Words

Today is my last day in the office until after Easter. We only have to work a short day tomorrow so I can’t be bothered to go in. This maybe isn’t the wisest decision as I am not a huge fan of long weekends. I sometimes just find them a bit depressing, and at present I don’t have huge amounts planned so this is not the ideal combination. I will see my sister and nephew (and bro in law, he does exist, even though I don’t think I generally mention him!) at some point, but I’m not sure quite when and so on.

Something I could do with my time off is go to the Science of Spying exhibition at the Science Museum. The Science Museum recently commissioned a survey which asked people what they have done to spy on their other half. More than half of those surveyed admitted to reading their partner’s text messages. Really? There must a lot of untrusting, or at least nosey, people out there. If I think about some of the messages that I have in my phone, I’m not entirely sure that I would want anyone else to be reading them. I don’t just get stray texts, I do occasionally get messages that are actually intended for me that are enough to make a girl blush.

Those who weren’t reading texts were reading e-mails, rummaging through pockets or reading personal diaries. Fortunately, I never write anything personal down so the last would never apply to me anyway. I can see that if someone has some reason to distrust their partner that the might want to test that. I am not sure that any of these are the best course of action. Would it not be better to try and find some other way to deal with it other than snooping? Obviously it’s not great to have reason to distrust your partner but I can’t imagine that these approaches are actually helpful. You reinforce the lack of trust by trying to find out if it is true through covert means – and if you are right, well what do you do then? It’s a slippery slope.

By contrast though it also seems that Britain’s favourite word is “love” (I can’t find a link to this but I read it in the paper so it must be true...). This was followed by “smile”, “happy” and “chocolate”. A few years ago I read that the favourite was serendipity, but it seems we have got more romantic over the years. When I say ‘we’ that actually means ‘women’, who are the gender that overwhelmingly voted for this word, although it was still the overall winner by a big margin. What did men actually say was their favourite word? Men voted for “antidisestablishmentarianism”. Somehow I don’t think they chose it for its meaning (it means people who are opposed to the disestablishment of the church e.g. they think the state religion such as the Church of England should continue to be supported by the state) but instead because it is a very long word and they like saying it. So men are either very deep or very shallow. I think I know which one I would vote for...