Something Rhymes with Purple - Water Vessels

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

We’ve spoken before about Susie’s, often fancy, water glasses that she sips on throughout the recordings… so this week we are pouring our thoughts into the vessels that we use to hold our drinks and have done for many centuries.  Eavesdrop on us, with your favourite drink as we spill what we know about water vessels.  We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [e-mail]  We currently have 20% off at the SRwP official merchandise store, just head to: https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple  Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club via Apple Subscription, simply follow this link and enjoy a free 7 day trial: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/something-rhymes-with-purple/id1456772823  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:  Zarf: a cup-shaped holder for a hot coffee-cup, used in the Levant, usually of metal and of ornamental design  Aprosexia: an inability to concentrate due to a distracted mind (prosexis: heedfulness)  Froonce: to frolic exuberantly  Gyles' poem this week was from Martyn Hesford ’s book ‘Lilac White’.  A Somethin’ Else & 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Hello, just a note to say that this episode was recorded back in August before news of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Welcome to Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast all about words and language, and it's presented by me, Giles Brandreth, based in London, in the United Kingdom, and my colleague and longstanding friend, the world's leading lexicographer, in my view, that's not her own opinion, but she is recognised internationally as one of the great wordsmiths of our time. It's Susie Dent, who is in Oxford, home of the Oxford English Dictionary.

How are you? How's everything been for you, Susie? Yeah, I am very well, actually. It's been quite a long week for me because I've had lots of countdown recordings for those who do watch the show in Britain. And it's in some places across the world. It's a game show and we pre-record them. So we do five shows a day and we do three of those days in a week. So that's 15 shows in three days. So it's quite heavy going, but a lot of fun. And as you know, I love talking about words and look forward to continuing now. And have you seen the exciting news that I saw reported in the papers? Some work that's been done, I think it was at York University, establishing that languages that we may have

learned as children, they're still lurking in our head. Did you read about this? Do you know about this? This will really encourage you. You know, you are, I learned French as a small boy and you learned German when you were a girl and you were often quoting German. I know it's your favourite language other than English. Yeah. And it turns out that speaking a language like German or French if you've learnt it as a child, it's just like riding a bicycle

and the ability never leaves you even if you don't practise it. Wow. Real research has been done on this. A study is suggesting that people who learned a foreign language in school are as good at speaking it 50 years after their last exam as they were when they studied it. Isn't that amazing? That is.

That's incredible. Yeah. Even if people had not used the skill in the intervening half century, they were found to be as adept as they were when they got the qualification at 16. 500 people who'd taken French GCSE on A-level in the 1970s, they were asked to do a French vocabulary and grammar test, and the result showed no significant drop-off in performance. Isn't that amazing? And this underlines what I have long thought, that if it's in there, particularly in terms of words and language, it really is in there. That's why you can recover, for example, the nursery rhymes or the poems you learnt when you were a small child.

It's all in there, which is fantastic. And you can open the beaker, open the vessel, and pour out the words. Open the beaker, open the vessel and pour out the words. Yeah. And I'm saying that because what I want us to talk about today is unleashing the vessel, pouring out the words and things to do with vessels. Receptacles. Receptacles.

That's what we want to talk about. Water vessels. Yes. What do you, do you, I have water in a glass. Do you have water during these recordings? I don't actually have anything at the moment. I should do. I have water all the way through in a glass. Do you have water during these recordings? I don't actually have anything at the moment. I should do. I have water all the way through in the studio.

But sometimes I put in, you know, you can get those fizzy vitamin tablets that you drop in. I always try and sneak one of those into my glass whenever I'm recording Countdown. And then I'm told promptly to put it under the desk because it looks like a urine sample. But normally it is a glass. Yes. But there were people who would drink their own urine. Was it Mahatma Gandhi or Mr. Nehru? I remember.

Oh, yes, there was a lot of people. And the actor Sarah Mills, if you remember her. Sarah Miles. Sorry, she used to do that too. Different family, but same idea. They drank their own urine and said it was very good for you. Well, we've talked about this in our medical episode, I think, that there were doctors who could diagnose what kind of diabetes people suffered from by tasting their urine. So if it

was sweet, it is diabetes mellitus. And if it was insipid, it is diabetes insipidus. So the two types of diabetes. And they became known as piss prophets yes only a few minutes in and people are thinking all over the world this is why i tune in to learn about the piss prophets well i want to learn all about vessels jugs pitchers ewers beakers and i want you to feel if you're listening to this people sometimes say to me where do you dredge these things up from these stories that you tell these names well i don't I don't dredge them up. They're in there. And what I've discovered from this research is that everything we knew as children, it's all in there waiting to come out again. And I want to draw from you, Susie Dent, today,

the origins of some of these words. Can we begin with the very water vessel itself? A vessel. Tell me about the vessel. It's quite simple, its story, really. So it came from the Romans. And we all know that, you know, drinking vessels are some of the earliest artefacts that have ever been found from ancient civilisations. And in this case, it comes from late Latin, vasellum, which means little vessel. Essentially, it meant exactly the same thing. But vessel has got so many different applications in English and in life. It's a container used to hold liquid, which is how we're talking about it today. In biblical use, it's a person who embodies a

particular quality. Lord, use this lowly vessel. Let me serve you as you will. In anatomy, it's a channel or a duct that conveys blood or other bodily fluid. And in botany, it's one of the tubular structures in a plant, in its vascular system, that conducts water and minerals and nutrients from the root. So lots and lots of different meanings, but all go back to that idea of being something that carries, that holds, and that sort of, you know, almost comes to embody something. Very good. Did you ever see the film that was for me

my favourite film of my childhood, The Court Jester with Danny Kaye? No. People of my generation will all be, when they hear the word vessel, they immediately think about the vessel with the pestle that has the brew that is true. There was a sequence in this film

where Danny Kaye has a conversation about where some poison has been placed. And Griselda, who is helping him, says, listen, I put a pellet of poison in one of the vessels. Which one? The one with the figure of a pestle. So the vessel with the pestle, yes, but you don't want the vessel with the pestle. You want the chalice from the palace. Oh, I don't want the vessel with the pestle. I want the chalice from the palace. The chalice from the palace, yeah. It's a little crystal chalice with the palace. Oh, I don't want the vessel with the vessel. I want the chalice from the palace. The chalice from the palace. Yeah, it's a little crystal chalice with the figure of a palace.

So the chalice from the palace has the pellet with the poison. No, the pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the vessel. Oh, the pellet with the vessel. The vessel with the vessel. The vessel with the vessel. What about the palace from the chalice?

Anyway, it goes on like this. It is hilarious. Wow. And I recommend it. And go to YouTube youtube if any of you haven't heard this song sung or this whole number this routine you're in for a treat um the vessel with the pestle danny k the court jester vessel chalice is more of a religious thing isn't it yes we think about the chalice at um communion don't we, as well. And yeah, so that goes back to the Latin calyx,

which meant a cup, essentially. So again, a sort of another ancient word with lots of what we call cognates in other languages, denoting a kind of goblet of some kind. So you know what gob means. It means mouth, essentially. So in French, gobe was to open one's mouth. It also gave us, remember, I think one of my trios once upon a time was the goblmouche, which translates literally as a fly swallower and denoting somebody who's so gullible because their mouth is open all the time and they will just literally swallow anything. So a gobbler is related to the goblet is the mouth. That's the goblet. Goodness. So you let things into the mouth with a goblet.

I mean, that's how you use your goblet. Le gobblet. Yeah. What about a jug? Jug is a strange one. For such a sort of earthy, you know, English word, you'd think that it just had a very simple kind of Germanic origin, maybe something from Latin.

But we don't know quite where it comes from. simple kind of Germanic origin, maybe something from Latin, but we don't know quite where it comes from. But there are conjectures that it's linked to the name Joan or Joanna, and a nickname was Jug or Juggin. Now, particularly, this was applied to a maid servant or a mistress. It was a kind of term of slight disparagement, really, just as, do you you remember we've spoken in the past about how proper names are applied to objects um or or certain professions so an abigail was a lady's maid for example so there is a chance that it goes back to joan or joanna and because they were maid servants perhaps the idea is that they were carrying jugs for the household but you know it's its journey is very unclear and hazy okay i'm I'm not sure about that one. A pitcher.

A pitcher. So this is what the Americans call a jug. And this isn't related to the pitchfork, where pitching is just sort of literally throwing or heaving something or sort of, you know, sticking a tool in something. It actually goes back to the old French piche, meaning a pot, which in turn is based on Latin picarium. A ewer. Do you know, this was a new one to me, really. So a ewer is, if I look this up, it's usually the trade name for a bedroom water jug. So if you go back, I guess, you know, a century or so, you will find people obviously with no taps or faucets, but just with a basin and a jug where they would perform their morning ablutions. So that's a ewer. Is that how you

understand it? Yes, it is. Yes. Okay. So not related to a female sheep at all and everything to do strangely with an old French corruption, I suppose, of the Latin aquaria, simply from aqua meaning water. So it kind of morphed quite a lot in the course of its journey. But again, it's a receptacle for water, but it kind of zoomed in rather on that very specific sense of a pitcher with a wide spout that is used for morning washing. Is a beaker something you drink out of or something you pour from? A beaker? Interesting. I would say a beaker, I would normally use beaker if there was one in my cupboard for a kind of plastic children's drinking cup. That's what I would call a beaker. And nothing to do with beaks, as you might imagine. And everything to do with the Viking word bika, meaning a drinking bowl or large drinking container. So a bit of a false friend there.

You might think it's, you know, your beak is your mouth and you put your beaker in your mouth, but no, it's from the Vikings. There are grander words too, an amphora. Again, you will find amphora, ancient amphora, in many museums and, you know, sort of their design is often quite sort of ornate and elaborate. So, it's a two-handed vessel and it was used by the ancients for holding wine or often

oil, but always with two handles, often overbodied and they have this kind of pointed base. And with the Greeks, I think an amphora was also about nine gallons so it was a liquid measure um as well and it simply goes back to um the word amphi or the prefix amphi meaning on both sides um and the ford is was carried so it's carried on both sides because of those two handles um and it's that amphi also gave us other words in English, like an amphibian, somebody who can exist in both water and land and on land. So it's the kind of both sense of things. This is not a word with which I'm familiar at all, but I've come across it looking up things to talk about today. The aquamanalium, aquamanile.

It's a jug apparently in the shape of an animal. Is this a well-known word? Yes, and it's quite incredible. So I think it's aquamanile. It's a jug apparently in the shape of an animal. Is this a well-known word? Yes, and it's quite incredible. So I think it's Aquamanile, that's how you or Aquamanile as well, is from the Latin and it was a basin for washing the hands. And it didn't really specify an animal until the 19th century when it was frequently one made in the form of an animal or a bird. And they can be quite elaborate and quite wonderful um but it goes back to aqua meaning water and um the the mannus the hand that you'll find in lots of other words like manicure manipulate etc yeah there's a creamer

uh here which is a small jug for milk or cream and it's called a creamer i assume simply because it contains cream exactly yeah simple as. Yeah, simple as that. Oh, yes. Simple as that. An interesting one. A poron, a wine pitcher with a long, thin spout. I've never heard of it. Have you heard of a poron?

I've seen them before, but I didn't know poron is what it was called. So it originated in Catalonia. And the whole point of it is that it's handed around a group and it's got one of those long, thin spouts. So you can open your mouth and pour the wine, if it is wine, directly into your mouth without having to touch it with your lips. And that's why it can get passed around a group

because it's very hygienic. You're not putting your lips to it. I'm not familiar with that. The only kind of vessel I am familiar with for pouring wine from is the carafe. We'll have a carafe of wine, which I take to be a French word, carafe. But is that its origin? Is it French in origin? It's actually Arabic, believe it or not, a carafe. So again, a bit of a false friend.

Like you, it does sound a bit French. And I think it probably came to us via French, but ultimately it's probably from the Persian or the Arabic, meaning pretty much the same thing, but ultimately from a verb meaning to draw or lift water. You gave us the vessel with the vessel and the chalice with the palace. What about the flagon with the dragon? Flagon. Flagon, yeah. Is it related to flask?

Where does that come from? It is related to flask. And yeah, so nothing particularly spectacular here. Quite a sort of simple one. And I think it arrived in sort of medieval English. There is flascon in or flasconem in Latin meaning a flask and they're all related. But the reason I like this one, Giles, is that it's actually related bizarrely to the word fiasco. So fiasco today is a totally humiliating failure. But in Italian in the 19th century, a fiasco was a bottle related to flask and flagon. And far fiasco was to make

a bottle, literally. But it began to be used in the theatre to mean to kind of slip up or fail in a performance. And no one quite knows why. Possibly, you know, we kind of think in English of bottling it, don't we? But that came a bit later from the rhyming slang bottle and glass arse because you fall on your arse. So this came before. So it's possible that it's referring to a glass maker's botched efforts to make a, you know, a glass bottle, but nobody quite knows. Shrouded in mystery mystery that one but flask and fiasco were actually etymological cousins so losing your bottle where does that that expression same thing it means that you sort of the the bottoms well you sort of if you fall on

your ass i suppose yeah bottle and glass ass so you lose your bottle somebody you say to somebody oh you lost your bottle meaning you've lost your nerve. Yes. It's because you ended up in your arse, because it's rhyming slang, bottle and glass arse. Are you sure? And also we had Aristotle as well. So Aristotle was used too for your arse, and that was all kind of part of the mix too.

Your Aristotle, your bottle and glass, yeah. Oh, how interesting. You've fallen on your Aristotle, meaning you've fallen on your backside. We're staying with that. Falling on your arse. So it's the same kind of idea, far fiasco. Well, I love a jug and I love a Toby jug. Now, what's interesting to me is I think that you drink from a Toby jug, but you pour something into a Toby jug from an ordinary jug. Is a Toby jug something you pour from or drink from? And why is it called a Toby jug? Now, this is a lovely one. Well, I'm going to kind of sort of

start backwards. I'm going to start with the mug because we all, well, most of us use mugs for our tea or our coffee or whatever. Now, have you any idea what the link might be between the mug that we drink from and either being mugged, unfortunately, you know, if you are stolen from and rather nastily on the streets, or having an ugly mug? No. Any idea? Well, I mean, mug to me means face. Yeah.

Is that the connection? It is the connection, because if you go back a couple of centuries, you will find mugs with kind of caricatures of faces on them. So Charles Dickens, I think, refers to these quite a lot as well. So these sort of mugs that represented this kind of grotesque human face became very popular, particularly, I think, in the 18th century. That gave us the origin of mug as a face. Then it gave rise to the idea of a mug as an insult for a stupid person because their face was kind of blank and unintelligent. And then mug became a term for somebody who's been duped, really,

by a card shop or a confidence trickster who's sort of been mugged or mugged off. And it's a mug's game. But they all go back to the face sense because to mug was originally a boxing term meaning to punch someone in the face so if you have been pickpocketed you have metaphorically been slapped in the face so they're all linked and and the mugs that we drink from as I say are all associated with that idea of the mug as a face. And I mentioned that because you were talking about Toby jugs and Toby jugs also were, they sort of carried a human form, didn't they? They were jugs in the form of a stout old man in a tricorn hat. And they were said to be based on a drinker, hard drinker from Yorkshire called Henry Elwes. And his nickname was toby philpot philpot obviously a play on fill your pot so we think

that is where it comes from but some think it was named after sir toby belch from 12th night i have to say the toby jug so just to add that in but i my bet is on that um stout old man in a tricorn hat very good the last thing is a toss pot and i know i've talked to you about this before when we talked about drinking in one of our past episodes but a toss pot was originally like toby philpott somebody who tossed their pot of beer back and enjoyed the contents a little bit too often to the result that that was the result that their behavior became uh both obstreperous and disorderly wherever you're going you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a

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

There are certain songs that I'm like, whoa, the melodies in this are really amazing. No idea what bro's saying at all, but I'm jacking these melodies. And you know, I hear Megan Thee Stallion is also a big anime fan. So Megan, do you want to trade AOT hot takes? We're here.

Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts AOT hot takes? We're here. Listen every Friday, wherever you get your podcast and watch full episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. We've had a most intriguing letter from Nick about a cat named Bo. This is from Nick Seymour, who says, Hi, Susie and Joss. named Beau as well, but with a similarly interesting origin. About two years ago, my friend Charles was walking home and heard the mewling of a distressed cat. After following the sound, they discovered the cat was inside the front of a parked car. With the help of a firefighter, they opened the car up and rescued the kitten inside. Charles has lived in the United States almost all of his life, but his family is from South Africa and England, so his accent and

vocabulary will slip into a less Americanised mode, particularly after he's been spending time with family. As such, he named his new kitten Bo, short for Bonnet, where they'd found him. I think it's so clever, since all his American friends know that part of the car as the hood, so they don't pick up on it from the story without the extra translation. They most often assume he's named after the comedian Robert Bo Burnham. Loving the podcast from Philadelphia, Susie, do you know the work of Robert Pickering Bo Burnham, the American comedian, musician, writer, actor, director?

I don't. His work often combines elements of musical sketch and stand-up comedy, apparently, with auteur filmmaking. He's only 32, and people are calling themselves Bo because of him. That's amazing. Oh, well, that's much more upmarket than my Bo, as you know, who is named after Bo Peep, or was, by Battersea Cats and Dogs Home.

So no such cultural associations for mine. But just to remind you about the bonnet and the hood um in british the bonnet is the the metal canopy obviously that covers the engine um it's all about covering really so the bonnet covers the head so likewise a hood covers the head it's as simple as that but there's distinction between british and american english there very good whenever i the people i know called beau it's usually an abbreviation for bozy as in bozy douglas the boyfriend of oscar wilde who was known as he was known as bozy because when he was a boy i think he pronounced uh he was known as sort of boise and that became

bozy anyway oh okay childhood names well we have we have one of my favourite emails also came in, I have to say, this week from James Patterson, who is a Tintin fan. Are you a Tintin fan, Giles? Hergé, I love Tintin. Le Capitaine Haddock, the Thompson twins. Absolutely. Oh, yes. Snowy. Snowy in English, Milou in French.

Yes, Milou, Milou. You'll enjoy this. So this is from James Patterson, who says, Dear Susie and Giles, while reading the Tintin comic Prisoners of the Sun, I came across several inventive insults hurled by Captain Haddock. Can you enlighten us to their origins and meanings? Okay, so the ones that he's come across here in Prisoners of the Sun, I have to say my favourite is blistering Barnacles, which he says a lot. This is an old sea dog.

What's his relationship with Tintin? I've forgotten. Oh, he's a kind of, they're allies. Captain Haddock is his friend. Yeah, he's a friend. He is absolutely a friend. Yes, okay. So these are the ones.

I'll just run through them very quickly and then I'll try and enlighten you, James, if I can. So there's Slubberdegullions, Bashybazooks, Pythacanthropic. Pythacanthropic. So it's Pythacanthropic Mountebanks. All of these with exclamations after them. Poltroons. That's another really good one. And finally, Doryphores as well. So I don't remember these ones from Tintin. I think I read them. I need to go back to them really. I love the Tintin

shop in London's Covent Garden. Just go in there, we'll get completely lost. I have a Tintin clock in my house. Anyway, I will try and enlighten you on these because these are all derived, bar one as far as I can see, from the Oxford English Dictionary, or at least you would say that Hergé knew his vocabulary. So slobber de gullions, I think it's been one of my trio before, it's a slobbering or dirty fellow, that's how a slobber de gullion is defined in the dictionary, from the 17th century, or a worthless sloven. And the first mention from 1612 is contaminous pestiferous slobber de gullions, which itself is worthy of Captain Haddock, I think. Then there is bashy bazooks. Now, I couldn't find this anywhere. And I think, but this is my guess, and James, you might have your own. It might be a riff on gadzooks or adzooks,

which in turn were sort of minced oaths, as we call them, or euphemisms for adzooks, God's hooks. And they refer to the nails on the cross. So these were verbal sidesteps from using the Lord's name in vain. That's all I can think of with bashy bazooks. Do you have any idea for that, Giles? What I want to say is this. You're mentioning Hergé because he is the creator of Hinton. Did he not write it? Well, no, he did write it in French. Yeah.

But I happen to know, when I began working in publishing in the early 1970s, I worked with a man called Michael Turner. And he and another person, a lady, whose name I'm trying to remember, they were the translators, I think, of Tintin. And I think that they will be, and he was into words and language in a very big way. I think these are the translators' works of genius. Of course. Inspired, absolutely, because they kept very accurately,

because they had to go with the pictures, to what was going on in the story. But I think these are brilliant British inventions. Or maybe I have a slight recollection that the lady involved may have been Australian. So I'm going to... I said they knew their dictionaries, of course, yes, not LJ himself, although, as you say in French,

they will be equally inventive. But Bashi Bazooksa eluded me a little bit. On to the Pythecanthropus. Now, he says Pythecanthropic mountebanks. And I've talked about mountebanks before. These were the charlatans who would sell their quack wares at markets up and down medieval Britain. And they would mount a bank or a bench in order to sell them and proclaim to the crowd. So they were charlatans and frauds essentially.

And Pythocanthropus was a hypothetical creature that was said to bridge the gap in evolutionary development between an ape and a man. So it's an ape man. So what Captain Haddock is saying, you're sort of, you know, you're only half human and you're stupid. And we all know that apes really aren't, but that was his insult of choice. A poltroon, that goes back to the Latin pulus, meaning a young chicken. So that's quite established in English. And finally, I didn't know this, dorifor. Did you know this one, Giles? No. Go on, Trish. No. So it comes from the French dorifour, meaning a Colorado beetle originally. But the English sense was introduced apparently by Sir Harold Nicholson,

who introduced it to mean a person who draws attention to the minor errors made by others. So really sort of annoyingly pedantic and quite pestering with it. And so in The Spectator from 1949, Harold Nicholson says, these Colorado Beatles will have spent hours searching for a misprint in the Oxford English Dictionary. Although these dory fours may achieve the short delight of proving that an author has made a mistake on page 479, they will never know the long, slow pleasure of writing a large book with continuous application. So it's a persistent critic. I do recommend the diaries of Sir Harold Nicholson. They are among the best 20th century English diaries. He was a politician as well as a writer, and I was lucky enough to know his son, Nigel Nicholson.

And if people are listening who can tell us all about the translations of the Tintin books, I would be grateful. We would be grateful because I don't think we've credited the right people. And I think it's quite a complicated story because, of course, Hergé, Georges Rémy, was born a long time ago, back in 1907. And he died. I remember he died in the 1980s. And he created 24 Tintin books as Hergé. And they were translated over many years by many different hands. And the person I mentioned, Michael Turner, he may not have been the first

translator. But I do remember that, because I read them first in French, Tintin was Tintin, Dupont and Dupont became Thompson and Thompson, Milou became Stoey, Captain Haddock wasn't changed, Bianca Castafiore was unchanged.

Can you remember what Professor Tournesol became? Sunflower? No, Professor Calculus. That's what it means. Oh, Calculus, of course. So they obviously did. I didn't think there was a sunflower in Tint means. Oh, Calculus, of course. So they obviously did. I didn't think there was a sunflower in Tintin.

Yes, Calculus, of course. So it's quite interesting. Let's explore more. And if you do know the answers, and in fact, if you are a descendant, because I don't think they'll be still with us, or maybe they are, if you are the translator of Tintin into English

and, of course, many other languages, please get in touch with us and tell us more about it. Yeah, hats off to you and incredible language skills. We're purple at somethingelse.com. We are. And it's time for my trio and Giles's poem. And by the way, if you're struggling with any of the spelling for my trio, because I realised that I could go quite quickly with these, they can be found in the programme description blurb of each episode, along with the title and the author of Giles's poems. That will give you more info there. Right, well, I'm going to start with something related to drinking vessels, Giles. I think it's been one of my trio, but from a long while ago, from one of the early

episodes, and that's a zarf. Do you remember what a zarf is? I do. It's what you put around a hot coffee cup. It's the piece of cardboard that goes around a hot coffee cup to keep it less hot. Is that right? Exactly. That's absolutely right. That's the modern incarnation, but actually it goes back to the incredibly ornamental, ornate, often golden cup-shaped holders that were used for hot coffee cups in Eastern countries. So some of them are really, really beautiful. But yes, that's what you rather pretentiously, if you like, can go in

to a local coffee shop and ask for. Could I have a zarf instead of a sleeve? So that's my first one. The second one, it might lead you astray, this one, but it's aprosexia. Aprosexia. And it is an inability to concentrate due to a distracted mind now the distracted mind has nothing to do with sex actually this goes back to a meaning without in greek and then prosexis meaning heedfulness so in other words you're not concentrating on what you're doing because your mind is elsewhere aprosexia quite useful one i think and finally i just love the sound of this and just the very act of doing it is something that we should all do more often fruits f-r-o-o-n-c-e fruits and it means to frolic

exuberantly we could all do with more fruiting don't you think very much so how intriguing well it's your poem for us well i thought i would do something a little bit different this week beautifully imagined poems this little volume volume came through the post. Beautifully imagined poems, said Sederic Jacobeth, or I'll read one of these. The book is called Lilac White by Martin Hesford. And I just dipped into it. And I'm going to read one of the poems too. You see, if it strikes you as unusual. It strikes me as quite unusual. It goes like this.

The glamour is coming. The Victorian ghosts are being hung back into their wardrobes. The new apparitions are rising. Do not be angry. Do not be afraid. It has been one way, your way, for a very long time. Share and share alike my genderless lipstick. Kiss me, honey, honey, kiss me. I forgive you. I love you. Will you love me ever? I am your eyes, shadow, your lilac, white, sparkle, star, flower.

Ooh, it's got a sting, that one, doesn't it? It is. I don't quite understand it. I think I see where it's coming from, and it's making us try to look at love and relationships in new ways. In different ways, yeah. But anyway, it's... It's always been your way. Also that Kiss Me, Honey, Honey, Kiss Me, right? There was that song in that film.

Anyway, Martin Hesford, he's a BAFTA-nominated writer. He wrote the screenplays for Fantabuloza, starring Michael Sheen. That was all about Kenneth Williams. And a wonderful film that I loved, Mrs Lowry and Son, which was about the artist Lowry, who were played by Timothy Spall, and Vanessa Redgrave played Mrs Lowry. I recommend, I really recommend that movie

if you can get to see it. And I think his poetry is rather intriguing. Yeah, very intriguing. Well, we hope you loved it too. And we're so happy that you are following us and listening in, whether or not you are members of the Purple Club or indeed the Purple Plus Club, where you can find us ad free and with a few sort of extra bits and pieces that we have a lot of fun recording. And we're on social media too. You can find us on at Something Rhymes on Twitter and

Facebook or at Something rhymes with on instagram something rhymes with purple is a something else and sony music entertainment production it was produced by harriet wells with additional production from chris skinner jen mystery jay beal and the man himself is he is he a captain haddock or is he a tinton do you think he certainly needs translation yeah indeed Haddock. Yeah, indeed. Absolutely. He's got the beard. Actually, he does have a little beard.

I always liked Captain Haddock, it must be said. Didn't you like him? Yeah, I did actually. Should we call Gully Haddock from now on? Yeah, he's our Captain Haddock.