I often hesitate over which of these two words is right in the particular context and it’s only when I say them out loud that I can get it clear. Loose, which rhymes with goose, is usually an adjective meaning not firmly or tightly held in place; not compact or dense; and free from restraint or confinement. The farmer realised that all the cows were loose and were trampling the vegetable patch. Matilda had a loose tooth which she hoped would soon come out and earn her some money from the… Read More

I know language changes and there’s no going back once words have either been lost or their meaning changed, but, in a no doubt forlorn bid to change things back to how they were, I want to focus attention on two changes that really bother me. Dying words First of all, I mourn the loss of a once-common word – “died”.  People don’t die any more.  They “pass away”.  They “pass”.   I just don’t understand where they’re supposed to have passed to, especially in New Zealand where only a small minority of… Read More

Somebody remarked that when you’re blind you are ‘one step away from the edge of the world’. It sounds a bit dramatic, but for those of us who faced sight loss somewhat late in life there’s a fair bit of truth in it. It’s not just tripping over the stuff that you swear somebody left in the way, there’s the mental hurdles: disbelief, adjustment and final acceptance are pretty tough to absorb, along with having to convert once instinctive actions into calculated steps. Coping is, of course, the key, and I reckon… Read More

I often hear these two words confused and though I wrote about them a few years ago, I’m doing a repeat explanation here. The problem seems to be that people will often use the verb to appraise when they mean to apprise. This rarely seems to happen the other way around, i.e., using apprise instead of appraise. It may be that this mistake occurs because some people are unaware that to apprise even exists – it’s a very formal sort of word. Appraise The verb to appraise means to assess or to evaluate. We inspect and appraise pre-owned vehicles before putting them on sale. Managers appraise… Read More

The siren’s song Alexa is a ‘Smart Speaker’, an innocent looking cylinder about a foot tall and capable of making the fiddly bits of daily routine a breeze. We blindies are suckers for this sort of stuff; anything that does our fumbling round for us is always welcome. She allowed me to access books and music without the threat of a wrongly pressed button or incorrect spelling. But blindness breeds doubt, and a dependence on gadgets disturbs me. I’ve always had a distrust of devices that do my thinking for me, what… Read More