This was a question Kirstin asked Elma in the car the other day. I collected a few other nice bits of linguistic data today:

Daddy, you should be finished your class by now!

(A pouty voicemail from Kiloh at 4.37pm, with a dramatic pause between each word - class finished at 5pm)

PAEDIATRICS - Please remember gonad protection. This is a legal requirement

(Sign behind the screen when Apoa was getting her arm x-rayed. The diagrams were also cool, one with flesh and one with bones)

The other was Apoa's bewildered silence when the doctor asked her, 'How can I help you?' I thought it was because she was used to doctors talking to me rather than her, but she said it was because she didn't expect to be asked how the doctor could help. She says next time she'll just say, 'cream, painkillers and an x-ray please!' ;-)

You'll have gathered that I did have to take Apoa to the doctor and then an x-ray today. Bad choice of day. The doctor was very busy and the x-ray department was busy and had some broken machinery. The receptionist explained there'd be at least an hour of a wait and asked us to take a seat, pointing to a waiting area with no unoccupied seats. The floor was fine, though. There's no fracture so it's just a case of waiting for it to feel better. Meanwhile no PE or guitar or anything.

Missed my office hours this morning and ended up over half an hour late for my class (I did warn them, though). The topic today was grammar in schools so we looked at Debbie Cameron's discussion in Verbal Hygiene of the conservative obsession with grammar and standards in the 1980s. So, of course, we had to talk about Mistress Chloe

B-)