Well I’ve lived all these years and still find words and objects to completely baffle me. The Telegraph’s “Codewords” feature irritated me last week by introducing me to the word PELF which the more educated of my readers will recognise as being a word used to describe ill-gotten wealth. The same newspaper angered me further with a Scrabble competition in which the word DZO was used (yes, it’s a cross between a cow and a yak).
A visit to the sister’s fine new house in East Sussex yesterday was notable not only for a very pleasant family lunch, but also for the handsome pair of pewter candlesticks on the table each inscribed “SS COSMA ET DAMIANUS 1687”. I struggled with thoughts of ships (the candlesticks were broad-of-base so the SS Cosma might have ploughed the oceans but unlikely as “SS” as in steamships were not around in the late seventeenth century). It was only when I got home that I learned of the Brother Saints Cosma and Damianus, both physicians of Arab origin who were martyred towards the end of the third century. A church was built in their honour in Rome by Pope Felix and a rather odd miracle took place on the premises when a nightwatchmen with a cancerous leg woke up to find that the poisoned limb had been replaced overnight with that of a recently demised Ethiopian. Cosma and Damianus were brethren germane, meaning brothers by the same mother and father, which differentiates them from other “brother saints” who were brothers in monkhood rather than by parentage. As well as being physicians they healed and cured beasts and practiced leechcraft. Anyway I woffle too much.
The sister and the new brother-in-law boast a fine collection of barbecue equipment on their patio. Amongst the gleaming equipment stood one of those terracotta stove things that hitherto I had only spotted in garden centres. They are called chemineas and might derive from North Africa or Spain. I always thought that they were an alternative form of barbecue – perfect for roasted monkfish or boney bits of chicken. Wrong again! Chemineas (as everyone apart from me knows) are wood-burning patio heaters - a good alternative to the gas-fired contraptions which radiate heat from above.
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