Spent the day in Sheringham on Saturday. It turned out to be a proper British seaside day – blue skies with a bit of a nip in the air, but without the senseless crowding and endless tailbacks that usually mar a fair weathered weekend on the east coast. OK, so it is not quite the holiday season, but it made a nice change. Anyway, you don’t go to the seaside without the customary wrap of fish and chips, and this was no exception. Fish and chips for me and Mrs Lestaret, with chips and sausage for Uppercase and just chips and ketchup for Lowercase. (pictured above)
Which got me thinking (it’s the change in the weather that does it – either that or the five litres of highly chlorinated water I swallowed at the leisure centre earlier!) about the letter n. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t sat gazing across a placid seashore thinking abstractedly about letters, just the n. Usually, but not always the lowercase n.
When did we start to use it instead of the word and? As in fish’n’chips of course. It seems to be a particularly British thing, and obviously more noticeable at the seaside; I don’t recall seeing it anywhere else in the world. We do it quite a lot too, but only with food apparently – salt’n’pepper, salt’n’vinegar, pie’n’mash, stew’n’dumplings, rhubard’n’custard etc.
Why don’t we use it more consistently? Apply it to other instances not related to foodstuffs. It may change our perceptions on the world. Just think, you could lose your licence for drink’n’drivin’, be arrested for assault’n’battery, and if Charles ever gets on the throne, we may well have a King’n’Queen! Gawd bless ‘em!
So I continue in this vein on the way home – relating to designerly things of course, (got to get a blog entry from somewhere!) and starting with H’n’J’s of course, upper’n’lowercase, work’n’turn/work’n’tumble, recto’n’verso sprang immediately to mind. Then I run out of steam. Shame really, as I thought there was much more to this and I could finish with an any suggestions? type of thing.
Now I appreciate that this isn’t the most intellectual entry, neither is it useful, or very probably not even mildly entertaining, but there you go. It’s been a quiet week. I’ll be back on form soon. There’s a couple of CD covers to design, and some slip casting in the offing, as well as a couple of books brewing… keep on coming back!
By the way, I did a short book making session on Thursday with my fist year graphics students (Hiya!) which seemed to go quite well. I was going to blog it up here, but Ms Feisty has already done a splendid job here which is why this entry is a bit dull!
