Something Rhymes with Purple - Fandango de pokum

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Join us this week as we turn the pages of our very own Susie Dent’s brand new book: ‘Interesting Stories About Curious Words’. We explore all the very best niche stories behind much loved words in the English language. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our NEW 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:  Shemozzle - muddle or complication Tenebrous - gloomy or dark Twiffler - a medium sized plate Gyles' poem this week was 'Who Has Seen the Wind?' by Christina Rossetti Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you: But when the leaves hang trembling, The wind is passing through. Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads, The wind is passing by. 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

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

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. Make your nights unforgettable

with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit

amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Hello, Giles here. And knowing that we have a family audience and the Purple people often include some very young people, just to say that today's episode does include some language that some people may find uncomfortable or offensive. Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. Today, we're celebrating a book, a particular book, but we celebrate books all our lives, Susie Dent and I. We love books, both of us, don't we, Susie? We do. And I always feel like I should eventually have a house one day where I can accommodate all the books that I have in my loft because I don't actually have as many as I would like around me. I have quite a conservative set of bookshelves

and I should just rotate my books. Instead, I just have a whole pile. You know, this, do you remember this is called in Japanese, sundoku. And that is the act of collecting book after book after book and never quite getting to read them. And that is me. Most of my books I've not read. I love them. I hoard them. I have thousands of them, many thousands of them. My wife says we should strim the shelves. We should get rid of the books. We really must. All those paperbacks, those yellowing paperbacks, and I love them. I love knowing that a book has been there waiting to be read for years. And I have the books from my childhood. I mean, I've been collecting books all my life. And I like a real book. I like a

hardback book. I like a book with a spine. I like a book with endpapers. I like a book where I can open it. I can smell it. I can feel the texture of the pages. Books are our best friends. They're the only friends, actually, that we can rely on. My wife actually agrees with me on that.

She does say that. She said, men, you can't rely on a man. You know, he either disappears with the au pair or he dies. Men are not reliable. Books are reliable. You can take a book on holiday. You can, you know, take a disappears with the au pair or he dies. Men are not reliable. Books are reliable. You can take a book on holiday. You can, you know, take a book on the train journey. So I love books.

And I love actually also going to book festivals. And you and I have been to quite a few already this autumn, but are going to more. I've just been to the Henley Book Festival, the 17th Henley Book Festival in, is it Oxfordshire? I think probably. Yeah. I went to there first. They told me I went to there first. And I'm going to Ilkley Book Festival, the 17th Henley Book Festival in, is it Oxfordshire? I think probably. Yeah. I went to their first. They told me I went to their first and I'm going to Ilkley soon. Oh, I love that one. The Ilkley Book Festival. It's been going for 50 years. And they said to me, you came to our first. So I've been going to them a long, long time. Do you have a favourite one in

Britain? Oh, goodness. I don't feel like I should say because then I feel like I'm blessing everyone else down. But I think one that has always been very close to my heart is the Hay Festival so I love that so I love the Hay Winter Festival which I'm going to this autumn where I'm going to be interviewed with Stephen Fry so that would be really nice and then also Cheltenham is another one that is sort of quite close to here but I love Ilkley. Ilkley is just such a gorgeous, gorgeous place. But you know what? I love the fact that actually the tiniest villages and towns up and down Britain are organising their own literary festivals and doing really, really well with them. So I think we should celebrate all of them. Let's celebrate all of them. But let me as an author say, because I'm an old seasoned author,

I'm going to say something you would never say. I'm going to tell you that it's very frustrating if you're an author. You get up and you give your talk. You give, you know, 40 minutes of talk, 20 minutes of questions. You give your all. You suck the juice out of your book that you're there to talk about. And then you go to sit down to sign, you hope, a few copies of the book that people will want to buy. And then you see people sneaking out of the hall or the tent without buying the book. They've spent a few pounds on getting in to hear your talk. And they rather think if you've talked well and that was very interesting. Oh, yes, I'll get that another day. And they don't get it then and then. So if you are going to a book festival and you hear Susie Dent speaking, don't at the end

think, oh, that was marvelous, and then disappear from the other side of the building away from where she is. Go get the book. Yeah, but sometimes you get the book with the ticket, but also not everyone has the money to buy the book. So I just, I have to say, and I'm not being cheesy or falsely modest or whatever, I just think it's lovely to have people there. And if they can buy the book, that's a bonus.

Look, you should buy the book. Of course, if you can't afford the book, that's the joy of our lovely public libraries. Libr course if you can't afford the book that's the joy of our lovely public libraries we talked about this didn't i love a library and a book will be available to you there you'll still be paying for it through your taxes but it will be generally available to everybody free at the point of use that is wonderful if you don't use your library you will lose your library so i'm all for libraries but i'm also all for encouraging people who go to book festivals to collect books

and to buy them. And I say, I will put anything in it. I say, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, write long messages. And if they say, I'm hoping to put this on eBay quite soon, I need it to be valuable, then I sign the book, J.K. Rowling. I am very happy to do whatever is required. You are a book tart, essentially, is what he's saying. I am. And I have no shame in it. And I think we should be less apologetic about it. So, I said you wouldn't want to say this. So, I'm saying it for you. If you hear Susie this autumn at one of these festivals, do tell her how wonderful she is. Do at least also, the other thing is, please don't ask her for a selfie without at least buying the book.

Oh, yes, that's true. I hate selfies. And I know that, you know, that they are absolutely what we should do. But then they're probably my least favorite thing. So if you buy a book, that's true. That will soften the pill. I want to celebrate your book. You've got another book out this autumn.

Interesting stories about curious words. And nobody knows more about curious words than you do, Susie Dent. And no one has got more interesting stories to share. So this is a book. Who's it published by? This is John Murray, my regular publisher. John Murray, who published people like Lord Byron many years ago. Yeah, exactly. In John Murray's offices, didn't they burn his diaries?

They did. And you've been into those offices. They still exist in Albemarle Street in just off Piccadilly in London. I've been published by them too. Very distinguished publishers. Marvelous people. They only publish good books.

They publish a number of Susie's books. And this is keenly priced. I don't know what the price is. But whatever the price is, but whatever the price is, buy it. Buy it, everybody. And now, Susan's going to tell you why you want to buy it. Why did you actually want to write it? Because you could write about anything. Why did you choose this subject for this book? Okay, so I have to say this was not written, it seems very boastful to say I've got two books out. We've talked about The Roots of Happiness, which is my children's book. This was written at a different time. And it's essentially the product of my hands wandering through the dictionary, you know, over the course of my entire career. But it is also

very much a credit and a tribute to Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, who we should devote a whole episode to, Giles, because the Reverend Brewer was a sort of eclectic collector of random bits of information, not just about language, but also about mythology, about legends, science. Every single subject seemed to intrigue him. And he had, as I do actually, he had lots and lots of little kind of books into which he would jot down anything interesting that came his way. And then he published them in these glorious compendia of miscellaneous information. And the most famous probably is Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which is the reference book, editor's reference book, really. It is this treasure trove of information it's a little bit like roger's thesaurus and that you're kind of not completely sure uh what you're going

to find when you jump in and i think it was terry pratchett who uh was one of the previous editors of the book i edited the 19th edition terry pratchett and philip pullman previous editors i think it was terry pratchett who'd, this is the book whose silent refrain will tell you, this is not in fact what you were looking for, but it is much more interesting. So you dive in and before you know it, you've spent a couple of hours. And so what I did was I, having been the editor of this book, I just collected all my favourite etymologies, the editor of this book, I just collected all my favourite etymologies, brought them up to date, rewrote them, added my own. And the result is a collection of etymological stories,

some of which people will know and some of which they absolutely won't. And yeah, so Georgina, my brilliant editor at John Murray, has always said, she will say, this is the book you've been writing your whole career. In other words, it's just full of all those little snippets of information that I have shared with people on Countdown, but not actually gathered together in this scope, I suppose, in a book. Give us a flavour of, if we were opening the book now, sort of, it falls open, what would we see? What would surprise and entertain us? Well, shall I just, I will open it. Dip in, dip in, open the book. prize and entertain us? Well, shall I just, I will open it.

Dip in. Dip in. Open the book. The first one is a little chapter because unlike Breers, which is alphabetical, I have put them into thematic chapters to make it a tiny bit more, hopefully more accessible and readable. And the first one I've come across is collective nouns, which we have devoted a whole podcast episode to. Where they came from, which is mostly the Middle Ages, 15th century, where they came from which is mostly the middle ages 15th century book of saint albans and what they meant so you have an abomination of monks you have a murmuration of starlings unkindness of ravens and so on so you have those then the next thing i am going to is well actually i've got a sports section so i'm looking at the word love in tennis, the word juice in tennis.

I have got the history of Palmao and the shopping mall and their link. I have got terms for things you didn't know had a name, a section on that. I have a section on real places, such as St. Coventry, Bambury Cross. Oh, and just let me stop you. St. Coventry.

I know what it means. What is the origin of that though? Then you tell us what it is. Then I'll tell you what the origin is. So being sent to Coventry essentially began during the Civil War when it is said that royalist prisoners who were captured in Birmingham were sent to Coventry because it was a parliamentary stronghold. And there they were kind of ostracized because they basically represented the other side. Then you have London place names, and then you have a whole section on food and drink. You have my favourite egg corns, which you and I have talked about, those slips of the ear.

I love an egg corn. Clothes. You've got the word boondoggle lots of discussions about various projects in britain at the moment which might be classed a boondoggle which essentially uh means a task on which a lot of money is spent but which ends up to be a bit of a white elephant who's another metaphor or utterly futile so it's you know it's got red herrings it's got cock and bull stories it's got nine day wonders it's got red herrings, it's got cock and bull stories, it's got nine-day wonders, it's got lots and lots. And would it answer my questions? For example, I know we've talked about this before, but if I thought, you know, we've often used the phrase Sweet Fanny Adams, Flipping Ada, Flaming Nora, Biddy Nomades, Jack the Lad.

These are characters that you tell me about regularly. Yes. Is there an index at the back where I could look it up and see? Ah, perfect. Yes. So it's also useful in that sense. Well, I hope it will be useful. And I hope that people will enjoy it.

The thing I always find is it's just, you know, I feel like, oh, it's not comprehensive. I could have put this in and that in, but then of course it would have been absolutely huge. It's quite fairly big as is actually. You are like I am. You are what my wife calls a completist. We want to have a complete, you know,

it has to be. But I'm told by publishers that they don't want books to be too long nowadays. I keep delivering books that the publishers, oh no, far too long. You've got to cut 60,000 words. I said 60,000 words. Wow. You know, yes. I don't know what the standard length is, actually. Mine are normally around 90,000 to 100,000. Same for yours? That's, can I say, how wise you are.

Because mine, unfortunately, well, no, I can't complain about mine. I'm very lucky with my books. But my last one, I've done a big biography this year of the late Queen Elizabeth II. But it is a big book. I think it's probably about 180,000. Wow. It is a big book. It's a big book uh it's i think it's probably about 180 000 wow it is a big book it's a big book it's a it's a big big book and it's got lovely illustrations and but it's about an important subject and i think people if it's a big biography people will stick with it but i'm told by publishers that for commercial reasons you know know, 90 to 120,000 words are what you need.

My autobiography, I did a childhood autobiography. Have I given it to you? I have one, yes, on my shelf. Good. Well, take it off your shelf. No, but actually, you don't have to. As you know, I bought your book on the Queen for many people and and explained to them just how hard you worked on that book because i remember you saying to me i'm working 16 hours a day but then you also said this is how i'm going to write all my books in future because you actually quite enjoyed that immersiveness didn't you i did i was able to focus on it i cared about it hugely i worked those long hours

because though i'd been working on it for some years, the Queen's sudden, and though she was 96, to some unexpected death meant I've got to get on with this now. So there was a pleasure with concentrating on it. Are you somebody when you're writing a book, do you like to concentrate on it? Yes and no. I'm a strange beast because if I'm writing something and I'm getting to a really, really good bit that I'm really looking forward to, I get up and make myself a cup of tea. It's like I sort of prolong the pleasure of it. It's very odd. Now that is interesting. But I think about it all the time. And even when I'm in bed, I'm tapping away in my notes section

of my phone or in a little journal that I keep by the bed and just sort of writing down things. But I also find that if I'm reading other books, I get slightly distracted by those and think that they're so much better than mine that I kind of lose heart. So I have to almost avoid reading anything else when I'm writing mine. Do you know who I mean by Hannah Rothschild? She's a novelist and she's written several novels. They're very witty, very amusing. She's a novelist and she's written several novels. They're very witty, very amusing. She's likened by some people to Jane Austen, others to Evelyn Waugh or Nancy Mitford.

And she's a contemporary novelist. And she's just written a new book called High Time. And I interviewed her at the Barnes Book Fest, another book festival, my local bookshop, and others organize it in Barnes in Southwest London. And we were comparing and contrasting our writing habits. And I explained, I'm very disciplined, you know, eight in the morning till six in the evening. I keep going, I haven't finished then.

And I've got to do a certain number of words per day, minimum 1,000 when you're on a road, you expect more. And I said, what about you? And she said, oh, no, quite different. For me, writing is like having a love affair. And I do it in strange places. I find secret hotels, out of the way coffee shops. That's how I write my books. Is that intriguing? Yeah, that is intriguing. It's funny, isn't it? It's such a sort of personal

thing. But with this one, I sort of felt that I did have Ebenezer Brewer sort of slightly holding my hand and it was a joy to riffle through his words again, because in some cases, his discoveries have since been, I suppose, overtaken. And in others, you know, he just delivers the sort of best explanation that you could possibly find of something. And so taking those and working with them was absolutely lovely. So, but it's funny, some of them were quite dark as well and working with them was absolutely lovely. But it's funny, some of them were quite dark as well. So you mentioned Fanny Adams. I don't know if you remember that story, but that was very grisly because Fanny Adams was the murder victim of a very notorious murder in the 1800s that really caught the imagination in a way that a brutal

murder will and still does to this day. And then several decades later, in the Navy, their tinned rations were called Fanny Adams. They were sort of named with a very dark humour after this poor young 10-year-old girl that had been murdered, Fanny Adams. And so, you know, Sweet F.A. actually stood for sweet Fanny Adams, which of course nowadays is taken to mean something else entirely. So really sad story. So quite difficult working with material like that. But then there were so many other joyful words in there. And I have to say, I have been quite non-brewer-ish in some of the stuff that I put in,

including some of my favourite words. So it's still a compendium though. I'm looking now at Hair of the Dog That Bit You, one of my favourite stories. Tapping the Admiral. Have you heard of that? No tap oh maybe i have yeah yes go on you may have told me before tapping the admiral tell me it's to suck liquor from a cask by a straw and some say it was first done by sailors from the rum cask in which the body of admiral lord nelson was brought to England. I mean, how but again, very strange. Sorry, I don't mean to linger on all the sort of quite sad ones. Having said that, putting the kibosh on another sad one, because the kibosh was

thought by some to be from the Irish for the cap of death worn by a judge when pronouncing a death sentence. So putting the kibosh on was condemning someone to death. Not completely sure about that one. But lots of funny insults. And as I say, there is a bit of joy there as well. Couldn't have not put in. Give us a chuckle. Before we go to the break, give us the one that you think is the most amusing or surprising or delightful. Just give us a bit of joy before we put the kibosh on it and go to the break. Well, given that you were in our withdrawing room the other day, our drawing room, aka the Purple Plus Club, talking about Nookie, I'll give you a word for sex, 19th century style,

fandango to pokum, which I just think is very funny. Fandango to pokum. And there's also hanky-panky, which, believe it or not, is thought to be an altered form of hocus-pocus, the fake Latin of the conjurer. And then I've also got, as you know, one of my favorite euphemisms from Victorian times. It's not really a euphemism. It's just a brilliant name for eggs and sausages. Sausages were bags of mystery, if you remember, because you never know what's in them. And then eggs were known as cackle farts. Very good. Bags of mystery and cackle farts in interesting stories about

curious words. A new book from the great Susie Dent, published by John Murray at accessible prices, available for free at your local library. But if I were you, I'd go to a festival where Susie is speaking, listen to her, and then be at the front of the queue to buy a signed copy. Or if not, go to your local bookshop where they will be happy to sell you a copy of the book. And if they haven't got it in, which I'd be surprised about, they can get it for you within 24 hours. So do support your local bookshop as well, of course, every kind of bookshop. We just love books and Susie Dent writes the best of them. Oh, you're lovely. Let's take a break. You're selfie-ic. 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. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder, that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is... Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray.

And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. With the best celebrity guests. And hot takes galore. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. touch. There was somebody the other day in the paper reporting that there was a Scottish writer who had written in a book, asked the dedication to who they were going to dedicate the book. And he then wrote to Emma Chisitt, signed whoever it was. And of course, this is a very old joke.

Kenneth Williams used to tell it when he was selling books, his lovely book, Acid Drops, which I was involved about 40 years ago. And he said, oh yeah, somebody came and wanted to buy the book. And I put her name in, Emma Chisit. And of course, it was an Australian person who was asking, Emma Chisit. So tell us, if you've got a funny story of going to a book signing session, it's purplepeopleatsomethingrhymes.com. We love hearing from you. Who have we heard from this week, Susie? Well, our very first question is from, this is such a great name, Andrew Kumpsty, which is great, who says he often listens to our shows more than once.

Thank you, Andrew, because he tries to remember the wonderful words that come up at the end. So bedinnered, he says, is certainly a new favourite of mine. He says he has a few phrases that he'd like some help with and um actually we've probably only got time for one of them today but i think we'll come back to um andrew because there's some extremely good ones in here but he asks where the phrase stop fannying around came from and he says i've just heard it on Gogglebox, presumably from you, and immediately thought of something rhymes with purple. To stop fannying about. Now, sadly, Andrew, we don't completely know why fanny as the pet form of the female forename Frances became associated either with a certain

part of the female anatomy or with the idea of fannying about. But they seem to be linked in their meaning and the sort of the idea, the fanny, of course, in the US can mean your buttocks. So perhaps the idea of sort of stop fannying about, stop sort of sitting around and loafing about and actually get to business. Why fanny in the UK means something, you know, very different indeed, which is why you need to be very careful you don't mix up the British and the American meanings, is possibly, but the OED only gives a possibly, because of John Cleland's erotic novel called Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, which became known as Fanny Hill because his principal character was Frances Hill, aka Fanny Hill. And there are quite a few bawdy 18th century

verses in which Fanny is used as a noun, actually, meaning sort of sex. So you probably didn't expect me to go there, but I have, I'm afraid, because they do seem to be linked. And actually, what's also quite interesting, in the 1930s and 40s, you have another meaning of Fanny, which is like sort of being incredulous. You'd say my Fanny, a bit like, oh, my arse, or even they have my foot or my eye and Betty Martin and that kind of thing. But my Fanny was one of those. So it's had various meanings, but I think the sense that's used in Stop Fannying About is probably closest to the American sense of, stop sitting on your backside and get going.

Is your copy of Fanny Hill up in the loft with all those other books? I do not have a copy of it. Do you? Well, I don't think I do anymore. I used to have a copy of it. When I was a teenager, I had a copy of it. I remember it. I remember being quite excited to have it.

Did I own it? Would I have dared buy it? Or was it a copy that somebody had at school? I know that I used to have a copy of it. And well, I don't. Anyway, I wonder if you can borrow it from the library. You're saying how good libraries are. Well, if you want a copy of Fanny Hill, go to the library. Anyway, stop fannying about and go and get it. Very good. Well done. Well, that's good. Thank you very much indeed. Who else has been in touch with us? Oh, somebody called Ben Di Benedetto. Great name. And he says, dear Susie and Giles, can't remember what I used to do before your podcast. What a lovely thing to

say. A note for Giles. Oh dear. Do you remember back in the seventies, the 1970s, that's 50 years ago, writing a book called How to Be a Spy. I loved it and I passed it on to my children, now 12 and 15, and they also loved it. We listened to your podcast together and they were over the moon when the penny dropped. They realized that you are the master spy who had such an impact on our childhoods. Thank you, Ben DiBenedetto. Is this true? If you think that's his real name, it's certainly true. I did indeed write a book called How to Be a Spy. And you can see, Susie, because you can see me on Zoom, the room that I am in. And it's

a room, oops, that was the noise of me moving my laptop, to show Susie some of the books on the walls. And in this room are only books that I've either written or edited or been actively involved in the publication. So I have been involved in writing an awful lot of books for an awful lot of time. But in the early 1970s, I began writing children's books. My first book was a book about prisons and that was published more than 50 years ago. But I then began writing children's books and How to Be a Spy was one of my most exciting, and I loved doing it. And then when my own children came along in the late 70s and 1980s, I wrote more and more books for children. So I could be classified. I mean, I've written more than 100 books for children as simply being

a children's author. But the problem is, if you do a lot of variety of things, people, you know, they can't put you in the box they want to put you in. So I'm thrilled. And this often happens. People come up to me at book festivals with old books and say, would you sign this for my children or even sometimes for my grandchildren, which is fantastic. So yes, it's full of secrets, how to be a spy. One of them is to develop a very good spy name. And I think Ben Di Benedetto is one of the best I've heard. Well done, Ben. Or shall I call you Roger? Over and out. Over and out. Brilliant. Well, time for my trio, where I give you three words,

usually dug up from the past that may or may not be useful in your current life, but that have always taken my fancy for some reason or other. I'm going to start with a lovely Yiddish word. Yiddish always has that just sort of gorgeous, affectionately teasing tone to it quite often, doesn't it? And I like the word shmozzle, shmozzle, not a schnozzle, but a shmozzle, which is a muddle or a complication. What a schmozzle she got herself into yesterday, which is just a glorious sounding word. The second one I think will be familiar to many people, but it's just beautiful. Tenebrous, tenebrous, which is T-E-N-E-B-R-O-U-S, meaning gloomy or dark. Tenebrous can apply to anything, really, that you would like.

It could be something rather loose, or it could be literal physical darkness or dimpsiness, as they say in Devon. And the second, now, Giles, I've never heard of this. And we were talking about the drawing room, the withdrawing room, et cetera, et cetera. Have you heard of a twiffler? A twiffler? Yes. Great word. Never heard of it.

room, et cetera, et cetera. Have you heard of a Twiffler? A Twiffler? Yes. Great word. Never heard of it. Apparently, and I'm taking this to be true, it is a plate that is kind of intermediate size. So it's between a dinner and a pudding plate. It's a Twiffler. I don't know whether Twiff bit is a bit like betwixt because it's been betwixt one and another, but I just love the idea that some people have Twifflers in their crockery cupboard. Wonderful. Do you have a poem for us today, as always? I do have a poem for us, and it's by one of my favourite poets, Christina Georgina Rosetta. Born on the 5th of December, 1830, died on the 29th of December, 1894. She was a wonderful English writer, romantic, devotional, children's poems, just completely

charming. She wrote, of course, the words for In the Bleak Midwinter, which became famous as a Christmas carol set by Gustav Holst and other people. Just wonderful. Anyway, this poem by her is very simple. It feels a bit seasonal to me, and I hope you will like it. It's only eight lines who has seen the wind neither i nor you but when the leaves hang trembling the wind is passing

through who has seen the wind neither you nor i but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by. Beautiful. Beautiful. And so simple. You know, absolutely extraordinary. She's one of my favourites. No, it's gorgeous. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. And well, we hope that you did too. We are always grateful for your company and we hope you will join us if you can for the bonus episode that will go alongside this episode but at least for the next main episode where we adore your company so please keep following us please recommend us to friends please leave us a review if you did like it

because we always love to see those and we do read every single one of them something rides with purple is a sony music entertainment production It was produced by Naya Dia, with additional production from Nemi Oyiku, Hannah Newton, Chris Skinner, Poppy Thompson, usually Richie. But today we have Teddy, who is joining us from Bournemouth, very close to the sea, where he's been wild swimming, Giles. Very impressive. That's amazing. I know where Gully has been because I saw him earlier today in my local bookshop.

He was saying to the bookseller, have you got a book called Interesting Stories About Curious Words? I heard in the podcast that it's quite brilliant. Not Gully, I'll give him a free copy.