Lost In a Book

I was, as usual, reading on the train to work this morning.  (This book if you're interested.) I was dragged rudely back to reality by an unpleasantly cold draft drifting across my legs.  Looking up to find out where it came from, I was surprised to discover that the train was at Waterloo and everyone else had already got off.  Good job it's winter or I might have ended up going back the way I came.

Mnemonic Fail

Like many people I sometimes forget people's names.  Particularly if they are names I've never heard before or I've never seen them written down.  There are a couple of people at my fencing club who's names I just kept forgetting, week after week.  After the third or fourth time it becomes a little embarrassing to ask them what their name is yet again.  So, I decided to use a mnemonic technique where I tried to remember their name by associating it with something unusual that was quite like the sound.  Unfortunately, there are now two people at my fencing club who I know for a fact are not called Arachnid and Camel. 

It is of course entirely possible that my lack of success with this technique was caused by me remembering it wrong.  Oh the irony.

I Am The Law

The End Of The Word Is Nigh

But interestingly only if the word is "anigh" which is so archaic as to be almost not a word anymore.  I suppose you could say the end of "nigh" is also "nigh" but that's cheating as far as I'm concerned since it's also the start and the middle and saying "The End of the Word and also the start and middle of the Word is Nigh, because the Word is in fact Nigh" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

In case you're wondering, I saw a typo on a website, it should have been World of course, but it did set me thinking - off the top of my head I couldn't think of any words ending in nigh at all.  Even a bit of light Googling only turned up one, although it is used in Lord of the Rings apparently so technically it is still in use, even if I have no recollection of it at all.

Carry on.