Median

 August 16 Word of the Day: Median

 

Clarinda is one of Melbourne’s top three “most tightly held suburbs”, according to a newspaper article entitled ‘The suburbs people never leave.’ Actually, the article reports residents saying approvingly it’s only a short drive to Oakleigh, so they do leave now and then, just not permanently. Oakleigh helped me grasp the location of Clarinda, a suburb I didn’t know and have never visited but seems to be on the other side of Warrigal Road, where we went to the drive-in in the old days. I am probably not alone in my ignorance of Clarinda, which is why people like living there, in another of those “best kept secrets of Melbourne.” The other two in the top three are Kilsyth South and Belgrave South, places where “home owners hold on to their properties for a median 26.9 years before they sell.“ Constant mobility is hardly a virtue of living. Wanting to escape denotes psychological anxiety. I wonder why the headline isn’t ‘The suburbs where people prefer to stay’, but such a statistic may be beyond the scientific interest of real estate. Anyway, as a watcher on a cast-iron balcony I enjoy browsing down this list, even if the same list in another paper may contain several different names. It comes as no surprise that two suburbs adjacent to my own obscure valley are in the top 20: Yallambie and Viewbank. Viewbank is Heidelberg by another name, one reason for its secure anonymity being that the main feature going through Viewbank is not a road but the Yarra River. Only two others feature in the inner east, Mont Albert and Murrumbeena, making me ask if a more meaningful list would be ‘The suburbs people most wish to leave’, though real estate is doubtless keeping tabs on them too. That Williamstown North is one of only two listed in the west is another story. Inner Melbourne is represented by old money Parkville, but also Carlton, the very mention of Carlton indicating that this early suburb has moved past its postwar déclassé legend into an entrenched gentrified respectability. I nod sagely at the naming of some of the islands of calm: St. Helena, Tecoma, Warranwood, Seaholme. Others require the Clarinda search test, Attwood and Wandong belonging I can report, like Ferny Creek and Croydon Hills, in the bracket Outskirts. Shoreham catches the eye as a questionable outlier, but the figures are thrown into complete chaos by Cape Schanck, which is not a suburb or a town or even much of a cape; Wikipedia plays safe by calling it a locality. Perhaps the whole article is a subliminal advertisement for Cape Schanck, with the intention of turning it into a suburb, but I must accept the word of the newspaper that it is somewhere people never leave.        

Lauf

 August 15 Word of the Day: Lauf

 

Is Scrabble a word game, a vocabulary memory test, or more a form of mathematical improvisation involving letters and numbers? You have to lauf. Formidable 13-year-old Dineth Fernando used this word on his way to winning the World Youth Scrabble Championship in Nairobi. Lauf he did, four letters meaning a run in bobsleighing, itself a fact known to a small percent of the English-speaking world. German, probably Swiss-German, its use here obscure even then. Dineth is unlikely to have competed in bobsleighs but he does practise 200 words per day from the official Scrabble dictionary. This reading habit is intensive training of a special order, eliminating the common assumption that players live on an intake of encyclopedias and novelese, another word Dineth put in place on his winning way. Authors of novelese, defined as writing characteristic of poor novels, bland and formulaic, might envy his word power while questioning how many of these words would ever make it into their own, or any, fiction. Latter day Joyces could well concur. Sri Lankan now living in Melbourne since February, Dineth has competed against many Australians. One player, Carol Johnsen, says Dineth is “an astounding player. The tiles just flowed for him. He got the X and the Z and the Q and they all went in the right places.” Which goes someway to answering our question. He uses his double and triple vocabulary to match double and triple word scores in a highly scientific manner, lending new meaning to the word computerate. Minceur, a French word for thinness that has entered English as low-calorie cuisine, was another of his winners. But the skill goes past knowledge of the word to where the power letters can capitalise, or grow fat if you will, by strategic placement on power squares. Only particular kinds of histrio (an archaic word meaning actor) will have that blend of aptitudes and talents, memory and attention, added to which they must keep in training. It is not enough to rely on postering, that is all the main words that send the message. Postering is another word the Scrabble histrio Dineth used in his win in Nairobi But he won by possessing words, any word but in fact the right word, to suit the occasion in play provided by the unique crossword puzzle combination confronting him in real time. It is as though all available words are equal on a level-playing field, their use being not communication or feeling or the necessities of words in the moment, but purely their perfect suitability during a game played on an enormous rebus. Dineth, his friends and colleagues, engage in a high-level language game that, long ago, broke the boundaries of an enjoyable pastime where family and friends test their English vocabulary. They are racing down their own chosen lauf.

 

Weakly

 August 14 Word of the Day: Weakly

 

Test cassettes for viruses get more sophisticated. Ailing this week, I returned to memories of lockdown tests: the swirl of the swab, sting in the nostril, goo in the extraction funnel, dropper on the test plate. “The RSV, Adv, Flu A/B & Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Combo Test is a lateral flow immunoassay based on the principle of the double antibody sandwich technique,” read the tissue-thin instructions, convincingly, extracted from the self-testing box purchased at the pharmacy. Expecting, even as I expectorated into a man’s large handkerchief, that Flu-A would register in the control panel bright red, instead a feint pink line appeared against Sars-Cov-2. This meant Positive, according to the tissue-thin pamphlet (See ‘Pamphlet’ this month, August 8 opening “Beloved of all…” for reverent description of such vital ephemera), but only what is termed Weakly Positive. I would see Red with completely Positive. This ‘Weakly’ position was signified by the pale pink band, scarcely visible, in the panel. I employed a magnifying glass to confirm this interpretation. The unusual flu symptoms of the past few days -sniffles, aches, pains universal, pulsing neck veins – suddenly made sense. They were covid symptoms, ‘Weakly’ because this year I had already had a covid shot, leaving me to think how badly I’d be suffering if I had not. ‘Weakly’, not weekly, as ‘weekly positive covid’ is, by definition as we and the world knows, impossible, the contracting of the virus making one immune for some months from further infection. So here I sit in my ‘weakly’ state which, according to current iso instructions from government and health, lasts no more than seven days. One may walk the streets but a mask is advisable near people. Stay at home and rest up. Having passed seventy, seven days is a reasonable quantity of measure, a foreseeable effort with a completion. I can practise being weakly positive. Not negative, which is not helpful, can hinder and distract, even be harmful and self-consuming. Nor completely positive, which is exhausting and a little unreal and possibly leads to quixotic or over-enthusiastic misjudgements. The panel is in, and it says be weakly positive. Potter around the place. Choose the best arrangement or the best view or best angle. Sleep at every hour when sleep suggests itself as an option. Reading matter may be negative, positive, anywhere on the spectrum, pamphlets, as long as it is read in a weakly positive manner. Pillows puffed up in bed in a warm room facilitates this style of reading. As day follows night, the longer I stay weakly positive the sooner I will recover from the reading listed Weakly Positive. No more aches and pains.