While travelling by bus to Leicester this morning I couldn't help overhearing the conversation of a couple apparently planning their morning's shopping.
She said to him "I want to get off at the thing. You need to get your thingie first and then go on to the thing.
Three 'things' in one sentence is quite a score but it was bettered by a neighbour of my great aunt. As they chatted over the garden fence, the neighbour said "Look, there's Mrs Thing's thing on the thing by the thing". To give readers a chance to guess I shall delay interpreting that for a day or two.
The older one gets, the more one is tempted by thing talk, as familiar names hide away just as one wants to use them, but I try to avoid monotony by devising alternatives to 'thing'. 'Whatnot' and 'thingamajig' are already quite common, though the second is rather thingy. I rather like 'grundleplonk' and 'twirtlegrob'. Readers are welcome to make more suggestions.
At one time I had great difficulty remembering 'skimmia' but I was always quite certain that its name did not begin with 'z', so I thought of it as 'the plant with a name that doesn't begin with z'
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