Why I like shagging

It's just such a good word for it. In my opinion. But not in everyone else's...

"Think of the transitive verbs for sex ... screw, hump, ball, dick, bonk, bang, shag, pork, shtup," says Steven Pinker in his new book. "They're not very nice, are they?"

Well, much as I love Steven, I have to disagree. I think some of them are much nicer than others, to the point of being -- well, pretty nice, actually. The f-word (first in his list, but edited out to make this more respectable) is a horrible word for the act. It's more useful as a swear word than anything else. (I am trying to give it up or at least cut down, since A said he thought it might be Sasha's first word. Oh dear.) But 'bonk' -- well, that's sweet, isn't it? And slightly crazy: associations with 'bonkers'. And I like the onomatopeia (gosh, that's hard to spell -- I'm not going to double-check, it's 1am here). 'Shag' is definitely my favourite, though, and A's. But a friend recently objected to my use of the term here, and as she's reserved but definitely not prudish I was startled, and gave it some thought.

First of all, to me, it sounds much less like something that somebody does to someone else than words like 'poke'. (I Speak As One who, as a feminist undergraduate, used the term 'make love with' to avoid such connotations.) Secondly, it's self-deprecating. It implies fun and slight naffness. I think the associations are with 'shaggy' (and therefore Scooby-Doo, if you're the right age) and 'shag pile'.

Because of this implicit humour, it makes the act sound fun, which is to be commended. 'Bonk' sounds fun too, but I suppose it has a suggestion of force, which we don't want. Not very much, though. Perhaps it also sounds just a bit too silly, whereas 'shag' has the hint of smut that's needed. 'Shag' also somehow connotes relaxation, casualness. You can say 'Fancy a shag?' in a very unthreatening way, and none of the others quite works like that.

Actually, looking at the list again, is 'dick' really a euphemism for sex? I thought it meant willy. Interesting how many words for sex and the make organ end in '-ck'. And 'shtup' ( why shtup when it's schmaltz not shmaltz and so on -- or isn't it Yiddish?) is too hard to say.... Imagine trying to ask "Fancy a schtup?" when drunk, as you almost invariably would be.

My favourite Steven Pinker joke: A linguist is giving a lecture. The linguist says, "Although there are many examples of the double negative in many languages, there are no examples in any language of a double positive." A rival linguist at the back of the hall says "Yeah, yeah."

Oh-oh

Or however you spell it -- I know how you say it. Spellings for some of those vocalisations are very weird: I was quite old before I connected 'tut tut' and the tongue-clicking sound, or 'ahem' with throat-clearing. Presumably, the way these end up written is by some kind of implicit consensus.

(Anyway: oh-oh. Sasha has discovered the compost bin as a handy source of tasty, partially decomposed snacks. I turn away for thirty seconds and the child will be sitting in a heap of yesterday's cold pilau rice, ancient banana skins, and week-old peelings, tucking in with gusto. I prised a tiny hand off a cold tea-bag as it approached the ever-gaping maw. Bleargh. How d'you spell that?)

To patronise or not to patronise

I was just wondering... My comment about the 'O' level was essentially saying 'Look, I'm only quoting this because I happen to know it, not because I'm frightfully intellectual'. Is this terribly patronising? I'm never quite sure whether it's worse to assume that people do know things, or assume that they don't. People on the Dorothy L Sayers mailing list sometimes get very worked up about DLS putting chunks of French into the novels untranslated, and even having a short story that hinges on one knowing one's genders -- and of course you miss one whole vital denouement if you don't know Latin. Is this patronising? If it's assuming greater knowledge than readers actually possess, then presumably it's the opposite.

I've been re-reading the sequence Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, Busman's Honeymoon, which ends the Lord Peter Wimsey saga with the Wimsey-Vane relationship. It's rather beautifully done, and the last of these is particularly satisfying in taking things on much further than one ever hopes for. I did wonder whether Gaudy Night doesn't flag a little in the first two thirds in which Wimsey hardly appears, but in fact I think on reflection it jogs along nicely but then accelerates when he turns up: the romance and the mystery gather pace in tandem. The whole love story is immensely satisfying. It does seem to me that DLs must be unleashing her own fantasies, but she controls them beautifully.

Most of my copies are a 1970s edition by the New English Library, with just a few typos, but rather jolly cover illustrations (except one that I think if you studied it closely would actually give away the plot), but I have two books in a new reprint, also NEL (except, now, of course, it's in lower case (welcome to the noughties)) which is apparently Hodder & Stoughton. They've been reset incredibly badly, with laughable typos that an infant could spot (double commas; words that even Microsoft's spellchecker would know were wrong) and some real idiocies (a Latin telegram that someone has obviously thought was meant to be in English). They've also got a truly ghastly introduction by someone called Elizabeth George, who obviously thinks she's the bees' knees and is prepared to patronise DLS in order to prove it.

Ooh, I've come around in an elegant circle. That doesn't often happen. In fact, I loathe the way it's almost ubiquitous now as a journalistic technique. It's rare to read an article, or at least a light-hearted one, that doesn't feebly hark back to its opening paragraph. I can see why it's a useful technique, but not every time. Please.