I don’t know about you but I find the language that weather forecasters use rather dispiriting, with endless dribs and drabs, spits and spots, mist and murk. Imagine my delight then when I came across a completely new term, thanks to Paul Simons’s Weather Eye column in the Times: “In extreme cold, beware ‘pogonip’, when the moisture in the air can turn into a thick fog of ice crystals.”
It comes from the word “payinappih”, used by the Native American Shoshone tribe to describe the frozen fogs of fine ice needles that occur in the mountain valleys of the western United States in December. According to tradition, breathing the fog is injurious to the lungs.
There will be a large reward for the first forecaster to slip it seamlessly into a weather bulletin.
My eye was also caught by an announcement by National Highways about an A12 Chelmsford to A120 widening scheme: “Detrunking of sections of the existing A12 at Rivenhall End and between Kelvedon Way and Marks Tey.” I’m sure this makes perfect sense to road engineers and I think I get the drift, but you can’t be sure, can you?
Now, two minds with but a single thought. Both David Linton and Nigel Fryer brought the following announcement to my attention about a Calmac ferry: “Lord of the Isles was withdrawn from service for repairs due to “steel wastage”. Both say, rightly, this was once known as rust.
I think it best to preserve the anonymity of the correspondent who sent me the following from an education department (we don’t want any reprisals): “Pupils’ substantive and disciplinary journeys are shaped by rigorously historical enquiry questions, so that they can learn, systematically, to recognise and carry out differing types of historical argument, and so that medium-term analytic and narrative journeys are well-blended.” My heart goes out to the pupils.
Email jonathan.bouquet@observer.co.uk
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
