Blogger’s Note 1: The first half of today’s offering is arcane. If it isn’t your kind of arcane, you might want to know, before you give up on me, that the second half of today’s offering updates you on the kids in Portugal. Look for a paragraph beginning “If your memory…” If neither arcane nor Portugal interests you, perhaps you need to find another blog.

Blogger’s Note 2: There is a where that we’re heading for today, but it’s some distance away, and it’s a lovely day out here in the foothills of my mind, so I intend to take my time and follow a couple of interesting side paths. If you’ve nothing better to do, you’re more than welcome to come along for the walk. Stout shoes not required: this is a gentle ramble.

From 1923 until 1973, if you had happened to drop by the British Library (then known as the British Museum Library) and walked up to Desk K1, the odds are that most days you would have found Eric Honeywood Partridge there, surrounded by and absorbed in etymological and other reference works. Born in New Zealand, schooled in Australia and then wounded in action in the First World War, Partridge returned home to complete his BA in classics, French and English. He then became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked on an MA on romantic poetry and a B Litt in comparative literature. He then taught briefly in a grammar (high) school before lecturing in Manchester and London universities. He married, founded a small press and wrote fiction.

In the four years before his press closed, he managed to publish some 60 books, one of which was his own Song and Slang of the British Soldier 1914-1918. This book marked his first venture into an arcane field of language study that, it is no exaggeration to say, he made his own. To illustrate his range within and, sometimes, beyond, this field, here is his bibliography:

RIGINS: An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English
A DICTIONARY OF THE UNDERWORLD
A DICTIONARY OF SLANG AND UNCONVENTIONAL ENGLISH
A DICTIONARY OF HISTORICAL SLANG
A SMALLER SLANG DICTIONARY
SLANG TODAY AND YESTERDAY
SHAKESPEARE’S BAWDY An Essay and a Glossary
A DICTIONARY OF CLICHÉS
A DICTIONARY OF CATCH PHRASES: British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day
COMIC ALPHABETS: A Light-hearted History
SWIFT’S POLITE CONVERSATION: A Commentary Edition
CHAMBER OF HORRORS: Officialese, British and American
USAGE AND ABUSAGE: A Guide to Good English
NAME THIS CHILD: A Dictionary of Christian or Given Names
Francis Grose’s A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE, a commentary edn
NAME INTO WORD dictionary of proper names become common property
ENGLISH: A COURSE FOR HUMAN BEINGS
THE LONG TRAIL, being songs and slang of the British soldier in WW1
(with Will Granville and Frank Roberts) A DICTIONARY OF FORCES SLANG, of all three services in WW2
A TESTAMENT WORD-BOOK
LEXICOGRAPHY: A PERSONAL MEMOIR
Seven volumes of essays on language (general) and words (particular)

Also some books literary rather than linguistic, e.g.:
GLIMPSES (short stories)
JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF MORNING (autobiographical essays)
THE FRENCH ROMANTICS KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETRY

I was going to say that he carved out a niche for himself, but, to be honest, from my forays into his world, I can vouch that it is more a network of rabbit warrens than a niche.

Partridge’s Dictionary of Historical Slang is, without a doubt, the filthiest book I know. I would estimate that some 60% of the entries, from a-cockbill on page 1 to zig-zig on page 1053, are not to be repeated in polite company.

The other of his works that I could not imagine living without is A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, to which I turn to quote in full the following entry that explains in part, for the benefit of those of you who are not simultaneously my contemporaries and my landesmen, the title of this week’s poat:

I’m worried about Jim. In the Daily Telegraph, 23 Feb. 1977, Gillian Reynolds (‘Radio Review’) writes, ‘It says a lot for the potency of radio that comedians can still raise the occasional laugh with a harp glissando and the words, “I’m worried about Jim…”, the catchphrase which came to represent “Mrs Dale’s Diary” in much the same way as “Play it again, Sam” [q.v.] did the film “Casablanca”.” VIBS amplifies: ‘Ellis Powell as the eponymous heroine of radio’s Mrs Dale’s Diary (referring to her doctor husband). Although she may not have uttered the phrase very often, it was essential in parodies of the programme’. This very British, middle-class soap opera was first broadcast in Jan. 1948-and ran for 21 years.

I invite you to admire that paragraph. Packed with information delivered with efficient, but never terse, brevity, it includes an apposite citation, a cultural reference that will capture this catchphrase’s place in British popular culture very accurately for a much wider audience, a telling detail to trigger a delightful sound-memory for any reader already familiar with the phrase. Is it any wonder that, when I ask myself these days what professional path I would like to take if I could have my life over, being Eric Partridge comes pretty close to the top? Of course, I would need to have been born with a much sharper memory and a keener intellect than I have, and – perhaps most significantly – a work ethic that could see me occupying Desk K1 in the British Library almost every day for 30 years.

So, moving swiftly on. Many thanks and appreciation to those of you who inquired after my health after last week’s post. Let me say that I have no intention of turning this blog into Mrs Dale’s Diary. I’m currently in the middle of tests which will doubtless, in the fullness of time, allow my doctor to come to a conclusion. Meanwhile, my infection is responding nicely to the antibiotic.

But what, I hear those of you have not got some anonymous AI bot who sounds nothing like me reading this post out loud to you, of the ‘Gym’ in the title of this week’s post. Not ‘Jim’, but ‘Gym’. I thought you’d never ask.

If your memory bears a closer resemblance to Partridge’s than to mine, you may remember that Micha’el and Tslil are currently preparing to embark on a new and exciting business venture – launching a bodyweight gym in Penamacor. Launch date is now only a month away and things are starting to come to a head. I thought I would bring you up to speed on what, exactly, I mean by ‘things’.

Among the occupations with which our auto-didact son has been filling his evenings this last couple of years is teaching himself Python, a programming language. (Here I find myself attempting to tread the painfully thin path between those of you who imbibed Python with your mother’s milk, and those whom I lost at ‘teaching himself…’. I know that I shall, from here on, be simultaneously patronising and befuddling. I apologise. I am, myself, very unsure of my footing here, but we’ll see whether I can avoid falling flat on my face too embarrassingly.)

As well as developing his programming skills, Micha’el has been immersing himself in online courses in marketing, and small business management generally. Bernice and I arrived in Portugal at quite an exciting moment. Having downloaded the freeware part of a CRM (customer relationship management) software product, Micha’el had been coding all the bits he and Tslil lacked the resources and the inclination to pay for. Our presence gave Micha’el the time to troubleshoot this coding and integration, and, by the time we left, he had a fully integrated CRM program that, two days later, actually worked in real time.

Simultaneously, Tslil and he have been working on promotional materials for a marketing campaign. By the time we left Penamacor, they had temporarily set up their temporary gym premises and held a successful photo and video shoot and their website was up and running with bilingual English and Portuguese text. I reviewed the English text, but Micha’el’s briefing of the AI that wrote it was so fine-tuned that I hardly had any suggested amendments to make. As I remarked to Micha’el: if I were still working, I reckon I would be out of a job.

In addition, their flyers and tee shirts were printed. They managed, while we stayed home with the boys, to pound the streets for a couple of evenings and weekend afternoons, gathering feedback to their market research questionnaire and getting the word out on the street.

A couple of days after our return, Micha’el was able to report that they already had a client very interested in private lessons, and a prospect who, in response to their online campaign, had proposed an appointment. The CRM program had fired back to her all of the appropriate SMS and email messages, captured her data and uploaded it to the database, and pinged Micha’el about the appointment.

As if that were not enough, the online interest had, within a couple of days, stimulated several hundred hits on the website. You can imagine how welcome this news is for Tslil and Micha’el, whose very significant commitment to their plan seems to be starting to pay off. Of course, a visit is not a firm prospect, and a prospect is not a customer, but the word-of-mouth feedback they have received on the street has been very encouraging. Undoubtedly, they are partly helped by the fact that this kind of 21^st-century marketing is not something often seen running through the optic fibre of Penamacor.

This is where you come in. If you could pass on this link to the website to all of your friends and family who live in the Penamacor….Ah, yes, I see what you mean. Well, then, if you follow the link yourself, you’ll at least have a better idea what I’ve been talking about.