Books I've actually finished lately: 115

I will have such difficulty in becoming English again.

- TE Lawrence, letter to his mother, 29/08/1909

InDefinition - 79

mumdinger, n. 1) excellent and/or particularly savage example of the mum-gag; 2) one deploying same; 3) the obvious.

InDefinition - 78

mumsplaining, n. when my mother tells me something that a) she's told me six or seven times before, and b) I'd prefer she thought I didn't need explained to me in the first place

#LAD

11-year-old boy dresses as Christian Grey for World Book Day.

I was entirely on this kid's side... until I read the mother's rationalisation of it.

Oscar Wilde - in context (again*)

Swallow, swallow, little swallow - as I said to YOUR MUM last night!

--
* for Dominic Hilton

Classical

My mother writes to inform me that the enigma of Joyce's Oirish masterpiece Ulysses is to be celebrated in a series of 'massups'.

Chuckle.

Life of Larry

I used to assume that Lawrence Durrell was just a ghastly old fruit who liked to wear hats.

Now I suspect that his mother made him write in an unheated house.

InDefinition - 44

mumpteen, adj. precise number of times your mother has seen a given film (Crimson Tide, e.g.) the basic plot of which she still cannot remember

Adventures with Mother

Toward the end of one lesson for example, [Maxim] told me that he had to leave ten minutes early - and then proceeded to spend the entire ten minutes unravelling the tortuous logic of how his early departure wasn't actually depriving me of any violin instruction.

- Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventure with Russian Books

Last night I had a similar experience with my mother, who told me that I didn't have time to go for a run because dinner was 'very nearly ready'. We debated the matter for at least ten minutes, and then I went out anyway and ran very fast. Dinner was served 30 minutes after I got out of the shower.

What are keystroke twins?

Keystroke twins are black cats in the C.21st linguistic Matrix, arising from whatever you call that system of putting letters on phone-keys ('buttons') and from the iniquities of predictive text.

Classic results might include missives like: 'I watched your mother last night. (Hard going, man!)' - when for 'mother' read 'movies'.

I prefer examples where the irony is less circumstantial ('cock'/'anal', infamously), but still. If you find cool ones, please let me know - due credits will be accorded, naturally. Clangers in foreign languages get extra cookies. Unless your phone has disabled them, of course.

[What are cookies?]

non sequitur

Me: It's freezing in here.
Mother: It's the month of July!