Mind your language
`HAVE YOU seen that letter any- where?' I asked my husband.
`What letter? We're drowning in your letters.'
My husband had been a little put out since reading the letter in The Spectator about boys' testicles. If only I'd asked him. Naturally, Veronica, our daughter, has no such appurtenances, but as a medical man he could have put ire right about their ascension, descension and relative position. Not that I was wrong about their etymology and semantic standing. But the letter I had now lost was on a medical matter from a man who sounded like he knew what he was talking about (note the use of like and position of about). Why, he asked, do people keep saying `going for the jugular'? There are vari- ous jugular veins: the external jugular vein conveys blood from the superficial parts of the head, and the internal jugu- lar vein conveys it from inside the skull. But, my good lost-letter-writer added, even if someone had gone for one or other jugular vein, you could perfectly well get on without it. Indeed, some poor cancer patients had such veins cut by solicitous surgeons. So perhaps, in future, when cliche- obsessed politicians or journalists want to go for Mr Peter Preston or Mr Jonathan Aitken, they should choose the carotid arteries; that would stupefy them all right. I have just shown my husband this and he says I have got it 'more or less right'. Thanks.
Dot Wordsworth
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