What I've been thinking about:
- Doors.
The other day, Ivie happened to mention that he'd been working next door. Past experience told me not to assume I knew what he meant by this. I ran through the possibilities in my head:
- The farmhouse less than a minutes' walk from our front door.
- The house a few minutes' walk along the cycle track in the other direction.
- The 'next door' farm on the way into the village.
It was none of these places. It was, in fact, the farm on the opposite side of the A75. Obviously.
It's not the only confusing door in my life. The one that we use 99.99% of the time is our back door and the one that is the background to my online meetings is the front door. My brain has found this hard to grasp and regularly mixes them up.
It made me think of other instances where what we say isn't quite what we mean. There's the definition of 'not long', for example (see this blog) or 'no dogs on the sofa'.
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| Not spoiled at all.... |
At least I seem to understand more of the farmery conversations that take place around me than I did at the beginning. It was all a bit like being abroad and picking out the odd word of schoolday French in amongst incoherent babbling. I'd concentrate really hard but lose the will to listen when it got to sheep prices at the local mart or decisions around spread rates.
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| La vache |
Nowadays, I recognise a lot more names and places I didn't know before and I usually understand what Ivie has been up to when I ask him at lunchtime how the morning has gone. I'm still not massively interested in spread rates, to be fair, but I like to think of myself as a work in progress.
It made me wonder whether Ivie had learned anything from me since we got together. "I know more about equality and stationery," he replied. Two very important topics, I'm sure you'd agree.
I might not know where next door is or whether my back door is my front door but it's good to know there's still things to learn about the world and each other six years down the line.
