet because our first bit of correspondence is also husking about an obscure German word, although perhaps it's not a feeling so much as an act. This one is from Alan Wilson. Hello. I have a favour to ask. At the first live show from Cadogan Hall in London, Susie mentioned a word in German that means to ignore someone spitting when they talk to you. Please, please would you remind me of the word? I was talking with three German colleagues recently who had no idea that there was such a word in their language. I tried using Google, but I didn't get anywhere. Many thanks. Alan. Well, thanks, Alan. The reason you didn't find it is that it's an entirely made up word, but still a legitimate word, of course, by Ben Schott in his brilliant

Starting point is 00:27:29 book Schottenfreude, in which he found as many linguistic gaps as he could find in English and then got a German translator to make up a bit like Legos and German words. And this was one of them. And he decided to call it in English saliva stoicism, which is, as Alan says, ignoring someone spitting on you when they're talking to you. And it's speichel gleichmut. So that's speichel meaning spit, S-P-E-I-C-H-E-L, and then gleichmut, which is stoicism, G-L-E-I-C-H-M-U-T. I hope that helps.

Starting point is 00:28:03 It certainly helps. Helps us all. And who else has been in touch? We have a message from Jack Hood as well, who has left us a voice note. Hi, guys. Gormless. Where and what is his background?

Starting point is 00:28:15 Thanks for the entertaining podcast and keep up the good work, Jack. Gormless. Tell us about Gormless. Okay, well, this is a happy one. It's one of the orphaned negatives that I talk about so much because you could be gormful, at least you could be full of gormless okay well this is a happy one it's it's one of the orphaned negatives that i talk about so much because you could be gorm full at least you could be full of gorm gorm comes from a viking word g-a-u-m it was spelled which meant had a bit of a double life because it meant

Starting point is 00:28:35 to take heed but also to be a bit kind of vacant but the take heed sense kind of won i think and so to be gormless is to be without any heed whatsoever. And there was also a lovely adjective, gorm-like, which means to have an intelligent look about you. Oh, I like that. Now, Charles, we haven't got a trio this week because I've bombarded you with words from my book, but I'm really hoping you've got a poem. I have got a poem and it's one of my favourites from my childhood. And the reason I've chosen it is that in recent weeks, I have been thinking

Starting point is 00:29:05 about our late queen, Elizabeth II, because of her recent passing. And because I wrote a book about her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, a year or so ago. And somebody asked me if I would like to, it was a portrait of him, if I would like to write a more personal portrait of the queen. So I've been reading about the Queen. Obviously, everybody has. There's been so much about her. And I met up with an old friend of mine the other day, a lady called Karen Yank-Jenkel, who was the daughter of Michael Bond. Oh, yes. You know Michael Bond? The creator of Paddington Bear. And when the Queen died, as you will remember, with the flowers and tributes left at Buckingham Palace, there were lots of Paddington Bears, lots of cards featuring Paddington Bear and little Paddington Bears because of that wonderful film that the Queen made only a few months ago for her jubilee. That little sketch of her and Paddington Bear at Buckingham Palace taking tea and her revealing that she kept her marmalade sandwiches in her handbag.

Starting point is 00:30:06 People were enchanted by it. But not everybody knew that the Queen genuinely loved Paddington Bear and had a thing, a bit of a thing for Bond. They were born in the same year, Michael Bond and the Queen, in 1926. And for the Queen's 90th birthday, there was a special service at St. Paul's Cathedral. And the Queen asked Michael Bond to write a story for that occasion. It was read by David Attenborough, again of the same vintage. And 1926 was also the year that A. A. Milne gave us Winnie the Pooh. Amazing. So I began thinking about Winnie the Pooh, and then I thought, what's the earliest A.A. Milne poem that I remember?

Starting point is 00:30:49 And I suddenly thought, of course, it's their Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace, the headquarters of the royal family. Anyway, the Queen enjoyed A.A. Milne. And indeed, when she was a little girl, only three or four years of age, she was asked whether they could dedicate, A. Milne asked her if he could dedicate a book of his verses with music turned into songs by a man called Fraser Simpson, whether they could dedicate it to the young Princess Elizabeth. And her parents, the then Duke Conductors of York, agreed. So this is a poem that was actually dedicated by

Starting point is 00:31:27 A. Milne to the Queen back in the 1920s. You will be familiar with it, and it was one of my favourite poems from my childhood. They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Alice is marrying one of the guard. A soldier's life is terrible hard, says Alice. They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We saw a guard in a sentry box. One of the sergeants looks after their socks, says Alice. They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We looked for the king, but he never came. Well, God take care of him all the same, says Alice. They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. They've great big parties inside the grounds.

Starting point is 00:32:19 I wouldn't be king for a hundred pounds, says Alice. They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. A face looked out, but it wasn't the king's. He's much too busy assigning things, says Alice. They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. Do you think the king knows all about me? Sure, too, dear, but it's time for tea, says Alice. Oh, that's brilliant. It's lovely, isn't it? Since they're a song, did they put it to musical? They did. Yeah, the changing guard. That's exactly it. And it was when the poems were put to music. The music was composed by somebody called H. Fraser Simpson. Oh, yeah. And that was the collection of the verses and the music that was, with permission, dedicated to Princess Elizabeth back in the end of the 1920s.

Starting point is 00:33:15 So the late queen, she loved a teddy bear, whether it was Winnie the Pooh or Paddington Bear. And I can share with you that she had a soft spot for rupert bear too which is interesting that though the bear is german and american in origin the teddy bear gets the name from the american teddy bear uh from you know teddy roosevelt and the first german bears made by the steiff company at the beginning of the 20th century the most famous bears in the world, I think, can all be counted as British. I think you're right. I forgot about Rupert Bear. Oh, well, thank you for that. A lovely, lovely poem. And I loved our chat. I hope everyone else did too. Thank you for following us. And you can find us on social media as well, at Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook, or at Something

Starting point is 00:34:01 Rhymes With on Instagram. Something Rhymes With Purple is a Something Else and Sony Music Entertainment production. It was produced by Lawrence Bassett and Harriet Wells with additional production from Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale, Teddy Riley and... He's a bitch. What kind of bear is he? Well, exactly. He is a bit... He's more a fuzzy bear than a fozzy bear, if you know what he looks like.

Starting point is 00:34:23 Golly.

Something Rhymes with Purple - Emovere

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