"Do you know what..." it drives me bonkers!

"Do you know what..." 

It seems to be the phrase of the year. Having replaced the ubiquitous "you know" which, for years past, fell from the lips of interviewers and interviewees alike on both radio and television, the new buzz phrase that I hear everywhere is, "Do you know what..." before the person speaking says what they want to say.

"Why?" I wonder, do people feel the need to prefix everything with such a buzz phrase... is it a verbal clearing of the throat?  Is it a nerve-suppressing prefix to speech? Is it just trendy and hip and what all the beautiful people are saying now?

Whatever the reason for this mindless phrase, it is driving me to distraction. I first heard it on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing spin-off It Takes Two, where every comment seems to be prefixed by this inanity. Today I heard it on <gasp of horror> BBC Radio 4, that bastion of intellectualism and sensibility!

I suppose I should rejoice in the demise of "you know", which was amazingly irritating, but I regret that it has been replaced by another, equally irritating buzz phrase. Can people not just speak, without presaging their oratory with unnecessary twaddle?!

Sharing the muck!

A recent comment on Facebook about muck-spreading, from my friend Sue Millard at Jackdaw E Books, reminded me of something which happened when I was a teenager and was dating a local farmer's son.

My mum was a passionate gardener and she and my boyfriend got on like the proverbial house on fire - she made fab apple pies, which he loved!  Anyhow I digress!  One day he'd arrived in his car (a VW Beetle) to collect me, as we'd arranged to go to a steam fair at Levens Hall, so off we went. It was a *very* hot August Bank Holiday afternoon, and we parked the car in the middle of the field allocated for parking, and went off to enjoy the event. When we came back 3 hours later it was to find the Beetle sat alone in a huge open space in the middle of the field - with a definite haze around it. As we approached we detected the smell... which got stronger the nearer we were to the car... looking puzzled I wondered what it was, and the boyfriend - looking very sheepish - confessed he'd brought two large sacks of farmyard manure for mum's garden, but instead of dropping them off for her before we went out, he'd left them in the boot of the Beetle - which, as you most probably know, is at the front of those cars - so we travelled home with an incredible smell of well-cooked manure wafting back over us!

Why a blog?

Well why? Or perhaps, why not?  I like writing, and a blog seems like a good way to let me ramble on about the literary, arty and crafty aspects of my life. I decided to include all my interests in the one blog, as I'm not organised enough to do one for each interest! So, I hope you'll join me as I chat about my books, plays, painting, crochet, knitting, and a myriad of other craft-related stuff. :)