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Who knew an egg box could occupy children just as much as its modern day nemesis the Xbox this half term! Thanks to Storyhouse's children's literature festival - affectionately known as WayWord - this week has been like one great big imagination, get-off-your-screens, holiday reading, recycling, culture for kids campaign...all wrapped up with a whole lot of sellotape! Kaleidoscopes. Lighthouses. Secret spy cameras. An impromptu giraffe and a whole herd of rhinestone-studded elephants. Allow me to explain. I am one of the cut-and-stickers doing free arts and crafts mornings in libraries across Chester as part of the festival. The library stereotype of hushed whispers and sitting still has been rocked and rattled with the invasion of the Junk-Modelling Box. At work, at home - everyone's been busy collecting. My family's fervent fetish for dairy has been exposed, as we amassed a multitude of milk bottles and enough yoghurt pots to create the leaning tower of Müller Light over the past couple of weeks. But the Chester Family's calcium intake has its uses: not only do we now have healthy, happy bones, the children of Blacon also have some pretty, darn wonderful yoghurt pot shakers! (Admittedly, a side effect of which is that the library carpet now has a sprinkling of escaped and stray lentils.) Recently, people have presented me with the greatest gifts I could've asked for: bin bags of juice boxes and bottles, tubes and tubs. Little did they know, that in doing so, they gave me the building blocks for MI5 toolkits, the inhabitants of the African Savanna, complex feats of engineering and musical instruments which would turn heads in a symphony hall! The characters, themes and imagination of the books surrounding our, ahem, rather chaotic, nay 'abstractly creative' craft table seeped out of their pages and crept into the Junk-Modelling Box too. Kings and queens, detectives and spies walked out of the library this week, their newly borrowed books in tow. X-boxes may be the ones that make the shop windows, but this half term has shown me that children haven't lost their love of egg boxes just yet. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Tinder makes Jane Austen cry, right? Valentine's Day: a shallow farce, a profound expression of love, a commercial ploy or a day of Disney-come-true. Think of it what you will. Some wallow in their singleness, others don't even give it a second thought, whilst the owners of Clintons, rose farmers and florists everywhere spend the day rejoicing! Like it or lump it, the season is upon us and love is in the air...or at least oversized teddy bears and chocolates are in the aisles.
When it comes to Valentine's Day, however, I have two questions. Number one - for people who are colourblind, does it appear that card shops up and down the country are plugging some Green Party campaign? And number two - what would Jane Austen make of all this modern-day romance? Online dating, 1813 Name: Liz Bennett Seeking: I am perfectly alright on my own thank you very much...but if someone was to come along, tall dark and handsome would be preferential. Likes: Walking through fields in long and very impractical dresses. Dislikes: Pride, prejudice and over-talkative vicars. Name: Will Darcy Seeking: A wife, I suppose. Likes: Pride, prejudice...that's about it really. Dislikes: Dancing, irritating in-laws and almost everything else. Romance and the art of courtship really have changed. Surely Tinder would just make Austen cry! Such a grating contrast is posed. Regency balls or swiping on screens. Emoji filled messages pinging through on your phone, or long, eloquent letters hand-delivered by a trembling, love-struck, sweaty palm. The location of a first meeting being some ornate stately home, or ending in .co.uk. However, let's be fair. It must be said that (though the literature lover and hopeless romantic within me begs to differ) change is not always a bad thing. Who knows, one day we may look back and think of match.com as vintage, classic and twee! For now, however, let's celebrate the fact that there is love in the world, romance in the atmosphere and a whole load of shelves full of chocolate that will be half-price in the morning! Society today, hey. Advertising, the media, airbrushing and diets. Maybe all our gripes and grimes boil down to this: we live in a world of superlatives and modal verbs. This is perhaps the most grammar-geekish thing I’ve ever written (let’s just not mention the apostrophe song, okay?) and if you are averse to a spot of language nerdiness you should probably look away now. But if you’re up for it, I’d love you to hear me out. Firstly, we need to hit the dictionary. I’m sorry to say that ‘superlatives’ are not heroes who fly around in too-tight-lycra, with a tendency to be late. Likewise, modal verbs aren’t the trendy cover girls of the thesaurus, who always know how to accessorise themselves with punctuation marks. (Semi colons are in, whilst commas and speech marks are sooo last chapter, or so I’ve heard!) No, now let’s get some things straight... Modal Verbs: Can, could, shall, should, may, might, must. They are small, unassuming words, but are crafty and persuasive little things if you ask me! They basically indicate a degree of possibility. Superlatives: These are adjectives, which describe something to be of the highest degree. The most, the least, the worst, the best. You get the gist. For example, Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. Little, less, least. Mean, meaner, meanest. (See – even cheesy chick flicks are hinged upon grammar!) Superlatives are the dangling carrots of the dictionary; they are the extremes that we strive for. They’re the Monica Gellers of language, fuelled by competitiveness to be the best. Now, when modal verbs and superlatives team up, the effect on the individual can be devastating. Particularly in the recent, less-than-feel-good-month of January. I don’t know about you, but I have found those niggly thoughts of comparing myself with others creeping in more and more. Comparisons with peers, pop-stars, pictures on posters, posts on Facebook, even to my old 2016 self! It’s unhelpful, unhealthy, but I’m going to be bold and assume that we all do it. At least to some extent, right? It’s in these self-doubts that our sneaky, grammatical tag-team pounces, slipping into our thoughts. ‘I could be doing so much more. I must try harder. She is the coolest. He is the smartest. I wish I was the most beautiful, the funniest, the kindest, the best.’ Apathy hits with may and might, as we fail to fulfil our possibilities. ‘I may do this today.’ But the evening draws in and our to-do lists remain unchecked. Failure rubs in our faces the fact that the satisfaction of striking a line through our tasks now belongs to tomorrow...or the next day. Which brings us round to the word that’s perhaps the worst of the lot: should. I should be able to do this. I should be able to cope. Everyone else can. And look where we are – back at comparing ourselves and striving for superlatives. This social media society, our habits of scrolling through Instagram and Facebook, the competitive – and, in my opinion, mistaken – way we wire our brains with regards to success. They all overuse the word should. They turn it into a feeling. The truth is we shouldn’t necessarily be able to do this. Not everyone else can cope either. Even the celebrities, the peers, the posters, the papers, the smiling Facebook pictures. They struggle, they feel inadequate and their to-do lists remain unchecked as well. Superlatives and modal verbs are indiscriminative in their work. You look at people and think ‘I should do what they’re doing. I could be more like them.’ And chances are, they are looking back at you and thinking the same thing. |
AuthorMegan Kate Chester Archives
June 2017
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