Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Over the weekend I read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which I was expecting someone to buy me for Christmas, but in the end, I had to borrow from a colleague. Like Lynne Truss, I'm a bit of a grammar stickler. I proof-read, argue with colleagues about whether or not split infinitives are the spawn of the devil (they're not), and drive smiorgan mad by pointing out misplaced apostrophes all over the place. So, of course, I thoroughly enjoyed ES&L. At times I was mentally shouting 'Yes! I hate people who do that! It's Just Plain Wrong' (TM venta), and at other times 'Are you mad, woman? No one in their right mind thinks that!', which was all good fun. However, I'm rather puzzled that many of the reviews I've seen seem to miss the points that, (a) punctuation is subject to change, and (b) lots of it is a matter of personal style, both of which Truss freely admits. No, it's not a groundbreaking work of modern grammar, nor is it particularly evil and elitist. It's reasonably light-hearted ranting, and if the subject is one you also happen to enjoy ranting about, it's great fun (regardless of whether you agree with her).

On a rather more productive note, she mentioned a Nicholson Baker book I hadn't heard of, so I need to go and look that up.

Dressmaking

I spent Sunday with M, making a toile of the bodice of my wedding dress (out of knirirr's cast-off brown wool-linen ;-). Halfway through the proceedings, M admitted he'd never made a boned garment before, and tried to persuade me to have a simple Regency dress (or, better, a sack) instead; the boning had a life of its own, and kept twisting away while M was trying to force it through the machine; and Jak the spaniel trying to help rather complicated things, but it all seemed to work OK, and I now have an approximate version that I have to wear around the house to test out the fit. In the meantime, we ate M's partner's fabulous cauliflower and smoked cheddar soup and homemade apple pie, and listened to the soundtrack of Once More With Feeling over and over again, while entertaining ourselves discussing various Buffy and Angel plot points, and planning a Buffy marathon to reward ourselves for all the hard sewing.

Coincidentally, blondeccgirl and her dressmaker (her Gran) also made up a sample (bridesmaid) bodice this weekend, and although it sounds like their experience was more straightforward than ours, I'm sure we had more fun ;-)