Wednesday, April 11, 2007

In response to a comment

David's heated commentary on Mister Reguly's final discharge (see comment on the earlier post) ends thus:

"As for Eric, I am sure he will enjoy the macho business culture, the prattle-free trading and the efficient infrastructure of Rome. All of the people I know who have re-located to that city have returned with their minds rather wibbled."

His comment brings me to, without tooting my own horn too loudly, the exquisite etymology of the last word - the "wibble".

Everyone has their specialties. Sherlock Holmes did a monograph on the various types of cigar ash. For those of you that never chanced on my own illustrious commentary on those creatures, great and small, of quasi-scientific transformation, known those of us in the industry as "the wibbles", I present to you the first few lines of the introduction to that very publication :-

It's all about the wibble.

The human brain has done well for itself through most of our lives- it has actually done very well through most of humanity. But it quivers and trembles when it sights far in the distance, a black stallion, wearing a mane of fire, approaching, breathing out foul odour from its molar cavities, carrying on its bouncing back, the round rotund, scally, unwholesome, wibble.

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