Literary coincidences: 1

The other day someone - apologies: I don't recall... - told me that the real reason for what we commonly understand as leprous disfigurement is not the leprosy, per se, but the steady accretion of the constant damage sufferers unwittingly do themselves, on account of their non-functioning nerve-endings [approx.].

I wasn't really sure that I believed him (this explanation, somehow, didn't seem to cover it); but, since the only thing I had to offer on the subject was the 'How did you know it wasn't contagious?' scene from Papillon, I held my whisht.

Today, though, Stephen Grosz's The Examined Life - borrowed from my wife because I'd run out of Audible credits and needed something to listen to while I was out walking the dog - confirms that this is true.

InDefinition - 81

inlawcest, n. sic

Yeats - in context

I went out to the hazel wood, / Because a fire was in my head, / And I had not had my Health & Safety briefing.

Favourite footnotes: GUEST ENTRY

In a digressionary footnote, he repeats a story out of Plutarch: did you know that Caesar's assassin Brutus was similarly afflicted with bulimia on his march to the Battle of Philippi?

- Hugh Aldersey-Williams, on Sir Thomas Browne's 'Boulimia Centenaria'

Books I've actually finished lately: 70

The privilege of being subtle is the distinction between the fortunate and the unfortunate.

- John Berger

And other things never overheard at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst*

As a Marine* lieutenant, I had always been told in times of uncertainty to go to the library.

- David J Morris, The Evil Hours: a Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

--
* don't bother.

Found in books - 6

In a second-hand copy of Louis Zukofsky's Prepositions: The Collected Critical Essays of... (expanded edition), the quite considerable but not at all unpleasant aroma of (consumed) cigars.

A haiku on getting up in the morning

Books I've actually finished lately: 48

Mercifully witty.

Keystroke twins - 26

heroic
hernia

Only in English - 16

tracheotomy
tracheostomy

Two minutely differentiated words for two technically different things which are, in fact, basically the same thing. But not.

InDefinition - GUEST ENTRY

Pokemon, n. Jamaican proctologist

[with thanks to Gareth Teece]

InDefinition - 67

irredentist, n. one who wants his teeth fixed by a Saxon

Favourite foreign onomatopoeia - 10

borborygmus - (Greek) the sound of intestinal gases rumbling

[with thanks to Moose Allain, cartoonist at the Literary Review]

Funny old world, innit

Playboy's Chicago offices are soon to be occupied by the Children's Memorial Hospital, Prospect reports.

Also seen, last afternoon

AMBULANCE - patient transport service

Well... yes.